Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  With a heavy sigh, she swanned out of the room, snatching her basket as she left.

  “We’ll be right back,” I promised, giving Ezra my best smile.

  * * *

  “There’s no soup out here,” Merry said as I swung the barn door shut behind us. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s a trunk in here someplace.” I raced over to where Ezra and Thomas had stacked their supplies.

  The curious little crate Ezra had swiped away from me was gone.

  “Ellerie, we can’t look through their things!” Merry hissed.

  “Keep an eye out, will you?” I tore open one of the rucksacks. Then another. Perhaps they’d stored it there, out of sight. “Do you remember seeing that small crate Ezra was so possessive of when they first arrived? The one with all the things carved into its top?”

  “I—I don’t.” She looked away from the window. “Ellerie, stop—just tell me what’s going on.”

  “We need to find it,” I said, upending the last bag. Clothing and boots fell out, but no box.

  “Why?”

  I let out a strangled howl. It wasn’t here.

  “Ellerie, please!” She left her post and grabbed my elbow, forcing me to look at her.

  “That’s not Uncle Ezra,” I said, deflating as every ounce of fight fled. “Or Cousin Thomas. I don’t…I don’t think we have a cousin. Or an uncle, for that matter.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed together. “Of course we do. Papa has talked about Ezra for—”

  “But that’s not Ezra. He lied, Merry. He’s lying now.”

  “But…if he’s not our uncle…then who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I was so certain the trunk would tell us. The way he grabbed it from me….There must be something important inside.”

  Her eyes slid from mine, and she drifted from me. My chest burned with a spike of fear. She was about to run back to the house and tell of my treacherous ideas. What would they do to us when their secret was exposed?

  “You mean…that crate?”

  She pointed up to the loft, where a bit of the box’s corner peeked out from a pile of straw.

  There it was, irrefutable proof. Ezra had left all his other things out in the open but had taken pains to hide that. That crate had to hold something damning.

  We went up the ladder and rustled through the hay until I felt the trunk. I tugged it free, bringing it out into a ray of sunlight beaming through a hole in the roof I’d clearly need to patch before the spring rains set in.

  If the spring rains ever set in.

  “E-E-F,” I said, reading the initials carved on the trunk’s lid. “He might be an Ezra, but he’s certainly not a Downing.”

  Merry stared uneasily at the box. “That could belong to someone else….Perhaps he bought it secondhand—or is borrowing it from a relative.”

  “We’re supposed to be his relatives,” I reminded her.

  I ran my fingers over a set of carvings done just above the latches.

  Two lanterns.

  The one on the left was dark and still, but the one on the right had been lit and was casting its light into the world.

  “Should we open it?” I asked, suddenly hesitant.

  What if I was wrong? So he’d hidden the box? He didn’t know us any more than we knew him. Perhaps this held his money or important documents. Things you wouldn’t want to leave about in a house full of nieces.

  Opening this could shatter any trust we had between us.

  But he lied, I reminded myself. He didn’t know things he should have, and rather than admit that, he lied.

  With a burst of confidence, I flipped the latches. Before I could open the lid, a hand fell heavily onto my shoulder, and the fingers curved around my collarbone as if to hold me back.

  As Ezra peered down at me, I knew exactly how a squirming mouse felt, caught in the sight of a great horned owl. I wanted to run, but there was no way to leave. The only path into and out of the loft was the ladder he stood in front of.

  “I—we—” I glanced at Merry. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide with fear.

  “Just know,” he said, his voice low and even, “I will explain everything.”

  He wasn’t angry. If anything, his eyes looked sorrowful, deep with repentance. That sent a wave of trepidation over me that settled just under my skin, persistent and chilling. My fingertips danced over the symbols. “What are these?”

  “Lanterns,” Thomas said, stepping out of the shadows. They must have climbed the ladder while we were looking for the box, too intent on our quest to hear their footfalls. “To help light the darkness.”

  I knew without a trace of doubt that he meant something beyond an absence of sunlight.

  A cold sweat prickled at my neck. “What’s inside the box, Ezra?”

  He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. I couldn’t even see him breathing, so frozen were we in this awful, horrible moment. “Open it and find out.”

  At first it looked like nothing more than a simple medicine crate. The bottom was divided into sections, and every square held a corked glass bottle. Folded papers and a few thin journals were tucked into the top bands of the lid. Ink had bled through the backs of the pages, but the handwriting was too spidery to read. Along the side of the box was a deep compartment, crammed with an assortment of silver. Chains and medallions, crosses and bells. There were even a few stray bullets. They all nestled together in a twisted tangle, glimmering with dull luster.

  “What is all this?” I pulled a vial free, watching as a silvery liquid danced against its confinement. The last bit of a faded label clung valiantly to its side, showing a hasty rendering of three crosses. “Holy water?”

  Ezra shook his head. “It’s a bit more special than that. And much more potent. There’s a hidden catch on the side of the crate. If you press it…” He fidgeted with his glasses. “Everything you need to see is in there.”

  After a moment of fumbling, I released the hidden compartment running along the bottom. It was full of papers and notebooks, a series of sketches, and journal entries.

  Flipping through them, I took in a sharp breath.

  Shadowy figures with wide-brimmed hats smudged the pages, their eye sockets left empty so that the blank paper seemed to glow with an eerie sheen.

  “What…what are those things?” I whispered, scanning more pages. The notes were in a jumbled combination of English and Latin, too complex for me to make sense of, but I understood the pictures.

  Mostly.

  Beasts of myths and lore were rendered with a startling, lifelike quality, every bit as detailed as the drawings in Papa’s field guides—as if these things had been scientifically studied and catalogued with a meticulous hand. Water snakes with fangs and flared nostrils swam alongside boats whose crews were dwarfed by the serpentine monsters. Angry elfin men, with hooked nails and webbed fingers, leered off the page, their barbed tails nearly hidden in a haze of smoky pencil lead. A cloaked figure, too tall to be human, lurked in a forest glade, a glowering antlered skull for its face.

  There was a small set of initials in the picture’s corner.

  EEF, dated only months before.

  “Is this…What is…I don’t understand.” Rational words failed me. I wanted to justify these away as the wild imagination of a skilled scientist, as doodled daydreams gone horribly wrong. They were the ideas for a story, for a book, for something. They could not be real.

  These things were not real.

  “What are they? What do they do?” I paused uneasily, feeling as if I was asking the wrong questions. “What are you?”

  He let out a sigh, a slow hiss like the release of steam on canning day. “I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but I am not your uncle. My name is not ‘Ezra.’ ” He tapped at the initials on the crate. “My name is Ephraim
Ealy Fairhope. And I’m from England.” His voice changed, altering into a more melodic cadence. One I’d heard before.

  I turned toward Thomas. “And you?”

  “My name is Thomas,” he said, dropping his trumped-up accent. “That much is true. And Ephraim is my father. I’m just not your cousin.”

  “We’ve been sent here on a research expedition. When we stumbled across your farm, that day with the wolf, and Martha McCleary mistook me for Ezra…it seemed like the perfect chance to become part of the town, learn all we could. Usually when we arrive somewhere new—strangers in a strange land, as it were—it can be harder to find out what we need to know.”

  My muscles ached as I listened to him, frozen in a strange motionless state, yet poised to fly if an escape attempt proved necessary. “What…what exactly is it that you need to know?”

  “Strange occurrences about town, in the forests. Unusual crops, unusual weather. Mutations in livestock. Unexplained mysteries.”

  “Amity Falls has had all of those things.”

  He nodded. “We know.”

  Merry shifted. “Do you think…is there something that’s causing it?”

  He nodded again and stepped forward, then flipped the sketchbook back to the dark shadows with the hollowed eyes.

  Eyes like Prudence Latheton claimed to have seen.

  Eyes like Cyrus Danforth had shouted about all the way to the Gallows.

  Eyes like those that haunted my brother.

  Eyes that I had seen myself.

  That was a dream, insisted the tiny voice within me.

  I turned the page, trying to read the notes scrawled along the edges of the drawings. “The…Dark Watchers?” Ephraim didn’t move a muscle, but the look on his face told me I’d translated it correctly. “What are they?”

  “Creatures that look like you and me—most of the time—but they can assume other forms when needed. They’re fast. They’re cunning. Their very presence in an area can change the world around them. Morphing it, altering it. Things that should be pure and good become twisted and wrong.”

  “The stag,” I said, remembering the misshapen creature the McNally boys had killed. “It had too many horns, too many hooves.”

  “Exactly.” He took my hand, pressing it between his, his face worried and earnest. “Thomas and I…we belong to the Brotherhood of the Light. Those lanterns are our sigil. For centuries, the Brotherhood has sought to hold back the darkness of the world with knowledge. We study these creatures—and others—to learn how to stop them.”

  “Stop them? From what?”

  “Destroying this town,” Thomas said softly.

  Ephraim peered through his glasses, squinting as if a smudge bothered him. To his credit, he left them on. “Dark Watchers thrive on discord. They’ve often been linked to terrible events around the world. For many years it was thought they could sense a tragedy before it occurred and were drawn to it—like ships to a beacon.”

  “But now?” I pressed.

  “We think they actually instigate the events leading up to the disasters.”

  “Instigate?” Merry echoed. “How?”

  “When they first arrive, Dark Watchers ingratiate themselves into the life of their new town, watching, learning all they can, to set up…well…a game for themselves. It always starts small, with little harmless pranks. You might have a hairbrush go missing, tools found in a different place than you left them.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “That sounds so childish.” I held up the sketch skeptically. “These creatures are really out there moving things around in houses?”

  Thomas shook his head. “No. No. They don’t do anything. They have others carry out the acts. People in town.”

  I shook my head. It made no sense. “Why would anyone go along with that?”

  “It’s all part of a trade. The person gets something they want, something they desire, and the Dark Watchers have a new pawn.”

  “I don’t see the fun in it for them.”

  “The pranks are efficiently designed. Frustrations build. Accusations are cast upon innocent people. Disagreements turn to arguments. Arguments into fights. And soon the whole village is tearing at the seams.”

  “Why would anyone want to watch that?” Merry asked.

  Ezra—Ephraim—shook his head helplessly. “It’s just their nature.”

  I closed the journal, eager to get rid of the disquieting pictures. “What are we to do?”

  “We are doing nothing,” Ephraim said. “Thomas and I are keeping a close watch on the town. This is the first time we’ve been able to watch one of their games unfold. We’ve always been a step or two behind, always coming across the aftermath. To see them in action, at work…this could prove very useful for the Brotherhood.”

  “And you’re going to stop them,” Merry supplied, filling in what he hadn’t said. “Right?”

  There was a sliver of hesitation before he answered. “Yes, of course.”

  My sister and I shared a worried look.

  “How?” Merry asked. “You’ve never even seen them before, but you—”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “I have,” I said. “I thought it was a dream, but I’m starting to worry it was a great deal more than that.”

  Ephraim frowned. “What do you mean? Who did you see?”

  “It was a woman, dressed all in white. She had long dark hair and horrible silvery eyes. And her hands—”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “The Queen.”

  “Queen?” Merry repeated.

  “They’re a hive, of sorts. Just like your bees. They take their orders from one head, doing everything they can to serve the good of their group.” He turned back to me. “You must tell me exactly what happened.”

  I recounted the dream, backtracking to explain who Cyrus had been, what he’d claimed to have seen before his Judgment. I told them of the times when I’d seen the wisp of white walking through the fields, lighting an Our Lady. I even confessed my fears that I’d had something to do with the schoolhouse fire, however impossible it seemed.

  Ephraim’s face was grave as I finished my tale. “You well might have. But…” He took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes before returning them. “When you saw her, before this dream, did she ever speak to you?”

  I shook my head. “She was always so far away.”

  He sighed. “You never spoke to her? Never struck up a trade?”

  “No.”

  “It…it could have been a dream, Father,” Thomas allowed. “With so many awful things going on throughout the valley, I shouldn’t wonder their sleep has been affected.”

  “But the school did burn,” Ephraim insisted. “That’s an awfully large coincidence….Someone had to have lit that match.”

  My stomach sloshed with guilt that I wasn’t sure I’d earned.

  “We need to do more research,” he decided. “Clemency announced the social for tomorrow?”

  Merry nodded.

  “I propose we all attend, keeping up the Ezra Downing charade. With so many townspeople gathered together, I’m certain the Dark Watchers will be nearby. But,” he added, raising a sharp finger of warning, “neither of you should mention this to anyone outside this barn.”

  I frowned, glancing out the small loft window to the chicken coop below. “We have to tell Sadie. We can’t leave her in the dark about something so—”

  “That’s exactly why we need to stay silent. We can’t afford to tip our hand. The only advantage we have against these fiends is our element of surprise. They don’t know we know,” Ephraim said firmly. “We need to keep it that way. For tomorrow at least.” He looked toward Merry, then Thomas. “Shall we all swear to it?”

  They nodded readily, but I remained still.

  “What’s your plan for tomorrow? We go
to the social and…what, exactly?”

  “We watch. We glean every scrap of information we can. See what disputes break out. See where the frictions are. I’m positive everything will lead us directly to the Dark Watchers.”

  “And then we…we kill them?” I hazarded to guess.

  Ephraim looked queasy at the prospect. “You see now the necessity of keeping the matter quiet, don’t you?”

  I didn’t like not telling Sadie. She needed to know, needed to be warned. It felt as though I was somehow lying to her. A lie of omission.

  But I could also understand Ephraim’s reticence. She was eight. All it would take was a whisper of her prized secret to Trinity Brewster, and suddenly the entire town would be abuzz with the story.

  After a moment, I agreed.

  “Excellent. It’s settled, then.” Ephraim shifted his voice back to Ezra’s accent. “Tomorrow the Downings shall be front and center at the Falls’s social.”

  One sack of flour.

  A bowl of eggs, gathered fresh from the henhouse that morning.

  Two apples so shriveled, they hardly deserved the title.

  A few spices, nearly petrified and probably without flavor.

  I drummed my fingers on the kitchen table, eyeing each ingredient with disdain. We were due to leave for the social in a few hours, and I couldn’t come up with a single idea for a dish to bring.

  Mama always brought a honey cake, but I had no honey, no cream, and certainly no sugar.

  If everything had been normal, I would have sliced up green beans, simmered them with little white onions and fat cuts of bacon, but without the usual spring rains, our seedlings had withered and shriveled.

  A custard, perhaps, I thought, staring at all those eggs. It wasn’t a dish anyone would ever expect to see at a picnic, but it truly was all we could spare.

  But what would I flavor it with?

  I pushed the jars of spices about, eyeing the mustard seeds.

  Deviled eggs it would be.

  I set to work, boiling the eggs.