Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  “Hello,” I started, overcome by a strange sense of timidity. There was no one remotely close enough to overhear and judge me. And besides…

  I stilled, watching the honeybees dance in the white-hot sunlight.

  These were my bees.

  The hive boxes and tools might still have belonged to Papa, but it had been months since he’d been near them. The colonies inside had shifted and repopulated many times since then. Even the queens could have changed, new ones born since I’d stepped into his duties.

  Until this moment, I’d never stopped thinking of them as his.

  But they weren’t.

  They were mine.

  “It’s me, Ellerie,” I said, beginning again, with a fresh round of confidence and assurance. “I don’t know how much you know about life outside your hives, past the fields and flowers, but things have…well, they’ve not been good lately. And they’ve gotten even worse today. I wish I could stay here, with you, and just go on tending to the farm, watching you grow and thrive, but I can’t. My sisters and my brother—my hive—they need me.”

  I ran my fingers over the wooden lid, feeling the slight vibration of all the buzzing bodies beneath it.

  “And a good queen always tends to her hive, doesn’t she?”

  A cluster of bees piled out of the entrance and crawled to the top. They were undoubtedly readying themselves for another forage, thinking of all the pollen to gather, but part of me hoped they’d come out to better hear my words.

  “It’s going to be dangerous leaving the farm and I…I don’t know if I will make it back. It’s strange to think about that—that this could be my last time here, with you, with the farm, with…everything….”

  Tears pricked at my eyes, and I looked away, blinking them back. I studied the porch steps, picturing Merry on them snapping peas, while Mama peeled potatoes in the rocking chair, singing and smiling. Papa was out in the fields, his big straw hat blocking the sun, while he chatted with the bees buzzing around him. Even Sam was there in my imagination, pushing Sadie on the rope swing under the oak tree. I drank the sight in, savoring the little details so ingrained in my memory. It was like reading a beloved old book. Would we ever be together like that again?

  “If I don’t…If something should happen to me…you will always have a home here, if you want it, but you’re free to leave, free to swarm away if you need to. Do whatever you need for the good of the hive, all right?”

  I wasn’t sure how to end my speech, so I simply stepped away before the tears overwhelmed me.

  As I trekked toward the barn, a trio of bees raced out in front of me, weaving around themselves. They hovered there for a moment, bobbing up and down, before rising into the sky, taking flight, and leaving me behind.

  It felt like a blessing.

  It felt like goodbye.

  A miserable hot breeze swept by, carrying echoing cries and lingering screams from town. A dark haze blanketed the village, smoke and ash, dirt and debris kicked up from the explosions.

  My resolve began to waver as I considered it. Nothing good would be discovered within such malignant murk.

  I was in the barn for only a moment, grabbing what I needed from the wall.

  With Papa’s hatchet heavy in my hand, I made my way back to Amity Falls.

  “Rule Number One: A rope of great cords will not fray, snap, or weather. The Falls stands strong if we all bind together.”

  The smoke smelled of burning timber and pitch, vile and black. It hung thickly in the air, stinging my nostrils and eyes, turning the bright afternoon into a false twilight hellscape, and making it nearly impossible for me to see my surroundings. Though I knew I was on the outskirts of town—there were the Maddins’ flower beds, withered away to ragged husks—I’d lost all sense of direction within the poisonous haze.

  There were darker shadows that moved within the smoke, warped into nightmarish shapes and creations. I watched agape as an absolute giant swung back a scythe and brought it down upon a writhing mass again and again until the mass moved no more. The titan then turned, shifting its path toward me. I ducked behind a bush in time to see the small form of Mark Danforth hurtle past me. The scythe was easily twice his height. Its blade was slick with red and black and things I cared not to think about. His eyes were completely flat, unable to engage or understand anything that was going on around him.

  “Where are you, Finnick?” he sang in an off-key taunt, all but whistling his glee. “I know it was you. You can’t hide forever. I’m coming. Oh, I’m coming.”

  His head shot toward the left with a reptilian snap, and he listened to an approaching skirmish. Rather than flee, he took off after it, his curved blade raised high.

  Shrieks rose from inside the Maddins’ house, and moments later, a window on the second floor shattered from within. Deadly shards of glass rained upon the parched ground, followed by the meaty thud of a body pushed from the gaping hole. Bonnie let out a final gasping moan before she fell still.

  “You there!” growled a voice from the window. A figure—too smudged in soot for me to clearly see—peered down at me.

  Alarm flooded my chest, then raced up my throat like a splash of hot vomit.

  It was Alice Fowler.

  She’d been the one to push Bonnie from the window, killing the girl.

  “Is that Ellerie Downing I see?” she called out. With the fire reflecting off her wide eyes, she looked crazed. Alice darted from the window, presumably on her way for me. I stumbled into the murk, heedless of where I was headed. I only knew I needed to get away.

  I turned down the street to the right as the Maddins’ front door swung open.

  “Where are you? Come back here!”

  Shouts rose across the road, and the schoolteacher raced after them, certain she was following me instead.

  I pressed on, heading deeper into the Falls. Some houses were ablaze, having been caught by falling embers. Others were already gone, burnt down to charred remains. As I turned up Main Street, I found the source of the explosions.

  McCleary’s general store had been blown to pieces, bricks blasted out across the road like in a game of Trinity Brewster’s jacks. The storage room must have caught fire, igniting kegs of gunpowder. The force of it had destroyed all the nearby houses, and the ensuing fires had raced to Matthias Dodson’s livery.

  Stallions galloped up and down the road, their eyes rolling madly as they tried to escape the inferno, racing like demons set loose upon the earth. Their screams rattled the air. I’d never heard a more horrible sound.

  Behind me, hidden somewhere in the hazy madness, a fight broke out. Though unseen, I could hear every accusation hurled, every punch thrown. One of the men was Leland Schäfer. I would have recognized his nervous stutter anywhere.

  “Get back, Winthrop, I’m warning you!” he cried. “I’ll shoot, I swear!”

  “Not if I shoot you first!”

  Winthrop Mullins.

  He blamed his grandmother’s death on the Elder.

  And now they both had guns.

  I wanted to stop them, to somehow intervene, but I couldn’t tell where they were in the shadowy mayhem. Their voices echoed off the walls of smoke, at my left one moment and my right the next.

  A gun went off.

  Once.

  Twice.

  The third shot zipped by, nearly grazing my ear as it sped past.

  I had to get out of here.

  But where to go?

  Where would my sisters have been taken?

  The Gathering House?

  It seemed possible, given that the last Judgment had played out there, but all three Elders would be required, and Leland was too occupied with murdering or being murdered by Winthrop.

  My mind skirted past the Gallows. If my brother was there—if all my siblings were there—I did n
ot want to know, didn’t want to imagine it, didn’t want even a trace of it entering my thoughts, lest I somehow conjure it into existence.

  With McCleary’s and the livery stables destroyed, my list of public places narrowed considerably.

  The tavern…or the church.

  Squinting through the fiery haze, I picked my way closer to the center of town, dodging altercations, ducking every time I heard gunfire. My axe would do me little good if I found a rifle pointed in my direction.

  I heard the shattering of glass as I approached the tavern. It was dark inside, lit only by two hurricane lamps, but I could make out overturned tables, bits of broken chairs, and cutlery strewn about. Whatever fight had broken out here was done and over with, save for one figure behind the bar.

  Prudence Latheton scurried back and forth, smashing bottles of liquor with a manic zeal. Her eyes were crazed with a righteous fervor, and her laughter spurted, as deep as a bullfrog’s cry.

  I stepped inside. The room reeked of spirits and sour mash. It was a wonder the entire building hadn’t already gone up in flames, as thoroughly doused as it was.

  Prudence swung at a cask of ale with a hatchet of her own, and split open the oaken barrel with a cackle. I knocked into a fallen chair, and she froze, her movements sharp and alert.

  “What are you doing in here?” I dared to ask, tightening the hold on my wooden handle. It was a risk, engaging her, but she might know where I needed to be.

  “The Lord’s work,” she said proudly, striking the cask again.

  I took an uneasy step closer. “Have you seen my sisters? Or Samuel?”

  She raised one dubious eyebrow. “They found him hiding away like a worm at Bryson’s ranch. Carried him out kicking and screaming all the way to the stocks. I imagine he’s still there. What’s left of him anyway.”

  “He’s dead?”

  The words fell from me, dropping clumsily free.

  Sam dead.

  It didn’t seem possible. He was my twin, the other half of myself. Shouldn’t I have felt the moment when he left the world, without me by his side?

  She shrugged, unconcerned.

  “Prudence, please! What happened?”

  “The parson wants to perform a cleansing, or some such nonsense. Says we need to make his soul right before he’s sentenced. Me, I’m grateful he dared to bring the devil here. It let us see everything clearly, let us cleanse ourselves.” She picked up a bottle of wine, examining it through slit eyes, before smashing it against the counter.

  Pieces of glass ricocheted out and struck one of the lanterns farther down the bar. It teetered on the edge for a moment before shattering. The wick landed in a puddle of spirits. In a flash, they caught fire. Flames raced along the floorboards, up the bar, heading toward Prudence. She let out a scream as the fire licked at her sodden skirts.

  “We have to get out of here!” I cried, grabbing a towel to stamp out the blaze.

  “No! No! Not until every bottle of this devil’s brew has been destroyed!” she protested.

  “The fire will take care of that. Come with me!” She squirmed and twisted in my grasp, and I lost hold of my hatchet. It clattered to the floor and was kicked under a pile of debris as Prudence fought against me.

  “Let me go!” she screeched, running back to the bar. “They must be stopped. They must be—”

  A burst of fire blasted out from the counter, cutting off any words Prudence might ever have uttered again. The explosion threw us backward. I landed painfully on an upturned table, cracking my head against its leg.

  The room went black.

  Consciousness came back to me in little stirrings of awareness. The sharp scent of burning timber. The flicker of the dancing flames. But I was unable to move, too stunned to feel the building heat, too disoriented to save myself from the approaching inferno.

  All I could do was watch.

  Watch the angry golden red.

  Watch the biting orange.

  Watch.

  Was it so very awful, sitting back and watching? There was a peace to it. An acceptance. It removed me from the situation, letting me examine it with an impassive detachment. I could almost understand its mesmerizing appeal.

  It was so easy.

  No.

  My fingers twitched first, skittering over the motionless form of Prudence Latheton, searching for any sign of life. With a dazed groan, I pulled myself forward. The room swam in and out of focus. The furniture wouldn’t stay still, and there were too many fires before me to make sense of where they were spreading.

  How long had I been out?

  Slowly my eyesight returned; the twin series of flames merged back together. The room was full of smoke, too murky to see through, and I had to feel about the floor for my hatchet. It couldn’t have fallen far from me. Where was it?

  At last, my fingers made out the metal curve of the head, and I strained to bring it closer.

  Above me, the rafters groaned, too much weight supported on beams too far ravaged. When one splintered apart, sending fiery detritus down upon me, I bolted from the burning tavern as fast as my unsteady feet could carry me.

  Down one street.

  Down another.

  I stumbled toward the church, pulled along by my unwavering belief that Sam was still alive. That I would find him, find my sisters, and that we all would somehow make it through this.

  House after ruined house.

  Wagons caught on fire.

  Stinking messes of soot and charred flesh.

  I hoped they were animals.

  I couldn’t bear to think of what else they could have been.

  The Gathering House was nearly gone. The Founder Tree was a dark silhouette in front of a corona of flames. Its stumps seemed to reach up into the sky, begging for relief, begging for release.

  I understood how it ached.

  What would happen when it finally gave up the ghost, collapsing in a final pile of ash and soot? It had been the start of the Falls. Would its demise signal the town’s end as well?

  As I turned onto Sycamore Lane, an unexpected sight met my eyes.

  There, surrounded by the smoldering husks of other homes, was the parsonage, seemingly untouched. My heart swelled with unrealistic hope. Perhaps my sisters had been taken here. Perhaps they were tucked away within those blessed walls, safe and untouched by the raging storm outside. Perhaps they—

  A scream from within ripped apart my foolish thoughts before I could even start to wish them.

  It throbbed, its vibrato standing the hairs of my arms on end. There was pain, yes, but something even darker, a primal urging of despair and grit, resolution and forbearance. It trailed off, as ragged as a torn cloth, only to mount again, louder and even more piercing than before.

  “Rebecca?” I murmured, recognizing some small scrap of her in that horrible tone. What were they doing to her?

  I pushed my way through the front door without knocking. Letitia Briard’s parlor was an oasis after the horrors outside. Lanterns glowed cheerfully, and not a bit of furniture was out of place. There was even a tea tray laid out, cups still steaming, as if their owners had only just stepped away. When a volley of groans rose from the back bedroom, feverish and pounding into my temples, I almost wanted to laugh at the absurd juxtaposition.

  “Get it out, get it out!” Rebecca howled, before letting loose a series of grunts.

  Out?

  I paused, terrified to conjure what was happening to her, before clarity dawned on me.

  The baby.

  Rebecca was in labor.

  I glanced around the parlor, now unsure of what I ought to do. I was the last person Rebecca would want barging into her confinement room, but I couldn’t leave her to do this alone.

  I was spared having to make a choice as Letitia bustled out of the room,
her arms full of bloodied linens. She dropped them as she spotted me.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her eyes fell to the hatchet, darkening. “I’ll scream. Simon is in the other room. Even if you reach me first, you’d never overpower him.”

  My face flushed. I was horrified that she thought so little of me. “I’d never…I wouldn’t…I heard Rebecca and wanted to help.”

  “I think your family has done far more than their share of helping her.”

  A wave of uneasiness swept over me, and my feet itched to flee. “You know?”

  “Anyone with half a brain could figure it out.”

  I glanced toward the back room, wondering who else was in the house. “Does Simon?”

  She sniffed. “Of course not. My boy may be many things, but gifted with an ounce of sense is not one of them….Have you come to kill it?”

  “It?”

  She looked at me as if I was impossibly slow. “The baby. I assume your brother sent you to cover up any evidence of their…congress.”

  My mouth fell open with horrified surprise. “I’d never!”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I heard her cries—”

  “There are a lot of people crying in the world right now. Go bother them instead.”

  Rebecca’s screams grew higher in pitch, lengthening until I thought they’d never end, until they’d drown the world in their agony, driving everyone who heard them to madness.

  But then, silence.

  Until another cry sounded.

  Softer.

  Smaller.

  And then, a laugh of delight.

  “She’s perfect!” Rebecca exclaimed weakly.

  She.

  A girl.

  Samuel had a daughter.

  “Just perfect,” Rebecca repeated. “Look at her, Simon. She’s just…”

  “Blond,” he finished. “She’s blond.”

  The baby began fussing as heavy footsteps paced the room.

  “Why is she blond?” Simon asked, confusion making him louder, looser, a cornered animal set to strike. “I’ve seen that shade before….Where have I seen it?”