“Are you crazy?” she hissed.
“You want the twins to catch you?”
Nalia took hold of the roof’s edge and let Jemmy help her wriggle up beside him.
They flattened themselves against the wooden shingles just in time. A puffing and red-faced Cinda came pounding around the side of the shed, her wheezing brother close behind.
“You said they came this way,” Asher said.
“They did!”
“Well, where are they?” He pushed her shoulders.
“I don’t know, you stupid goat!” she said, shoving him back.
Before the fight escalated, something caught Asher’s eye. His anger dissolved, turning into a satisfied smirk. “Next best thing,” he said, trotting around the shed.
Nalia snaked her way to the top of the roof.
“What are you doing?” Jemmy said.
“Some other kid is probably in trouble.”
“Long as it’s not us.” But at her stricken look, he said, “What?”
She whispered, “Speare.” Her little brother threaded his way through the market just a few feet below, sack slung over one thin shoulder. She turned to Jemmy, her heart full of need.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Jemmy said, scowling.
With a huff of exasperation, she squirmed down toward the shed. “I can’t let them hurt him.”
“But they’ll smash you to bits!”
“He’s only six!”
“Just—hold on, will you? Let me try something.” Jemmy touched one of the wooden shingles beneath him. It lifted free a moment later. He closed his eyes and hummed.
“Hurry,” Nalia whispered, seeing the twins split up to trap Speare between them.
“Twiggy!” crowed Cinda. Speare jumped. “You were supposed to bring us our bread this morning.”
“I did,” he said, backing up. Behind him, Asher grabbed the burlap sack.
“You didn’t,” Cinda said. “Mama said so. You’re not calling our mama a liar, are you, you little snot-nosed weakling?”
If Jemmy didn’t do something soon, Nalia was going to jump down. She glanced at Jemmy and saw the shingle in his hands fall apart into a dozen sharp wooden darts.
“Be ready,” Jemmy murmured. He elbowed his way to the top of the roof and threw half the darts with a snap of his wrist. Before they hit, he let fly with the rest.
Asher howled first, then Cinda.
Nalia and Jemmy scuttled down the roof, half-jumping and half-falling to the shed, then to the ground. They ran around the side of the meeting hall, in full view of the twins.
“You turds!” Cinda screamed, brushing darts out of her hair and clothes. “I’ll tear your arms off!”
Nalia held back on her speed till she was sure both twins were pursuing them. Then she sped up and grabbed Jemmy’s arm. “I have an idea!” She led him in a circuitous route, knocking into market patrons here and there to be sure muffled cries and curses marked their path for the twins to follow.
They ran right in front of the honey-cake stand, Nalia’s stomach twisting with hunger at the delightful smells. Four flattened rounds of fried dough sat steaming on the wooden rack, already dripping with honey. A few feet away, the vendor stood watch over his cast-iron frying pan, stirring a new batch.
Just as she’d hoped, Asher slowed; his sweet tooth was legendary. He grabbed one of the honey-cakes and tried to slip away, but the vendor’s arm snaked out and grabbed his wrist. “You’re paying for that, boy,” he said.
Asher howled in frustration, twisting to free himself. Cinda said, “You let my brother go!”
“Come on,” Nalia said, pulling Jemmy away from the market, toward the forest. Once they made the trees, the twins would never catch them.
She’d never been so glad to feel the chill of the forest’s shadows.
“That was a good idea,” Jemmy said, as the two of them slowed to a brisk walk.
“Thanks.”
“How’d you think of it?”
She shrugged. “I knew they’d be mad as hornets. And what does Asher do when he’s mad as a hornet? He finds something sweet to eat.” A little shyly, she said, “That was great, making those darts.”
He shrugged and kicked at the dirt, hiding a small grin.
“I never saw you do anything like it before. Did you learn that from the forest people too?”
“Hamadrians,” he corrected absently. She knew he sneaked off for a few days at a time when his mama was busy with a customer. Taking Maven’s riding horse, he would cross the Laskia River, heading deep into the forest to spy on the strange people who dwelt in the trees. She wasn’t sure anyone else in town even knew they were there. He had offered to take her along, but she knew her papa wouldn’t allow it.
“I wish I could do that woodcraft stuff too,” she said.
“It’s not that hard,” he said, but she held up her hand before he could offer to teach her again. In all the times she’d tried, she’d never shown the slightest ability.
He said, “You just have to talk to the wood, ask it to change for you. It’s amazing, what the Hamadrians can do. I even saw one coax a tree to make special sap for a poultice, for someone who was hurt.” His eyes grew dreamy. “I bet I could do that.”
“Jemmy,” she said, “what did Asher mean, about your mama? What’s wrong with her having a customer?”
His mood soured. “Nothing,” he said, and scaled a nearby oak before she could say anything else. Seconds later, he sat on a branch thirty feet up.
She suppressed a sigh of frustration. He knew she couldn’t climb like that.
When she got home that afternoon, Nalia found her papa, Sabaston, sitting at the work table in the bakery’s back room. The stump of his left leg rested on a chair kitty-corner to his, a grim reminder of the mill accident that had claimed her mama’s life six years before.
While he measured out flour, salt, and potatoes for the next day’s deliveries, Nalia gathered up the dirty baking sheets to take them out back to the water-pump and wash them. She wanted to complain to her papa about what the honey-cake vendor had said about Jemmy, but she knew what he’d say: Jemmy’s an odd boy, and people can be suspicious of odd things. Don’t fret about it. How was that supposed to help her, anyway?
A new voice broke the silence. “Look, look!” Speare dashed into the back room, beaming and holding up a grubby coin.
“Where’d you get that, little man?” Sabaston said.
“Maven’s new customer,” Speare said. “I was kinda out of breath when I got there, so he gave me this and said I was a good boy to work so hard.”
“Why were you out of breath?” The question was mild, but Nalia heard the concern behind it. Speare wasn’t supposed to overexert himself.
Speare blinked, his grin dying. “Well, um,” he said. “I wasn’t, till. . . .”
“Till?”
Nalia spoke up. “It was Cinda and Asher. They found him in the market.”
Sabaston raised an inquisitive eyebrow and turned back to the unbruised and unbloodied Speare.
“Nal and Jemmy lured them away,” Speare said, embarrassed. “Then I ran fast to get out of there, but honest, Papa, I had to—”
Sabaston raised a floured hand. “I think I see.” Nodding at the coin, he said, “And what do you plan to do with that?”
Speare’s grin returned. “Honey-cakes,” he said happily, and dashed back out the door.
Life went on as usual for a few days: Nalia delivered her loaves in the mornings, hurrying in the deepening autumn chill, and spent her afternoons playing in the forest with Jemmy. But a week after their run-in with the twins, she found their weeping willow tree empty. Jemmy wasn’t at the market, nor at the bakery.
She found him behind his mama’s house, in her small orchard of apple trees, notable for their red-and-yellow-splotched fruits. He lay along a bough of the largest tree, eyes drowsing, fingers stroking along a branch and down one of the apples.
“What are you doi
ng?” she asked, coming closer.
He glanced at the house and then said in a low voice, “Mama’s sick. I’m going to make her better.”
“How?”
He pointed his chin at the piebald apple beneath his fingers. “I’m asking the tree to put medicine in it.”
“How long will it take?”
“Two or three days,” he said.
“You can’t stay up there for two or three days!”
“I have to. She’s sick.”
Nalia turned to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“To get you food, and a blanket. You may be crazy, but you can at least be warm.”
The next morning, as Nalia gathered more supplies for Jemmy, her father called to her from the bakery’s workroom.
“Yes, Papa?” she said from the doorway, hiding the sack behind her.
“Hop-Flea, you need to take Speare’s rounds today,” her papa said. He looked troubled. “He’s ill.”
She rushed upstairs to Speare’s little cubby of a room. Her brother lay in bed, awake and listless, his breathing raspy. His eyes looked gummy.
“Don’t you worry,” she said, ruffling his thin brown hair. “I’ll see to it you get better soon. Can’t have you turning into a lazy lie-about.”
He smiled faintly.
She got to Jemmy’s apple tree just after noon. “Sorry, I know I’m late,” she said. “Speare’s sick so I had more deliveries. Here.” She handed the sack up to him.
“Thanks,” Jemmy said, and yawned.
“Jemmy,” she said. “Speare’s sick.”
“And?”
She lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Nal,” he said, “I can’t just—”
“He’s my brother,” she said. “You know he’s not strong. He needs all the help we can give him.”
“I’m not—” He lowered his voice. “I’m not supposed to.”
“Not supposed to what?”
“Do anything out of the ordinary, around anyone.”
“You do stuff around me all the time!”
“That’s different. That’s just you. Speare can’t keep a secret.”
“He’ll never know,” she said. “Please, Jemmy.”
He gave a hard sigh and stretched his free hand to touch another apple.
Throughout Fallon’s Bend, many, particularly children, fell ill. Most, including Nalia, felt miserable for a day and then bounced back, but Speare’s health ebbed like a slow, low tide. Nalia fussed and fidgeted over him, forcing him to drink broth and tea, putting hot plasters on his chest to ease his breathing, but nothing she did seemed to accomplish more than temporary relief.
The day after Nalia’s own brief bout with illness, as she loaded up her sack with deliveries—and another, surreptitiously, with supplies for Jemmy—Sabaston said, “Bring these to the twins’ house.” He handed her two warm loaves of his braided potato bread. “No charge.”
“Why?”>
“Asher’s sick.”
To Nalia’s chagrin, part of her was secretly glad. “How sick?”
“Sick. For days now.” He shook his head. “Poor Shona, and Frayne.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Every time I go there, Asher’s mama accuses me of bringing her days-old bread, or says we’re using mealy flour or rancid butter. Why do you want to help her now?”
“Well, Hop-Flea, sometimes a little kindness at the right moment can soften a suspicious heart.” He shrugged. “Even if it doesn’t, it’s easy to be kind to your friends. The mark of a truly good heart is helping those you don’t get along with when they need it most.”
When Nalia knocked on the twins’ door, their mama, Shona, pulled it open. Her red-rimmed eyes spoke of recent tears. Without a word, Nalia handed over the two braided loaves.
Shona’s mouth thinned. “We didn’t order these. I’m not paying extra for them.”
“No charge,” Nalia said. “Papa says they’re a gift. We—we hope Asher’s better soon.”
“A gift.” The look in Shona’s eyes said she was trying to figure out how Sabaston was trying to cheat her this time.
“Tell me,” Nalia said, “it’s what everyone else has been sick with? What Asher has?”
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s just,” Nalia said, and faltered. “Speare’s sick too.”
Shona said nothing.
“Anyway, I hope Asher gets better soon,” Nalia said, and fled.
Speare looked awful, and now Papa was looking awful too, grim and worried. She hadn’t seen him like this since Mama died.
After rushing through her deliveries, Nalia raced for Jemmy’s orchard.
“Yet?” she called up to him.
“Shh,” he said, glancing at the back door to his house. “No, not yet. Took longer to work on two at once. But I finished my mama’s last night. Her fever broke this morning,” he added proudly.
“How much longer?”
He let his fingertips drift over the apple, a clouded look on his face. “Another day, maybe day and a half.”
Speare would be all right for a day and a half. But—could he wait even a little longer? Nalia hesitated, then said, “What you’re doing is wonderful. I just know you’ll save Speare’s life.”
He shrugged.
“You could save another life too, you know.”
Twisting his head to look at her, he said, “What?”
“Someone else is very sick.”
“Nal—”
“You have such a good heart, Jemmy, I’ve seen it. Doesn’t it make you feel good, that you could help your mama when no one else could?”
He rolled his eyes. “Who is it?”
“Asher.”
The look on his face mixed disbelief and betrayal. “You’re crazy!”
“He could die!”
“If anyone deserves to be sick, it’s Asher.”
“Papa says it’s easy to be kind to your friends, but the true test of a good heart is helping people you don’t like when they really need it. Jemmy—I know the things people say about you. About how you’re odd, and fey, about how you don’t have a father, about—about how there’s something wrong with you.”
His glare was so bilious that she knew she’d gone too far.
She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but the words spilled out anyway: “This is your chance to show everyone what I already know: that you’re the kindest, most good-hearted person in all of Fallon’s Bend.”
His fingers tightened around Speare’s apple. Nalia made herself walk away before she said anything more.
Just before sunset, after she’d finished cleaning up at the bakery, Nalia skulked near Maven’s house, trying to catch a glimpse of Jemmy without being spotted. She crept closer, till she made out his form, lying like a snake along the branch. Her heart lightened when she saw that he cradled not one apple now, but two.
On the second day, when Nalia arrived with supplies for Jemmy, he plucked Speare’s apple from the branch and dropped it into her hands.
Nalia was about to thank him, and tell him he was doing the right thing with the other apple, when a sharp voice startled her.
“Hey!” Maven yelled. She stood at the back door in a robe clasped around her stout form, her graying dark hair spilling down her shoulders. “You there!”
“Go,” Jemmy muttered.
Nalia dashed off, hearing Maven shout, “Jemiah! Get in here now!”
Running home seemed to take five times as long as the walk over had. Speare had little appetite, so Nalia cut the apple into tiny pieces and stirred them with a few drops of honey. She sat by his bedside and nagged and pressed, overcoming his protests and feeding him the apple bit by bit, till he’d eaten it all.
“There now,” she said, stroking his hot cheek. “You’ll feel better soon, I promise.” Relief made her giddy.
The next morning, Speare ate an entire bowl of chicken soup with onions and carrots, and even shakily got out of bed. It was wit
h a light step that Nalia descended the stairs to the kitchen.
Nalia sneaked back to Jemmy’s house, but he wasn’t in the orchard. She found him high in their weeping willow, yanking off thin branches and hurling them at the ground. Such a big pile had already accumulated at the tree’s base that Nalia wondered if he’d been at it all night.
“Jemmy?” she said, climbing up to their niche.
“Go away!”
“I will not. Come down here and talk to me.”
A willow whip sailed down toward her, smacking her in the shoulder.
Her flash of anger was quickly replaced by worry. “Jemmy, what happened?”
“Leave me alone!”
“All right,” she said, settling in against the split trunks. “But I’m staying right here. You can throw all the branches you like at me. I won’t leave.”
He kept up his branch-tearing tantrum for another hour; the air around the tree was thick with falling willow whips. Glancing up, Nalia could see sunlight through a denuded spot high above.
When he finally climbed down to their spot, the look on his face was savage. “You want to know what’s wrong? Fine!” He whipped off his leather shoes and yanked off the rags that bound his feet.
Nalia braced herself to see toes missing or deformed, a club foot, burn scars—but what she saw perplexed her. Smooth, even feet, with long supple toes. “What—what’s wrong with them?”
“The toes,” he snapped. “The big toes. Look!”
She looked more closely, reaching in fascination for one of his feet. He flinched, but she lifted his foot into her lap, inspecting it. The toes were unusually long, sure, but—
Jemmy’s big toe bent out to the side, like the thumb on a narrow hand.
“I don’t understand,” Nalia said, touching the thumb-toe.
He stared at her for a long moment, then scurried down the tree and started running pell-mell through the forest.
Swearing under her breath, Nalia shinnied down and started following. Before long, her lungs and legs burned, but she pressed on.
Jemmy finally stopped beside a stream, hunkering down low, wrapping his arms around his knees as he stared down at his muddy, exposed feet. Nalia sat beside him. When he started shaking, she put a hand on his back.
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