by Jon Berkeley
They stumbled across the hut by accident. It was a tiny dilapidated wooden building, almost invisible among the trees. The roof was made from dried branches, which Arkadi seemed to have supplemented in the night with newer greenery. He sat outside the hut, whittling a stick with a knife. He looked up and smiled.
“Hello,” said Bea.
“I heard you coming,” said Arkadi. “You make enough noise for nine sumo wrestlers.”
“We brought you some sandwiches.”
“Did you steal them?”
“They were made for us, but we’ve already eaten.”
Arkadi unwrapped a sandwich and took a bite so enormous that he could hardly chew it. From his throat came a muffled sound that might have been, “Thank you.”
Bea seated herself on a log and waited patiently. Phoebe began to climb the nearest tree. Arkadi gave a grunt and wagged his finger at her. He swallowed noisily. “Don’t climb,” he said. “Ringsnakes in these trees. They’ll kill you stone dead and you’ll fall, bump, bang, crack. Break every bone in your body and they’ll have to bury you in a cake tin.”
“Ringsnakes?” said Phoebe.
“Ringsnakes,” said Arkadi. “They sit like a ring around the trunk. You can’t avoid them whichever side you climb.”
“I thought you’d never been here before,” said Phoebe.
“I haven’t,” said Arkadi. “Heard many, many stories, though.”
“Have you heard of a clan called the Ledbetters?” said Bea.
“Bedwetters?” said Arkadi. He looked at Bea with an open face. It gave nothing away.
“Ledbetters,” said Phoebe, jumping to the ground from a high branch. “They look in through people’s windows at night.”
“What are they looking for?” said Arkadi.
“We don’t know,” said Bea. “But the family we’re staying with seems frightened of them.”
“There are always things to be afraid of,” said Arkadi. “It’s what you do about them that matters.”
“Like hiding in a hut?” said Bea.
“I’m just hiding till I figure out what’s best.”
“What will they do if they find you?”
“They won’t find me,” said Arkadi. “I’m good at hiding.”
“And if we tell?” said Bea.
“You promised.”
“My little brother disappeared on the crossing,” said Bea. “Captain Bontoc says that’s never happened before.”
Arkadi glanced up from his stick. “I’m sorry to hear that. Little brothers are hard to replace.”
“Do you think he disappeared because you were under the floor?” said Bea.
“Why would he do that?” said Arkadi.
“‘Sky black, moon blue, nine souls go through,’” said Phoebe. “It says it on the side of the Blue Moon Mobile.”
“That’s just a slogan,” said Arkadi. “Like ‘Men’s shirts three for two on Tuesdays,’ or ‘Half a dozen is better than six of…’” He put down his knife and his stick and began to count on his fingers. He looked confused. “I was never good with phrases,” he said. “I’m good at fixing things. That’s me. And hiding,” he added.
“How did you unscrew the panel from the inside?” said Bea.
“That’s another thing I’m good at,” said Arkadi, “unscrewing things from the inside.” He picked up his stick again, and Bea could see he was carving it into the shape of a meerkat. “Thank you for the sandwiches,” he said, without looking up.
Fire
“He didn’t seem to know anything about Theo,” said Phoebe. They had retraced their steps and were following the path that Mrs. Miller had first suggested. They passed the plumegranate orchards, where a dozen pickers were working, loading the ripe fruit into a large handcart that Mr. Miller wheeled between the trees. He waved at them as they passed.
“I’m not so sure,” said Bea, waving back. “I think he was just avoiding our questions.”
“If he doesn’t want to tell us more, I don’t see how we can make him.”
“We can still threaten to turn him in.”
“But we promised.”
Bea stopped in the road. “Granny Delphine always says, ‘Blood is thicker than water.’” She knelt down and unzipped the backpack. Nails poked his nose out and sniffed, then jumped out gratefully and scurried to the grass verge to forage for his breakfast.
“What does that mean?”
“I think it means that your family is more important than anything. If I thought it would help us to find Theo I wouldn’t think twice about turning Arkadi in.”
They passed a slightly ramshackle windmill and turned left, walking on through the open countryside in the gathering heat. Bea noticed that she could hear different notes in the buzzing of the bees. Not only could she tell how near they were and in what numbers, but before long she could distinguish the bees of one hive from those of another. When she mentioned this to Phoebe she found to her surprise that Phoebe could hear only a bee that was flying close. She could not hear the network of bees crisscrossing the fields as Bea could, nor the hum of distant hives.
Ahead of them the road curved through a range of low rounded hills. They could see three or four small copses of trees, their trunks slender and their leaves pale and feathery in the distance. Nails had stayed close, as she thought he would. He trotted along on the road ahead, sometimes diving into a ditch to rummage in the long grass, then running to catch up. Bea could feel a knot forming in her stomach. She pictured Theo sitting there among the trees, waiting impatiently for her to arrive. She did not want to get her hopes up, and she pushed the picture from her mind.
“Do you think that might be where he is?” said Phoebe.
“I hope so,” said Bea, “but things aren’t usually that simple.” She concentrated on the sound of the bees to keep her mind occupied. Reaching the trees seemed to be taking forever. She noticed that the tracks of the bees were converging on the nearest copse. A fat honeybee arrowed past them, but as it approached the copse it began to zigzag and fly in circles.
“I wish we hadn’t given away all our sandwiches,” said Phoebe.
Bea smiled. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll have honey instead.”
“Did we bring honey?”
“No, but there’s a hive in those trees.”
“How do you know?”
“That bee told me,” said Bea. “It flies straight toward home, but when it gets near the hive it flies in circles.”
“Maybe it’s lost.”
Bea shook her head. “I think it’s trying to confuse us, so we can’t easily spot the hive.”
“You never went around in circles when you got near your apartment.”
“I’m not a bee,” said Bea. “Not a honeybee, anyway,” she corrected herself.
They had reached the trees now. There were about twenty of them, tall and slender with silver bark and heart-shaped leaves. Bea stood for a while, her eyes closed and her ears open to the pattern of bee trails that surrounded her. “There,” she said, and she opened her eyes. She pointed to a hole in the trunk of a tree a little way ahead of them. A couple of bees were coming in to land, and more were setting out on foraging duty.
Phoebe shaded her eyes and looked. “I can see them now,” she said, “but how will we get the honey?”
Bea put Theo’s backpack at the foot of the tree. “First we’ve got to look for Theo,” she said. The trees were spaced far enough apart for grass to grow beneath them, dappled by the sunlight through the leaves. It did not seem likely that even a small boy could be easily hidden here. Bea took the Squeak Jar from the backpack. She sat down in the cool grass and placed the listening horn to the lid. “Theo?” she said.
“What?” said Theo’s voice. There was no waterfall to mask the sound now, and she could hear him clearly. He sounded quite cheerful.
“You never answered me about the moon,” said Bea.
“What about it?”
“Is it blue or yellow?”
“How should I know? It’s the middle of the day.”
“Are the Tree People there?”
“They’re always here.”
“Ask them why they’re keeping you.”
There was a brief conversation, though Bea could make out only Theo’s muffled voice. “They’re just looking after me. They said I’ve always been here.”
“But you just got there yesterday,” said Bea.
“The Tree People have never heard of yesterday,” said Theo.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s funny. They only remember what’s happened since we woke up this morning, but they know lots of stuff.”
Bea shook her head as if to clear it. This didn’t seem to be getting her any closer to finding Theo.
“Can you still see me?” she asked him.
“I can when you’re here,” said Theo.
“Pinch my arm,” said Bea.
“But you’re always telling me not to do that.”
“This time I want you to.”
“You’ll just pinch me back,” said Theo with a touch of suspicion.
“I can’t even see you,” said Bea. She tried to keep the impatience from her voice. She waited, but nothing happened.
“What now?” came Theo’s voice.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“That was my best pinch,” said Theo indignantly. “The twisty one. Usually you scream like those peacocks in the zoo.”
Bea gave a short laugh. She wished more than anything that Theo were right there with her and Phoebe. She wouldn’t mind how much he was annoying her. “I just wish you could tell me where you are,” she said.
“The Tree People say that a wish is no good unless you can give it legs,” said Theo.
“How can a wish have legs?” asked Bea.
“Beats me,” said Theo. “They say lots of weird things.”
Bea looked around her in frustration. She was sure Theo couldn’t be in the small copse where she and Phoebe sat. There were others scattered among the low hills, but it would take days to search them all. If only there were a quicker way to find out if Theo was there.
“Can’t you light a fire or something?” asked Bea, thinking of lost people on desert islands.
“Okay!” said Theo. “There’s a magnifying glass on my penknife. If I can just get this dry leaf to stay still…” He sounded enthusiastic, and Bea thought about how he had set fire to the kitchen bin the year before. And the balcony, when he had been burning a picture onto a piece of wood with the same magnifying glass. And the bathroom, she remembered suddenly. How could anyone set fire to a bathroom?
“On second thought—,” she began to say, but before she had finished there was a commotion from the Squeak Jar.
She heard Theo say, “Ouch! I didn’t…” His voice became muffled. She called his name a couple of times, and just when she was about to give up, she heard him again faintly. “Have to go!” he said, and then there was silence.
Quorum
Bea Flint inched her way up the trunk of the honey tree. The silvery bark was rough on her arms and her bare feet, but she was concentrating on the song of the bees and she barely noticed the discomfort. Above her the guard drones swarmed like black dots against the sky, and their humming rose to a higher pitch as they watched her approach the hive.
Bea hummed back to reassure them. I won’t hurt you, was what she hoped her hum would say, and I won’t take all your honey.
The humming of the bees seemed to calm a little. They began to land on her face and arms. She moved as slowly and carefully as she could, hugging the slender trunk like a koala. The bees’ feet tickled her gently, but she felt no sting.
“Watch out for ringsnakes,” whispered Phoebe from below. She had wanted to be the one to climb the tree, but Bea had insisted. She didn’t answer Phoebe now. There were bees crawling across her lips. She breathed as shallowly as she could for fear of sucking them up her nose. Her eyes were just open enough to allow her to see, though she felt sure she could navigate by the sound alone.
When she reached the hive she paused and tried to figure out how she could remove the honey and climb back down with only two hands. I should have brought a bag, she thought. She shifted her grip and reached into the hole with her right hand, as slowly as honey pouring. She could just see the honeycombs hanging in sheets inside the hive. She grasped the edge of a comb and pulled gently. The buzzing grew stronger. The bees sounded angry now, but Bea kept up her own quiet hum as she lifted the honeycomb slowly from the hive. She held it out at arm’s length and squinted at it through half-closed eyes. You can spare this one for us, she hummed.
To her surprise the bees that crawled over it began to leave one by one, as though accepting that this honeycomb had changed owners. She dropped it into the long grass at Phoebe’s feet. She wondered if she could make the bees leave her head and arms also. She was not afraid they would sting her—more that she might crush some of them as she inched back down the trunk. She hummed a thank-you to the bees, and felt the lightness as they took off like a fuzzy cloud and began to stream back into the tree. She climbed slowly down. Her arms and legs ached suddenly, and she almost fell from the tree before she reached the ground.
Phoebe was staring at her, openmouthed. “That was amazing!” she said. “One minute you looked like…like a giant bee lollipop; then you hummed at them and they just went ‘poof!’ You never told me you could do that.”
“I didn’t know myself,” said Bea. “It just seemed like they returned to the hive when I asked them to.” She picked up the honeycomb and turned it over to make sure there were no bees still on it. She took a bite. It tasted like nothing she had ever tasted before. A warm feeling spread through her. It felt like getting a generous gift from a distant relative you never knew you had.
They began the long walk home licking their fingers. The girls were sticky inside and out. The honey seemed to have gotten everywhere, even on the back of Phoebe’s hair and on the soles of Bea’s feet. Nails had shared the feast, and now lay in the warm darkness of the backpack, occasionally licking a paw in his sleep.
The plumegranate orchards were deserted by the time they passed them in the late afternoon. The handcart stood in a corner of the field, stacked high with empty picking baskets, and bees worked quietly among the wildflowers that grew between the trees. The path led them on into the forest, and in the cool shade of the ancient trees they sat down to drink the last of the water Mrs. Miller had given them and to rest their tired feet.
“I always thought Clockwork Gabby was mute,” said Phoebe, tossing pebbles at a large mushroom that grew from the bark of a nearby tree.
“Granny Delphine didn’t think so,” said Bea. “She told me once that she thought Gabby had suffered a terrible shock, but she could never find out what it was.”
“I wonder why she’s started to speak now,” said Phoebe.
Bea shrugged. “Maybe she feels safer here,” she said. “Maybe it’s a bolt-hole for her too. I’m not sure she’s making sense, though.”
“She said ‘boygone,’” said Phoebe.
“That’s easy enough,” said Bea, “but she said something else before that, when we were walking up from the falls. It sounded like beanos.”
“What are beanos?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you wind her up this morning?” asked Phoebe.
Bea shook her head. “I’m sure Ma did. She never forgets.”
“I hope so,” said Phoebe. She picked up a larger stone and knocked the mushroom clean off the trunk. “What do you suppose is wrong with Willow?” she said.
“Whatever it is, it has something to do with the Ledbetters. The Millers didn’t want to discuss them anymore once she appeared.”
“The Ledbetters don’t look sick. They look weird, though. Maybe they scared her half to death, climbing up the walls like that.”
She picked up the mushroom she had dislodged and beg
an to pick it apart with her nails. Bea closed her eyes and tuned in again to the network of bees that was working among the trees. They were fewer and more spread out here in the woods than out in the open. There weren’t as many flowers in the shade, Bea supposed. By concentrating hard on the sound of the bees she could make a sort of map of her surroundings in her mind’s eye. She could hear in the distance a few busier spots, not busy enough to be hives, which she guessed must be small clearings where flowers grew. She could tell where the larger trees were, because the bees had to fly in a wide circle around them. One of the trees in her sound map seemed to be moving. That can’t be right, she thought, and she opened her eyes.
It was not a moving tree that the bees were circling, but a squat woman with her hair in a bun, gliding swiftly through the shadows. She wore a scarf and gloves as before, and Bea wondered how she could stand to be so wrapped up in the heat. She nudged Phoebe in the ribs. “Sssssh!” she said, before Phoebe had a chance to speak. She pointed into the trees on the far side of the path. “It’s that Ledbetter woman,” she whispered. “The one who said she was the neighborhood watch.”
“What’s she up to?” said Phoebe.
The woman was frowning and muttering to herself. She walked quickly through the undergrowth, following no visible path, but still she did not make a sound.
“Don’t leap up and ask her,” whispered Bea. “Let’s see where she goes.”
They sat quietly on the pathside, waiting for the woman to get far enough away that they could follow her without being seen. To their surprise she took a sudden turn to face an enormous oak tree. The trunk of the tree was so thick that twenty people with linked hands could not have encircled it. A broad crack ran up from the roots to just below the lowest branches. Higher up the trunk Bea noticed what appeared to be windows cut here and there in the rough bark. The woman exchanged a few words with someone they could not see. She stepped through the crack and disappeared into the darkness.
The two girls stared at each other in surprise. “I thought she lived on an island,” said Phoebe.
