Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  “They’re coming for you. She’s coming for you.”

  My breath hitched, caught in the hollow of my throat. “Sam, what are you saying? Who’s coming? Who’s ‘she’?”

  I glanced out the window, half expecting to see a figure perched on the sill, pressed up and leering through the panes. A figure long and lithe. A figure wearing a pale dress. But there was only a cool lavender sky.

  He made a small whine, already deep in another dream. I was about to wake him, demand answers, but heard a rustle behind me.

  “Ellerie, what on earth are you doing up so early?”

  Mama poked her head around the curtain, squinting. Her hair was still in its nightly braid, hanging long over her shoulder.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder, after last night. You didn’t wake up Sam, did you?”

  I shook my head. “He stirred earlier but then…” I nodded back to him. His mouth hung slack, bits of drool wetting the corners. His hand fell from mine, as if he’d not been clenching it just moments before.

  “Why don’t you come downstairs and help with breakfast?” she asked, pulling me to my feet. “We’ll make a pot of coffee for just you and me first. It’s going to be a long day for everyone. We might as well make sure we’re fortified.”

  * * *

  “That hit the spot,” Papa said, pushing aside his empty plate with a contented sigh. “Thank you, Sarah. Ellerie.”

  Mama and I had made a veritable feast: eggs as yellow as sunshine and freckled with cracked black pepper; thick slices of ham; tomatoes fresh from the garden and fried so perfectly that the tangy insides burst in our mouths; and towers of pancakes, drizzled with the final dregs of the maple syrup jar bought from the Vissers’ orchard last winter. Sadie ran her pancake over her plate, wiping up every last bit of the sticky sweetness. She smacked her lips, clearly longing for more.

  Mama accepted a quick peck from Papa as she reached in, collecting his plate and cutlery.

  “The girls can clear the table,” he said, drawing her back to sit on his lap while my sisters and I locked eyes, trying not to giggle.

  She tweaked his nose before rising. “I’ll wash up as you all go to the town meeting.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” he asked, surprised.

  “Someone needs to stay home with Samuel and Sadie.” Mama picked up a plate heavy with ham drippings.

  “What? No fair! I want to go too!” Sadie’s fork dropped with a painful clatter.

  “You can keep me company and help watch after Sam. We might even make a batch of ginger cookies,” Mama promised, crossing into the kitchen. “Besides, you know you’re not old enough yet.”

  “Then Merry should stay home too!”

  “I’m sixteen now,” Merry reminded her, gathering the rest of the table’s cutlery.

  “Barely,” Sadie shot back. “Please, Papa, let me come. I want to hear you speak.”

  He stood up, ruffling her hair till the fine strands stood on end, creating a golden corona around her like drawings of saints in Parson Briard’s books. “You know they wouldn’t let you through the doors, little love.”

  The founding families had drawn up a list of seven rules designed to help nurture Amity Falls from a field of backwater campsites into the bustling town it was today. In a place so removed from the rest of the world, we had to be able to rely on our neighbors, to know that their intentions and hearts were pure. Every house had the list of Rules tacked near the main entrance—all carefully copied in Old Widow Mullins’s elaborate copperplate—to remind us of our duties as we went into the world each day.

  In truth, I barely noticed ours anymore. They garnered no greater acknowledgment than my mother’s prized but faded wallpaper or the cross-stitched pillows on the threadbare settee.

  The Rules ranged from mundane (no one under the age of sixteen was admitted into the Gathering House) to ones so practical that it seemed silly to list them in the first place (no one was to ever enter the pines on their own) to outright warnings (sabotaging a neighbor, be it family, property, or livelihood, would be punished with swift justice). We were too small a community to warrant an appointed judge and too isolated to care about big-city strangers ruling over our lives.

  When crime did occur in the Falls—however rarely—the town dealt with it on its own.

  I watched Papa follow Mama into the kitchen. What was he going to tell the Gathering? There would be a Deciding, that much was obvious, but what would we be voting on?

  He kissed Mama’s forehead before picking up two buckets from beneath the old metal washtub and swinging them out to the pump. Last night he’d seemed so haunted and beaten down that I’d worried he would never recover. Today he was practically giddy. His whistle could be heard all the way across the yard.

  “Papa seems in an awfully good mood,” I observed, returning the crock of butter to the icebox.

  A soft smile lit Mama’s face as she gazed out the window. Papa was busy at the pump, drawing water from our well with the long iron handle. He worked with an easy efficiency, the muscles in his back and arms shifting smoothly, always ready for whatever was required.

  “He’s happy to be home. They wandered in the pines for so long. If you hadn’t lit the Our Ladies when you did, Ellerie…” Mama trailed off, unwilling to finish that dark thought. She reached out and squeezed my hand. “We’re all very glad you did.”

  “If you want to go to the Gathering House, I can stay behind with Sam and Sadie,” I offered, wistfully hoping she’d decline, even as the words left my lips. I didn’t want to miss whatever was said.

  Mama shook her head. “Sam’s splint will need to be rewrapped, and between you and me, I could use a quiet morning.”

  I studied her with fresh interest. There was a certain weariness I hadn’t noticed before. Though her eyes sparkled, the skin around them was dark. I hadn’t seen her look like that since…

  “You’re pregnant,” I guessed with a hushed gasp. I’d been too little to remember what it had been like with Merry, but when she’d carried Sadie, we’d often had to help with extra chores and keep the house quiet. She always said the first three months were the most draining part of the process. “And that’s why Papa’s so happy too. You must have told him!”

  Her smile deepened into a grin. “I never can get much past those eagle eyes of yours.”

  I threw my arms around her. “Mama, that’s wonderful! How far along are you?”

  “It’s still in the early stages. I only noticed a few days ago myself. Don’t tell your sisters yet. Or Sam. We want to wait a bit longer.”

  I nodded gravely, promising to keep the secret. Mama had had two miscarriages before, and they’d devastated the household.

  I counted the months. “So, April, then? Maybe May?”

  “Maybe,” Mama agreed, and raised a swift finger to her lips as Sadie came in carrying the empty milk pitcher.

  “Rule Number Three: Fifteen harvests children sow, then to the Gathering let them grow.”

  The hall was nearly at full capacity by the time Papa, Merry, and I made the trek into town. Matthias Dodson and Leland Schäfer pulled Papa over as soon as we entered, leaving Merry and me to scout out seats on our own.

  The Gathering House was a long building on the northern outskirts of town. The windows, lining three of the walls and normally shuttered tight against the cold, were open today, offering an unbroken view of the pines looming all around us.

  At the front of the room was the Founder Tree. It had been an impossibly large black walnut, boasting three trunks at its base. Stories claimed it was the reason why the wagon train had veered off-trail to rest in the palm of God’s Grasp in the first place.

  Decades ago, a terrible storm had come across the mountains without warning. Through the gales of wind and
rain, the settlers had seen bolt after bolt of lightning strike the behemoth tree, seemingly without harming it. They’d watched the shadowy creatures that had terrorized their travel run in fear from the flashes of white heat. The wagon train leader had viewed the tree as a great protector and had decided they would set camp there once the storm had passed.

  Most of the smoking walnut had been hewn down, leaving behind the wide trunk as a centerpiece for Amity Falls’s Gathering House to be built around. But its unmarred image—full branches and full roots spread wide, reminding us of our connectedness—was everywhere. Carved into the buttons of the Elders’ cloaks, carved across our thresholds, carved into the very staff Amos used to walk the Falls every day.

  The rest of the room was crowded with rows of plain wooden benches, divided into sections by an aisle. Spotting an empty length of bench, I slid in, pulling Merry after me before anyone else could claim it. So relieved that we wouldn’t have to stand for the whole meeting, I hadn’t bothered to glance at who I’d sat next to.

  “Oh. Rebecca.”

  Her face, normally a soft peaches-and-cream complexion, turned bright crimson as she saw me.

  “Good morning, Ellerie, Merry.”

  Her eyes betrayed her, darting away to see who else had come in with us.

  “Sam is at home.” My voice fell, flat and clipped, the words painfully angled as they spilled free. “He couldn’t have walked here with so bad a sprain.”

  “Is he hurting very much?”

  I paused, weighing out how exactly to answer.

  Rebecca squeezed my knee, her eyebrows drawn together in a worried line. “I…I wanted to tell you, Ellerie, truly I did. It felt wrong keeping something so big from you. You’re my best friend—we’ve always told each other everything. Always shared everything.”

  Beside me, Merry sniffed. “Apparently.”

  Rebecca let out a small noise that was both gasp and sob. “Sam said we would. Eventually. He just wanted to wait.”

  “Wait? What on earth is there to wait for?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He always just said it would be better, later on. For—for a while, I worried he wasn’t serious about the courtship. Why else wouldn’t he announce it? I thought he was playing a joke on me—”

  “Sam would never do something like that.” My tone was sharp enough to slice her sentence in two. No matter what secrets Sam had kept, I ought to stick up for my twin.

  Rebecca combed her auburn hair behind her ears as she nodded in agreement. She still wore it long and loose, like a little girl. The locks fell into perfectly formed curls, brushing over the black floral pattern of her dress.

  “I know that now. But at the time it just—”

  “You had on that dress last night, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Her expression darkened with confusion. “I—yes.”

  “Did you have any visitors over?”

  “What? When?” She looked positively bewildered.

  “Last night. Before the Our Ladies were lit. Was there anyone at your house?”

  “Papa and Mark, of course. Who else would there be?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You’re sure that—”

  I was cut off as the three Elders marched to the front of the room. They took their place in the row of padded leather chairs facing us. Papa trailed after, filling the space between us and them. Every trace of the joy he’d shared with Mama was gone, replaced with a heavy and grave responsibility.

  He ran his fingers over his beard, gathering thoughts before proceeding. Papa was well respected in town, admired even. I ached for him, about to deliver such dreadful news, standing all alone. But he didn’t look scared or uncertain. He knew exactly what needed to be done. He always had.

  “Good Blessings to you,” he began, his words carrying clearly throughout the hall. “As most of you know, earlier this week, Jeb McCleary left with five others on the summer supply run. And just a day later, his stallion returned, fatally injured and riderless.”

  I looked around the room to find Molly or her children. They weren’t here, and my heart warmed with gratitude at whoever had thought to keep them away. If Papa’s story was anything like Sam’s, Jebediah’s family didn’t need to hear it.

  “My son and I ventured into the woods following the trail they would have taken. We found what I believe to be their last campfire, only a few miles from the Falls. They didn’t get very far before…it happened.”

  “What ‘it’?” The question came from the back. I couldn’t tell who had spoken.

  Papa’s jaw tightened and his front teeth clicked together. “It was hard to make out what truly took place….It appears the men were attacked while sleeping. Their tents were torn to shreds and the men were missing.”

  “Could it have been bandits?”

  Papa shook his head. “I believe it was animals, of some kind.”

  “That bear,” Cyrus Danforth said, standing.

  “No bear could have done what we saw. And…whatever it is…there’s more than one. Perhaps a pack.”

  “Wolves.” Edmund Latheton spoke up.

  “That feels more plausible. Leaving the camp, we found…parts of the men dragged away. It seems no one got far. The creatures must have been extremely fast.”

  “Wolves,” Cyrus conceded. “So why the theatrics? Send a team of men to root them out and be done with it.”

  “Now, wait just a minute,” Gran Fowler said, standing now too. “We all saw that stallion. Those slashes on his side were enormous.” He spread his fingers as wide as they could go. “They were certainly bigger than anything I could cause.”

  Cyrus let out a chirp of laughter. “Good news, everyone. Fowler isn’t the murderer.”

  The chicken farmer’s eyes narrowed. “I’m just asking, what wolf has paws bigger than a grown man’s hands?”

  Papa nodded. “None we’ve seen before. And…” He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the rest of his fingernails. “Sam and I started burning away the surrounding brush. We didn’t want anything else drawn to the blood, especially with the camp so close to town. As we started lighting the fires, we saw the creatures, just out of range. The fires’ light caught their eyes, making them glow bright and silver. They’d been there the whole time. Watching us.”

  He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. It was the first time since taking the floor that he looked nervous.

  “I couldn’t make out their exact shape—they blended in with the pines’ shadows—but whatever they were, they were monstrous in size. Well above my height.”

  I bit down on the corner of my tongue. Papa was one of the tallest men in the Falls. I tried to picture a wolf bigger than him. I could imagine the scruff of its back, raised with a sinister growl, or the massive paws, with moonlight reflecting off clawed tips, but the pieces wouldn’t go together to create a whole beast. My mind refused to assemble such an abomination.

  “That’s impossible,” Cyrus snorted.

  Gran looked uneasy. “It does sound rather far-fetched, Gideon. Is there any proof?”

  Papa’s eyes flashed, indignant. “Proof? What proof more do you need than my given word? Everyone here knows me to be a man of integrity and honor. I’m not prone to flights of fancy or exaggeration. If I say that’s what I saw, you can be certain it’s exactly what’s out there.”

  Looking around the room, I saw several people exchange guilty glances. They weren’t convinced.

  Papa evidently caught them as well and sighed. “Samuel saw them too. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

  Sam’s story from this morning flitted across my memory. He had admitted that he’d seen giant beasts in the woods.

  He’d also said they’d laughed at him.

  “Latheton,” Papa said, finding the carpenter in the middle of the room. “
You say you’ve seen them too. How big would you guess they are?”

  After a moment of urging from his wife, Edmund rose unsteadily to his feet. “I…I couldn’t say for sure…but they are much larger than regular wolves. Faster too. The one we saw…” He glanced back to his wife. She reached up and squeezed his hand. “The one we saw, it was out near my woodshed, on the far side of the property. You know that little spot where the creek cuts in?”

  Several people nodded, drawn into his story.

  He gulped a big mouthful of air, and I noticed a slight tremble in his hands. “We saw the eyes—just like Gideon said—shining silver. Something must have spooked it. It raced across the field to hide behind the barn. That’s nearly five hundred feet, and it made it in only seconds. I…I’ve never seen anything move like that.”

  Prudence stood up. “He’s telling the truth. They both are,” she added, glancing back to affirm Papa.

  “So what do you propose we do about these monstrous wolves, Gideon?” Cyrus asked, joining Papa at the front of the room. His stomach jutted over his pin-striped pants like the prow of a ship. “You make it sound as though half the town will be needed to take one down.”

  Edmund paled. “I don’t think even that would be enough.”

  Papa murmured an agreement, his eyes wary. “I…I believe the monsters our forefathers spoke of have returned.”

  Murmurs of disbelief spread through the crowd.

  “That’s impossible,” Parson Briard said, jumping to his feet, his brow furrowed into deep lines. “While my family was not here when the town was settled, those stories have always sat wrong with me. Fanciful fairy tales to scare children at bedtime. God would not allow such creatures to exist.”

  Matthias frowned. “Sit down, Clemency. You’re making a fool of yourself. There were many documented sightings. They were real. But, Gideon…you know as well as I, there’s not been a sighting since—”

  “Since now,” Papa cut off unhappily.

  The Elder’s nostrils flared. “Then these devils need to be eradicated.”