“You shot this up on the eastern ridge?” Calvin Buhrman asked, kneeling down to examine the legs. He ran a finger over the hook of one claw, whistling through his teeth.
Orin McNally nodded. “Never seen anything like it.”
“I have,” Martha McCleary said, stepping through the crowd with care. Her twists of hair were snow white, and she leaned heavily on her cane. It was nearly an identical match to the one her husband, Amos, used. “My pa shot something like that back when this town was nothing more than a couple of families living in tents, trying to fight back the wilderness.” Her lips, papery thin and creased with deep lines, pressed together as she dredged the story up through decades of memories. “Pa said there were whole herds of them, dotting the meadow where the Pursimons’ farm now is. All too small. All too strange. Can’t eat the meat, and the hide is too thick to wear. Best to burn it. Burn the body and scatter the bones.”
“What’s wrong with the meat?” Orin asked. The crowd had fallen into a still hush as Martha had spoken, and his question sounded as loud as a gunshot.
Her face wrinkled into a grimace. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.”
“Were there more of them?” someone in the group called out.
“Just this one,” Pryor McNally said, circling the body. “We ought to keep the head at least. Won’t that be something, hung above the mantel?”
“Something indeed,” Martha agreed, though her words did not match the look on her face. “Do as you wish; you young people always do.”
With a shake of her head, she toddled out toward the main road, then disappeared around the corner, no doubt taking the news back to the general store. The Elders would be here soon. Before I turned my attention back to the creature, I spotted Samuel near the entrance to the yard.
He’d strayed away from the group and was speaking with Rebecca, half-hidden in the shadows of the portico. Her fingers twisted through his, and smiles played on both their lips as they whispered to one another. Though their secrecy had initially stung, seeing them so happy together warmed my heart, healing its wounds.
It would be a busy autumn, planning a wedding, helping them settle into their new life together. Would they build a farmhouse of their own, or remain with us? I pictured Rebecca and me sitting beside the hearth as snow fell, knitting tiny hats and socks, quilting small, cozy blankets. I imagined them pink. Sam would undoubtedly want a son first, but I hoped it was a girl. A little girl with blond hair and stormy gray eyes.
But something was wrong. Sam’s face slowly fell, turning ashen as his smile faded. He shook his head once, a sharp dismissal before stepping away from her.
“No,” he said, his voice traveling on the breeze. “You’re wrong.”
Rebecca tried to take his hands, but he jerked them to his chest, darting to the side to avoid her. His head shook again, once, twice, three times, as he was backing up, backing away, backing as far from Rebecca as he could get.
Rebecca trailed after him, unable to see that she was only making it worse.
Accusations, hissed too softly to draw the crowd’s attention from the stag, were hurled back and forth until Rebecca reached out and grabbed Samuel to her. Her fingers softened, running down his shoulders, holding him in place. For a moment, I thought she was going to kiss him, ending the fight, ending the misunderstanding, and all would be forgiven.
Instead she served him a hard slap across the face and stalked off without a backward glance.
“Rule Number Five: Let from your lips no false words pour, damning characters evermore.”
“We need to talk,” I said, lingering in the open doorway of the barn as Samuel unharnessed the horses.
“About what?” he grunted, hoisting Luna’s bridle over her ears.
He hadn’t said a word the whole ride home, sitting in the back of the wagon and rubbing at his cheek as though Rebecca’s handprint still stung. Sadie had chattered about all the gossip she’d overheard at the sewing circle, drowning out any chance of a conversation. No one else seemed to realize anything was wrong with Sam.
I glanced toward the house. Mama and Merry were in the kitchen, and Sadie was out on the side porch, sweeping circles of dust about her skirts and laughing. Papa had been quiet as he’d ferried us home, and then had said he needed an afternoon walk to clear his mind. For the moment, it seemed Sam and I were alone.
“I saw you and Rebecca fighting,” I started, twisting the corner of my apron around my finger.
He froze, his back tense as he waited for more.
“I…I know what it was about,” I ventured.
He snorted. “I really doubt that, little sister.”
I crossed in, splitting the distance between us. “Rebecca told me everything…about the baby…about everything.”
He shifted into motion once more, placing the harnesses on a stack of hay bales. The tack would need to be cleaned and oiled later. “She tell you who the real father is? Because it’s certainly not me.”
I gasped. “Of course it is! She loves you—”
Samuel led the horses to their stalls for a rubdown. “She loves a lot of boys in town. I was the only one stupid enough to love her back.”
My mouth fell open in surprise. “That’s not true!”
“Not what I heard. Not what a lot of people have heard.”
“People? What people?”
He pushed back a lock of hair. “I was at Buhrman’s earlier. Winthrop Mullins said he saw her down by the creek with that Pursimon boy.” He snorted in disgust. “He’s not even in Merry’s grade.”
“Then it couldn’t have been whatever Winthrop thought it was. He was probably just teasing you or—”
“It wasn’t just Winthrop. Even that new trapper was going on about it,” he snarled.
Had Price been at the tavern today? He’d been running into everyone in the Falls. My heart twanged, uncomfortably concerned I’d missed seeing him, but I pushed back those thoughts. “The boy I saw down by the creek?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Him or one of his friends. He was dressed funny—he had this fancy black hat like he was on his way to the opera, but buckskin breeches and hair down his back.”
Not Price, then. Someone else from his camp.
“He said he was setting traps along the north ridge and came across a couple in the woods. It was Rebecca and Simon Briard. The parson’s son! And judging by the state of their clothes, they hadn’t been praying.”
I remembered Rebecca’s face from earlier that morning, flushed with love for my brother. “I know that’s not true!”
“Oh yes, you know so very much, Ellerie. I’ve been sneaking around with her all summer, and you just bothered to figure it out. Forgive me if I don’t have much faith in your skills of deduction.” He slapped Zenith’s rump, trying to get the stalled horse moving again.
I stepped back to let him work, giving him space and a moment to cool his temper.
“What will you do, then?” I asked when the silence had drawn long.
“Do? Do about what? It’s not mine. I’m going to forget I ever had anything to do with her and move on.” He slammed the half door shut, punctuating his thought.
“They need to be rubbed down,” I reminded him.
His face was splotchy with anger. “Why don’t you do it, then? Since you’re so full of ideas about what others ought to be doing.”
With a sigh, I picked up a large flat paddle brush and started in with Luna first. “How…how do you know it’s not yours?” I tried keeping my voice smooth even as I wanted to cringe.
After a pause, Sam took up a comb and began brushing off Zenith. “You really want all the sordid details of my love life, Ellerie?”
“Of course not, but Rebecca is certain you’re the father, and I can’t imagine her straying from you.” I picked at a particularly nasty tangle
in Luna’s mane, focusing my attention on a problem I could solve.
“Well, she did. Just like the trapper said. And Winthrop. I don’t doubt there are others too. She’s probably familiar with half the boys in the Falls.”
I peered into the neighboring stall with a withering stare. “Sam, you can’t believe that. This is Rebecca. I’ve seen how she looks at—”
He pointed the comb at me. “Don’t tell me what I ought to believe. Stop sticking your nose into things that don’t concern you.”
We glared at each other for a long moment before I turned back to Luna. She swayed back and forth as though listening in and unable to pick a side.
“Everything all right in here?” Papa asked, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “I heard your yelling all the way from the creek.”
“It’s nothing,” Samuel said, working the brush over Zenith with sudden diligence.
“Actually—”
Sam was up and over the half wall before I could continue, his hand raised as if to slap my words away. I cried out in surprise and ducked around the mare to avoid him.
“I swear to God, if you breathe a word of this to anybody—” he began, but was yanked back as Papa rushed into the stall, stopping him before his hand could fall. “Let go of me!” Samuel shouted, enraged. He cast aside Papa’s arm. The momentum threw Samuel off balance, and he crashed hard against a post.
“Sam!” I cried out in concern, even as I hid away.
Papa stepped forward with an outstretched hand, ready to help.
“Get away from me,” my brother growled, scrambling to his feet. “I’m so sick of everyone in this family always reaching for me. Everyone always in my face, wanting more and more. Just leave me alone!”
Before Papa could stop him, Samuel raced from the barn.
“What in the world happened?” Papa asked, whirling back to me.
His face softened as he spotted my building tears. Growing up, Sam and I had squabbled often—as twins, we were often seen as one person even when our thoughts were wildly divergent—but we’d never come to physical blows before. He was changing, growing angry and hard. I didn’t understand why. Was this simply part of growing up—growing separate and apart?
“Sam—” I stopped short. This was a problem, a big problem, but it was Sam’s, and Sam’s alone to fix. I wouldn’t run tattling to Papa like a little girl, out of breath and braids flying. “It’s nothing.”
Papa looked me over. “Are you all right?”
I stepped from the stall.
A long sigh fell from his mouth. “I don’t know what to do about that boy. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to do an ounce of work this summer. He needs bigger opportunities, bigger responsibilities. When I was his age, I was already wed with the two of you on the way. He needs to grow up, become a man.”
I swallowed uncomfortably.
Sam and I were twins. We were supposed to be at the same stage of life. What bigger opportunities did Papa think I was meant to take on? Why wasn’t he concerned that I wasn’t married, wasn’t grown-up?
I wasn’t a man.
My place in the world was nebulous, a malleable concept only given definition by the space I occupied. When I was in the classroom, I was a schoolgirl. At home, I was a daughter. When someone eventually courted me, I’d be a wife, a mother.
But until then, what was I?
Who was I?
I had no answers and once again felt the sharp loneliness of being left behind.
By my own twin, the one person I was meant to go through the world with.
I opened my mouth, but Papa chuckled to himself, unaware of the torment he’d summoned within me. “If he’s not proposed to that Danforth girl by the end of the summer, I might just do it for him.”
* * *
Sam didn’t come home for dinner that night, and in the morning, his bed remained crisp and completely untouched. We didn’t see him that day, or the next.
We didn’t see him for a whole week.
Though they didn’t comment on his absence, I caught Mama fretting in moments of solitude, chewing on the side of her cheek as she peered out the window. Papa couldn’t seem to muster the energy to worry.
Crops needed tending.
Animals needed care.
And finally, the honey was ready to be harvested.
The morning of the harvest, he tapped me on the shoulder, letting me know I was needed. My excitement loomed so large, I could barely eat my breakfast.
Papa and I donned hats, veils, and gloves and worked from sunup to sundown, putting hive boxes to sleep and extracting out the honey-laden frames. We carried them back and forth across the field with trembling arms. Each section of a hive box could weigh up to eighty pounds when full of capped honey, and I think it surprised but pleased Papa to see I could keep up with him and never once slowed down the process.
It felt good to put in a hard day’s work. My muscles ached each night, but I went to bed so content, I almost never noticed Samuel’s empty corner of the loft.
* * *
“Mama, please!” Sadie exclaimed. “I’ll do anything, I promise!”
Days before Sadie’s eighth birthday, Trinity Brewster had loaned her a tattered book of fairy tales. Every night, I’d read the stories out loud while Sadie hopped about the loft reenacting them for us and making Merry join in whenever a handsome prince or evil queen was required. “Hansel and Gretel” was her favorite, and she studied the illustrations with rapt attention while pondering what the three-tiered cake at the center of the witch’s table must taste like.
At first, she thought it must be a strawberry cake, so thick and moist that it would take a circus strong man to slice through it. Then she decided it was a pecan cake, with toasted nuts and caramel drizzle. Finally she declared that Abigail had told her it was chocolate, with a generous scoop of cocoa powder dusted across the frosted tiers.
Once Abigail had conjured such a cake, Sadie could think of nothing else.
“I’ll only turn eight once—shouldn’t we celebrate with chocolate cake?” she wheedled the morning before her birthday, more persistent than a starving dog after a bone.
“You can say that about any birthday,” Merry said, fanning herself with her straw hat. We were out in the garden picking sugar snap peas for dinner. “I’ll only turn sixteen once, and I didn’t even have a cake! It was that blackberry cobbler—which was delicious and I loved it,” she added quickly, throwing a look of apology toward Mama.
“Even if we could find chocolate in Amity Falls—which is this side of impossible—I’m sure we’d never be able to afford it, little love,” Mama explained, tossing another handful of pods into the basket.
“I wish Trinity had never shown me that story,” Sadie moaned, and she plopped herself to the ground with a petulant thump.
“You’ve loved reading the stories,” I reminded her gently. “We all have.”
“Stop being such a baby, Sadie.” Merry swiped a fistful of peas from the plant nearest her. “You can’t get everything that pops into your head. Don’t you think we all want things as badly as you want that cake? Ellerie needs new dresses, and I’m dying for new books, and Mama…” She paused, her delicate eyebrows knitting together as she pondered what Mama could possibly want. “Mama could use a whole lot of new things.”
“I’m happy with everything I’ve got,” Mama said. “And I truly wish there was a way to get you your chocolate cake, Sadie-Bird, but I don’t see how it will happen this year.” Mama reached out to cup Sadie’s cheek and rubbed her thumb back and forth across the downy peach fuzz. “I’ll tell you what….We’ll spare an extra bit of sugar, and I’ll make a honey cake in three layers—just like the one in the picture—and come spring, when they send out the next supply run, I’ll make sure Jeb—”
Though done by pure habit, she still bl
anched at her mistake.
“I’ll make sure whoever is running the store has chocolate squares on their list, and we’ll make a cake then too. With chocolate frosting so frothy, you’ll have to eat it with a spoon.”
Sadie folded her arms over her chest, clearly interested but unwilling to accept at first glance.
“And I’ll make you a crown to wear tomorrow,” I threw in. “Just like the one the princess wears in the book!”
“Which princess?” Sadie asked, as though it truly made a difference.
“Any of them, you goose,” I said, laughing, then helped her out of the garden row.
She brushed her skirts off with as much dignity as a pouting almost-eight-year-old could muster and looked at Merry. “What will you give me?”
Merry opened her mouth, undoubtedly to reply with something clever and biting, but Mama shook her head. My sister twisted her lips, thinking. “I’ll set the table for you for the rest of the week,” she offered. “So you can rule over your kingdom like a princess ought to.”
Sadie cocked her head to the side, as if listening to a voice the rest of us could not hear, before clapping her hands with glee. “Abigail and I accept! And we want the crown to be as golden as sunlight!” she added, turning to me.
I pushed myself up, peas all picked. “Then golden you shall have!”
* * *
Even after the honey was harvested, we were never allowed to pick the flowers growing in our fields. Once the combs had been cut away and we left the bees to prepare for winter, Papa would wade out into the fields, picking the annuals to extract their seeds. He liked to experiment with different combinations of flowers come spring. Every type of flower pollen produced a different taste in the honey—some giving flowery notes so sweet, it made your teeth ache. Others tinged the honey with a rich smoky flavor perfect for pouring over hardtack biscuits and dry bread.
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