Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  But it seemed unlikely, given that Cyrus Danforth had not only seen but engaged with her.

  So if she was real—and hiding away somewhere in the woods—what was I supposed to do? Ignore her? Confront her?

  I wanted to laugh.

  The pines went on for miles, spreading across five different mountains—that I knew of. Trying to find anything in that dark and tangled mess would be nigh impossible.

  But…

  Whitaker.

  He knew the forest better than I ever would and was far more skilled at tracking.

  He could help me, I was certain of it.

  I nodded, feeling more settled now that there was a plan.

  I closed my eyes again, praying sleep would come.

  But something still nagged at me. There was a heaviness at the back of my neck, poking and prodding. I couldn’t shake the notion that I was being watched. I rolled over to face the doorway, and a bit of the tightness in my chest lessened when I saw its emptiness.

  My gaze fell on Sadie and the rag doll she clutched in the crook of her arm. In all the chaos surrounding her birthday, I’d forgotten about the chocolate cake and Abigail’s gift.

  Not Abigail, I clarified in the sleepy depths of my mind. Abigail wasn’t real.

  But someone had made the horrible little thing and left it for Sadie. Why?

  Again, the unbidden image of the woman waving at me entered my mind.

  Was she behind this?

  The dark red stitches seemed to glower in my direction. No matter how much reason screamed that the Xs were only bits of thread and cotton, I knew that the doll was staring at me.

  Without thinking, I stole it away from Sadie and tossed it beneath the bed. It landed on the wooden floorboards with surprising heft, making far more of a thunk than any doll ought to, and I sank back into the mattress with caution, certain I was about to hear skittering noises as the monstrous thing pulled itself to freedom.

  But the noises never came, and when I next opened my eyes, the sun was up. Its golden rays pushed back and discarded the terrors that had consumed my night.

  I knew without a doubt that Samuel had left. The house already felt lighter without his stewing presence.

  I padded downstairs, then stopped short in the kitchen, staring in horrified confusion at an absolute disaster. It took me a moment to realize what Samuel had done, but when I saw the super frames—the combs cut away unevenly with jagged slashes—it all sank in.

  He’d stolen out in the middle of the night and pilfered the bees’ winter reserves. I counted the wooden frames, quickly doing the math.

  Each hive ought to be left with sixty pounds of honey to last out the cold months.

  He’d taken too much.

  Far too much.

  My chest went numb with dread. I flipped through the supers, searching for their identifying symbols. Papa always branded little markers into each colony’s frames to keep them separated in case of disease.

  I wasn’t sure which scenario would be worse—that he’d robbed one hive of its entire winter supply or that he’d taken an assortment of supers, letting in the cold and killing bees in each box.

  I counted three different marks and pictured hordes of dying bees scattered across the frozen yard like macabre confetti.

  Stupid.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  With the flowers burned and the cold settling in, there would be no chance for the bees to create more reserves on their own. We’d have to feed them a supplement as the months wore on, a combination of water and…

  Sugar.

  Laughter burst from my chest, bitter and biting.

  We had no sugar.

  McClearys had no sugar.

  Had this been written into a drama, I would have found it too absurd to believe.

  There in the kitchen, in the middle of the mess Samuel had left, I sank to my knees and clasped my hands together, begging God to ensure that the men would return from their run with sugar. It seemed so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, I feared they wouldn’t think of it.

  As I prayed—whispering my pleas over and over again, as if their sheer quantity would somehow convince God to listen more carefully—tears spilled down my cheeks, drowning out the laughter. It was as though a dam had broken, the floodgates smashed wide open, and the river of worry and fear I’d been pushing aside since the night of the fire sprang free, ready to drown me. The sobs’ force brought me even lower to the floor, and I pressed my face to the floorboards, letting them cool my scalding abject misery.

  I don’t know how long I lay like that, but eventually my brain began sorting out next steps.

  I had to pull myself together before my sisters woke. Merry and Sadie couldn’t see me like this. I was the only adult in their life right now.

  I had to be strong.

  For them.

  Pushing myself up, I wiped my eyes. I counted breaths, slowing them until my heart calmed its painful pounding rhythm. Blinking with unfocused eyes, I gazed over the mess waiting to be cleaned up. The enormity of the situation struck my chest, square on like a battering ram.

  A whimper escaped from deep within me, and once again I lost myself weeping.

  The bottoms of the brood boxes were littered with the dead.

  We’d scooped out as many of the husks as we could, and were dumping them into a bucket to dispose of away from the hive. Honeybees liked to keep a clean living space and would carry out the dead or dying far from the colony to keep disease from spreading. I couldn’t imagine how the undertaker bees would be able to clear out the massacre and wanted to lighten their load, however I could.

  If there were any undertakers left.

  The damage was far worse than I’d feared. After waiting until the afternoon—the warmest time of the day—Merry, Sadie, and I created a makeshift tent with canvas tarps and lit several lanterns to warm the space before opening the boxes. It was unconventional, but I couldn’t think of a better way to check on the hives’ health.

  What we found made me want to cry. A single hive could hold several tens of thousands of bees. Sam’s carelessness had cost us at least half of every box he’d opened. And more deaths would follow if we couldn’t somehow supplement their winter honey.

  Each of the hives we checked seemed agitated, buzzing irritably at our unwelcome intrusion. I worried they might decide to attack, sacrificing even more of their numbers to protect their queens. We’d brought the smoker with us, but I was scared to use it, uncertain how far the temperature inside the hive would plummet if the bees stopped shivering.

  Papa would have known what to do. I felt as though I was making up everything as I went along. In a wretched moment of utter selfishness, I wished he was here instead of at Mama’s side. This mess was too big for me to handle on my own.

  “We have to get them sugar cakes,” I said, putting the lid on the final box with grim resolution and casting aside my treacherous thoughts.

  “There truly isn’t any sugar left?” Merry asked, sitting down and folding her skirts about her goosefleshed calves. We’d decided to keep the tent up around the hives for a bit after the inspection, hoping it would help warm the boxes once more.

  “We bought the only sack left at McClearys. I used the last of that on the cake for Rebecca.”

  Sadie made an ugly face, picking at blades of dead grass. “And she didn’t even taste it.”

  I pushed aside the memory of all that precious sugar smeared across the Danforths’ steps. I couldn’t salvage it any more than I could our relationship. Like all that sugar, our friendship seemed utterly lost.

  “Has it been long enough, do you think?” Merry asked, leaning her head toward the makeshift tent.

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “I can’t remember ever seeing Papa do this. Can
you?” Sadie asked, looking up dubiously at the canvas.

  “Papa was never in a situation like this,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “If it’s keeping the bees warm, maybe we should just leave it up?” She traced a series of shapes against the cloth.

  “Then the bees wouldn’t be able to get outside when they need to.”

  “Why would they want to go out in the cold?”

  I wanted to howl with frustration. I felt damned no matter what I did. No one but me would be judged on how we got through this situation. No one would blame Sadie if every single bee starved to death. No one expected Merry to fix it.

  I didn’t want this responsibility, this horrible and heavy weight pressing into my chest, stabbing its sharp talons around my throat and digging in until I feared I’d suffocate. Looking after my sisters was one thing, but adding the bees and other animals on the farm was too much. It was all too much, and I felt too young to handle it on my own.

  Why, why, why had Samuel left me with this mess?

  “I think…I think it’s been long enough.” I tried to keep my voice resolute even as my insides floundered. “Why don’t we blow out the lanterns and then take down the tarps?”

  Merry didn’t budge from her seat, clearly not ready to leave the manufactured warmth. “How much sugar will they need?”

  I raised my shoulders. “Papa has the recipe for sugar cakes written down in one of his journals. We’ll look it up and see for certain, but I think it’s about ten pounds per hive.”

  Merry whistled out a low note through her teeth. “Where are we going to find thirty pounds of sugar?”

  “I don’t know. I just…” Hot acid burbled up from my stomach, scalding my throat and choking my words. “I don’t know, Merry.”

  “We could ask around town, see if people have any they’d be willing to let us buy?”

  “With what? Papa took the harvest money with him, and Sam took the honey. We don’t have anything to buy or trade with. Certainly not enough for thirty pounds of sugar.”

  Sadie chewed on her lip. “What about Uncle Ezra? And Thomas? Maybe they have sugar. Or would know what to do.”

  The thought had crossed my mind. You were supposed to be able to lean on family in times of trial. But Ezra wasn’t exactly family. Not yet, at least.

  “Maybe,” I said half-heartedly. “But we don’t know them well. It’s best not to count on them for anything yet.”

  Sadie’s eyes were dark with worry. “So…what are we going to do, then?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, hopelessness casting a bleak shade of gray over everything. I bit my lip, drawing blood, and ground myself into that pain. I would not lose control in front of my sisters. I would stay strong. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Later that night, I lay in bed while my sisters slept, hopefully lost in sweet dreams and heedless of my stumbling plight. I’d been able to hold back the rushing eddies of panic through dinner and cleanup—we’d even read the story of Jonah and the whale before bed, one of Merry’s favorites—but the moment I closed my eyes, worry swept over me, dragging me down, down, down into its dark abyss.

  I had to get out.

  It was too hot.

  Too stifling.

  I felt as though the house would collapse under the weight of my distress, crushing me into a dismal grave I’d never escape.

  I raced out the door and ran into the night, clutching at my chest and gasping for air. My rib cage felt too small by half, squeezing and tightening until I feared I’d snap in two. I drew breaths in as deeply as I could, but they weren’t enough. Dark stars spun before my eyes, and some small functioning part of me wondered if I was about to pass out.

  The frigid night air was a shock to my system, but even it couldn’t stop such unchecked hysteria. I couldn’t keep still. My feet itched to be in motion, and carried me out into the burnt fields, where I paced like a madwoman.

  Sadie and I had gone through every possible thing of value we could sell or trade, while Merry had gone door-to-door, pleading for sugar. She’d returned home with downcast eyes, misery written across her face.

  There wasn’t a single sack of sugar to be had in Amity Falls—not at any price.

  I sank to the ground now, staining my nightdress with remnants of old ashes and frost.

  Our only hope was the supply run.

  I’d tried reassuring myself that surely someone would think to bring sugar back with them, but my mind wouldn’t leave well enough alone. It wasn’t a guarantee. I couldn’t assume that would happen and relax. I needed a backup plan. There had to be some way of getting out of this mess. If only the waves of panic would recede long enough for me to be able to think.

  I’d run through the absolute worst scenarios that could occur—all three hives starved, leaving us with only two boxes. Two wouldn’t produce enough of a honey surplus. Not with all our savings being handed over to a faraway hospital. We needed more bees.

  It was possible to lure a swarm of wild bees in, come spring. Papa had certainly done it before, but I didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about such a thing. Bees swarmed at the beginning of spring, as flowers burst into bloom and their nectar flowed heavily.

  But our fields, usually so tempting to bees, were decimated, our supply of seeds burnt to ashes.

  Even if I knew how to catch a swarm, I had no way to draw them to the farm.

  I needed to find a way to feed the bees we already had.

  “Ellerie?”

  The voice came out of the darkness, cutting its way through my haze of despair, almost as if the night itself had spoken to me. When I glanced about the barren fields, it seemed I was alone. I shifted my eyes toward the tree line and the watchful gaze of the ever-present pines. The shadows there shifted, lightening into a form, and for one horrible moment, I feared it was the thing I thought I’d seen racing across the fields the night before.

  “What on earth are you doing out here in the cold?” Whitaker asked, stepping free of the forest’s grasp. Unlike me, he was dressed for the chilly night, with a heavy wool coat. His rucksack was thrown over both shoulders and stuffed impossibly full, making him look like a turtle moving about.

  “I—I don’t really even know,” I admitted, a shiver slicing through my words. “I just couldn’t stay inside the house any longer.”

  In an instant, the bag was off and he slipped free of his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. His body heat lingered, warming and surrounding me with his scent—leather and tannins and something green, like freshly cut grass. It was an intoxicating combination, and it wasn’t until I took a deep, savoring breath of it that I realized the tightness across my chest was gone. The panic had ebbed away, soothed by his mere presence.

  “Thank you,” I said, tugging my braid over my shoulder in an attempt to cover the split neckline of my nightdress. I burrowed deeper into the coat’s sleeves. “You’re traveling awfully late. How was your hunting trip?”

  “Awfully early,” he corrected me, pointing to the moon’s position in the sky. “Birds will be up soon. Couldn’t sleep?” he guessed.

  “It—it’s been quite a whirlwind since you left.”

  He plopped himself down in the middle of the field, heedless of the dirt, the dark, or the cold. “Is that a fact? Tell me about it.”

  I explained the emergency town meeting, the poor harvest and black rot, and the necessity for a late-season supply run.

  “Sam volunteered to go out with the party,” I ended, and his expression grew grave.

  “He left you and your sisters all alone?”

  “Even worse—he decided to harvest more of the honey before he left. I guess he wanted to try to sell it in the city? He took it from the bees’ reserves, and now they won’t have enough to get through the winter.”

  “He’s a
fool,” Whitaker said. “What can be done?”

  “If it was a normal year, we’d make sugar cakes and leave them in the hives, but there’s no sugar left. Every bit of it is gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Surely they’ll bring sugar back with them, won’t they?”

  I raised my shoulders, shrugging. “Even if they do—we don’t have the money to pay for thirty pounds. Papa took everything with him when he left with Mama. And I’m sure whatever Sam gets will be squandered away before he returns home. If he returns home.”

  The dark thought soured my stomach.

  What if Samuel didn’t come back?

  He’d been miserable and petulant for weeks, and now Rebecca was marrying another man. He’d tried acting blasé about the whole affair, but I couldn’t forget his reaction at the Gathering House—sharp and visceral and impossible to disguise.

  What if he saw this run as his chance to break free of the Falls? He’d be long gone, completely untraceable, by the time our parents returned. With all his ill-gotten money, he’d be able to start a new life elsewhere. It was the perfect setup for him to run.

  “Oh God,” I whispered, seeing everything with painful clarity. “What if he doesn’t return?”

  Whitaker pressed a tentative hand on my shoulder. “Then you’ll have one less mouth to feed this winter and be better off for it.” His eyebrows furrowed together. “That sounds more callous than I intended, but it’s still the truth. You don’t need dead weight holding you back—or worse, dragging you down.”

  “But I—I don’t know how to manage the farm. Papa taught me a little about the hives, but I feel as though I’m making up everything as I go along….What if I fail?”

  “Oh, Ellerie,” he said, and cupped my cheek, rubbing his thumb across it. His hand was deliciously warm, and I fought the urge to lean into it, seeking more of his touch. “You won’t. You’re too smart for that, and you care too much. You’ll make mistakes—we all do—but you care enough to keep fighting. That’s the truly important part. You care too much to quit.”

  “I might have to. Without sugar there really is no way to salvage the situation.”