Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  Her smile was sly and biting. “You’re welcome to test your luck. We can even change the terms of the deal, if you like. I’ll give you three chances to guess my name.”

  I felt myself begin to nod, lulled into complacency.

  “If you don’t guess correctly,” she continued, raising that one horrifically malformed finger. “You join us.”

  “But if I do?” I asked, wanting the terms to be said aloud.

  “Then whatever you want is yours, if it’s within my power.”

  My heart thunked painfully in my chest, and I tried to arrange my face into a bland expression. This was what I wanted. This was my chance to save everyone, to save the Falls.

  But now that I was here, in this moment, I was terrified to reveal that she’d called my bluff. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t have a clue as to what it could be.

  Or did I?

  Whitaker’s strange farewell still rang through my head, ripples of a rock dropped into a still pond. His words lingered, twisting over one another into a puzzle. I was certain they meant more than their first impression.

  If I could piece them together, would I come up with the Queen’s name?

  Think. Think, Ellerie. What had he said? Exactly?

  The girl who can name every flower.

  I recalled that afternoon in the meadow, alongside the Greenswold, the sun’s rays long and warm at our backs. We’d picked clovers and I’d made Sadie her birthday crown. I’d pressed him to admit his name. There’d been a flower….What was it?

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember.

  We’d been walking, and there had been little bursts of yellow and orange—like fireworks exploding in the midst of all that green.

  Field marigolds—but I’d called them by their species name, their true name. There’d been surprise in his eyes when he’d learned that I knew the Latin. Surprise…and maybe a touch of worry?

  The girl who thinks she can name the stars.

  Christmas night. Dancing in the snow. And spotting a constellation. He’d said it was ridiculous to christen something so far away…but he’d asked if I knew more of the myths.

  The girl who thought she could name me.

  Here I stilled, my theories stalling. The name “Whitaker” hadn’t been taken from a myth or a dead language. There were no heroes, no legends. It had been the most pragmatic of choices. A name inspired by him.

  A name that meant something.

  I glanced back at the Queen. She was still waiting for my answer. If I did this, if I did this wholly stupid and unthinkable thing, I could save Amity Falls. If I succeeded, I could save everyone I knew and loved.

  Or.

  Or I could fail and become one of the Dark Watchers. My skinned crawled, just thinking about it, and my stomach flipped with revulsion. But if the worst should happen, my sisters would be safe….

  Sometimes we have to overlook our own desires for the betterment of the hive as a whole.

  Papa’s words returned to me, floating up out of a memory and ringing with importance. He was right. The good of the hive was more important than the life of one little bee.

  “Yes,” I decided. “I’ll accept your offer.”

  Her smile was quick and altogether too lovely.

  “Excellent.”

  “Should we…should we start now?”

  I felt the weight of her silver eyes heavily upon me. “It’s strange.”

  “What is?”

  “I would have expected twins to be more alike,” she mused thoughtfully. “But you’re an altogether other sort. Two garments cut from very different cloth.” She blinked, as if working out a trying puzzle before her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I met your shadow in the woods once.”

  “Sam? Sam isn’t a shadow.”

  “Isn’t he? A lesser copy of the original? He’d found himself in a bit of a predicament, a nasty little moment with a pack of wolves.”

  “The supply run,” I guessed, and my breath caught as it finally dawned on me. “You saved him. You’re the reason he survived that attack.”

  Her smile deepened. “It wasn’t terribly difficult. Not for me. But he was grateful. So grateful, he offered up your life in exchange for his.”

  A black coil of dread uncurled within my belly. He wouldn’t have. “What?”

  He’d bargained me away. My own brother. My other self. Indignation tore at my throat, showering sparks of anger. At him. At her. Why had she bothered with the pretense of a deal if Sam had already—

  Her laughter was as bright as sunlight. “Of course I told him that wasn’t possible. You can’t go around pledging other people as payment for your own debts. Can you imagine? Oh, but how that infuriated him.” She clicked her tongue. “Such different characters. Truly a wonder.”

  “But…what did he offer? It had to have been something special. He made it out of the woods. He’s alive. Tell me,” I insisted.

  She paused, considering me. “He owes me a lie.”

  Laughter snorted out of me. “You didn’t make a very good bargain. Sam lies about everything.”

  She shrugged. “This is a very special one. An important one. One given at exactly the wrong—or right—moment.” Her glee could hardly be contained.

  “What do you mean? When?”

  She tweaked my nose. “That, my girl, is entirely between your brother and me.”

  I squirmed away from her touch. Her fingers, so mangled and misshapen, felt wholly wrong against my skin, like the rough scrape of tree bark.

  “Let’s begin, then, shall we?” Dimples winked from her soft and rosy cheeks.

  “But—”

  “Now!” she snapped, and for the sharpest moment, her features blurred, chaos and discord screaming out over the beauty. I wanted to look away, to cower and sink into the earth. But it was over in less than a second, and the human features regained control, settling over her monstrous form like a costume cloak.

  She ran the backs of her fingers along her jaw, as if reassuring herself that everything was put back into place, before offering a winning smile of contrition. “Now, honey-haired girl. My name.”

  Her name.

  A name.

  Any name.

  Names are meant to have meaning.

  My words from the flower field echoed back to me.

  A name that meant something.

  This thing before me. What summed her up? What resonated through her veins? What christening befit such a creature, so dark yet lovely?

  Aphrodite, goddess of beauty.

  It was the first thing to come to mind, but I tossed it aside. It wasn’t quite right for this Queen. Her beauty was dazzling, to be sure, but there was a sharp edge beneath it, hard and calculating, twisted and cruel. Aphrodite was also goddess of love. This Dark Watcher exemplified many things, but affection was not one of them.

  “Helen,” I guessed, remembering the capricious queen whose beauty had brought nothing but destruction. It was a strong choice. One I felt neatly summed up this Queen.

  “You think my face could launch a thousand ships?” She beamed. “I’m flattered, Ellerie, but no, that’s not my name.”

  Two chances left.

  I racked my mind, trying to remember every story in the book of myths that Sam and I had pored over as children. There were tales of heroes and rulers, gods and monsters. Some seemed to fit, but I remembered Whitaker’s mention of the stars. It was another clue, I was certain of it.

  “Cassiopeia,” I tried, brightening. It was the constellation I’d pointed out to Whitaker at Christmas. The vain queen. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me first.

  Her smile grew into a wicked grin. “No.”

  “You’re lying,” She had to be. It made too much sense to not be true.
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  “One guess left.”

  I wanted to howl.

  I thought through every constellation I knew, not just considering the shape—what it was meant to depict—but what the object really represented as a whole.

  Orion and his famed belt did me little good, and neither did the sets of bears. My mind was dizzy with stars as I imagined their points and patterns, dredging up the stories Papa had told us when we were children and the summer nights were long and bright.

  Whales and swans, foxes and dragons.

  None of them were right.

  But then…

  The Harp.

  Orpheus’s harp.

  Would you follow me to the underworld?

  Whitaker had seemed so horrified when I’d told him of the doomed musician. Orpheus had had the chance to have everything but had lost it all.

  All because he’d turned and watched.

  Watched.

  A smile curved over my lips.

  This was it.

  It had to be.

  The Harp.

  But it wasn’t a harp exactly, not in the original myth. What was it called?

  A lyre.

  “Lyra,” I said, remembering the constellation’s proper name. Its right and true name.

  She froze, and for one horrifying second, her whole façade fell away, revealing the true creature beneath the dazzling charms.

  The jaw hanging too long, with too many teeth.

  The frame, hunched and hulking.

  Sinewy arms hanging past her knees.

  Lank hair falling to her calves, matted and snarled.

  For that split second, I saw the monster from Ephraim’s journals, and everything within me quivered.

  “What—what did you say?” she asked, pushing back a lock of hair, shiny and lush once more as she fought to keep herself together.

  “Lyra,” I repeated, more loudly this time. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  She opened her mouth to reply but stopped short, her eyes darting to the other Dark Watchers in the glade.

  Awareness burned in their eyes once more. They were no longer mindless drones carrying out their Queen’s orders. When her control had slipped, it must have freed them from their catatonic state.

  “How?” the man asked, taking a step toward the Queen—toward Lyra. “How did she know?”

  “That fool must have tipped her off somehow,” the older woman snapped. “It was stupid for us to have followed him here.”

  “He can’t do that. None of us can. You made certain of that,” the man said, whirling back to the Queen.

  Lyra shook her head, denying everything. I could see her mind racing, trying to spin the situation to her favor, even as she lost grip on her mask of composure.

  Other faces appeared in place of hers, their features morphing as fluidly as water over stone.

  Twisted noses.

  Inhuman ridges.

  Exposed bone.

  So many kinds of teeth.

  “What now?” the older woman asked. “What happens now?”

  Lyra balled her fists and, with a howl of frustration, grappled back to her previous form, even though it no longer seemed to sit on her correctly. Once you saw behind the illusion of a trick, it was impossible to believe it had ever been magic.

  But still, she tried.

  In a single motion, perfectly synchronized, every Dark Watcher’s eyes fell upon me.

  “Well, little honey-haired girl?” Lyra asked, her voice high and imperious. “You’ve won the game. What will your prize be? Go on, tell us the deepest desire of your heart.”

  I knew my answer.

  Amity Falls.

  But as I stared at her, unbidden thoughts entered my mind, sparkling madly like facets of a priceless diamond.

  Pretty dresses, jewels, and charms. Eternal beauty, admiration, and praise. What would my life be like if I traipsed through the world as radiant and beguiling as the creature who stood before me?

  She smiled as if sensing my thoughts, and I suddenly realized she knew exactly what I’d been thinking because she’d engineered them all in an attempt to distract me from my true mission.

  “I want the madness to stop. I want my town to go back to how it was before you arrived. I want you to leave here and never return.”

  A frown marred her beatific face. “But that’s impossible. The hatred, the violence—the madness, as you call it—was always there. It’s been there, hidden away in the hearts of every person in Amity Falls. Our arrival didn’t change that. We simply unlocked the door holding it back.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. The Falls is full of good people. People who would never behave as they are now if they’d not been bewitched by you. By all of you.” I shot a daggered glare toward Abigail and the others.

  “I can’t undo the past, Ellerie. No one can. Too many things are in motion already. It’s like dye spreading across cloth—you can scrub till your knuckles are raw and bloody, but the two will never be separated again.”

  As if punctuating her words, a great rumble exploded through the forest, coming from the direction of town. Its force brought me to my knees as the ground shook. Little pebbles of slate and shale trembled free from larger rock faces, spilling down the incline with the loose clatter of an avalanche. A nearby pine, dead and dry and as yellow as a corn husk left after harvest, ripped free from its stagnant roots and crashed to the ground with a terrifying boom.

  Other thuds echoed through the forest. The people of the Falls weren’t the only ones suffering in this summer drought.

  There was another explosion, closer to us, and giant comets rocketed into the sky, blazing orange and red. They arced high, blocking out the sun, before gravity pulled them back. They fell fast, plummeting to earth and pounding into the trees.

  “Do you see now why I can’t stop this?” Lyra asked. “There are too many wheels turning. Too much madness in the air. Too much hatred burning. Burning and churning and—”

  Dark smoke rose out of the pines, pushed about by a hot wind. It wafted toward town, whirling with specks of ash and dancing embers. Dread bloomed deep within me, filling my rib cage, unfurling its dark fingers into my wrists, my knees, until all of my bones ached with its weight.

  “We haven’t had rain all year.” My voice sounded flat and impossibly far away. “The whole town will go up like a tinderbox.”

  “That’s our cue to leave you.” She nodded to the others. Bloodlust danced across their faces, their eyes silver and hungry.

  “No,” I said, holding out my hand. “Stop.”

  The four Dark Watchers stilled. Lyra cocked her head.

  “You may not be able to stop this madness, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to watch it play out. I banish you from Amity Falls. I want you to go far, far away, to where you can’t hurt anyone ever again, and stay there.”

  The tall man bristled. “Who are you to—”

  The Queen cut off his challenge with a sharp movement of her fingers.

  “You want us to leave? This is your request?” she asked. Her voice was as light as silk, but her eyes burned with an acute resentment, flickering between me and the plumes of smoke. When another explosion went off, jolting the very ground we stood upon, her lips pressed together in a grim snarl, stifling back a howl of rage. “Then I suppose we’re all done here.”

  “Wait,” I said, throwing out my hand.

  The house was silent when I entered it, too still to be occupied.

  “Merry?” I called out anyway, wandering from room to room. “Sadie? Thomas? Ephraim?”

  There was no answer.

  The empty loft worried me the most. The bedsheets were twisted and ripped, revealing the ticking mattress beneath.

  Had Sadie’s condition grown wors
e, necessitating a trip to town?

  Or had they all been taken by force?

  My footsteps crunched as I entered the dining room. A teacup had fallen, and its ceramic shards lay shattered across the floorboards. I picked up a curved piece, examining the little flower painted on the handle.

  It was a lilac.

  Mama’s favorite cup.

  Merry would have never allowed them to leave such a mess behind. She would have swept it up and run a wet rag over the floor to make sure none of the stray shards found their way into an unsuspecting bare foot.

  Taken, then.

  I didn’t want to imagine a mob of angry people marching to the farm, searching for Sam and finding my sisters in his stead, but the images flooded my mind, each more horrifying than the last. I supposed I should have been grateful that the only damage left was one broken teacup.

  I needed to go after them. Needed to find and save them all.

  I spun around in the room, searching for anything that would make me feel less alone, less small. I needed something to fill my hands, to buoy my sinking confidence. The situation had spiraled far out of my control, and with every second that ticked by, I grew less certain I would be able to right anything.

  Not with words.

  Certainly not with reason.

  It would have to be by force.

  I stared at the empty spot above the mantel. Papa had taken the rifle with him, but his tools were still in the barn.

  Hatchets.

  Scythes.

  Metal.

  Blades.

  I could do this.

  I was halfway across the yard when a familiar hum rose, loud enough to break my grim thoughts, stopping me in my tracks.

  The bees.

  I couldn’t leave the bees.

  Not like this, with everyone else gone and the probability of my success dwindling.

  They needed to be told.

  I had to say goodbye.

  I approached the hive boxes slowly, trying to push aside my worries and fears. They would sense them, and I had no time to waste putting on a veil.

  I held my hands out, fingers softly splayed, showing them I meant no harm.

  The bees drifted in and out of the boxes, seemingly unconcerned by my advance. I tapped gently on the middle box three times, as I remembered Papa doing whenever he had important news to share.