Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,23

I first made one without any help was a very fine day indeed.

“Look here,” I said to Samuel as he sat on the log and I cleared some ground near his feet. From my pack I took what looked like a bird’s nest: a ball of oak bark I’d shredded into coarse wood-thread and molded into shape. I carried one with me always, usually several in the bottom of my pack.

“This is your tinder,” I told him, setting the little nest aside. “Which you can make yourself from threads of dead bark or dry grass as long as it’s very fine.” Then I gathered small twigs and built a tiny pyramid, just big enough to hold some dried leaves with room left over for the nest of bark thread.

Then I scraped the flint hard and strong with my knife until sparks flew into the tinder and then caught, suddenly, making a small flame that I blew on gently, gently, until it strengthened. I quickly slid the burning tinder among the twigs, which caught, making a stronger flame. Before long, the fire was burning well enough to add more sticks and finally a big one I would use as a torch.

Samuel watched it all in silence, with round eyes, and I felt at least ten feet tall.

“Who taught you to do that?” he said, his face serious.

“Daddy did.” I blew on the flames and fed them with dry leaves to make sure the torch was well and truly engulfed.

“Why didn’t he teach me?” Samuel looked so small that I nearly scooped him up into my arms.

“He will. Soon.”

I did not say Or I will. Our father would do it. He would.

The biggest stick was flaming well when I lifted it into the air and swept it mildly enough to feed it, feed it, coax it hotter and hotter. Then I held it aloft as I scooped dirt and stomped on the fire I’d built.

“What did you do that for?” Samuel said. “That was a good fire!”

“And I got what I needed. Now stay right here and don’t move.”

The hive was so close to the trail that I thought maybe I should send Samuel farther away, but I didn’t know any words that would make him leave. So again I said, “Don’t move,” before I turned up my collar and pulled on my gloves and crept through the thicket around the oak hive. As I came closer to it, I held the torch straight up until it began to go out, then blew the last of the flame away so it gave just smoke.

With the smoking branch in front of me, I edged up to the oak tree, the hive in its big, dark mouth humming away, and then gently poked the stick into the hole, not too far, just enough to fill the hive with smoke, which would make the bees drowsy and dumb.

After a bit, a few stumbled out, stunned, and flew lazily to the ground.

Others, coming in from their work, spun crazily, looking for a foe, but I stood as still as a broken clock and waited until the hive grew quiet.

Then I pulled the stick away and plunged it, hot end first, into the ground and slowly reached my gloved hand into the hive, feeling for the comb.

The bees in the hive covered my glove until it trembled with their sleepy buzzing.

I could feel the comb where they stored the honey that fed them all winter, that kept them alive in the year’s hardest, leanest months, that was meant for them and their young. And I felt their terror. Felt their panic as they choked and nodded in the smoke, their queen weeping. And I let go of the comb and slowly drew my empty hand from the hive.

It was covered with bees slowly regaining their wits, baffled by the smoke but waking as I watched. I shook my hand gently as I backed away from the hive and some of them fell softly away. Others clung without moving and I knew they had stung my glove and died doing it. Which made my heart hurt.

“Go, go,” I said to Samuel as I cleared the thicket. “Quickly now.” And off he went, up the path ahead of me.

Oddly, it was only then, as I was leaving, that a lone bee flew up and stung me on the cheek.

One of the hardest lessons I had ever learned concerned honeybees and how they died when they stung. How they couldn’t