Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,74

“If she dies of something she can’t fix.”

And I knew she was talking about how Larkin’s father had died. “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” I said impatiently. “That’s just mean. When that’s not what we need right now.”

She glared at me for a long moment. Then she sighed. “There’s no honey. Not in our hive. I was just there, not two days ago, and it’s dead. Every bee.”

I was shocked at the idea of that. A whole hive dying. “But, why?”

I sounded like Samuel.

She looked at me in surprise. “Things die. No reason to it.”

“Maybe too wet,” Larkin said. “Maybe mites. Maybe something robbed them and they starved.”

I thought of the honey I’d taken from the hive by the river.

“Don’t you have any of your own?” I said. “From last summer?”

“We might,” Larkin said, his eyes wide. And off he ran, into the cabin, then came slowly back again with a jar in his hand.

“Nowhere near enough,” he said, tipping the jar into the sun so we could see the thin golden film in the bottom of it.

I knew that our own honey was much the same, spent on Christmas.

I couldn’t imagine Cate dying for lack of honey, though maybe any reason, even that one, was better than none. “We could go for the doctor,” I said.

“Who will want to be paid,” Larkin’s mother said. “In real money. Do you have any of that?”

To which I said nothing.

“Nor do I,” she said. “Not enough.”

“We could offer something in trade,” I said. “When my father got hurt, my mother paid the doctor with a silver locket.”

She lifted her chin. “Do you see a silver locket?”

I looked at the fine cabin. “You must have something you could trade. A mandolin?”

“No,” she barked. “I have just one left and I’ll not trade it away.” Though I knew she would, in an instant, if it were Larkin who was sick. “Besides, it would take too long for a doctor to get here.” Something she clearly knew, as Cate had known. Something that brought the darkness back to her face.

She turned and went into the cabin.

But she did not drag Larkin with her.

“Will you come with me?” I said.

“To the other hive? The one where you went before?”

I shook my head. “I already took most of what they had.”

“Then where?”

“Maybe the other families have some.”

He frowned. “And if they don’t?”

I thought of the pail of cold water on the cabin step. The bear on the path. Captan. And everything else that had brought me to this moment. This fresh chance to be of use.

“I don’t know. But I’d rather ask for it and get none than cut Miss Cate’s leg without ever asking.”

Larkin must have heard something in my voice. Something that echoed what he was surely telling himself.

With a last glance at the cabin, he said, “Then let’s be quick about it, or it will be for nothing.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

We stopped first at the Andersons’, where Mrs. Anderson came rushing to the door when I banged, perhaps too hard, and asked her for honey without saying why.

She looked past me at Larkin, who stood in the yard, a little distance away, his face hidden in the shadow of his hat.

“Who’s that?” she whispered. Mrs. Anderson was so thin that she’d once traded five blueberry pies to my father to make a Sunday smock that didn’t swallow her whole.

I remembered thinking she should have just eaten the pies herself and filled out the smock she had, but I was happy with any arrangement that let me eat pie for days on end.

“That’s Larkin,” I said.

“Who?”

“He’s from the other side.”

“The other side of what?” As if we lived on the moon and could not fathom the side we couldn’t see.

“The mountain,” I said, as patiently as I could.

“Oh.” She looked a little confused. “And what will you give me for the honey?”

I hadn’t expected to pay for it, even in trade, and I had no time to bicker, so “My thanks,” I said. “And whatever I have to give that’s mine, down the road. But I need the honey now. As much as you’ve got.”

Which wasn’t much, in the end, but more than I had.

I watched as she spooned perhaps a smidgen, no more than a dollop, from her own jar into mine.

“I’ll have you muck out the chicken coop for that,” she called as we hurried off down the path.

“I will,” I called back. “I promise.”

The Petersons came next, with much the same result. No