Chapter 4: Bees

"Honey," Thad said, "is fat and sugar in a jar, and it is the best news this forest has given me."

Tuck, riding on his shoulders, tilted his head.

"What's a jar?"

"A pot with a lid. Never mind. Where do the bees live?"

Tuck wrinkled his nose.

"In the big dead oak by the creek. Everybody knows. Nobody goes."

"Why not?"

Thad glanced up at the branches.

"Because of the bees."

Thad considered this.

Behind them, three steps back on the snowy track, Wystan made a noise that might have been a cough or a laugh.

He had appeared at the cave mouth that morning without being asked.

He had fallen into step behind them with his thumbs in his belt and his eyes fixed carefully on the trees.

He had not said why.

He did not say anything now, but Thad was starting to learn that his silences came in different sizes.

This one meant he was keeping an eye on them.

The oak was huge and hollow, with a split down the trunk.

A droning hum came out of it that made the cold air buzz.

Thad had watched a beekeeper once on a farm-to-table tour.

He remembered the smoke.

He remembered the gloves.

He did not remember what the man did when the hive woke up angry.

"Stay back," he told Tuck, lowering him to the snow. "I'll be quick."

"They'll sting you."

"Not if I'm calm."

He climbed the low branch, lit a bundle of damp moss with a flint spark, waved it into the hollow, and reached in.

The comb came away in his hand, heavy and gold and dripping.

For one perfect second he was a genius.

Then the whole oak exhaled.

A black cloud poured out of the split, and the sound went from a hum to a roar.

"Oh no," Thad said.

Something hit his neck, and something else hit his ear.

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