“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 more than a tablespoon.

“The honey’s a fair trade for the balsam that sealed Scotch’s hoof,” Mr. Peterson said thoughtfully. “So consider us even.”

He looked at Larkin, who stood a little away.

“You’re from here?” Mr. Peterson asked him.

To which Larkin said, “Since before your grandfather was born.”

I expected some feathers to ruffle at that, though none did.