The stump was the right height. Perfect, really, though she’d be sitting on a rough and spongy seat. Not very nice.

“It’ll do,” she said.

I fetched her again when she called me, and we both went slowly back into the cabin.

She was panting and sweating from the effort of being up, so I helped her lie back down again.

The crust on her leg must have broken some more, since there was a spot of blood on the bandage where there hadn’t been one before. “What if it doesn’t get better now?” I said.

She shrugged. “Why worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“Because I’d like to be ready to do what needs to be done, if it needs doing.”

“Oh, if it hasn’t improved enough by tomorrow, we’ll clean it out and put in some fresh honey.”

I chewed my lip. “We used it all, and I don’t know how much is left in the hive. Probably not much.”

“There’s a hive right near where I live,” Larkin said.

“And a mother who won’t want you taking honey for me,” Cate said, pulling the blanket up to her chin.

“If it does get better, will we just leave the honey that’s in there now?” I asked.

Cate considered that. “Why not? Might make me even sweeter than I already am.”

Which made Larkin laugh.

Cate said, “A boy who can laugh when he’s lying on the floor with a potato poultice on his eye. What do you think, Captan? Is that some boy?”

Captan opened his eyes. He thumped the floor with his tail just once and closed his eyes again.

“Won’t do me any good to cry,” Larkin said, though he wasn’t laughing anymore, either.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Did you make that stew you brought?” Cate asked.

“No,” I said. “My mother did. And she’d have my head if she knew I’d put cold water in the jar so it would take a lid.”

Cate said, “Oh, it was plenty good, even so.”

I watched her trying to catch her breath, the doll again tucked up by her cheek. She seemed young and old at the same time.

“My father told me he saw you skinning a deer on that day he climbed up here.”

Cate shrugged. “Maybe so. I do that when I kill one.”

“You kill deer?”

She raised one eyebrow at me. Something I would have to try myself. “And why wouldn’t I?”

I looked around the cabin. Saw no gun. No bow. Said as much.

“Have you never made a snare?” she said, clearly curious.

My father had. For rabbits. For other small game. And had taught me how, though I didn’t like to snare things. The animals we caught tried too many hard things to get loose.