“Sleep, little bees,” he said. The smoke smelled like woody spearmint. He removed a honeycomb in its rectangle frame and knocked the bees onto the ground, where they crawled over each other in a pile. Bay told me that bees will find their hive if you move it a mile, but never if you move it six inches.

The burning herbs made my throat catch. I felt deliciously swollen, waterlogged, like I might cry.

The afternoon was glaring gold, the mountains violet. Heavy happiness came down and trapped us in its wax. The family was radiant, graceful, slowly rising and stretching, cradling armfuls of wildflowers. The sky and ground glittered and refracted light. We stripped off our salty clothes and cooled ourselves in the creek.

When the sun began to set, the sky too clear to be beautiful, the strip of light just above the earth a cloudless green, I felt already spent from the mead, even though the party hadn’t begun. On the banks of the creek, Dice made a fire by rubbing a dowel and a block, exhaling softly onto his glowing kindling. Beginners often blew too hard at that step. The kindling smoked, like it’d gone out, but Dice sat back with satisfaction, and then the kindling popped into flames.

Bay built the big fire, brushing past me, on purpose, I thought. I followed his every movement. We roasted sausages on sticks, grilled big fatty pork chops on a piece of slate with eggplants crowded around to suck up the drippings. We ate Cherokee hominy boiled with ashes, smother-fried squirrels, dandelions in vinegar, borscht, okra, Thelma Sanders squash, cake with fresh peaches. Everyone was laughing and the sparks from the bonfire spent ages wafting upward. We sang unusual songs: “In the Pines,” “Conflict,” “Amboy.”

Queen and I drank with our arms around each other. Sara and others danced, clapping and stamping. In the darkness, my happiness took on larger, more mysterious forms. I felt buoyed up, like a paper lantern that rises only on the strength of the candle inside it. Queen hugged me and gave me a smacking kiss. But Bay beckoned me to follow him down to the edge of the forest. I broke away. I didn’t know I wouldn’t see Queen again for a long time.

How did he do it? I was standing, listening to the oceanlike sound of many turning leaves, and then I was on the ground. He knocked me over. His face rose over me, even darker than the blue ridges. He breathed down onto me, like I was a bee in a beehive. He smelled like alfalfa, sweet, chaffy.