“Hello!” he called, and Arden straightened up quickly. As Baz got closer, he saw that she had been pulling the toys out of the weeds and setting them in a row on the edge of the well.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling a fresh bright smile that lit him up from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
“Good, uh, good morning. I brought you coffee. It might be cold now.”
“Oh, how lovely.” She took the flowered cup from him, wrapped it in her muddy hands, and inhaled, then sipped. “Well, it’s still a little warm. And full of lovely, lovely caffeine.”
“What are you doing out here?” Baz asked. Then he realized that had come out slightly accusing. “I mean, I went by your cabin and you weren’t there, so I wondered.”
Arden lowered her face to the coffee smell, inhaled deeply, and drank again. “Oh, I woke up early and decided to walk around a little. I just wanted to see this place again and find out what it looked like when I could see it properly. Fern and I were talking about it a little last night.”
It was still too overgrown to really get a good look. Behind the well, the stream churned high and muddy against its banks.
“You know, if you want to see what it looks like with some of this mess cleared off, I bet we can find tools,” he said. “Dunno if you feel like doing that before breakfast, though.”
Arden grinned another of those brilliant, infectious smiles. “I’m really not that hungry yet. I’d love to.”
From the well, it turned out that it was more or less a straight line through the woods to the back of the old grocery store. Once they beat down a path rather than having to push through the bushes under the trees, it would be a nice little walk. Right now it was still overgrown and wet.
“I thought I wouldn’t need the poncho, but I’m glad I put it on,” Arden remarked as they emerged in the field of wildflowers behind the old store.
“Come on into my house,” Baz offered. “I guess you’ve already been in it once, but now you can see it when it’s not full of goats.”
Arden looked around curiously while he got some tools together. From the grocery store and the outbuildings behind it, he turned up a variety of things: a rake, a couple of differently shaped axes, a hand saw, a pair of rusty shears. There was also a strange tool that looked a bit like a saw blade on a long handle. Baz had no idea what it was for, but it would probably work for brush clearing, and might even be meant for that in the firstplace. From his pack, he provided a couple of pairs of work gloves. They were huge on Arden, but would help prevent more of the blackberry scratches that already marred the backs of her hands.
“We’re really doing this?” she asked, picking up an axe.
“Unless you have a better idea. There’s a chainsaw around here somewhere, but I think it’s over at Lexie or Declan’s place.”
Arden hefted the axe. “Honestly, I’m looking forward to this. It feels like a great way to work up an appetite.”
It was a great way to get covered with sap, chips of wood, and scratches. But it was also rewarding work. They ripped out blackberry canes, cleared brush, and piled the spoils of their labor in a heap at the edge of the woods. Slowly the old well began to emerge from the overgrowth that had covered it. It looked much like Baz remembered, a stone base with a roof made of overlapping split-wood shakes and a winding handle for the well bucket, which no longer seemed to be there.
The well had been capped off at some point, so there was nothing inside the stone well casing except more brush growing on heavy, moss-covered boards reinforced with rusted iron bands. Honestly, that was a relief; at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about was someone falling down the well. Just to be sure, Baz reached inside with an axe handle and tapped on the boards.
“Aren’t you supposed to throw a penny down a wishing well?” Arden asked.
“We used to leave the toys instead.”
He wondered if it had been Fern’s idea. In spite of being among the youngest and smallest of the kids in their clique, Fern had often been the one who came up with new games and ideas for the rest of the group. Baz had been the one who told them what to do—generally alternating with Lexie—and Declan and Maida were the contrary ones who argued with the others. ButFern had been the one who told them how things were, and they listened to her, even when they were all very young.
Arden leaned on the edge of the well, looking inside. “Should we make a wish anyway?”
Baz wasn’t sure why that idea made his stomach knot up a little. “I don’t know if we should,” he said. “I feel like wishes made here have power, somehow.”
“Maybe that’s all the more reason to,” Arden said. She was covered in scratches and bits of leaves; she’d removed her poncho in the morning’s growing heat, and her shirt was sticking to her with sweat. Her hair was frizzed.
She looked amazing.
If he could make a wish in that moment, he knew exactly what he’d wish for. Every warm, lovely, luscious inch of her.
And that was what he was afraid of. What did it mean, if wishes were real, if you could cement a person to you with a careless request to whoever or whatever commanded the power of the wishing well?
He suddenly remembered another thing Fern had said. It dropped into his mind like a coin into a well, a stray recollection from back when they had played the wishing well game. They had come here once after a rain, and he remembered Fern clutching his hand and telling him they should be careful, the well was more powerful when the water was high.
If that’s real, then this would definitely be the time to make a wish that you really want to come true,he thought.Or not to make a wish. I don’t know if I want to mess around with something like that. Not right now.
“I don’t think we should,” he repeated.
