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“That’s a third. That’s progress.”

I lean back against his legs and look out at my meadow. Bees in the clover. Sun on my face. And behind me, a house with a broken bed, a bitten bee on the headboard, a nest by the fire, and a man Mother Wren carved every inch of for me. According to him.

My whole life, I wondered what it would feel like to have somebody.

Turns out it feels like a basket of eggs on the front step.

Ten

Chapter Ten: Rowan

Three weeks later, the whole village loses its mind over apples.

They call it the harvest fair. As far as I can tell, it’s an excuse for every human in the valley to stand in one field, eat too much pie, and judge each other’s vegetables. I’ve watched them do this every autumn for a very long time. It hasn’t gotten any less ridiculous.

But Hattie’s excited. She’s been excited for a week. She braided ribbons into her hair this morning and put on a yellow dress I’ve never seen before, and she made me carry two crates of her best honey all the way down the hill, because the mayor’s wife judges the honey contest this year.

“She cried at my honey last year,” Hattie tells me for the fourth time. “She’s going to cry again.”

“She cries at geese.”

“She’s going to cry harder.”

The field is packed. There are stalls everywhere, selling pies and apple juice and little cakes and wool. Somebody’s playing a fiddle badly. Children are running around screaming for no reason. There’s a pig wearing a hat.

I hate it immediately.

Hattie loves it, so I carry the crates.

She sets up at her usual table, and the line starts the second I put the crates down. Same wives as market day. A few new ones. They all buy candles and stare at me, and I stand behind Hattie with my arms crossed and let them.

The apothecary comes by around noon. He’s a thin man with a pinched face and a black coat, and he looks at Hattie for a long moment and frowns.

“You’re glowing, Miss Ashby,” he says. “An imbalance of the blood. I’d recommend leeches.”

“I’m sweating because it’s hot, Mister Pell.”

“Leeches,” he says again, wagging his finger, and wanders off.

I watch him go. “His grandfather tried to cure a broken leg with leeches.”

Hattie snorts. “Did it work?”

“The man walked with a limp for forty years and never trusted a Pell again.”

She laughs so loud the woman at the front of the line jumps.

* * *

The honey judging happens in the afternoon, under a big tent at the center of the field. Hattie’s so nervous she won’t stop fixing her ribbons. I stand at the back of the crowd, a head taller than everybody else, and watch her watch the mayor’s wife.

The mayor’s wife is a large, soft woman with three chins and a very serious spoon. She tastes the first honey. Nods. Tastes the second. Makes a face. Tastes the third.

Then she gets to Hattie’s.

She dips the spoon. Tastes it. Goes still.

And her bottom lip starts to tremble.