The Hidden Boy (8 page)

“H
e didn't seem to know anything about Theo,” said Phoebe. They had retraced their steps and were following the path that Mrs. Miller had first suggested. They passed the plumegranate orchards, where a dozen pickers were working, loading the ripe fruit into a large handcart that Mr. Miller wheeled between the trees. He waved at them as they passed.

“I'm not so sure,” said Bea, waving back. “I think he was just avoiding our questions.”

“If he doesn't want to tell us more, I don't see how we can make him.”

“We can still threaten to turn him in.”

“But we promised.”

Bea stopped in the road. “Granny Delphine always says, ‘Blood is thicker than water.'” She knelt down and
unzipped the backpack. Nails poked his nose out and sniffed, then jumped out gratefully and scurried to the grass verge to forage for his breakfast.

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means that your family is more important than anything. If I thought it would help us to find Theo I wouldn't think twice about turning Arkadi in.”

They passed a slightly ramshackle windmill and turned left, walking on through the open countryside in the gathering heat. Bea noticed that she could hear different notes in the buzzing of the bees. Not only could she tell how near they were and in what numbers, but before long she could distinguish the bees of one hive from those of another. When she mentioned this to Phoebe she found to her surprise that Phoebe could hear only a bee that was flying close. She could not hear the network of bees crisscrossing the fields as Bea could, nor the hum of distant hives.

Ahead of them the road curved through a range of low rounded hills. They could see three or four small copses of trees, their trunks slender and their leaves pale and feathery in the distance. Nails had stayed close, as she thought he would. He trotted along on the road ahead, sometimes diving into a ditch to rummage in the long grass, then running to catch up. Bea could feel
a knot forming in her stomach. She pictured Theo sitting there among the trees, waiting impatiently for her to arrive. She did not want to get her hopes up, and she pushed the picture from her mind.

“Do you think that might be where he is?” said Phoebe.

“I hope so,” said Bea, “but things aren't usually that simple.” She concentrated on the sound of the bees to keep her mind occupied. Reaching the trees seemed to be taking forever. She noticed that the tracks of the bees were converging on the nearest copse. A fat honeybee arrowed past them, but as it approached the copse it began to zigzag and fly in circles.

“I wish we hadn't given away all our sandwiches,” said Phoebe.

Bea smiled. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “We'll have honey instead.”

“Did we bring honey?”

“No, but there's a hive in those trees.”

“How do you know?”

“That bee told me,” said Bea. “It flies straight toward home, but when it gets near the hive it flies in circles.”

“Maybe it's lost.”

Bea shook her head. “I think it's trying to confuse us, so we can't easily spot the hive.”

“You never went around in circles when you got near your apartment.”

“I'm not a bee,” said Bea. “Not a honeybee, anyway,” she corrected herself.

They had reached the trees now. There were about twenty of them, tall and slender with silver bark and heart-shaped leaves. Bea stood for a while, her eyes closed and her ears open to the pattern of bee trails that surrounded her. “There,” she said, and she opened her eyes. She pointed to a hole in the trunk of a tree a little way ahead of them. A couple of bees were coming in to land, and more were setting out on foraging duty.

Phoebe shaded her eyes and looked. “I can see them now,” she said, “but how will we get the honey?”

Bea put Theo's backpack at the foot of the tree. “First we've got to look for Theo,” she said. The trees were spaced far enough apart for grass to grow beneath them, dappled by the sunlight through the leaves. It did not seem likely that even a small boy could be easily hidden here. Bea took the Squeak Jar from the backpack. She sat down in the cool grass and placed the listening horn to the lid. “Theo?” she said.

“What?” said Theo's voice. There was no waterfall to mask the sound now, and she could hear him
clearly. He sounded quite cheerful.

“You never answered me about the moon,” said Bea.

“What about it?”

“Is it blue or yellow?”

“How should I know? It's the middle of the day.”

“Are the Tree People there?”

“They're always here.”

“Ask them why they're keeping you.”

There was a brief conversation, though Bea could make out only Theo's muffled voice. “They're just looking after me. They said I've always been here.”

“But you just got there yesterday,” said Bea.

“The Tree People have never heard of yesterday,” said Theo.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. It's funny. They only remember what's happened since we woke up this morning, but they know lots of stuff.”

Bea shook her head as if to clear it. This didn't seem to be getting her any closer to finding Theo.

“Can you still see me?” she asked him.

“I can when you're here,” said Theo.

“Pinch my arm,” said Bea.

“But you're always telling me not to do that.”

“This time I want you to.”

“You'll just pinch me back,” said Theo with a touch of suspicion.

“I can't even see you,” said Bea. She tried to keep the impatience from her voice. She waited, but nothing happened.

“What now?” came Theo's voice.

“I didn't feel anything.”

“That was my best pinch,” said Theo indignantly. “The twisty one. Usually you scream like those peacocks in the zoo.”

Bea gave a short laugh. She wished more than anything that Theo were right there with her and Phoebe. She wouldn't mind how much he was annoying her. “I just wish you could tell me where you are,” she said.

“The Tree People say that a wish is no good unless you can give it legs,” said Theo.

“How can a wish have legs?” asked Bea.

“Beats me,” said Theo. “They say lots of weird things.”

Bea looked around her in frustration. She was sure Theo couldn't be in the small copse where she and Phoebe sat. There were others scattered among the low hills, but it would take days to search them all.
If only there were a quicker way to find out if Theo was there.

“Can't you light a fire or something?” asked Bea, thinking of lost people on desert islands.

“Okay!” said Theo. “There's a magnifying glass on my penknife. If I can just get this dry leaf to stay still…” He sounded enthusiastic, and Bea thought about how he had set fire to the kitchen bin the year before. And the balcony, when he had been burning a picture onto a piece of wood with the same magnifying glass. And the bathroom, she remembered suddenly. How could
anyone
set fire to a bathroom?

“On second thought—,” she began to say, but before she had finished there was a commotion from the Squeak Jar.

She heard Theo say, “Ouch! I didn't…” His voice became muffled. She called his name a couple of times, and just when she was about to give up, she heard him again faintly. “Have to go!” he said, and then there was silence.

B
ea Flint inched her way up the trunk of the honey tree. The silvery bark was rough on her arms and her bare feet, but she was concentrating on the song of the bees and she barely noticed the discomfort. Above her the guard drones swarmed like black dots against the sky, and their humming rose to a higher pitch as they watched her approach the hive.

Bea hummed back to reassure them.
I won't hurt you
, was what she hoped her hum would say,
and I won't take all your honey
.

The humming of the bees seemed to calm a little. They began to land on her face and arms. She moved as slowly and carefully as she could, hugging the slender trunk like a koala. The bees' feet tickled her gently, but she felt no sting.

“Watch out for ringsnakes,” whispered Phoebe from
below. She had wanted to be the one to climb the tree, but Bea had insisted. She didn't answer Phoebe now. There were bees crawling across her lips. She breathed as shallowly as she could for fear of sucking them up her nose. Her eyes were just open enough to allow her to see, though she felt sure she could navigate by the sound alone.

When she reached the hive she paused and tried to figure out how she could remove the honey and climb back down with only two hands.
I should have brought a bag
, she thought. She shifted her grip and reached into the hole with her right hand, as slowly as honey pouring. She could just see the honeycombs hanging in sheets inside the hive. She grasped the edge of a comb and pulled gently. The buzzing grew stronger. The bees sounded angry now, but Bea kept up her own quiet hum as she lifted the honeycomb slowly from the hive. She held it out at arm's length and squinted at it through half-closed eyes.
You can spare this one for us
, she hummed.

To her surprise the bees that crawled over it began to leave one by one, as though accepting that this honeycomb had changed owners. She dropped it into the long grass at Phoebe's feet. She wondered if she could make the bees leave her head and arms also. She was not afraid they would sting her—more that she might
crush some of them as she inched back down the trunk. She hummed a thank-you to the bees, and felt the lightness as they took off like a fuzzy cloud and began to stream back into the tree. She climbed slowly down. Her arms and legs ached suddenly, and she almost fell from the tree before she reached the ground.

Phoebe was staring at her, openmouthed. “That was amazing!” she said. “One minute you looked like…like a giant bee lollipop; then you hummed at them and they just went ‘poof!' You never told me you could do that.”

“I didn't know myself,” said Bea. “It just seemed like they returned to the hive when I asked them to.” She picked up the honeycomb and turned it over to make sure there were no bees still on it. She took a bite. It tasted like nothing she had ever tasted before. A warm feeling spread through her. It felt like getting a generous gift from a distant relative you never knew you had.

They began the long walk home licking their fingers. The girls were sticky inside and out. The honey seemed to have gotten everywhere, even on the back of Phoebe's hair and on the soles of Bea's feet. Nails had shared the feast, and now lay in the warm darkness of the backpack, occasionally licking a paw in his sleep.

The plumegranate orchards were deserted by the time they passed them in the late afternoon. The handcart stood in a corner of the field, stacked high with empty picking baskets, and bees worked quietly among the wildflowers that grew between the trees. The path led them on into the forest, and in the cool shade of the ancient trees they sat down to drink the last of the water Mrs. Miller had given them and to rest their tired feet.

“I always thought Clockwork Gabby was mute,” said Phoebe, tossing pebbles at a large mushroom that grew from the bark of a nearby tree.

“Granny Delphine didn't think so,” said Bea. “She told me once that she thought Gabby had suffered a terrible shock, but she could never find out what it was.”

“I wonder why she's started to speak now,” said Phoebe.

Bea shrugged. “Maybe she feels safer here,” she said. “Maybe it's a bolt-hole for her too. I'm not sure she's making sense, though.”

“She said ‘boygone,'” said Phoebe.

“That's easy enough,” said Bea, “but she said something else before that, when we were walking up from the falls. It sounded like
beanos
.”

“What are beanos?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you wind her up this morning?” asked Phoebe.

Bea shook her head. “I'm sure Ma did. She never forgets.”

“I hope so,” said Phoebe. She picked up a larger stone and knocked the mushroom clean off the trunk. “What do you suppose is wrong with Willow?” she said.

“Whatever it is, it has something to do with the Ledbetters. The Millers didn't want to discuss them anymore once she appeared.”

“The Ledbetters don't look sick. They look weird, though. Maybe they scared her half to death, climbing up the walls like that.”

She picked up the mushroom she had dislodged and began to pick it apart with her nails. Bea closed her eyes and tuned in again to the network of bees that was working among the trees. They were fewer and more spread out here in the woods than out in the open. There weren't as many flowers in the shade, Bea supposed. By concentrating hard on the sound of the bees she could make a sort of map of her surroundings in her mind's eye. She could hear in the distance a few busier spots, not busy enough to be hives, which she
guessed must be small clearings where flowers grew. She could tell where the larger trees were, because the bees had to fly in a wide circle around them. One of the trees in her sound map seemed to be moving.
That can't be right
, she thought, and she opened her eyes.

It was not a moving tree that the bees were circling, but a squat woman with her hair in a bun, gliding swiftly through the shadows. She wore a scarf and gloves as before, and Bea wondered how she could stand to be so wrapped up in the heat. She nudged Phoebe in the ribs. “Sssssh!” she said, before Phoebe had a chance to speak. She pointed into the trees on the far side of the path. “It's that Ledbetter woman,” she whispered. “The one who said she was the neighborhood watch.”

“What's she up to?” said Phoebe.

The woman was frowning and muttering to herself. She walked quickly through the undergrowth, following no visible path, but still she did not make a sound.

“Don't leap up and ask her,” whispered Bea. “Let's see where she goes.”

They sat quietly on the pathside, waiting for the woman to get far enough away that they could follow her without being seen. To their surprise she took a sudden
turn to face an enormous oak tree. The trunk of the tree was so thick that twenty people with linked hands could not have encircled it. A broad crack ran up from the roots to just below the lowest branches. Higher up the trunk Bea noticed what appeared to be windows cut here and there in the rough bark. The woman exchanged a few words with someone they could not see. She stepped through the crack and disappeared into the darkness.

The two girls stared at each other in surprise. “I thought she lived on an island,” said Phoebe.

“Maybe she's visiting someone.”

“Let's take a closer look,” said Phoebe.

Bea put the empty canteen into the backpack, being careful not to let Nails escape. They crossed the path and crept in among the trees. As they got closer they could see a man sitting on one of the oak tree's enormous roots. He had a wedge-shaped head and large dark eyes. His thinning hair was slicked across the top of his head. He reminded Bea of the grasshopper who had selected Mr. Miller to be their host. His head was nodding with sleep, but every now and then he jerked himself awake and peered blearily about.

“We need to distract him somehow,” whispered Phoebe.

“It looks like he'll fall asleep before long,” said Bea.

“That could take forever. She might come out again anytime.”

An idea came to Bea, and she smiled to herself. She began to hum very quietly, the way she had done to calm the bees before taking their honey. Phoebe gave her a puzzled look, but Bea put her finger to her lips and kept humming. The doorman's head nodded again. This time his chin settled firmly on his chest, and within a short time he had begun to snore.

“How did you do that?” asked Phoebe, stifling a yawn herself.

“I'm not sure,” whispered Bea. “I tried to make the sound bees make when they don't sense any danger. Maybe we all know that sound in the back of our minds, without realizing it.”

“I don't remember ever seeing a bee till we got here,” said Phoebe.

“We need to find a way in,” said Bea. “We can't go through the front door in case we meet her coming out.”

“We can climb up the far side and look in through the windows.”

Bea snorted with laughter. She put her hand over her mouth and checked on the doorman. He was still fast asleep. “Like the neighborhood watch,” she whispered,
but Phoebe was already walking silently toward the tree. She stooped to pick a bright yellow flower, and creeping straight up to the sleeping doorman she tucked it gently behind his ear. Bea held her breath, but the man slept on.

The mighty roots of the oak tree swept up from the forest floor, making the first part of the climb easy. Bea and Phoebe had removed their shoes to make their progress quieter. Bea's stomach tightened with fear when she thought of the Ledbetter woman's menacing stare. What if the old woman looked out of one of the glassless windows just as they reached it?

There was a small round opening just below a branch, and she pointed silently to it. Phoebe nodded and ran up the steep trunk as though it were horizontal, waiting just below the window level for Bea to catch up.

They reached the window and peered cautiously inside. The tree was indeed completely hollow. A circular floor had been built about halfway up the inside of the trunk, some distance below the high window. There was a hole in the center of the floor. The top of a ladder could be seen poking up through it. Nine chairs were arranged in a circle around the walls of the
chamber. All of them were occupied. The Ledbetter woman stood by the top of the ladder with her hands on her hips, glaring at the person sitting in the chair in front of her. As Bea's eyes got used to the dimness she saw with a start that the occupant of the chair was none other than Granny Delphine.

“Then you must be Maize Ledbetter,” her grandmother was saying. “I've heard all about you.”

“You'll have heard a pack of lies, then,” said the woman in her scratchy voice. “And you're sitting in my chair.”

“Mrs. Walker arrived unexpectedly,” said a man with a wispy beard from the far side of the chamber. “She had an urgent matter to put before us.”

Bea looked at Phoebe and silently mouthed the word
Quorum
. Phoebe nodded.

“In any case we weren't expecting you…,” began a beefy man who sat beside Granny Delphine. He looked as though he could wrestle a bull with one hand while enjoying a pint of turpentine with the other, but he sounded nervous speaking to the flat-faced woman.

Maize Ledbetter snorted. “Nine clan leaders are entitled to sit in the Quorum, no more. I turns up when I sees fit. Between times my chair stays empty.
Newcomers always think their little complaints is urgent.” She turned back to Granny Delphine. “What is it, then—Millers' beds got fleas? Lost your post office book?”

“I lost my grandson,” said Granny Delphine, making no move to vacate Maize Ledbetter's chair. “Perhaps you have a suggestion as to where we might find him. I believe you've lived here longer than anyone.”

The other woman started slightly at the mention of the lost grandson; then her expression became blank, as though a shutter had rolled down over her thoughts. “I've seen 'em all arrive,” she said at length. “Arguing, complaining, crying for their lost hamsters. Never seen a bunch careless enough to lose a kid, mind you, not in all these years. A boy, you said?”

“A seven-year-old boy named Theo,” said Granny Delphine. “Some of the council members seem to think you might know something about it.”

Bea could tell which were the council members who had expressed this opinion. They cleared their throats and looked at the floor. They checked their fingernails for dirt. They directed their eyes anywhere but at Maize Ledbetter.

“And why do they think that?” said Maize. There
was quiet menace in her tone. “They been complaining about nightmares again?”

“They say that members of your clan invade people's dreams while they sleep,” said Granny Delphine. She stood up now, and fixed the other woman with a level stare. “And that in those dreams you say only one thing: ‘Give us the Hidden Boy.'”

The two women stood motionless, face-to-face. Bea knew well the mesmerizing effect of her grandmother's stare, magnified as it was by her mysterious spectacles. She had been on the receiving end of Maize Ledbetter's cold glare as well. She thought about a mongoose facing a rattlesnake, and she watched with fascination to see which one would outstare the other.

“They all has nightmares,” said Maize Ledbetter, “because of guilt. They keep us on a rock in the middle of a lake. Ain't nothing growing there. We got to slave for our keep. When that ain't enough we got to take what we need. No wonder they don't sleep easy.”

“You chose to live on that island,” said the man with the wispy beard, “and there were plenty of fruit trees on it once. You cut them all down.”

“Who is the Hidden Boy?” interrupted Granny Delphine.

“You tell me,” said Maize. She folded her arms. Neither woman had averted her gaze.

“My missing grandson can be heard, but not seen,” said Granny Delphine. “Let's just suppose he is the Hidden Boy. What would you want with him?”