Buzzford's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Buzzford walked away from Myrtle's cabin with the larva wrapped in wax cloth against their chest. Nessa kept close, one hand near her knife. They had gone a hundred paces through the reeds when Nessa stopped and pointed. Across the flat, smoke rose from the rival's yard. Not cook smoke. Signal smoke, thick and black. The rival had found the cut frame. Nessa said the rival would send the boy along the meadow track first. That track ran straight to Myrtle's door and then on to Buzzford's hives. They could not cross it. They could not stay in the reeds either. Dogs would work the edges by dusk. Buzzford thought of the fen. The long water crossing lay to the west, past a stand of alder they had already used once. The grey fox with the golden eyes held that road, and the tribute of dried liver was spent. Buzzford still had a strip of salt pork in their coat and a copper button Nessa had cut from a dead man's shirt last winter. It would have to be enough. They moved west, low through the sedge. Halfway to the alders a painted turtle slid off a log into the black water ahead of them. Nessa froze. Buzzford saw why. Beyond the turtle, at the foot of a leaning cedar, the grey fox sat waiting. Its yellow eyes tracked them without blinking. It had known they were coming before they did. Buzzford knelt in the mud and laid the salt pork on a flat stone. They set the copper button on top. "Passage," they said. "One crossing. No hunt behind us." The fox stepped forward, took the pork in its teeth, and nosed the button into the moss. Then it turned and walked into the reeds toward the smoke. A moment later, a dog began barking far behind them, then another, pulling east, away from the meadow track. They crossed the shallow water at the alders and came out on the far bank as the light went orange. Buzzford's hives stood a short walk ahead, humming weakly in the dusk. Buzzford unwrapped the wax cloth on a stump. The larva was still pale, still curled, still alive. Nessa let out a breath. Then she said what Buzzford already knew. The larva would starve by morning without proper feed. Ordinary jelly would not raise a queen from black comb stock. They had bought their skins and lost the road to Myrtle in the same hour. Buzzford wrapped the larva again and set it in a warm clay pot near the smoker. They sat on the step of the cedar cabin and watched the last light leave the fen. The rival was hunting the wrong ground now. That much was won. But the jar sat on Myrtle's shelf, and the larva in the pot had until sunrise.