Hazel Softpaw's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Morning came gray and cool. Hazel stood at her door with an empty leather sling sack and no plan. The trader's wagon would arrive today, full of rare seeds her bare garden needed. But she had nothing to pay with. No coins. No goods worth trading. She had cleared her clearing too well, brewed away her herbs, and kept nothing back. She needed something valuable, and she needed it fast. A warm smell reached her first. Honey. Thick and sweet on the cool air. She followed it and found Jimothy sitting outside her clearing. He was a raccoon, her neighbor, with a wide head and no neck to speak of, cheerful as always. He held a glossy piece of honeycomb in both long arms and licked amber from his fingers. He grinned at her, unbothered. "Where did you find that?" Hazel asked. "Old tower," Jimothy said. He nodded at nothing in particular. "There's a corner where it grows right out of the wall. Whole cascade of it. I can take you." Hazel's heart lifted. Honey was valuable. A trader would want it. "Show me," she said, and grabbed a large glass jar before they went. The tower was a crumbling thing, half swallowed by moss and creeping vines. Stones had fallen from its top. Wooden beams stuck out at broken angles. Hazel flew up beside a jagged hole in the wall. Inside the corner hung a huge golden honeycomb, dripping in slow amber strands. It was enough to fill her jar twice over. "Careful," Hazel said. The wall looked ready to slide. Loose stones shifted under Jimothy's grip. Jimothy reached in with one long arm. He worked a thick slab of comb free from the wall. Honey ran down his wrist. He passed it to Hazel, and she pressed it into the glass jar. They filled it piece by piece until the jar glowed gold and heavy in her paws. She sealed the lid tight. "Thank you," Hazel said. "This could buy every seed I need." Jimothy shrugged and licked his fingers. "Lots more where that came from." He looked at the dripping comb a moment longer, then remembered something. "I was headed for a blackberry ridge. South. A possum told me." He climbed down without another word, already thinking of berries. Hazel flew home with the jar cradled to her chest. Now she had something to trade. But the jar sat cold and full in her paws, and a new thought pricked her. This honey was not hers. It belonged to the bees that built it. She was the eyes of the forest, the one who noticed when something was off, and something felt off now. She had taken from a hive without asking. The trader would come whether the bees forgave her or not. She would have to answer for the empty comb before she spent a single drop.