Angela Ant stood at the edge of the oak root and looked across the garden toward the cottage where Summer Sun lived. She wanted to visit. That was the whole trouble. Ants in her colony did not visit the big creatures. They hid from them. Angela had already broken that rule once, when she walked away from the witch and chose Summer Sun instead. Now she wanted to keep choosing her. She wanted a real friendship, the kind you show up for on an ordinary afternoon with no emergency to explain you. The problem was simple and awful. Summer Sun was enormous. Angela was the size of a seed. If she crawled up onto the cottage step unannounced, Summer Sun might not see her at all. Worse, she might see a dark speck moving near her door and brush it away before she looked twice. One flick of a hand and the trust they had built would end without either of them knowing why. Angela climbed down and started back toward the colony. Her sister Tracie was hauling a crumb along the path. "I need to be seen," Angela said. "Bright. From far away. So she knows it is me before I get close." Tracie set the crumb down. "There is a scrap by the fence. Yellow. Fell off a picnic thing last week." Angela found it caught on a thorn. A strip of shiny yellow cloth, longer than her body and light as a petal. She dragged it free and worked one end into a loop she could wear across her back. The cloth caught the sun and threw it everywhere. She could barely see past her own shoulder for the glare. She was crossing the flat stones toward the cottage when a shadow cut the light. Matilda stood on the path in her ragged black robes, hat tilted, looking down. "That yellow will get you eaten by a bird," Matilda said. Flat. No warmth. "Take it off." Angela did not stop walking. "I want her to see me." "She will. So will everything else." "I know what I chose." Matilda watched her another moment, then stepped aside. She did not argue again. Angela kept going, the yellow sash flashing at every step, and she felt the witch's eyes on her back the whole way to the cottage door. Summer Sun was on the step already, watering a pot. She saw the yellow before she saw the ant. Her whole face changed. "Angela." She crouched low and set her palm flat on the stone, fingers spread wide, well clear of Angela's path. "You wore a flag." "So you would know it was me." "Anytime you wear that," Summer Sun said, "I will know. Come up." Angela climbed onto the warm palm. Behind her, on the path, the witch was already gone.

Angela came home from the cottage still warm from Summer Sun's palm. She wanted to tell Tracie about the way the light had felt up there. She never got the chance. Three of her sisters stood at the base of the anthill, crowded around something white on the dirt. A sugar cube. Bigger than any of them. It smelled like burnt honey and something else underneath, something Angela's legs remembered before her mind did. "Don't touch it," Angela said. Tracie looked up from the edge of the group. "There's more. Four along the north tunnel. Two by the south door." Angela circled the cube. The sweet under-smell was the same smell that had come off the trail Matilda had once laid to pull her back to the bramble cottage. She had walked away from that trail. Her sisters had never smelled it before. They would not know to walk away. "It's the witch," Angela said. "She's baiting us. If we eat these, she owns the colony." One sister was already leaning in, antennae twitching. Angela shoved her shoulder hard. The sister staggered back and hissed. "I know how it smells," Angela said. "I've had it in my head before. Trust me or lose everyone in there." Tracie stepped up beside her. "We move them. Now. Before the foragers come out." They worked. Angela and Tracie rolled the first cube away from the mound, then the next. The sugar was heavy and it left a bright trail in the dirt that Angela scuffed over with her back legs. Sisters who had been curious started to help once they saw Tracie carrying. By the time the sun tilted, seven cubes sat in a pile at the far edge of the flat stones, well clear of every tunnel mouth. Angela climbed the top cube and looked across the garden. The witch was there. Ragged black, hat crooked, hands empty at her sides. She had been watching from the fence line. Angela walked down off the pile and crossed to her. "Take them back," Angela said. "They aren't going in my hill." Matilda's face did not move. "You smelled it." "I've smelled it before." "You have." Flat. She looked past Angela at the pile, then at the anthill, then at the cottage in the distance where a bright shape stood on the step. "You'll tell her." "I already am." Matilda bent and gathered the cubes into the fold of her robe. She did it slowly, one at a time, and she did not argue. When the last cube was up, she straightened. "Next time you won't smell it," she said. Then she walked back toward the fence. Angela watched her go. Her sisters were safe. The witch knew she'd been seen, and she had chosen a warning over a fight. That was worse than a fight. Angela turned and started across the stones toward the anthill.

Angela did not sleep. She sat at the top tunnel mouth and watched the fence line until the sky went pale. Matilda did not come back. That was the problem. A witch who took her poison home without a fight was a witch who was already planning the next thing. Angela had to tell Summer Sun. She had to make Summer Sun believe her. She left before the foragers stirred. Tracie caught her at the south door. "You're going alone?" "She'll see me faster if I'm alone." "Take the sash." Angela took the sash. She tied the yellow strip across her back and started across the stones. The walk to the cottage was long on ant legs. She kept to the shadow of the grass and watched the sky for beaks. When she reached the step, Summer Sun was already outside, barefoot, watering a pot of clover. Summer Sun saw the flash of yellow and knelt at once. She put her palm flat on the stone. Angela climbed on. The palm was warm. She stayed on her feet this time. She needed to be heard, not held. "She poisoned the hill," Angela said. "Seven cubes. We moved them. She came to the fence and watched." Summer Sun's face did not change. "You got them all?" "All seven. I made her take them back." "Good." "She didn't fight me. She just said next time I won't smell it. Then she left." Summer Sun was quiet. She lifted Angela closer to her eye. "You have the cubes?" "She took them." "Then I have your word." "That's all I have." "That's enough." Angela's legs shook. She had come ready to argue. She had rehearsed how to describe the smell, how to explain the trail from before, how to prove any of it. Summer Sun had skipped past all of it. "You believe me," Angela said. "I know you." "She's been at your cottage. She brought you tea. She made you laugh." Summer Sun set Angela down on the step and sat beside her. She looked at the garden a long moment. "She did," Summer Sun said. "That was real too." "Both can't be real." "They are." Angela did not know what to do with that. "I'll watch her," Summer Sun said. "Closer. You watch the hill. If she comes back to the fence, you send Tracie. Don't wait." "I won't." Summer Sun stood. She did not look angry. She looked like someone counting the exits in a room she thought she'd known. "Angela." "Yes." "Next time she offers you something, don't send it back. Bring it to me." Angela climbed down off the step. The yellow sash caught the early light. She started back across the stones toward the hill. Behind her, Summer Sun stood on the doorway a long time before she went inside and shut the door.

Angela made the walk to the cottage three more times that week. Each trip took most of a morning. A crow shadow sent her flat under a leaf for an hour. A boot came down two ant-lengths from her head and did not know she was there. She lay in the dirt after and shook until her legs would hold her. If she was going to watch the hill and report to Summer Sun, she needed a way to survive the road between them. She went to Tracie at the south door. "I need something loud," Angela said. "Something a big foot will hear before it lands." Tracie thought. "The tinker leaves scraps by the fence. I've seen a little brass thing there. Round. It rings." They went together at dusk. The bell was the size of a raindrop and hung from a broken chain. Angela cut a length of grass fiber. Tracie helped her lash the bell to the sash, right at the shoulder, where every step would swing it. Angela walked a test line across the stones. The bell rang thin and clear. A beetle turned its head and stepped aside. A sparrow landed, cocked its eye at the sound, and lifted off again. Small ears heard it as a wrong note. Big ears heard it at all. She set out for the cottage at first light with the bell ringing at her shoulder. Halfway down the path she froze. Matilda was crouched by the fence, sorting stems into a cloth. The witch's head came up at the sound of the bell. Matilda looked at the yellow sash. She looked at the bell. Her mouth pulled flat. "That's clever," Matilda said. Angela did not move. She did not answer. "A bell for the big ones." Matilda's voice went clipped. "So they step around you." "So they hear me." "Same thing." Matilda tied the cloth shut and stood. "I hear you too. From the fence. From the hedge. Anywhere you walk." She stepped over the stems and went back toward her cottage without looking again. Angela stood a long time in the path. The bell hung quiet at her shoulder. The thing that had made her safe from crows had told the witch exactly where she was, every step from the hill to the cottage. She kept walking. Summer Sun needed to know. At the step, Summer Sun knelt and put her palm down. Angela climbed on. The bell tapped her shoulder. "You made a road," Summer Sun said. "I made it for the birds." "She saw it." "She heard it. She said she'll hear it every time." Summer Sun studied the bell. Her face stayed flat. "Then we know where she'll be listening," Summer Sun said. "Come. We plan the walk different." Angela sat down on the warm palm. For the first time in a week, her legs stopped shaking.