Small Favors Read online

  Papa chewed the inside of his cheek. “Fine. Fill a pack, but be quick about it.”

  My fist struck the dough, smashing into its thick, warm pliancy with a satisfying thud. I struck it again, leaving a giant dent before gathering it up into a loaf. It still looked misshapen. I hit it once more.

  “Whose face are you imagining right now?” my mother asked, coming around the tall kitchen table with a tray of hot bread. She deposited the loaves onto the cooling racks before bustling back to the oven.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, slamming the dough back onto the table. A burst of flour rose into the air, mixing with sparkling dust motes as they danced in and out of the late-afternoon rays of sun that painted the kitchen orange.

  “Something’s been bothering you since we came back from town yesterday,” she observed. “You’ve nearly pounded that loaf into oblivion.”

  Using the back of my hand, I pushed aside a stray ringlet of hair that had pulled free from my bun. I only ever wore my hair up on baking days. Our kitchen simmered with yeast and heat, far too hot for my usual thick braid.

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a bad day,” Mama continued, crossing back to the table. She grabbed the dough from me and worked it into a more manageable shape. “And there’s certainly nothing wrong with taking out frustrations while baking. I do whenever your father does something to vex me. Why pick a fight when you can bake a loaf of bread?”

  She slammed the dough into another loaf pan, adding an exclamation to her point.

  “Mama, we make bread almost every day.”

  Her eyes twinkled as she tapped my nose, dusting it with flour. “Exactly.”

  Mama sold her baked goods in town—to the Buhrmans’ tavern and at the general store. Her sourdough was good enough that even the most tightfisted misers would fork over the shiny dime Amos McCleary charged per loaf.

  But it was her honey cakes that had all of Amity Falls lining up.

  She only made them once a year—just after Papa harvested the combs, and all the honey had been extracted and bottled. He’d make sure our larder was fully stocked for the winter and would then sell the surplus in town—charging a whole dollar a bottle. Though people claimed to be scandalized by the price, he never had a shortage of customers, and the honey was always sold out before day’s end.

  All but three bottles.

  He saved those for Mama.

  Mama’s cakes were deceptively simple. Flour, spices, fresh cream, and three eggs each. No nuts or chocolate or sugared icing. She never added anything to take away from the true star of the dessert—Papa’s honey.

  As the story went, shortly after they were married, Mama brought her first honey cake to a church social, and all the women in town nearly stampeded her to get the recipe. But no one could ever correctly replicate it—even using the precious honey they’d bought from Papa. When people demanded to know how to achieve the impossibly thin and moist layers or the perfectly caramelized tang, Mama would smile mysteriously and say it was just a pinch of love.

  Some claimed it was more like a touch of magic. Even Parson Briard—after his wife had made a particularly disastrous cake—said Mama must have been blessed by the angels of Heaven. There was no other way to account for it.

  I’d watched her make them for years, studying every step—down to the way her fingertips danced across the rolling pin—but I’d never been able to make an exact match. Maybe Mama did have a bit of magic in her.

  “Tell me all about it,” she said, scattering another scoopful of flour across the table before starting on the next round of dough.

  I toyed with a hangnail, worrying it back and forth till it broke free. I didn’t know what to say. Samuel and Papa had left while Mama had been tending to Molly. She hadn’t heard who my brother had been sneaking off to see all summer, and as mad as I was at him, it wasn’t my story to tell.

  “You’re worried about Sam,” she guessed, and it felt impossible to disagree. “And your father.”

  We’d watched the brushfires burn late into the night, shimmering through the trees. She hadn’t said so, but I knew that Mama had thought they’d return yesterday.

  “Do you…do you ever wonder what life is like outside of the Falls?” The question bubbled up from deep within, surprising me.

  “Out of the valley?” Mama asked. I nodded. “I can’t say it’s never crossed my mind. Especially when I was around your age. I wanted to go off and see so much more of the world. See a big city skyline. Buy a fancy dress and have tea in a proper restaurant.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She raised her shoulders. “Other dreams became more important.”

  “Papa?”

  “And you. Your brother. Our home here.” She paused, rolling the dough between her hands thoughtfully. “Your father left the Falls once.”

  “When Uncle Ezra went missing.” I knew the story well.

  My father’s younger brother, Ezra, had gone hunting by himself one summer, venturing out past the Bells. He’d never returned. Townsfolk had searched for him for over a week before giving up.

  “Gideon wouldn’t let it rest. He said he knew Ezra was still alive, out there someplace. He went over the pass, looking for him in nearby towns, even going into the city.”

  “But he didn’t find him,” I concluded. We grew up with tales of Ezra and his adventurous spirit, spoken in hushed tones.

  “Your father still thinks Ezra’s out there, that he’ll come back one day. As big and wide and wondrous as the world can be, everyone eventually wants to come home.”

  Before I could answer, telling her how much I wanted to leave, how much I wanted to find my place in that wide and wondrous world, Sadie’s tabby cat flew out from nowhere and landed on the table with a hiss.

  “Sadie, how many times have I told you to keep Buttons out of the house while I’m baking?” Mama cried, hollering loud enough for my sister to hear her in the barn.

  We saw her small silhouette race by the windows. Her footsteps clattered across the porch’s splintered planks, further aggravating the cat. “Sorry, sorry!” she exclaimed, bursting into the kitchen. “We took him to the barn, but he got scared.”

  “Can’t imagine anything horrible enough to scare that monster,” I said, jumping back as he swiped at me, claws bared like tiny knives.

  Sadie had found him when he was a kitten, no more than a few days old. He’d been trapped in a bag near the creek that ran behind Papa’s hives. She wasn’t supposed to play near the boxes, but she claimed to have heard crying. We all assumed he’d die before the day was over, but Sadie fed him drops of milk every hour and cuddled him close at night. He was well and truly her cat, despising the rest of us. Papa said he had no use for an animal so full of hate, but Buttons had proved to be an excellent mouser so was allowed to stay.

  “I think he saw that thing with the silver eyes,” Sadie started as Merry came in, arms weighed down with two pails of milk. She let the screen door crash shut. It spooked Buttons, who leapt off the table with a miserable yowl. “Trinity says she sees them outside her window at night. I think that’s what Buttons saw too.”

  “Bessie kicked at him,” Merry corrected Sadie, her eyes wandering over the cooling racks, looking for an easy snack to grab. “That beast tried swiping at her ankles, poor cow.”

  “My sweet, practical girl,” Mama said, cupping Merry’s chin and giving her cheek a fond pinch. Mama turned to Sadie. “Don’t pay any attention to Trinity Brewster’s stories. That girl has a penchant for the dramatic.”

  Sadie made a noise of agreement. “It’s true. She couldn’t even pick up three jacks today.”

  “It is strange, though, don’t you think?” I asked, scattering fresh flour onto the table as Mama grabbed the basket of brown eggs, preparing to make another batch. “The Lathetons mentioned something with silver eye
s too. Why would so many people imagine seeing the same thing?”

  Mama’s voice was full of sage authority. “It’s a small-town problem. In the big cities, with so much going on, people have more to talk about. But here, everyone knows what everyone says—sometimes only minutes after it’s been said. We can’t talk about the things we really want to, so people invent other things to discuss. It’s easier to have a problem with something out in the pines than with the person who lives next door.”

  “Like Mr. Danforth?” Sadie asked, plopping onto one of the stools. Buttons lay in her arms, purring contentedly and looking for all the world like a sweet cat. I swear he smirked at me when our eyes met.

  “Like Mr. Danforth,” Mama agreed, sifting flour and yeast into the bowl.

  “Wilhelmina Jenkins says that Sam is going to marry Rebecca Danforth. She said she saw them kissing down by the lake last week.” Sadie’s legs swung back and forth. “Do you think Mr. Danforth would interrupt the ceremony?”

  Mama burst into laughter. “I can’t imagine a less likely bride for Samuel than Rebecca Danforth. Wilhelmina Jenkins ought to have her eyes examined.”

  I drew a series of spirals in the flour. Mama was as in the dark as I had been, then. It should have made me feel better, but instead my stomach ached, squirming uncomfortably as I withheld the truth.

  Mama reached into the basket and neatly cracked open an egg with just two fingers. I’d always admired her ability to do that.

  “Look,” she said, gesturing to the bowl. “Double yolks. That’s a sign of good luck.”

  Sadie leaned over the table, straining to see. Two yellow circles peered up at us like eyes.

  Mama grabbed a second egg. Her breath hitched as she dropped the insides into the bowl.

  Another set of double yolks.

  Curiously, I fished out an egg for myself and studied it. It didn’t look any different from the others in the basket. I broke it open, using the side of the bowl to crack the shell, then cast it from me as if it was something horrid and squirmy.

  We emptied out the entire basket, ruining Mama’s dough and wasting over a dozen eggs in all. Each contained two yolks.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mama murmured darkly, studying the sea of yellow before us.

  “Maybe we’re just extra lucky?” Sadie asked. “That’s good, right? With Papa and Sam in the woods? I’d be so scared to go in there, especially with all those monsters running around.”

  “There are no monsters,” Mama said, pushing the bowl away with one final look. The insides steamed. “It was just a bear that wandered too close to the Falls. Maybe a rogue wolf or two.”

  “But there used to be monsters,” Sadie pressed. “Abigail told me all about them.”

  Sometime at the start of summer, Sadie had created an imaginary friend for herself. She was called Abigail and—by Sadie’s account—was as beautiful as a princess, dressing in fine gowns and silk slippers. She often whispered town gossip to Sadie, who tended to relay it to the rest of us at the most embarrassing moments. I’d overheard Mama fretting about Abigail’s existence to Papa early on. She’d worried Sadie was far past the age when it was acceptable to have a made-up friend, but Papa didn’t mind. We didn’t live directly in town, the way the rest of Sadie’s friends did, and if she wanted to have a companion to chat with while milking the cows or racing about the farm, it was all right with him.

  “Some think that, yes,” Mama said, tactfully avoiding all mention of Abigail.

  “Don’t you?”

  “I think…” She pushed wayward strands of hair off her forehead with a sigh. “I think when the founders first came to the Falls, they were exhausted and under an immense amount of strain. They’d lost so many people to animal attacks on the journey and wanted to blame something that was as big and wild as the land was. So they saw monsters and they hung the Bells. But time went by, and there’s not been even a glimpse of those creatures for decades. You know that.”

  “Because of the Bells,” Sadie said, a firm believer in Amity Falls’s legends.

  “Because there were never any monsters to begin with,” Mama said, dusting off her hands. Buttons saw this as a direct threat to himself and flew out of Sadie’s lap, then disappeared into a dark corner. “If that cat lands in the dough, he’s staying outside tonight.”

  “Not with the monsters!” Sadie howled, leaping after him. “Abigail said they’d love to eat him right up!”

  “There are no monsters,” I said, echoing Mama.

  An eerie cry spread across the valley as if to prove me wrong.

  Another joined in.

  And another.

  This wasn’t a lone wolf wandering too close to town. This was an entire pack, and they sounded on the hunt. I thought of Papa and Sam out in that forest, so near the wolves, and shuddered.

  Even Mama paused. “Not Gideon, not my Gideon,” she repeated in a whispered prayer.

  When the howling came to an end, she looked at each of us, weighing our fears. “We should light the Our Ladies.”

  A chill raced over me, setting my arms to gooseflesh even in the stifling kitchen. We hadn’t had cause to use them in months. Not since the great blizzard in March, which had blanketed the entire town in flakes so thick, it had been nearly impossible to see anything but the biting, burning white.

  Merry froze. “The Our Ladies?”

  Mama threw a damp towel over the last of the dough. “It’ll keep till I return. Ellerie, you’re in charge.”

  “You can’t leave us!” Sadie said, dropping Buttons to fling herself into Mama’s skirts. “Not with the monsters out there! You heard them!”

  Mama struggled to extricate herself from my little sister’s grasp. “I won’t be gone even an hour. I’ll start on the eastern edge, and by the time a few are burning, people in town will see and light the rest.”

  “I’ll go.” The words left my mouth before I’d even made up my mind. “I bet I can have five lit before dark.”

  My mother’s eyes softened and she grasped my hand. “That’s very brave of you, Ellerie.”

  Merry’s eyes were wide. I could see she was trying to muster the courage to volunteer as well.

  I squeezed her hand. “I’ll grab a lantern and be back before you know it.”

  * * *

  The Our Ladies were a series of giant bonfires built along the edge of Amity Falls, just yards away from where the tall pines sprouted and the boundary ceded from town into the unbroken wilderness.

  Three generations ago, when the town was being settled, the Latheton family had created the first wave of them, perfecting the materials and shape so that the fires could burn all through the night without needing to be fed. Morbidly, they resembled tall, elegant women, their wide bases resembling skirts, so the structures had been christened “the Our Ladies.” Just like the Holy Mother protects her flock, the Our Ladies held the darkness back from the Falls with the purity of their flames’ light.

  At first, the Falls had burned through dozens of bonfires every night to keep the creatures of the woods cowering in the pines. But as the town had grown and the land had been tamed, the Our Ladies were only used during storms or if someone was foolish enough to venture into the forest and lose their way. Unburnt pyres dotted the perimeter of our town, the virgin wood jutting from the stacks like curved rib cages, waiting to be called into service.

  When lit, the fires brightened the whole area with their amber glow. Long, flickering shadows raced across the valley, like hungry hands stretched out, ready to snatch away anyone unlucky enough to be lost in the woods.

  As I made my way through fields of our wildflowers, the sun was already dipping its blinding edge behind the western range of Blackspire. Made up of four mountains, with a solitary fifth to the south, the cluster was often referred to as God’s Grasp. Amity Falls lay acro
ss the valley’s heart line and did inspire a certain peacefulness, as though we truly did reside in our Heavenly Father’s palm.

  The Falls’s founding families had been traveling by wagon train, toward the promise of abundant land under the western sun. Their party had been plagued by misfortune, losing cattle and even a couple of teamsters to the tricky trail and deadly mountain predators. When Matthias Dodson’s great-grandfather had discovered the beautiful shores of Greenswold Lake and the miles and miles of land, lush and ready for farming, the wagon train had set up camp and never left. They’d hung the Bells—any bits of brass or silver the settlers could spare—along the edge of the forest, claiming the purity of the chimes would hold back the shadowy terrors. More families arrived to clear the surrounding woods. More trinkets were hung, bells with bowls and clappers, and the so-called monsters were driven from the settlement. Amity Falls grew from outpost to village to town.

  Dusk stole across the land, and the constant droning of the cicadas faded away. It wasn’t until the riot stopped that I realized how loud they’d been. The sudden silence set my teeth on edge.

  Even the Bells were still.

  Twilight didn’t linger long in the mountains, and I didn’t want to be tripping over tree roots and briar bushes in the dark. Our fields came to an end, and I paused for a moment, on tiptoes and with bated breath, staring out at the sea of wheat in front of me.

  This wide swath, grown yellow in the summer sun, was all that separated me from the pines. The stalks were even taller than I was, and once I was among them, the only thing I would have to guide me would be the scattering of stars pinpricking the sky. If anyone was out there, if anything was after me, I’d never know it was coming. I tried pushing aside thoughts of silver-eyed monsters but nearly jumped out of my skin as a prickly tuft brushed my cheek.

  A slight breeze rustled through the field, breaking the oppressive heat and setting the wheat to whisper. It waved at me, as if beckoning, beseeching me to join it. The center of my throat was dry and sticking.