The Hidden Boy (16 page)

A
bumblebee flew across a calm stretch of water. He flew straight as an arrow, his fat furry reflection keeping pace in the rippled mirror of the lake. He came from a hive newly established by the lakeshore, and he was headed for the sweet heather flowers that the hive's scouts had found on the island at the lake's center.

The heather had been carefully transplanted by Bea and Phoebe from a hillside to the south of the lake, and it had taken root quickly in the scrubby soil of the island. Ike Ledbetter had helped them with the planting. When Bea had first moved to the island he had done his best to ignore her, but he found the business of maintaining a lifelong grudge surprisingly tiring, and on the whole he found being in her company far more enjoyable than sulking in his boat. Neither of them
ever mentioned the giant bee incident.

Around the Ledbetter compound a new orchard was taking shape. It was planted with saplings that had been donated by the citizens of Bell Hoot from their own nurseries. It was Granny Delphine's idea to ask for contributions of young trees rather than seeds, so that the Ledbetters' new orchard could begin to produce all the sooner. The fruit growers had responded promptly and generously, though Bea was wise enough to understand that they would also be relieved to see the Ledbetters able to support themselves once again without resorting to burglary.

On this particular day a barbecue was being held to celebrate the completion of the new house. It was a handsome and sturdy house, built by Mutton Ledbetter and his brothers with timber cut from the forest and poled across the lake in makeshift rafts. It stood on a rise a little way off from the main compound, and although it would be occupied by Ma, Pa, Granny Delphine, Theo, Bea, Phoebe and Clockwork Gabby it had already become known as Master Theo's house, a title that seemed likely to stick.

Bea was showing the Millers the place where she planned to build her hives, on a gentle slope on the
sunny side of the house. “Once the fruit trees have settled in and the heather has spread there should be enough flowers for a dozen hives to begin with,” she said. She had borrowed every book on beekeeping that the Bell Hoot Library contained, but to build the hives she needed Ike's skill with wood. He was still very wary of bees, but she had shown him the hive designs in the borrowed books; and as she had hoped, his enthusiasm for woodworking had overcome his fears, and he had already begun to search for suitable timber.

“How will you get the bees to come and live in the hives?” asked Willow.

Bea smiled at her. The Willow who had asked the question was a lively and elegant girl with a contagious chuckle, almost unrecognizable from the whey-faced ghost who had drifted around the Millers' balcony only months before. “You have to capture a queen,” said Bea, “and the rest will follow.”

Willow's eyes widened. “Can I help,” she asked, “when the time comes?”

“Of course,” said Bea.

“If Big Chief Theo allows it,” added Phoebe under her breath.

Most of the Ledbetter clan had accepted Maize's
word that Theo should be their new head, and they had ratified her choice by electing him leader under the laws of Bell Hoot. In practical terms it was Mutton Ledbetter who took care of the day-to-day running of the clan, but he always cleared major decisions with Theo first.

For his own part Theo had reluctantly abandoned his idea of making Mutton wear a pink dress to test the power of his new position, and instead had issued some rules that showed a wisdom greater than most seven-year-old boys possess. He ruled that no member of the clan should steal from or harass any citizen of Bell Hoot, and that where possible they should repay in goods or labor what they had stolen in the past.

On hearing of Tilly Horton's tragic death he had ordered the Ledbetters to build a playground in the center of Bell Hoot before even a plank of his own family's house was put in place. With the approval of the Quorum he named it Tilly's Garden, and it took shape and bloomed under the direction of Martha and Coco Ledbetter, two of Ike's aunts whose natural talent for gardening had been of little use to them under Maize's rule. There were slides and swings, tree houses and hidden corners, and it quickly became a favorite place
for the children of Bell Hoot, Tilly's younger brothers and sisters among them.

There were some members of the Ledbetter clan who had not been able to settle so easily into this new way of living. The occasional burglary still occurred in Bell Hoot, and the livestock that began to repopulate Mumpfish Island contained a few more sheep and pigs than had been willingly donated by the mainland farmers. Then there was Silver Ledbetter, Maize's only daughter and a hard-faced replica of her mother, who had announced that no stranger's pup would ever be telling
her
what to do, before disappearing into the woods on the day of Maize's funeral. She was followed soon afterward by her sly younger brother Yoric, and no trace had been seen of either of them since.

By and large, however, the clan had settled well enough under Theo's and Mutton's leadership. They were soon feeling the benefits of working for themselves instead of laboring for others, and a wary trust had grown between the townspeople of Bell Hoot and those Ledbetters who began to bring their surplus produce to market.

They had accepted Clockwork Gabby too, without seeming to notice her strangeness. There was no
shortage of hands to wind her key when she began to slow down, and in any case Bea was almost sure she had begun to last a day or two without needing to be wound at all. Gabby still made careful notes in the small green notebook that she carried with her, though no one was allowed to see what she was writing. She spoke rarely, as though words were scarce and might run out at any moment, but she worked hard and smiled more frequently than she ever had before.

And so they sat around on benches and logs on that warm summer evening, as the sun neared the horizon and the visiting bees started their return journey across the lake. There was Granny Delphine and Pa and the No Longer Hidden Boy, the tattoo artist, her bee-charming daughter and her daughter's best friend. There was the half-tamed Ledbetter clan; Captain Bontoc and his counterpart, Captain Fuller—who were still trying to figure out how they would restore balance to the captains' roster; the Hortons, who had lost a daughter; and the Millers, who had gotten theirs back; the clan heads and the farmers; the craftspeople and the librarian and the clockwork lady with the invisible key. They sipped Gladys Miller's plumegranate juice and wine from Horton's vineyard, and
picked roast pork from between their teeth as the conversation drifted through the company like the smoke from the slowly cooling embers.

“He wouldn't have been gone that long without a very good reason,” Captain Bontoc was saying, returning to the well-worn topic of Arkadi's surprise reappearance.

“It beats me how he could have stayed hidden all those years, whatever his skills,” said Mr. Miller. “It's not as though Bell Hoot is such a big place.”

“He may not have been in Bell Hoot all that time,” said his wife.

“Where else could he have been?” said Bontoc. “There's only one way in and out, and every soul is accounted for on the crossing.”

Bea glanced at Phoebe, who winked back at her. She looked quickly at Granny Delphine, and was not altogether surprised to receive a knowing look through her grandmother's singular spectacles.

“If you ask me,” said Captain Fuller, “he was an unwilling guest of the Gummint all that time. Only reason—”

He was interrupted by Bontoc, who cleared his throat loudly and nodded in the direction of Clockwork
Gabby. She seemed to be busy scraping leftovers from plates for the Ledbetters' dogs, but Captain Fuller lowered his voice anyway.

“Only reason I can see that he'd be gone for that long, and not get in touch with anyone.”

Bea remembered what Arkadi had said to her about being unavoidably detained. She wondered why the two captains were wary of discussing the Gummint in front of Gabby. Surely they couldn't suspect
her
of being connected to the Gummint! Maybe it was just the reverse, thought Bea with a chill. Bontoc had said that the Gummint carried out experiments on their prisoners, that night on the Millers' balcony. Could that have been what had turned Gabby so strange in the first place?

“It's only a matter of time before they rumble this place,” Captain Fuller was saying, lowering his voice still further.

Captain Bontoc guffawed. “Never happen!” he said, giving his gloomy counterpart a hearty slap on the back. “There's only one way in here, and those clowns would never figure it out, not if it had a big neon sign on it.”

“It has,” said Bea.

“You're not wrong, Miss Flint,” agreed Bontoc, “but it says ‘Mr. Waxy,' not ‘This Way to the Hidden Bolt-hole of Bell Hoot.' Gummint men come in there all the time to get their little cars polished. Long as old Waxy don't press the wrong button they'll never be any the wiser.” He chortled at the thought, but Bea noticed that Captain Fuller did not seem amused.

On the far side of the fire Theo was describing to a captive audience what it felt like to implode on an underwater bus.

“It was like falling asleep and turning inside out at the same time in a huge bucket of marshmallows with a choir singing backward and fireworks going off and your mouth full of lizards,” he said. He waited for that description to sink in, then added thoughtfully: “Only not really like that.”

Bea smiled to herself. She had heard Theo describe his strange experience several times before, and each time the description was different. As always she was relieved to hear that he made no mention of the Tree People. She had repeated to him Arkadi's suggestion that he should not speak of them, but it seemed to her that he had half forgotten them anyway, as though they had wiped themselves gently from his memory, in
the same way their own memories were cleared at the dawn of each new day.

“But what kind of place were you in, when everyone was searching for you?” asked Willow.

“Bea knows,” said Theo vaguely.

“Beanos,” echoed Clockwork Gabby, and suddenly a light came on in Bea's head.

Phoebe leaned over toward her. “So
that's
what she meant,” she whispered.

Bea nodded. “She must have known all along that I'd find the answer.”

“The answer to what?” asked Phoebe.

Bea felt the last of the sun on her face and closed her eyes, half conscious of the distant murmur of the bees as they changed sentries and stocked their honeycombs on the lakeshore. She smiled. “Arkadi would probably say that that's the right question,” she said.

Jacket art © 2010 by Tim Jessell

Jacket design by Amy Ryan