IT pressed on. “You sent her away because she wanted a different sort of life than she could have on a farm, because existence here has its own perils: blizzards, rockslides even without a volcano, drops over cliffs, floods, fires. You sent her away because you love her. And I took her in because—” IT broke off, perhaps surprised at where ITs rhetoric was leading. “Come, Madam, we both regard your daughter as precious. Let us be friends in this.”
The contest ended. Goodwife Bettel busied herself with cutting bread for everyone. Elodie had never before seen her mother lose an argument.
“Elodie,” IT said, “your parents have heard the broad outline but not the particulars of discovering the thieves and the Replica.”
This was an invitation to mansion. By firelight the two mansioners enacted events at the Oase and on Zertrum, Albin taking the male roles and Elodie the female. They did well and the applause was enthusiastic.
Elodie sat back down between her parents.
Goodman Han sighed. “It’s a happy ending, but . . .”
“But it’s very sad,” her mother finished. “Master Uwald . . . Johan-bee . . . I don’t want to feel sorry for them, but I do.”
“Masteress?” Elodie said. “When there’s a crime and you detect, when it’s finished, is the ending ever truly happy?”
“Rarely.”
Silence fell until IT said, “I do not relish a life lived out of doors. Your Lordship, when we reach Tair—”
“I’m not going to Tair.”
“You’re not?” Elodie cried.
“Nesspa and I will be bees on Zertrum for a while.”
Dismayed, Elodie wondered if her masteress would stay on Lahnt, too. Would she have to herd geese again?
ITs smoke turned green—a confused dragon. “You will rusticate here, Your Lordship?”
“Wonderful!” Elodie’s father put his arm around Elodie’s shoulder.
Elodie flashed a look of appeal at her masteress.
Goodman Han continued happily. “Folks will need help, Your Lordship, and you can stay with us when you’re not—”
“Nesspa and I will live better than most bees.”
Meaning His Lordship didn’t intend to live in the open outside a cottage. Elodie blushed for her friend’s rudeness, which she knew he hadn’t meant.
IT scratched ITs snout. “In the spring Elodie and I will continue on to Tair.”
Phew! Elodie thought.
“Why?” Goodwife Bettel sounded ready to start another argument.
“I am a creature of town and city, of lair and hoard.” ITs smoke spiraled. “I prefer the rub and chafe of people, fools though most of you be.”
“Mother?” Elodie’s father said, clearly hoping she would forbid their daughter to go.
But Goodwife Bettel accepted ITs decision. “Masteress, do you usually allow my daughter to be awake so late into the night?”
EPILOGUE
A week after Elodie and her companions left the Oase, the earl of Lahnt arrived. High Brunka Marya pleaded for leniency for Johan-bee, taking on herself some of the blame for his part in the theft.
The earl, whose orchards on Zertrum had been ruined, condemned Master Uwald to spend the rest of his life in prison. Johan’s sentence was ten years, and he was no longer a bee.
Master Tuomo visited his former master occasionally, perhaps out of gratitude for saving his sons. At first he gave Master Uwald a few coins so he might wager with the prison guards, but generosity became unnecessary, because Master Uwald had regained his luck, and he amassed considerable wealth in his confinement, which he put aside as an inheritance for Master Robbie.
Nockess Farm had taken the worst of the volcano: buildings collapsed, soil stony, flocks and herds scattered. Master Tuomo soon grew disgusted with the character of the new owner, Master Erick, and quit to purchase his own farm with his sons.
Master Robbie never visited Master Uwald. He finished out his childhood at the Oase. Deeter-bee taught him to read, and he devoured every book on healing. Even before he was fully grown, the high brunka ceased sending for a barber-surgeon when a bee was ill or afflicted with toothache. He wrote often to Elodie. She answered, and a correspondence flourished between them.
The Replica on its pedestal had pride of place in the center of the Oase’s great hall. When guests came, Deeter-bee stood next to it, recounting the tale of its latest theft.
In the spring, Masteress Meenore and Elodie left Lahnt, after a tearful farewell that was made less sad by ITs promise to return regularly on the wing with Elodie, who was sure she had been granted the best of everything: frequent visits with her parents and Albin and the fascinating life of a detecting dragon’s assistant.
In the northern harbor village of Dew they boarded the cog for Tair, where they planned to see the sights and where Elodie would proclaim, as she’d been hired to do: “Today, in the kingdom of Tair and only in the kingdom of Tair, the Great, the Unfathomable, the Brilliant Meenore is available to solve riddles, find lost objects and lost people, and answer the unanswerable. Speak to IT with respect.”