My heart quickens with alarm. I am not ready to lose one of my only friends. “Not yet, surely! ’Tis the heat renders them sluggish.”
Papa considers me for a minute. His eyes are grey and piercing, and I feel their gaze like a weight upon me. At length he relents with a nod. “Very well. But you must begin keeping a tally of who is laying.”
I curtsy again. “Thank you, Papa.”
When I place the eggs in a bowl on the shelf, I see something unexpected; a chunk of honeycomb lying on a large green leaf. There is a bit of dirt in it as well as a squashed bee and several long black hairs, but, oh! My mouth waters at the prospect of sweetness and I reach for it unbidden, thinking to dip just the tip of one finger in the amber liquid oozing from the comb.
“Do not touch it!” Papa’s voice is stern and I feel a painful prick on my extended fingertip like the sting of a nettle. I snatch my hand back, tears coming to my eyes, and curse my impatient greed. “What do you see?”
This is a test, then. I gaze at the honeycomb. The pale wax cells echo the decorations that adorn the archways of many of the palace chambers. Mayhap that is what Papa wishes me to see? Like draws like, he says; that is the cornerstone of his art.
But no, I think that is wrong. If the Moors wrought the likeness of honeycomb in plaster, it was to draw the bees who love it. And though there are many bees that buzz amid the myrtle and the jasmine in the gardens, there are no hives on the palace grounds, or at least none that I have found in my explorations.
No, the honey is an offering from the wild boy.
He has brought gifts before, many times, leaving them on the doorstep of the kitchen. Fish, usually; mullets and sardines, Papa says. Mussels gathered from the rocks. A handful of dates or ripe olives. Once before, honeycomb.
Why is this time different?
A squashed bee.
Three strands of hair.
I draw a sharp breath. The wild boy is swift and elusive, coming and going too quickly to be caught. But Papa should like to catch him; catch him and civilize him. He says if the experiment is to work, it must be done gently, with art and kindness. I should like to be kind to the wild boy if he would let me, but I have no art with which to lure him to me.
Papa does, though. Papa wears amulets strung on fine chains around his neck to help him command the spirits; and one that holds a lock of my own hair so that he might charm me to sleep or soothe my fears or punish me at need. He summoned Oriana with a tuft of hair he found caught on a bramble where the wild goats graze.
“It is the hair,” I say, looking up. “Do you think it is his hair? Do you mean to summon the wild boy?”
Papa smiles at me in approval and it is as though the sun has emerged from the clouds. My heart swells with pride. “That I do, lass,” he says. “I believe it is a portent. And if the thing is to be done, ’twere best it were done quickly, ere the malleable nature of a child hardens into a man’s savagery.”
“Do you reckon him savage?” I ask a bit fearfully.
Papa steeples his fingers. “There is an impulse in him that lends itself to generosity,” he observes. “Whether it be the untrammeled nobility of man’s true nature made manifest or a base and craven instinct to appease remains to be determined. It may yet be that blood will out, and if my suspicions regarding the whelp’s dam are proved—” He cuts his words short, fishing a kerchief from one of his robe’s pockets. “No matter, lass. Fear not; whatever may transpire, I’ll allow no harm to come to you. Now fetch me those hairs, and have a care with them.”
I extricate three strands of the wild boy’s hair from the honeycomb. The strands are sticky with honey and coarser than mine. I bring them to Papa, who folds them carefully in his kerchief and tucks it away.
“Well done,” he pronounces, returning his attention to the slate. “You may finish your chores.”
I remove the wooden pail from its hook and return to the garden to milk Oriana. She stands patiently for milking and suffers me to scratch the shaggy brown hair around her ears when I have finished.
I tell Oriana she is a good girl. The chickens are content to roost in their cote, but Oriana chafes at captivity. Papa says that unlike the simple elemental spirits he summons, goats, like people, are too willful to remain bound and obedient without tending, and it is not worth his while to tend to a goat. If Oriana were not tethered, she would scramble over the crumbling walls and rejoin her wild kin until Papa summoned her back.
Will the wild boy feel the same way, I wonder?
I hope not.