She had wanted something from me before, I was sure of it, and I was just as sure I had not given it to her. Before I could ask, Arwa came running into the square at her usual carefree pace.
“The well is still good!” she announced. “It’s not even overgrown, like so many of the houses are.”
Saoud and Tariq came out of the house behind us empty-handed, and we followed Arwa back to the well. Saoud fell into step beside me. I knew that he had overheard everything I had just told the Little Rose. I had made promises to them both, and that had been a foolish thing to do. Saoud did not rebuke me, and I was glad, for I had not yet had the time to muster a defense.
The well was more than good. It was nearly untouched. Even the rope and bucket were still there. Only a slight crack in the mortar that held the stones of the cover together betrayed the well’s age.
“Wait,” said the Little Rose and I, speaking in the same breath. She looked at me, as though the conversation in the square hadn’t taken place, and I knew we were of a common mind.
“It’s like the gnome’s garden,” the Little Rose told Arwa. “There are creatures here.”
“Listen,” said Tariq, and we heard it.
The wooden walls of the village houses had been held in place by wattle and daub. Nails might have been used around the windows, to fasten the coverings down, but they were still a luxury. The technique meant that wall collapse left pockets of decayed plant matter between the planks. With the summer sun and the shelter of the wind, it was warm enough for bees.
Once I heard the buzz of them, I wondered how I had missed it. They must be in every wall, returning now to the safety of their hives as the day drew to an end. There would be hundreds of them, thousands likely, and where there were that many bees…
“Piskeys,” breathed Tariq.
“We should go,” Saoud said. We all gaped at him in protest. “Not far,” he said. “Just to the edge of the village. We’ll camp there, and see if we can come up with a way to fix the well cover. In the morning we’ll do the work, and then if the piskeys come out, we will ask them.”
We retreated to the western side, and found a place to pitch the tents. Tariq and I worked quickly to set them up, and Arwa went to dig a privy without being told.
“Yashaa,” said Saoud, “come. Let’s see if we can find where the villagers got their mud from.”
I went with him, and before it was fully dark, we found a good-sized pond. It was shallow and on a path from the village that had once been well-trod, so we guessed that it was the source of both the reeds used for the wattle and the mud used for the daub. It was too dark to gather any great quantity, but at least we knew where it was, and were able to take a small amount back in my drinking cup.
I gave it to Tariq when we returned, and he ground it between his fingers.
“This should do,” he said. “It will have to bake in the sun for a few days, but it’s still warm enough for that. We’ll make the cover out of reeds. It won’t be as strong as the stone cover, obviously, but it will suit, and it will be easier for the piskeys to maintain, if they have to.”
“The reeds won’t be dry,” said the Little Rose. “Won’t they just rot?”
“We can take them from the edge of the pond,” I said, “where the summer heat has dried the bed of it a little. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than something with holes in it that might crack at any moment.”
Arwa passed out our dinner. It was the last of the food from the gnome’s garden. After this, it would be back to vetch. At least Tariq was better at cooking it than I was, and we still had the supplies they had brought back from their short excursion south.
The buzzing, which had all but stopped as the night grew dark, intensified again. I listened and realized that the pitch of the noise had shifted. It was lighter somehow, and the movement of it was more carefree than a honeybee, driven to its task, would be.
“There,” said Saoud, as the first small shower of gold dust appeared in the sky by the village edge.
The noise grew closer, and though we couldn’t see them fully, we knew by the trailing golden lights that the piskeys were dancing in the village below. The sight of their stately patterns further calmed the itch I had been feeling since we’d come back to Kharuf. Even if it was less oppressive this time, thanks to the influence of the Little Rose, I knew what it would do to my body if I did the work. The dance was beautiful, and we watched it for hours until we finally dragged ourselves inside the tents and went to sleep.