“Nettle, foe,” shouts Brian. She can’t reach her shins to scratch her rashes because she’s got her fire truck on, so she rubs them against a tree.
“Mm, what’s this delicious little friend?” asks Sic, leaning over some orange globes.
“Let me taste.” Aspen reaches for one.
“Foe! You’re so dead,” Wood tells her. “That’s Jerusalem cherry.”
“Aspen not dead,” says Brian, a little uncertainly.
“This one’s a strawberry, totally friendly,” Sumac tells her, swallowing one.
“Who’s the leader of this game?” demands Wood.
“It’s not a military expedition,” murmurs CardaMom.
“This is life-or-death stuff, Mother.”
“Whoops, should I have pretended she didn’t know a strawberry when she saw one?” asks Sumac.
“I wants strawberry,” says Brian.
“And what in the world could that one be?” asks Aspen, wide-eyed. “It’s black and it’s a berry….” She drops it in Brian’s palm. “Could it just ever so possibly be our friend blackberry?”
“Don’t want blackberry.” Brian hurls it back in the bush.
“I’d have eaten that,” Sumac complains.
“I want strawberry!” Brian bangs on the cardboard sides of her truck.
“Stay calm if you want to stay with the gang,” CardaMom reminds her. “What about elderberry?” She points to a small dark fruit.
“Don’t tell this loser crew the names,” Wood rebukes her. “They need to know the plants by sight, for survival.”
“You mean in the End Times?” asks Sic, sniggering. “When you, with all your wood lore, rise to be boy leader of the handful of Torontonians left alive?”
Wood aims a karate kick at him, but Sic jumps away.
“You mock your little brother now,” says PopCorn to Sic, “but come the Apocalypse, you’ll be begging to get into his fortified compound.”
“So is elderberry a friend or foe?” asks Sumac.
CardaMom makes a kinda gesture with her hand. “Like beans, it turns friendly when you cook it.”
They’re heading down the slope of the Ravine now. The path’s still a bit crumbly from the flash floods earlier in the summer. “Leaf of three, let it be,” chants Brian balefully, waggling her finger at some low green leaves with red berries.
“Actually, that one’s a friend called fragrant sumac,” MaxiMum tells her. “See, the three stems are all the same length. With poison ivy the middle one’s longer.”
Brian scratches one of her bumpy legs with her other foot. “Leaf of three be my foe!”
Her little sister does recognize leafs of three, Sumac thinks with a cold sensation. Could Brian have run into the poison ivy to save Grumps, not vice versa?
“Anyone remember how to tell poison sumac from fragrant?” asks MaxiMum.
“White fruit that sticks up,” Wood tells the group.
“White, yeah, but it dangles down.” MaxiMum makes her hands droop and puts on a monster face.
Sumac feels a tiny stab of pleasure at the sight of Wood’s expression.
“By the way, young ones,” says CardaMom as they head back up toward their property line, “new rules.”
“How many new rules, and for what?” Sumac pulls her notepad out of her shorts to take them down.
“Just one. Your grandfather’s not able to be in charge of the little ones,” says MaxiMum, “so if Brian’s with him, or Oak, a teenager or an adult needs to be there too.”
“Does it matter?” asks Sumac.
Everyone stares, and she feels herself turning red. “I only mean, if he might be going tomorrow, or whenever the results come in —”
“Going where?” asks MaxiMum.
“Like, leaving,” says Sumac, faltering. “Back to Faro.”
PopCorn says, in a hoarse voice, “Cherub, my dad’s never going back to Faro.”
What, never? How can they be sure of that? Sumac blinks. “But he said you said, two weeks and you’d see. Two weeks is the last day of July; that’s tomorrow.”
“I don’t think anybody would have said anything as specific as two weeks,” CardaMom tells her.
“A couple of weeks, then,” Sumac growls. “He marked it on his calendar. The flower calendar in his room, with the circle around the date?”
Blank looks all around.
“You’re the best noticer in the family,” says CardaMom.
“He said he was perfectly minty” — Sumac suddenly can’t retrieve the phrase — “some Latin words that mean perfectly solid in his mind, and it’d all been a big mistake.”
“If you’re such a good noticer,” scoffs Wood, “how come you haven’t noticed the guy’s brains are fried?”
“Wood,” protests CardaMom.
“Scrambled!” He mimes whipping eggs. “He put his sunglasses in the microwave.”
“Did he cook them?” asks PopCorn, horrified.
Wood shakes his head. “I stopped him just in time.”
“He can still play chess,” Sumac argues confusedly.
“Did he win, though?” says Sic.