Free Heaven's Bones by Samantha Henderson

burly through the shoulders, and strong-looking for all he was well past middle age. He stood beside the boy and looked up at the branches of the oak, as if he could pierce the canopy of leaves with his gaze.
    â€œA new swarm, making a new hive,” he said, reflectively. “They ain’t in a mood to sting now, but give them an hour or three, and then they’ll have something to get angry about. You’d better come away now, while they’re still in a mood to let you go scot-free.”
    He turned and strode away, leaving Alistair confused. Was the man warning him off his land? He hadn’t meant to trespass.
    The hum of the bees was growing more intense, more purposed, he realized. Perhaps it was time to go home and risk the consequences.
    Then the man turned and called over his shoulder.
    â€œIt’s getting on to dinnertime, boy,” he called. “If you’ve not eaten, come join us.”
    Dinnertime? Alistair’s family didn’t dine so early, but suddenly a rumble in his belly reminded him he’d had no lunch, and for breakfast only an apple filched from the larder.
    He followed the man and the dog a few steps. “If it’s no trouble,” he called, wondering where his boldness came from.
    In response, the man waved his arm, almost impatiently. Alistair trotted after him until he caught up. The man barely glanced at him, accepting his presence as if he were another dog, and Alistair tentatively laid his hand on Mala’s great back for reassurance.
    Along they went, through oak and meadow, and in that place where the trees and sky and small blue flowers in the grass, and the thump of the man’s stick against the ground, and the warm solidity of the dog’s flesh beneath his fingers was almost too real, he felt a great upwelling inside him, a river of happiness to match the chuckling waterway behind him, ready to break free. It did not break its floodgates but stayed, trembling inside him, and he didn’t dare speak for fear he would babble.
    The man would understand, he knew.
    He didn’t know how long they walked, but his pangs of hunger were sharpening when they came to a clearing and the dog’s muscles under his hand tensed. Alistair stopped, wondering if what he saw was real.
    They were pulled up alongside a grove of birch that clustered together like a pale green jewel in the golden band of oak: two wagons—gypsy caravans—one a deep forest green, the other the cheerful red of a cardinal’s wing. Their sides were heavily carved with fantastic patterns and the details picked out in gold. Two enormous draft horses grazed a little way apart—a bay with a dark mane that ignored him and kept rooting at the sweet grass, and a coal black creature without a trace of white who lifted its great head and stared at him, considering. Then it snorted and returned to its grazing.
    In the center of the clearing, before the wagons, was a fire banked with round stones and over it a tripod with a stewpot. Alistair sniffed and his hunger overwhelmed him all at once, as if he had been starving all his life.
    â€œWhat have you brought us, Nicolae?”
    A woman stood at the edge of the clearing, her arms full of kindling. A little girl stood beside her, similarly burdened. The woman was in her forties, perhaps—a little older than his mother—but although her face was tanned and lined there was a peaceful joy to it that he had never seen in his mother’s face, and it gave her an airof youth and vitality. She wore a full dark skirt and a shawl over her head, but a quantity of thick gray hair peeped out.
    The little girl was maybe five or six, small with a serious expression.
    Nicolae walked over to the stewpot and considered its contents.
    â€œEnough to share,” he commented.
    â€œOf course,” said the woman in her deep voice, quiet but penetrating. Followed by the girl, she walked to the rearmost wagon, the green one, and