At times, she sounds nearly thoughtful. She brings her leg back into the car, wraps her arms around her knees, and crouches on the seat. I have already told her to buckle up; she has already refused.
“I’d choose bees,” she says. “Definitely bees. Easy.”
“But they sting,” I say. Again, a fact I have learned.
“They make honey,” she says. A fact I once knew but forgot; upon being reminded of it, I wish I too had chosen bees over rats, but this is not the sort of thing one confesses to a girl like Maebh.
* * *
At The Farm, there are many bees. They are large and fuzzy. They wander dazed among the wild grapevines that have netted Main House, among the waist-high grasses in the yard (well, waist-high for me and thigh-high for Maebh), among the unknown fruits that dangle off the trees with bronze bark. Maebh tells me these are called plums and laughs at me for not recognizing them.
“They’re what prunes come from! You didn’t know that?”
The sun itself is like honey here, thicker and more orange as the August afternoon matures. I am surprised to find that I can sit on the porch in a rocking chair, relaxing into the heat and the smell of orchards, without fear. I would not have guessed that I would be capable of forgetting about the dangers; I have never before left the city. I have never before encountered “pollen” (the word Maebh uses for the soft dust), nor a stream of water like the one that runs behind Main House. I have seen streams of hot chocolate in the grand supermarkets, and streams of beer in the pubs, but never this, clear and lazy, with small colorful stones on the bottom.
Maebh lies down on the sun-soaked floorboards of the porch. She tells me she is filled with nostalgia. I am not surprised — I am only surprised that she has such a word in her vocabulary — because as we were leaving the city this morning her parents told me they used to bring her here every summer when she was a very young child, in the years before the dangers.
Suddenly she jumps up and steps through the tall grass toward the stream. I watch from the porch. She kneels and slaps water all over her face, shrieking with the cold of it. Then she starts to unbutton her blouse and wiggle out of her jeans. Is she going to — bathe? — swim? — dive? Showering, that’s how I’ve encountered water.
Maebh turns back to look at me. I am trying to not look at her. She re-buttons her blouse and re-zips her jeans.
“Later,” she says. “I’m hungry now. I’m thirsty. Wanna drink milk?”
The house has been provisioned by an old farmer and his wife. Maebh’s parents deposited an unnecessarily large sum into this farmer’s bank account and told him to make sure we have food until the disappearances cease, or until Maebh heads back to boarding school in Japan come September.
There is milk in the refrigerator — yes, a real refrigerator, pale green with rounded edges, which wheezes and thunks all day long — and a huge circular loaf of bread on the table, and four jars of preserves. I read the labels: apple, okay, pear, okay, plum again, the source of prunes, apparently, and gooseberry. Gooseberry! Well, I can at least guess what that is; I am familiar with strawberries and blueberries. Maebh finds two old jam jars in the cupboard and pours milk into them. It is pleasant to watch her pouring it. I ought to be pouring milk for her. She hands me my milk and we carry everything out to the porch.
I have never tasted anything like this milk. It is better than beer, better than margarine, better than orange juice. Maebh says it comes from cows that were probably milked this morning, or maybe last night. This milk has never been powdered; there are no soybeans involved. Between the two of us we drink half a gallon. We rip hunks off the loaf of bread and dip them into the preserves. The plum and gooseberry are too rich for my taste, but I am fond of the pear. Maebh does not like pears, so I get it all. I shove bread deep into the jar to reach the last bit. When I look up, I see that she is watching me.
“I didn’t know you were fun,” she says.
* * *
There are many bedrooms at The Farm. It seems I ought to stay in one of the outlying buildings, where the family’s servants have historically slept. But the farmer’s wife prepared two bedrooms side by side in Main House. I do not know if Maebh’s parents requested this arrangement, or if the farmer’s wife decided on her own, but we shall go along with it because everywhere else is covered in pollen. The farmer’s wife made the beds with white wool blankets, and put jugs of daisies on the bureaus, and spread rag rugs on the floors. All of this makes Maebh gasp with delight. If I ever expressed myself in gasps, I am sure I would gasp too.
“Night-night,” Maebh says, lolling against the doorjamb for an instant before slipping into her dark bedroom.
“Good night,” I say, before retiring into mine.
We had no proper dinner, but are still overfull with bread and milk. It is uncannily easy to fall asleep.
* * *
It is barely light when Maebh wakes me, stomping her foot outside my door. I understand more than ever why Maebh’s parents believe she is a prime target for these odd disappearances, even though she is nearly eighteen and thus almost out of danger, on the verge of donning her hood and trousers. It is always the wildest girls, the most vigorous and lean, those who enjoy stretching on the roofs of the skyscrapers, those who behave as though they are immune to the dangers.
I get out of bed and start to put on my hood and trousers, my fingers stumbling over the buttons and snaps. Maebh stomps her foot a second time, a third. When I finally emerge, Maebh grabs my hand. We have never before touched. I am aware of this. Maebh is not. Her blinding yellow sundress. She leads me down the stairs and out into the grass, which is wet.
“Did it rain last night?” I say, unable to control the thrill in my voice. It has been so long since there was rain in the city. I was only a child then.
“No,” she says. “That’s dew. It happens every night in the countryside. You hardly know anything, do you?”
She really is a little bitch but it is not her fault.
When we get to the stream she slips out of her sundress. I avoid looking at her body. This is just my job. I will stand here to make sure she does not drown. Not that I could help her if she did, since I have never swum, nor taken a bath. In any case.
“You too!” she commands, up to her ankles in water so cold she cannot breathe.
It takes me much longer to undress than it took Maebh. There are so many buttons and snaps on my trousers, and my hood is tightly laced. She has gotten in all the way by the time I join her. The frigid water on my shins makes me feel as though I have drunk ten cups of coffee. Yet somehow I am not frightened. Maebh’s curly blond hair has become brown and straight now that it is wet. This makes her appear more solemn, which I appreciate.
“Get in all the way,” Maebh instructs.
“No,” I say, “thank you.”
“I command you to get in all the way,” she says.
I try to maintain my impassive face, straight mouth and neutral eyes, but it is not easy. An unpleasant sensation swells inside me at the sight of her mouth, left open after she spoke the word “way,” her lower lip hanging down, her jaw loose in the casual manner of those accustomed to power.
“Just kidding!” she yelps, plunging her head underwater. She clings to handfuls of pebbles in the streambed and lets the water wash over her. She wriggles in the current. She splashes and surfaces. I am careful to keep my eyes off her body. It is not hard to imagine, after alclass="underline" narrow hips and thighs, hard dark nipples and a rib cage like old architecture.
“I can look at you but you can’t look at me!” Maebh says.
I cannot tell if I am more startled by her jubilant rudeness or by the conviction that she has perceived my thoughts. I feel her staring, and long for my hood and trousers.