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In the early hours of the morning Evelyn turned over and saw the boy, motionless, eyes half open. She sat up too quickly and wrenched something in her back and cried out. Beside her Lily’s head rustled in its nest of hair.

“What is it?” she said.

“Nothing. I forgot he was here.”

When Evelyn stood, the pain was excruciating. Somewhere next to her spine her muscles had turned hard and unyielding, clenched like a fist. They pulled her whole body sideways, and she bent like a crone.

“Well, that’s all I need,” she muttered, and shuffled over to make up the fire.

Lily slowly roused herself.

“Is he dead?” she said, standing over the boy.

Everything apart from his mouth was wrapped tightly in his blanket—Lily’s blanket—and his chest was barely moving. He looked as if he were bound in readiness for a burial or a pyre. Lily nudged him with her foot and he sighed.

“Not dead,” she said.

Once the fire was lit, they had tea and ate some dry crackers. The boy sat up with his hands still bound and watched them carefully. Some of the panic had gone from his eyes.

“You’ll have to do some work today,” Evelyn said to him, “now my back’s like it is.”

She untied the string at his wrists and ankles, and he rubbed his grazes with a fingertip. Lily bit noisily into another cracker and said nothing.

“How is your leg?” Evelyn asked. “Can you stand up?”

He got to his knees, then to his feet, and stood a little lopsided in Evelyn’s shirt and her mother’s trousers. He slowly shifted his weight to his bad leg. He winced, then took a few faltering steps and steadied himself on the table.

“It’s all right,” he said very quietly.

“The thing speaks!” said Lily.

That was enough to make him sit down again.

“Perhaps he could help me with the bees,” said Evelyn.

“Perhaps he could make me another apple pie,” said Lily.

“He could,” said Evelyn, though she knew her sister was being sarcastic. “Do you know about bees?” she said, turning to the boy.

He shook his head.

“Do you know what I mean? When I say ‘bees’?”

He shook his head again.

“Buzz buzz,” said Evelyn, and swirled her finger in the air.

He made a small O with his mouth that suggested recognition, but otherwise said nothing.

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

—

It was bright and humid in the garden, though they’d had no rainfall, and the air was like syrup. Everything seemed to have grown six inches overnight. Such a joy, such a marvel, on days like this. Enough to make Evelyn’s eyes brim. Enough to make her feel twenty, thirty years younger, while she stood on there on the doorstep, massaging the warmth and the sweetness into her muscles.

She and the boy went at a snail’s pace across the lawn, through the vegetable patches and the orchard and over the small bridge that crossed the remains of a stream. She thought she felt the boy relax, too, but might have imagined it. His gaze snagged on certain flowers as they went. She told him the names, and he nodded but did not reply. In one of the beds on the far side of the orchard was a flourishing tree peony, and he stopped beside it and sniffed the air. He did not move for some time.

“Very nice smell that, isn’t it? You can stick your nose in if you like.”

The boy looked at her as if she might be trying to trick him. She showed him it was safe, and he buried his face in one of the flowers. When he stepped back, he was wearing a look of complete astonishment and there was pollen clinging to the tip of his nose. He muttered something.

“What’s that?” said Evelyn,

“I love it,” he said.

The word was such a surprise. She smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “So do I.”

He had sniffed another half dozen of the flowers before Evelyn chivvied him along. When they reached the beehives, she rested on a tree stump and he stood crookedly on his good leg.

“You’ve seen these, I take it?” she asked.

He nodded again.

“I noticed one of them had moved. Were you looking inside?”

He shook his head.

“Then why did you move it?”

He looked around the clearing, over to the lilac and the newly mended wall, back along the tunnel of honeysuckle that led to the lawn.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“What happened?”

“I was running.”

“Running?”

“I didn’t see it. I ran into it.”

“I see. Why were you running?”

He just shook his head. Evelyn did not press him, surprised he’d said as much as he had. They listened to the bees working.

“Did you knock over the wall, too?” she said after a while.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to climb over.”

Evelyn paused.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We fixed it.”

“I was so hungry.”

“So I gathered,” she said. “A whole apple pie!”

“I thought I was dying. It was such a long way.”

Evelyn stopped smiling. What was such a long way? She found herself suddenly face-to-face with the question that had been in her head ever since she had first visited him in the icehouse. It was perhaps the biggest question of all. An immense, fearful question that could no longer be ignored.

“Where did you come from?”

He sat on the ground and tore a clump of dandelions but said nothing.

“Are there other boys and girls like you?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Where?”

He gestured vaguely with one arm. “Back in the other place.”

His words felt like something unearthed. Artifacts she’d disturbed without meaning to. Evelyn decided she wouldn’t ask any more questions. Her thoughts strayed beyond the garden and gave her that familiar and horrifying sense of vertigo. She’d probed too much and now she wondered whether rebuilding the wall had achieved anything, whether any battle to keep the garden sacrosanct was to be fought in her head, and Lily’s head, and nowhere else.

Evelyn tried to haul her thoughts back from the precipice.

“You don’t want to go back to the other boys and girls?” she asked.

The boy shook his head.

“Then why did you try to run away the other day?”

“I wasn’t running away.”

“You were hiding in the grotto.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“By the lake.”

“I just wanted to have a look. I’ve never seen anywhere like this. It’s so…I don’t know how to say it.”

Evelyn studied him. He looked scolded. Guilty of something, beyond breaking the wall and stealing their honey.

“Do you want me to go back?” he asked.

Evelyn regarded him as he stood lopsided, hand on his wounded thigh.

“You can stay,” she said. “But you have to work. We all have to work. We’re like the bees.”

He nodded. “I can work.”

“Good.”

“You don’t need to tie me up anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She sat for a moment. She pictured the almanac, the tasks still outstanding.

“We should collect some honey,” she said. “You can make up for the jar you broke.”

“All right.”

“Second one along. Next to the one you bumped into.”

He limped over to the hive, leaned against it, and immediately snatched his hand back when the bees began to crawl over his fingers.

“It’s all right,” said Evelyn. “They’re a friendly lot. I used to have a smoker to calm them, but they’re used to me now. They might give you a few stings. Nothing life-threatening.”

He looked at the hive doubtfully.

“Take off the lid,” said Evelyn.

The boy tentatively embraced the hive. His arms were amazingly long. He could reach all the way around it. He lifted the top section with ease and held it aloft while the bees drifted around his neck and face.

“You can put it down,” said Evelyn. He practically threw it to the ground and began waving his hands around and shielding his eyes. “Stop flapping! Then they really will sting you.”

He flapped anyway. Evelyn rocked forward on the tree stump, thinking she might go and help, but then her back spasmed and she closed her eyes and stayed where she was. The boy was making sounds that were almost inaudible, as though he was trying to reason with the bees in their own secret language.

“Calm down,” said Evelyn. “Look inside. Carefully. You’ll see ten frames. Ten bits of wood.”

The boy shielded his eyes and squinted as though facing a bright light.

“You see them?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. Lift them out, slowly, one at a time, and let me look at them.”

He faltered for a moment, choosing the best place to hold the frame. He dipped his hand in and out, in and out, then finally lifted one. Evelyn assessed it from where she was sitting. Only half of the cells on the frame were sealed.

“Next one,” she said. They went through another four before they found one that the bees had completed. It was slick and golden, honey spooling from one corner onto the edge of the hive. “Bring that one here,” said Evelyn.

The boy did as he was told. He came over blinking and spluttering, still wafting his hand in front of his face. He gave the frame to Evelyn and she held it in her lap. She couldn’t resist tasting the honey with a finger. Delicious beyond words. So intensely sweet it somehow made her feel younger than she was, a real-life elixir. Some of the bees had come with the frame, reluctant to abandon their finished work. Evelyn cast her eyes over the neat geometry of the cells and watched their busy, furred bodies nudging gently up against one another.

The thought of the “other place” came back to her, of other boys and girls. She imagined hundreds of them emerging from a hive as big as the house, crawling from cell to cell. Flying in a swarm to investigate her and Lily’s garden. Sent by a queen, perhaps, to collect what was needed for their colony.

At some point Evelyn looked up and realized the boy was screaming and had no idea how long he had been screaming for.