Not asking after him because he was concerned. Not asking after him because they were colleagues. Malrick didn't askafter people out of courtesy. He asked after them because he was mapping something. Because he'd already decided on an outcome and was running the numbers on how to get there. And there were eight days still left on the repair estimate.
He flagged Maeve down for a another drink.
She poured it without comment, but she was watching him with those sharp, cataloguing eyes, and he had the distinct impression she knew exactly which part of the conversation he'd been listening to.
8
ISLA
Corin's land sat a half mile outside Hollow Oak's tree line, past the beekeeper's field and down a rutted track that smelled like clover and damp soil no matter the season. The hives ran along the eastern edge of the orchard in two long rows, pale wooden boxes weathered to the color of old bone, and beyond them the land opened into a wide meadow that backed up against a ridge. Nothing breakable nearby. No structures close enough to matter if the wind went sideways.
Isla had found it three weeks after she arrived in Hollow Oak, which meant Corin had found her first.
He'd appeared at her cottage door one morning with a jar of honey and no particular agenda, a big man with honey-brown hair going slightly wild at the ends and golden-brown eyes that didn't carry any of the wariness she'd come to expect. He'd said he'd heard she was settling in on the western edge and that he had open land if she ever needed room to breathe. Then he'd handed her the honey and left.
She'd shown up at his orchard four days later and he'd been there, working the hives in his smoke-stained canvas jacket, and he'd pointed to the far end of the meadow and said,that end'sbest, the ridge breaks the worst of the eastern wind, and that had been the entirety of the conversation. She'd practiced for two hours. He'd never once come to watch.
That had been seven months ago. The arrangement had held.
She came through the orchard gate just past nine, the morning still cool enough that her breath showed faintly, and found Corin already at the middle row of hives with his veil up and a frame in his hands. A woman was with him, small and fair-haired, crouched in the grass at his feet examining something at the base of the nearest box with the focused attention of someone who knew what she was looking for. Chloe. She'd been at the orchard more often lately, her pale blonde hair tucked back, green eyes quick and practical. She grew things, herbs mostly, and she and Corin moved around each other the way people did when they'd stopped having to think about where the other one was.
Chloe looked up first. "Isla. Good morning." She straightened, brushing grass from her knees. "Corin said you might be in today."
"I wasn't sure myself until this morning."
Corin lowered the frame back into the box and latched it, unhurried. He was 6'5" of quiet and steadiness, the kind of man who never seemed to fill a room so much as anchor it. "Bad night?"
"Unsettled." She set her bag down near the gate post. "The outage."
"Felt wrong," he agreed, which from Corin was a complete analysis. He pulled the veil down over his face and moved to the next box. "Weather's been off all week. Not just yours."
"I know." That was the part she kept reminding herself. The pressure system from the north had nothing to do with her. The presence on the river road had nothing to do with herstorms. They were separate things and she needed to keep them separate.
Chloe was watching her with the careful, non-intrusive attention of someone who asked questions with her eyes and waited to see if you answered. "Do you want company today or room?"
"Room," Isla said. "If that's alright."
"Always." Chloe picked up her basket and moved toward the orchard rows without making anything of it as Isla went to the far end of the meadow.
The first twenty minutes were the way they always were. She always started with too much effort, too much awareness of the effort, and then the sky responding to her self-consciousness rather than her intention. She stood with her feet in the grass and her hands loose at her sides and tried to stop trying, which was the paradox of it, the thing no one who hadn't lived it could fully understand. You couldn't force a storm quiet any more than you could shout someone to sleep.
She breathed with it instead. Let the pressure build and acknowledged it rather than compressing it, the way Corin had once described managing a hive that wanted to swarm. You didn't stop it by blocking the entrance, you gave it somewhere better to go.
The wind shifted at the twenty-five minute mark. Not dramatically, just a degree or two of rotation, the air over the meadow finding a new path along the ridge line instead of pushing down into the low ground. She felt it in her hands first, that cool clean response, and kept her breathing even and let it extend. The clouds over the ridge were moving the way clouds moved when something was directing them rather than just following pressure gradients with purpose, with shape, with the particular coherence that meant the connection was open and holding.
For four minutes, it held.
The sky over the meadow went the deep, saturated blue of a morning after rain, the kind of color that had no weather threat in it, only clarity. The hives hummed at the far end of the field. A blackbird cut across the high open air above her and the wind moved with him, not against, and she stood in the middle of it and let herself feel something very close to ease. Then the gate at the orchard track opened.
She heard the iron latch and the creak of the post hinge. Suddenly, the connection flickered. She brought it back and held it. But then she heard footsteps on the track, heavier than Corin's, a different rhythm, and the connection flickered again and this time she felt exactly why.
The cloud formation over the ridge lost its shape in under ten seconds. The wind dropped to nothing, then came back wrong, and Isla pushed both hands down flat against the sides of her thighs and compressed the whole thing back into something manageable before it could decide to become weather before she turned around.
Rafe was coming up the track with a crate balanced on one shoulder, talking to Corin, who had appeared from the hive row to meet him. Sandy hair loose without the tie, work jacket, the wave tattoos dark against his forearms in the morning light. He wasn't looking at her. He was talking to Corin about the crate, gesturing with his free hand toward something on the lid, and Corin was nodding and taking it from him.
"From the undamaged tier," Rafe was saying. "Dry goods, sealed. I noticed your name on the manifest when I was going through what was salvageable this morning. Figured it was easier to bring it out directly than have you come to the dock."
"Appreciate it." Corin set the crate on the stone wall at the orchard edge. "You didn't have to make the trip yourself."
