Page 55 of Potion Sickness

“You don’t have to help,” Annabel says, handing me a veil.

“I’m helping.”

“You’re just trying to distract me from your kindling charm.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Why can’t I do both?”

The hives sit behind the carriage house, on the strip of lawn my mother has always called ‘the orchard.’ I always thought this was a rather generous description of a few crabapple trees.

Annabel is already in her gear. Addie has the smoker. She’s allowed to hold it but not allowed to light it, and she has accepted these terms under protest.

“When do I get to do the smoke?”

“Maybe when you’re nine.”

“I’ll be nine soon.”

“You’ll be nine in March.”

“That’s a lot of bugs,” Bandit says from his position against the stone wall at the end of the orchard.

“They’re bees,” Addie says.

“Bees are bugs,” he says.

Annabel lifts the lid off the second hive. She takes out a frame and holds it at an angle. The whole thing is heavy and gold and moving, hundreds of bees walking across the wax.

“That’s capped,” she says to Addie. “See the difference? Wax over the top means it’s finished. Open means it’s still water.”

“How do they know when it’s done?”

“They just know.”

“But how?”

“That’s a good question,” Annabel says. “But I don’t have an answer.”

“I’ll ask again when I’m nine.”

I hold the box while she works. Somehow, I don’t get stung, and by the fourth frame I’ve stopped bracing for it. We take six frames and leave the rest, because Annabel intentionally always takes less than she could.

Afterward, we sit on the carriage house steps. She pours a jar for Genie and ties a ribbon on it, writes the tag, and then pours a second one.

“Two?”

“She’s been very demanding lately. She’s going to want two.”

She sets a tea light on the step beside my knee.

“I should’ve seen that coming.”

“Attempt eighteen. Nothing in front of it, nothing behind it. Go.”

I hold my intention like a match and offer it to the wick.

Predictably, the candle doesn’t light. It slides down the step and tips over.

Addie comes up the lawn with the smoker held out in front of her.