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I pick the pickles up out of the lavender. The jar’s not even cracked.

“Well,” I say. “Now everybody knows.”

* * *

Everybody knows by noon.

By supper, there are four baskets on the front step. Bread, a blanket, a little knitted hat the size of my fist, and a pie with a note from the baker’s wife that just says Congratulations and Does he have a brother?

The next morning, the mayor’s wife walks all the way up the hill to tell Hattie congratulations. She cries the whole time. I leave the room.

The morning after that, the Pruitt boy’s mother shows up with advice. A lot of advice. About what Hattie should eat and how she should sleep and which way she should face when she sits down. She talks for an hour. I time it.

When she finally leaves, I close the door behind her and turn around.

“If that woman comes back,” I tell Hattie, “I’m going to plant her in the meadow.”

Hattie laughs so hard she has to hold her belly.

I don’t bring up the fact that I’m not joking.

* * *

I’m not going to hover.

I decide that early. I’ve watched a lot of creatures carry young. Birds, foxes, deer, bears. The ones that hover over their mates just get bitten. Hattie’s not a bird, but she does bite.

So I don’t fucking hover. I just pay attention.

I pay attention to how she rubs her lower back after an hour at the hives, so I build her a little stool with a curved back that fits right against her spine. I pay attention to which smells make her gag. Eggs. Smoked cheese. The Pruitt boy’s mother. I get rid of all of them.

I pay attention to how she gets dizzy if she stands up too fast, so I start standing up when she does, close enough to catch her elbow, and I never say why. She notices anyway. She doesn’t say anything either. She just leans into me a little more.

And I go see Mother Wren.

She’s in her shop, carving the same long, smooth arm she’s been working on for weeks. She doesn’t look up.

“I need wood,” I tell her.

“There’s a whole forest out there.”

“Not just any wood.”

She stops carving. She looks at me over her glasses for a long time. Then she gets down off her stool, goes into the back room, and comes out dragging a piece of timber almost as tall as she is.

Pale. Smooth. A little curved.

I know it the second I see it. I’d know it anywhere.

It’s me. A piece of my old trunk. Left over from when she carved me.

“Figured you’d come asking eventually,” she says. “Been saving it.”

I pick it up. It’s warm in my hands. It feels like home.

“Thank you,” I say. And I mean it. That’s the first time I’ve ever thanked a human for anything. It tastes strange.

“Don’t get used to it,” I tell her.