Running through the forest

Barnaby knew the sound of trouble before he saw it.

It came first as a tinny rattle from the east path, then a thunk, then a string of muttered curses that made the cattails shiver. He stood on the bank of Blackroot Pond with a half-finished reed whistle in one hand and a slug of mud on his wrist, and listened. Ethel, who had been crouched beside him turning over stones for shiny beetles, froze with one beetle pinched between thumb and forefinger.

“That,” she said, squinting toward the path, “sounds expensive.”

Barnaby snorted. “Sounds clumsy.”

He tucked the whistle into the reed mat beside him and wiped his hands on his stomach. The pond smelled of green rot and sun-warmed mud, sharp and clean at once. A dragonfly skimmed the water, blue as bottle glass. Somewhere in the sedges, a small thing clicked its teeth. Normal sounds. Home sounds. Which was why the racket from the path felt so wrong.

Another thunk. Then a splintering crack.

Ethel rose to her full height, which was not much, but she had the posture of a person who expected the world to step aside. Her apron was tucked into her belt on one side, and a line of black mud ran from her knee to her ankle. “If that’s Mr. Pinder again,” she said, “I’m not paying for it.”

Barnaby frowned. “For what?”

“For whatever he’s broken this time.”

They climbed the bank together and peered through the elderberry. The east path was a narrow track of packed earth and roots, sunlit in patches, dark in others. Halfway down it, wedged sideways between a leaning birch and a tangle of bramble, was a cart the color of old teeth. One wheel had come off. A crate sat cracked open in the grass, and bright metal bits spilled across the path, catching light like angry little stars.

And standing over the mess, red-faced and sweating through his shirt, was Mr. Pinder.

Barnaby felt Ethel go still beside him.

Mr. Pinder was not a large man, but he had a way of taking up room anyway, mostly by being loud in all directions. He wore a brown hat with a dent in the crown and carried a ledger under one arm as if it were a weapon. His face had gone the shade of boiled beetroot.

“It was stable five minutes ago,” he snapped at no one in particular. “Five minutes. Then the wheel—” He stopped, noticed the spilled crate, and made a choking noise. “No. No, no, no. Not that.”

Barnaby craned to see better. The crate held glass vials wrapped in straw. Some were intact. Some were not. One green bottle had rolled into the ditch and was leaking something that smoked faintly where it touched the dirt.

Ethel’s ears twitched. “That’s not good.”

“No,” Barnaby said. “That’s very not good.”

Mr. Pinder spun, and his eyes landed on them through the elderberry. “You. Frog. Girl. Come here.”

Barnaby hated when people said things that way, like they’d already decided he belonged to their problems. Still, he and Ethel stepped onto the path. The earth was warm through the thin skin of his feet. Broken glass crunched softly under Ethel’s boot.

Mr. Pinder jabbed a finger at the crate. “You two live nearby.”

“Yes,” Ethel said.

“Yes,” Barnaby said at the same time.

“Then you’ve seen anyone pass this way today. Anyone at all. A fox. A thief. A child with sticky hands and no sense. Somebody.”

Barnaby looked at the leaking bottle again. The smoke from it was curling into the air in a thin gray thread. It had a sharp smell, like hot pennies and lightning. His stomach tightened. “What is it?”

Mr. Pinder’s mouth worked once before he answered. “None of your concern.”

Ethel gave a short, humorless laugh. “Then perhaps you should stop dropping it in our path.”

He ignored her. “Listen carefully. The top vial in that crate is marked with a black wax seal. If it’s missing, you will tell me immediately. Immediately. Do you understand?”

Barnaby did understand. He understood the way Mr. Pinder’s hand was shaking despite all his bluster. He understood that one of the straw nests in the crate was empty. He understood, with a sudden coldness behind his ribs, that someone had already taken the vial.

And just then, from the far side of the path, hidden in the nettles beyond the leaning birch, came the soft sound of a bottle being set down very carefully.

Ethel heard it too.

So did Mr. Pinder.

All three of them turned at once toward the nettles, where something small and dark shifted out of sight, and Barnaby saw, half-buried in the leaves, a gloved hand reaching back for the missing black-sealed vial.