Chapter Thirty-Five

As the boat swims through the lake, a thick, opaque fog surrounds them. Marigold can see nothing through it except a familiar flickering light, now stronger than ever.

"Is that a will-o'-the-wisp?" Mr. Benny says.

"You see it, too?" Marigold says, horrified.

"Of course. It's shining clear as day."

"What is a will-o'-the-wisp?" Lottie asks.

"It's sometimes called a ghost light. It's an old superstition," Mr. Benny says.

Marigold and Lottie both stare, waiting for him to continue.

"Well, it's an old folktale, really. Supposedly it is an omen of something sinister or strange. But it's silly."

Marigold looks at Lottie. "Do you see it, too?"

"That flickering light? Yes, of course I see it."

Marigold is already on the verge of panic. That will-o'-the-wisp has been casting its threatening glow ever since her arrival. Her grandmother thought it was another landv?ttir, but Althea never saw it for herself. She did not know what it was, but Marigold felt it in her bones from the beginning. Now that the will-o'-the-wisp is strong enough for even Lottie and Mr. Benny to see, it is far beyond an omen—it is a threat.

The boat emerges from the wet white fog once it reaches the dock of Innisfree.

Someone else has been there. Marigold senses the disruption, the invasion. She stiffens in her seat, rigid beside Lottie. Odessa, the swan landv?ttir, has reverted to her sickly state, and Marigold blames herself entirely. It is not as if she could have stayed here instead of going to Bardshire, but if Lottie were not with her, she would have been here to protect it when whatever Mr. Benny saw occurred.

And Lottie would not have been with her if Marigold had just let her go in the very beginning, the way she should have done. The landv?ttir were obviously too weak to protect the isle on their own fully. But what of the protection wards? Why weren't they enough to stop this?

The air is sour and tinted green with the smell of ash and death. As she pulls herself off the boat, all the horror before her becomes real.

Cindershine runs to meet them at the coast, screeching in horror as he beckons them to follow. While Marigold stands frozen, Lottie rushes to her side. Marigold looks past her to Mr. Benny, who has just emerged from the boat. As he walks, he pauses. A thought comes to him, slamming into his head like a hammer to an iron nail. He gasps. "Her grave."

It is all he needs to say to send Marigold into a panic. Her grandmother's grave, left alone and exposed to her greatest enemy. She drops every belonging, and she runs.

Up the stone path.

Through the flower gardens.

To the apiary behind the Honey Witch cottage.

Her dress is sullied with the dirt and blood that speckle the ground. The moist air burrows through her dress and slimes her skin underneath, but she does not slow. She must get to Althea.

The hives do not peer over from a gentle vantage point, waiting to greet her. She sees no white boxes, no drips of fresh honey, no bees bumbling like dandelion wishes.

She sees the ruins of what it once was.

All of the hives—destroyed. Empty. Burned.

All of the bees—dead. Their tiny bodies litter the ground like bullet shells after a battle. Talaya, the landv?ttir of the apiary, looks even worse than she did on the day that Marigold first discovered the sickness. Talaya is barely able to move, her body withered to nothing but scales and bone. Versa is the only threat who could have caused such damage. What other enemy exists? Who else would be able to harm the landv?ttir? Still, the Ash Witch should not have been able to penetrate the protection wards. It's impossible.

The copper wind chimes at Althea's graveside lay on the ground, snapped in half like twigs. Marigold walks forward, her legs shaking beneath her anger. Her knees collide with the splintered wood and honey-sodden grass where a hive used to be. She runs to her grandmother's graveside and weeps.

"I have brought this upon myself. It's all my fault." She wipes her tears with sticky fingers. There is a hand on her shoulder now, but it is not enough to pull her from the agony in her mind. She has never felt such a deep sense of failure. Someone is speaking to her, but the sounds fall over her like the fog above the lake.

"I should have been here to protect them. I knew they were weak, and I left anyway," she cries again until the hand on her shoulder tenses into a strong grasp.

"Was it the Ash Witch? How could she do this?" Lottie says.

"My protection wards were not strong enough. My return was late, and it cost us everything."

"It's not your fault. There was nothing you could have done," Lottie says.

She looks up at her. "There is something I could have done. And I should have done it a long time ago."