Mama burst into laughter. “I can’t imagine a less likely bride for Samuel than Rebecca Danforth. Wilhelmina Jenkins ought to have her eyes examined.”
I drew a series of spirals in the flour. Mama was as in the dark as I had been, then. It should have made me feel better, but instead my stomach ached, squirming uncomfortably as I withheld the truth.
Mama reached into the basket and neatly cracked open an egg with just two fingers. I’d always admired her ability to do that.
“Look,” she said, gesturing to the bowl. “Double yolks. That’s a sign of good luck.”
Sadie leaned over the table, straining to see. Two yellow circles peered up at us like eyes.
Mama grabbed a second egg. Her breath hitched as she dropped the insides into the bowl.
Another set of double yolks.
Curiously, I fished out an egg for myself and studied it. It didn’t look any different from the others in the basket. I broke it open, using the side of the bowl to crack the shell, then cast it from me as if it was something horrid and squirmy.
We emptied out the entire basket, ruining Mama’s dough and wasting over a dozen eggs in all. Each contained two yolks.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mama murmured darkly, studying the sea of yellow before us.
“Maybe we’re just extra lucky?” Sadie asked. “That’s good, right? With Papa and Sam in the woods? I’d be so scared to go in there, especially with all those monsters running around.”
“There are no monsters,” Mama said, pushing the bowl away with one final look. The insides steamed. “It was just a bear that wandered too close to the Falls. Maybe a rogue wolf or two.”
“But there used to be monsters,” Sadie pressed. “Abigail told me all about them.”
Sometime at the start of summer, Sadie had created an imaginary friend for herself. She was called Abigail and—by Sadie’s account—was as beautiful as a princess, dressing in fine gowns and silk slippers. She often whispered town gossip to Sadie, who tended to relay it to the rest of us at the most embarrassing moments. I’d overheard Mama fretting about Abigail’s existence to Papa early on. She’d worried Sadie was far past the age when it was acceptable to have a made-up friend, but Papa didn’t mind. We didn’t live directly in town, the way the rest of Sadie’s friends did, and if she wanted to have a companion to chat with while milking the cows or racing about the farm, it was all right with him.
“Some think that, yes,” Mama said, tactfully avoiding all mention of Abigail.
“Don’t you?”
“I think…” She pushed wayward strands of hair off her forehead with a sigh. “I think when the founders first came to the Falls, they were exhausted and under an immense amount of strain. They’d lost so many people to animal attacks on the journey and wanted to blame something that was as big and wild as the land was. So they saw monsters and they hung the Bells. But time went by, and there’s not been even a glimpse of those creatures for decades. You know that.”
“Because of the Bells,” Sadie said, a firm believer in Amity Falls’s legends.
“Because there were never any monsters to begin with,” Mama said, dusting off her hands. Buttons saw this as a direct threat to himself and flew out of Sadie’s lap, then disappeared into a dark corner. “If that cat lands in the dough, he’s staying outside tonight.”
“Not with the monsters!” Sadie howled, leaping after him. “Abigail said they’d love to eat him right up!”
“There are no monsters,” I said, echoing Mama.
An eerie cry spread across the valley as if to prove me wrong.
Another joined in.
And another.
This wasn’t a lone wolf wandering too close to town. This was an entire pack, and they sounded on the hunt. I thought of Papa and Sam out in that forest, so near the wolves, and shuddered.
Even Mama paused. “Not Gideon, not my Gideon,” she repeated in a whispered prayer.
When the howling came to an end, she looked at each of us, weighing our fears. “We should light the Our Ladies.”
A chill raced over me, setting my arms to gooseflesh even in the stifling kitchen. We hadn’t had cause to use them in months. Not since the great blizzard in March, which had blanketed the entire town in flakes so thick, it had been nearly impossible to see anything but the biting, burning white.
Merry froze. “The Our Ladies?”
Mama threw a damp towel over the last of the dough. “It’ll keep till I return. Ellerie, you’re in charge.”
“You can’t leave us!” Sadie said, dropping Buttons to fling herself into Mama’s skirts. “Not with the monsters out there! You heard them!”
Mama struggled to extricate herself from my little sister’s grasp. “I won’t be gone even an hour. I’ll start on the eastern edge, and by the time a few are burning, people in town will see and light the rest.”
“I’ll go.” The words left my mouth before I’d even made up my mind. “I bet I can have five lit before dark.”
My mother’s eyes softened and she grasped my hand. “That’s very brave of you, Ellerie.”
Merry’s eyes were wide. I could see she was trying to muster the courage to volunteer as well.
I squeezed her hand. “I’ll grab a lantern and be back before you know it.”
* * *
The Our Ladies were a series of giant bonfires built along the edge of Amity Falls, just yards away from where the tall pines sprouted and the boundary ceded from town into the unbroken wilderness.
Three generations ago, when the town was being settled, the Latheton family had created the first wave of them, perfecting the materials and shape so that the fires could burn all through the night without needing to be fed. Morbidly, they resembled tall, elegant women, their wide bases resembling skirts, so the structures had been christened “the Our Ladies.” Just like the Holy Mother protects her flock, the Our Ladies held the darkness back from the Falls with the purity of their flames’ light.
At first, the Falls had burned through dozens of bonfires every night to keep the creatures of the woods cowering in the pines. But as the town had grown and the land had been tamed, the Our Ladies were only used during storms or if someone was foolish enough to venture into the forest and lose their way. Unburnt pyres dotted the perimeter of our town, the virgin wood jutting from the stacks like curved rib cages, waiting to be called into service.
When lit, the fires brightened the whole area with their amber glow. Long, flickering shadows raced across the valley, like hungry hands stretched out, ready to snatch away anyone unlucky enough to be lost in the woods.