Northern Light by Annette O'Hare Page B

up Jeremiah’s toys. You need to watch over him for a while.”
    Margaret stood in the kitchen, which appeared to be intact.
    As June danced back toward them, she suddenly screamed and grabbed her arm. Margaret and Thomas ran to her. Mama and Papa were right behind them.
    “What’s the matter?” Margaret asked as she knelt.
    June lifted her arm. A bee’s stinger was embedded in her flesh. “Something bited me!” June exclaimed. Her arm was swelling even as she cried.
    The dying honeybee twitched on the floor. Margaret mashed it with her foot.
    Mama took June’s hand, picked up Jeremiah, and disappeared into her and Papa’s bedroom.
    Papa wasted no time. “Thomas, help me close all the windows. Margaret, get some towels and stuff them under the doors. I know what those Yankees were screaming about. They tried to steal the hives and the bees are swarming!”
    Thomas jumped to action.
    Margaret followed suit, jamming towels under the thresholds of both doors. “Papa, it looks like the smoke from whatever they set on fire has the bees herded into one area at the west side of the yard,” Margaret called as she surveyed the back of the property.
    “You’re right. I don’t think I’ll even need the smoker.” He abandoned his preparation of the smoker and rubbed his chin. “OK, then…Thomas, gather up those garden tools and drag them back out to the shed. When you’re done, meet me out back. I need your help to find the queen and get her back into the hive. When she’s in place, the swarm should return.”
    “But, sir, how will we ever find one particular bee in that giant swarm?”
    “It’s not as hard as you think. One of her wings is clipped.” He gave Thomas a sideways grin. “She don’t fly so good.”
    Thomas raised his eyebrows and wasted no time getting the tools.
    Papa turned his attention to Margaret. “All right, I want you to unhitch Nanny Sue and take her back out to her pen. As soon as we get the queen back in the hive, you and Thomas can survey the damage outside. And for heaven’s sake, see what those Yankees set on fire.”
    “Yes, sir,” Margaret answered.
    Papa opened his bedroom door a crack.
    Mama was sitting on the bed, doctoring June’s bee sting.
    “Caroline, when I get the queen bee back inside the hive, you and I will make sure that Yankee vessel is gone, and then we’ll go find our daughter.”
    Tears slipped down Mama’s cheeks as she nodded.
    The dread Margaret had kept at bay returned with a vengeance.
    ~*~
    “Why would they burn our cotton?”
    Thomas heard the anguish in Margaret’s voice as he doused the charred cotton with water. “I don’t know, lass. It’s quite valuable up north. They could have sold it for much more than it’s worth…even used it for bandages.”
    “They burned it out of pure meanness.” Margaret tramped around beside the garden, kicking a rock. “We won’t have any money to trade with. And just look at the garden, they took everything!”
    “That’s not true, lass. They didn’t take those green ones over there. What’s yer papa call them, collard greens?”
    Margaret managed a snicker at his mangled pronunciation.
    “All right now, there ye go makin’ fun of the way I speak.” He smiled at her. “And look, they didn’t take the time to dig up those potatoes, and those plants over there growing up the fence line.”
    “Stupid Yankees probably don’t even know what black-eyed peas are.”
    Thomas scrubbed though his scraggly beard, trying to avoid the fact that he’d never heard of anything called black-eyed peas either. “Come on, lass, let’s walk around the property and see if anything else has been bothered.”
    “At least they didn’t break into Papa’s shed.” Margaret ran her fingers across the locked shed door as she walked around the corner. They reached Celia’s pen next to the shed, and she froze. “Oh no, they took our donkey too.”
    Thomas put his arms around Margaret. She turned into his embrace and