Bess had taken Eli to the old orchard.
It was her default safe location, she had told me when we arranged it, because it was far enough from the main settlement road to be inconspicuous and close enough to the boundary path to have two exit routes and also because Eli liked it there. He had discovered it on his third day in Millhaven, followed his nose through the trees the way wolf children followed things that interested them, and arrived at the gnarled old apple trees with the expression of someone who had found something that belonged to them.
Bess had apparently decided that any location that made the child that happy was worth maintaining.
I heard him before I saw him.
His voice carried through the trees in the particular way it carried when he was not managing himself, when he w
