Envenonmate

5

Shelly had seen her dad get rid of a hornet's nest in a peach tree at her grandmother's house. The nest had been shaped like a playground spinning top and looked made from grey mud and paper, ugly to look at. It had hung a good eight feet up and the largest yellow hornets Shelly had ever seen (until today) had been crawling on the papery exterior.

"Stay inside," her dad had ordered.

From behind a closed window, she'd watched as he'd pulled out the ancient barbecue grill, permanently smoked from decades of charcoal. He'd filled twigs and balled-up newspaper inside. Some of the little branches were green. She'd been nine, and thought that a mistake, but after lightning the newspaper and making the twigs catch, her dad had come in to explain everything.

"You have to make a lot of smoke. That's why the green stuff is on there. People stranded in the wilderness do the same thing. Make a fire, throw on some green branches. The smoke makes the wasps sleepy." Clouds of almost creamy grey smoke had started to flow up to wash the nest.

"Some of them are flying away," Shelly had pointed out.

"Yeah. But you watch. They'll leave me alone when I go back out. They're bothered by the smoke, but it's drugged them up too much to attack."

"What if you can't find the nest and the hornets keep coming over? You can't keep a fire going all the time."

"Use any strong aromatic herb. They don't like the smell. Or you can make a little smokepot, burn the herbs slowly, making smoke. It smells nice and does the same trick."

After smoking the nest for fifteen minutes, he'd used a step ladder to reach it. He'd clipped the nest off the tree and it had dropped neatly into a shopping bag he'd held open beneath. A quick twist at the neck, and a knot, and the job was done.

How could she make enough smoke to drug a town's worth of giant hornets? Burn the house down? Ridiculous idea.

But her dad was driving into an actual death trap. She had to do something...anything.

The solution emerged from Shelly's mind right then. It was insane, difficult and dangerous, but her instincts were untroubled—she would try it.

She would go outside and into the woods on her crutches. There, Shelly intended to set the Cambodian wild thyme on fire.