𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐘𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐒

1. The Lookout and the Explorer

It was the first of June, a soft breeze that smelled of snapped dandelion stems and fresh laundry wafting through the blue summer sky. In his tire swing in a tree atop the hill, Beckett Honeybee was curled up with paper magazines, filled with pictures of the stars and pirates and grey-blue oceans. Below his swing, a small pond reflected blue sky, and a few friendly ducks gathered at the foot of the tree. They preened and gossiped among themselves with their wide bills, accustomed with Beckett's gentle presence, as he kicked himself back and forth with a bare foot.

Beneath the hill, bobbing on waves of rolling fields and thick forests, was the Honeybee farm. It was a lovely honey-gold, with a burnt brown roof and white shutters, nestled in the yellow-green fields as naturally as if it had grown up from the plump wheat kernels itself. Next to it, a small dot of white paint on a landscape, was the Honeybee house. The three-storied Tudor home was always easy to find, even in the nighttime, since Mara let Beckett and Abe paint it with glow-in-the-dark constellations.

Beckett flipped through his glossy magazines, his fingers careful and dry, brushing over Ursa Minor and Ares. He hated sticky fingers. Then pages stuck together. It was so sad, those forgotten pages. Beckett had long ago vowed to never let his pages get stuck and forgotten.

The hill, which everyone called Beckett's Hill, was the very tallest and very last hill on the Honeybees' land. It overlooked both farm and road, and Beckett liked to sit there, even if it was a long walk away from home. He liked to see who might come down the road, and race the incoming guests back to the house.

When the bottle-green car came lumbering up the road, Beckett carefully closed his magazine and stood on the swinging tire to get a better look. Mom wasn't expecting anybody, but oftentimes people got turned around, what with every field and piece of sky looking the same. Curious, Beckett leaned forward, his tire swaying dangerously.

The car was low to the ground, slow-moving, but steady. It chugged along the dirt road, glittering like a beetle in the sun, and just as small from this far away. Beckett could hardly make out the figures through the back window, but what he did see quite clearly was the door popping open, and a girl rolling out, as the car kept puttering along.

He gasped, and the tire slipped. Beckett landed to the ground with a soft thump, and the ducks fluffed up, alert. But he pushed himself up, heart beating, ignoring the dull pain in his elbows to see what happened next.

The girl rolled down the road, into the grassy ditch below, and crawled forward on her belly. She slid into the drainage pipe and covered the hole with leaves and dirt, out of sight.

The person driving the car, an old woman who Beckett found familiar, stopped and got out, distressed. She called out the girl's name, garbled and distant. By the pipe, the pile of leaves fluttered with amusement. The woman called again, but hesitated to step off the dirt road, and after a few more minutes, she clambered back into the car.

Beckett rolled up his magazines, tucked them under his arm, and dashed down the hill. He wanted to see if the girl was hurt, and if she was hiding from a bad lady. He had only ever heard of runaways from his older siblings' books, kids who ran away from home because they didn't like it, or were scared. Runaways, he decided, were brave. Beckett could never have run away from home. The darkness and the vastness of the world were too daunting for a little duck like himself.

"A runaway must be like an explorer," Beckett said breathlessly to himself, his legs working hard as he half-tumbled down the hill. Explorers and runaways were brave, and they went to new places that everybody else was scared to go to. If this girl was a runaway, he wanted to meet her. He wanted to know what explorers were like.

Breathless, Beckett stumbled to a stop at the ditch. The pile of leaves still sat in front of the pipe, flickering in the wind like a sly wink. Beckett approached the pipe and knocked.