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over my head, they’d fly away for a minute or two, but they always came back. So I just let them crawl all over me, their tiny chant ringing in my ears: “Gold, gold, gold!”
    “Wow, look at him! Look at the pixies!” said a little girl working closest to me along the sluice. “You must be finding hoards of gold.”
    I didn’t find a speck.
    When the sun was low, I waited for Red to come out of the tunnels. She had dirt smeared all over her face and looked cross. She walked right past me but I still followed her.
    “What do you want?” she asked.
    “I want to show you something.”
    “Show me, then.”
    I looked around, wary. “And I need to tell you something.”
    She walked even faster. “So tell me something.”
    “It has to be someplace where no one will see or hear”—I brushed the pixies out of my eyes—“and where there are as few pixies as possible.”
    Red scowled at me and kept walking. But after a while she stopped and turned back. “Hurry up, I’m hungry.”
    I followed Red down the mountainside and through The Village. When we passed the mill, I got a cold prickle on my neck, like someone was watching me. I hurried past.
    I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Red went into The Woods, but it was getting cold and dark. I stopped just inside the trees.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “To a place where no one will hear or see, and where there are no pixies. That is what you want, isn’t it?” Red folded her arms impatiently.
    “Is it safe?” I asked.
    “If you stay on the path. And don’t ask questions.”
    “What path?” I looked down and my mouth fell open. There was a path beneath my feet, clearly trodden and winding farther into The Woods. I would have sworn it hadn’t been there before. I had never seen it. “How—?” I started, but Red cut me off.
    “I said, don’t ask questions.” I closed my mouth and followed.
    Red led us deep into The Woods, much deeper than I’d usually go. She didn’t seem afraid, though. In fact, she seemed more comfortable here than she was in The Village. She touched the trees as if they were friends. A bird fluttered down to a low branch and chirped as though he were saying something to Red, and I had the feeling she understood the bird, even though she pretended not to notice.
    “Do you come here often?” I asked. Red glared at me. “Sorry.” I wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but questions were all that rose to my mind.
    The path curved and twisted. Where was she taking me and how much farther was it? I bit my tongue to keep in the questions. Then I started to hear something, a low hum. It got louder as we walked. Suddenly we rounded a corner and came upon a giant fallen tree. The tree was swarming with bees. I froze. I saw Red’s thinking, of course. Bees and pixies don’t like each other, so where you find a swarm of one, you probably won’t find the other. But bee stings didn’t sound much better than pixie bites. I stayed far back.
    Red walked right to the edge of the swarm. Slowly, like a creeping cat, she moved through the buzzing wall of bees, reached her hand down the log, and pulled out a chunk of honeycomb, dripping with golden honey. She moved back just as slowly. Bees crawled all over her head and arms and even her face, but she didn’t flinch, andsoon they all flew away, back to their honey log. She broke the honeycomb in half and gave me a piece. “Gold you can eat,” she said, and we licked the sticky mess.
    “You could trade this for grain,” I said. “Probably lots.”
    “Wouldn’t want to,” said Red.
    “Why?” She could get a whole sack of grain for just this one chunk of honeycomb.
    “Because some things people like to keep to themselves. This has always been my tree, and I don’t want anyone else to know about it. If you tell, I’ll punch your teeth out.”
    It made me feel really special that she would share it with me.
    “And don’t think you can come here without me,