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made.”
    â€œHasn’t there always been a moon?”
    â€œBless you. Not in the slightest. I remember the
day the moon came. We looked up in the sky—it was all dirty brown and sooty gray
here then, not green and blue . . .” She half-filled each of the vases
at the sink. Then she took a pair of blackened kitchen scissors, and snipped off
the bottom half-inch of stem from each of the daffodils.
    I said, “Are you sure it’s not that man’s ghost
doing this? Are you sure we aren’t being haunted?”
    They both laughed then, the girl and the old woman,
and I felt stupid. I said, “Sorry.”
    â€œGhosts can’t make things,” said Lettie. “They
aren’t even good at moving things.”
    Old Mrs. Hempstock said, “Go and get your mother.
She’s doing laundry.” Then, to me, “You shall help me with the daffs.”
    I helped her put the flowers into the vases, and
she asked my opinion on where to put the vases in the kitchen. We placed the
vases where I suggested, and I felt wonderfully important.
    The daffodils sat like patches of sunlight, making
that dark wooden kitchen even more cheerful. The floor was made of red and
gray flagstones. The walls were whitewashed.
    The old woman gave me a lump of honeycomb, from the
Hempstocks’ own beehive, on a chipped saucer, and poured a little cream over it
from a jug. I ate it with a spoon, chewing the wax like gum, letting the honey
flow into my mouth, sweet and sticky with an aftertaste of wildflowers.
    I was scraping the last of the cream and honey from
the saucer when Lettie and her mother came into the kitchen. Mrs. Hempstock
still had big Wellington boots on, and she strode in as if she were in an
enormous hurry. “Mother!” she said. “Giving the boy honey. You’ll rot his
teeth.”
    Old Mrs. Hempstock shrugged. “I’ll have a word with
the wigglers in his mouth,” she said. “Get them to leave his teeth alone.”
    â€œYou can’t just boss bacteria around like that,”
said the younger Mrs. Hempstock. “They don’t like it.”
    â€œStuff and silliness,” said the old lady. “You
leave wigglers alone and they’ll be carrying on like anything. Show them who’s
boss and they can’t do enough for you. You’ve tasted my cheese.” She turned to
me. “I’ve won medals for my cheese. Medals. Back in the old king’s day there
were those who’d ride for a week to buy a round of my cheese. They said that the
king himself had it with his bread and his boys, Prince Dickon and Prince
Geoffrey and even little Prince John, they swore it was the finest cheese they
had ever tasted—”
    â€œGran,” said Lettie, and the old lady stopped,
mid-flow.
    Lettie’s mother said, “You’ll be needing a hazel
wand. And,” she added, somewhat doubtfully, “I suppose you could take the lad.
It’s his coin, and it’ll be easier to carry if he’s with you. Something she
made.”
    â€œShe?” said Lettie.
    She was holding her horn-handled penknife, with the
blade closed.
    â€œTastes like a she,” said Lettie’s mother. “I might
be wrong, mind.”
    â€œDon’t take the boy,” said Old Mrs. Hempstock.
“Asking for trouble, that is.”
    I was disappointed.
    â€œWe’ll be fine,” said Lettie. “I’ll take care of
him. Him and me. It’ll be an adventure. And he’ll be company. Please, Gran?”
    I looked up at Old Mrs. Hempstock with hope on my
face, and waited.
    â€œDon’t say I didn’t warn you, if it all goes
wobbly,” said Old Mrs. Hempstock.
    â€œThank you, Gran. I won’t. And I’ll be
careful.”
    Old Mrs. Hempstock sniffed. “Now, don’t do anything
stupid. Approach it with care. Bind it, close its ways, send it back to
sleep.”
    â€œI know,” said Lettie.