She was neither.
The stone wall was so overgrown, they nearly smacked into it before they saw it. Long ropy vines crisscrossed the stones and bloomed in the crevices, but it was a wall, man-made and very old by the look of it.
“Civilization!” Max said. “I told you!”
They moved around it, trying to find a way in. The wall stood at least eight feet tall and cut through the woods in a wide, unbroken curve.
“Let’s climb it,” Nell said. “Look at these vines! They’ll hold us!”
She grabbed one and hoisted herself up, jabbing the tip of her shoe into the stonework.
The rest of them followed her, groaning and nearly losing their grip, but the growth was so thick, it held.
“Wow!” Nell called when she reached the top. “Max, wait until you see this!”
On the other side, an orchard of peach and plum trees spread out in genteel rows.
Susan swung over the wall, eased herself down to the other side, and dropped to the ground. It was covered in moss and clover studded with round-headed white blossoms. The trees in the nearest row were full of peaches.
She grabbed one and tugged. It dropped into her hand, red and orange and perfect.
“Here!” She tossed a fruit to Kate, then another to Jean. Soon the juice was slipping down their chins and making their hands sticky.
“Civilization.” Max sighed. “Finally.”
“Civilization tastes great,” Jean said. “I never knew.”
Susan picked several extra peaches and shoved them into her skirt pocket.
“We’d better look for the owners,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll find some people now.”
The aroma of hot peaches clung to the air beneath the trees. They walked along, and Max peered up at the branches. He shook his head.
“I don’t think peach trees are this big at home,” he said. “Fruit trees are usually shorter.”
Susan tried to ignore him. She didn’t want this place to be odd or puzzling. It was an orchard, and that meant people, and help, and getting home soon.
And yet the place was strange. Whoever had done the planting had definitely neglected the harvest. Flies lit on mounds of rotting fruit. Wormy peaches littered the space between the trees.
She reached the end of the row and saw why. Past a short clearing full of white clover and moss stood the ruins of what must have been a huge stone house. Only the outer wall remained, and only the lower half of that. It framed a square full of charred gray stones half covered by climbing weeds. The children stepped through a space that might have once been a back door and walked among the jumbled remains.
“Guess they had a fire,” Nell said. “And left it.”
Susan bent and ran a finger across a mossy stone.
Max examined the ground.
“But how long ago?” he asked. “There’s nothing but stone left. No wood, even. A house would have probably had some wood in it.”
Kate and Jean had climbed to sit on the half wall and rest their legs. Nell slouched to a seat beside it, her head against the stones.
“How old can it be if the trees are still so full?” she asked. “Wouldn’t some of them have died or something?”
None of them had an answer for that. Susan sank to her knees and tried to fold her arms across the wall. She only wanted to rest a minute, but the stones were too hot against her bare skin. She sighed and leaned back onto her heels.
“Hey,” Kate said suddenly. “Is that singing?”
Susan raised her head. “Where?”
Her sister pointed at a line of plum trees on the far side of the orchard. “That way. Can’t you hear it?”
For a moment, Susan heard nothing but a chorus of enthusiastic cicadas. Then she caught the sound of a girl’s voice.
Swiftly, she climbed over the short wall and headed back into the trees. The others followed. The voice petered out, but Jean and Kate ran ahead in its general direction, and the rest of them were right behind. Halfway down the row, they heard the girl take up her song again from somewhere up among the plums.
“Genius has but one command:
Useful hands, useful hands.
Work the day long, work the land,
With your two good useful hands.”
Susan looked for her. The plums hung in great clusters of red and purple, obscuring the view, but after a moment, she caught a flash of red trim, the stained hem of a long-hanging dress. The girl had perched a basket on one of the lower branches, and from above it, fruit rained down, hitting the wicker in a rhythm that punctuated the song.
“With useful hands come bang the drum!
With useful hands does progress come!”
She had a funny accent. For a second, Susan wondered if she was singing in a different language. But she couldn’t have been, since the words were perfectly plain:
“Clear the old, the worn, the low.
The new day dawns! The past must go.
The bounty waits for the brave and sure,
A prize for the useful and the pure.”
Susan circled the base of the tree, trying to get a look at the singer.
“Excuse me?” she called into the leaves. “Hello?”
The girl stopped singing abruptly. In the sudden hush, the cicadas trilled a small chorus of alarm.
The silence stretched for a long minute.
“Hey, there!” Nell called suddenly, smacking the trunk with her hand. “We can see you up there! Could we ask you a question?”
This time the girl did answer. Her voice came nervously from the green shadows. “Who’s that?” she asked. “Purity?”
Susan guessed that must be some friend of hers. “No,” she said. “Sorry, we’re lost. You don’t live around here, do you?”
There was a small release of breath from above, and when she spoke this time, the girl sounded
