The drizzle has changed to fog. A thick, heavy blanket of cloud with a bruised purple tint, as if the air itself is hurting.

My visitor tonight wears the green tunic and cloth badge of a forester, and moves as if he too is bruised.

It’s more memory than physical maladies that pain him. A soul in transition leaves all but the very worst wounds behind, but the mind can carry scars deeper than any inflicted on the body. I conduct him to the chair by the fire, then pull out the ingredients for Distance Tea.

He watches my movements and I seek to distract him with a question. “Will you tell me of your journey to my tea shop?”

The way his lips pull in, it seems I’ve prodded the hurt, rather than diverted from it. “I left a child alone in the woods.”

He turns to stare at the fire. “A girl. The granddaughter of the town’s best beekeeper. She had an argument with her parents. Something about her grandpa’s home and bees. She ran away, headed for the woods and didn’t come back at dark.

“Her parents came for help and I went out. I know those woods. Know where a child can come to trouble, but also where one who knows the place can shelter.

“There was no moon, and this fog was just starting to move in, wisps of mist that fooled the eye and made even the most familiar trees and groves feel alien.

“I found her, halfway to Sheltered Dell. She’d fallen – there’s a nasty little overgrown gully too close to the path. I went down but misjudged in the dark and the mist. I fell. Hit my head. The pain. It was too much.

“When I woke, I realised I was in one place and my body, unmoving in another. I’d come down out of sight of the girl, but she was calling and I couldn’t answer, and she sounded so afraid.”

I handed him the tea and he gulped half the mug before continuing. “I was stupid. I went out there alone, and now that poor girl is huddled in the dark and cold, likely hurt, definitely scared beyond her wits, and no one will come for her as they believe I’m taking care of it.”

I thought back to my last guest, that beekeeper, and his small companions. I had a feeling, so asked another question. “What is the last thing you remember, before you were pulled to this road? A sound perhaps?”

The forester stared into his mug, my distance tea starting to take effect pulling the guilt and fear away, clearing his mind to memory. “Yes, there was a sound. A low buzzing. Faint at first but getting louder, as if a swarm of bees…” he looked at me, hope rising in his expression. “As if a swarm of bees had come to find their keeper.”

He finished his tea, and sighed, more peaceful than pained now. “I hope the poor child doesn’t find blame, from her own self, or others, for my own decisions and actions. But she will be safe and well with her bees.”

He stood, no longer hunched against pain but resolute. He left me a bright gumdrop as he disappeared into the fog once more.

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