The Hive Queen

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Finally,” Sundew went on, “I heard a tip-tap-patter kind of noise. I squinted at the hole and saw a little head poke out. It was just like the one you described from under the savanna — fluffy black fur on its head, scraps of silver silk and gray fur on its body, hairless long brown paws.”

  “Perfect for holding books,” Cricket breathed.

  “This one didn’t have a book,” Sundew pointed out. “It had a stick with a bit of fire on the end of it.”

  “Where did — I mean — um, I wish I knew where that came from!” Cricket said quickly. The one she’d seen had had a fire, too. Did the reading monkeys have access to flamesilk somehow?

  “Anyway, it saw me, shrieked like a snake-bit panther, and ran away before I could eat it,” Sundew said grumpily.

  “But you wouldn’t have!” Cricket said. “Right? You wouldn’t eat something that can read, right, Sundew?”

  “I’m going to need a little more proof they can do that before I start giving up on prey,” Sundew said. “But really I wouldn’t eat something you’re so completely obsessed with because I know I’d never hear the end of it from you.”

  “Well, if I have to annoy you into protecting cool new species, then that’s what I have to do,” Cricket said nobly. “It’s so unfair you saw one instead of me! You’re so lucky.”

  Sundew rolled her eyes. “That’s me, the luckiest dragon.”

  A tearing sound came from the cocoon. Swordtail leaped to his feet and joined Cricket, crouching by the end with the rip in it.

  “I was right!” she whispered to him. “I knew it was about to happen! It’s happening! Do you remember your Metamorphosis? Is there anything we should do when he comes out?”

  “Just give him some space,” Swordtail said, his wings twitching and his eyes fixed on the shape of claws poking through the silk. “He’ll want to breathe for a moment and then eat something.” He swept the pile of fruit they’d gathered closer with his tail.

  Cricket wished she had her notebook. She’d never seen a Metamorphosis before, and the books were always frustratingly vague about SilkWing details. If she could take notes, maybe one day she could write a paper about what it looked like and how it worked and every step of the process …

  No. I’ll never get to do that. I’m not going to be a published scientist. There’s no normal HiveWing life ahead for me.

  Unless … what if we defeat Queen Wasp? Then what happens?

  Could the HiveWings and LeafWings and SilkWings all start living in harmony? Sharing the Hives, planting food, publishing books, going to school together?

  Cricket glanced over at Sundew and felt like the weight of one of the moons was settling on her wings.

  The LeafWings aren’t going to forgive us. How can we ever move on — as though we didn’t try to wipe out the LeafWings or dominate the SilkWings?

  How can they ever trust us, or want to live alongside us again, after what we’ve done?

  She couldn’t imagine a path from Sundew’s anger, or her plan to wipe out the HiveWings, to a world in which the three tribes lived in peace. She’d been trying for days, but her thoughts kept circling back to the mind control. As far as she could see, her only hope for avoiding a war was to convince Sundew that HiveWings with free will would be on the LeafWings’ side.

  Which, if she was honest with herself, she wasn’t at all sure of.

  A familiar purple snout burst through the silk, shaking filaments off his horns. Cricket held her breath as Blue wriggled and shoved and slid out onto the stone floor, kicking his shredded cocoon away from him. He struggled free and finally stood for a moment with his head bowed, taking deep breaths. And then he looked up, met Cricket’s eyes, smiled, and spread his wings.

  Cricket wondered if her smile could lift her through the ceiling. Blue’s wings were glorious — shimmering purple and blue like sapphires and violets tumbled together. He was glorious. She knew she loved more than his beautiful scales and his lovely face — she loved his kindness, and his sweetness, and his sense of humor, and the way he thought about other dragons so deeply, and the fact that he seemed to have no idea at all how handsome he was. But oh my goodness, she also really loved his lovely face.

  “Cricket,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You stayed.”

  “Of course I did,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, and her heart felt as if it might burst. “I bet that was …” He paused and thought for a moment. “Hmm. Boring?”

  She laughed. “Just a little.”

  Can he see how much I adore him? Am I too obvious? I wish I knew what he feels.

  Swordtail stepped forward and offered a leaf cup full of water. Blue took it gratefully and drank the whole thing.

  “Nice wings,” Swordtail observed. “Not as handsome as mine, of course, but pretty cool. See, I told you Metamorphosis wasn’t that bad.”

  Blue flicked his friend’s tail with his own. “I can’t believe it’s over,” he said. “After all those years of worrying about it!” He stretched his wings as wide as they would go and wrinkled his snout as though he was trying to stop smiling. “Remember how Luna and I were waiting for you when you came out?”

  “With a giant box of honey drops and Luna’s weird banana mash cake,” Swordtail said, grinning.

  “You did a really good job of pretending to like it,” Blue said. He studied his wings, which looked shiny and damp in a brand-new kind of way. “I guess the one upside of being fugitives is she can’t make one of those for me.” His eyes searched the cave. “Hey, Sundew.”

  “Hey yourself, SilkWing,” Sundew said gruffly. “You sure took your time growing those flappers.” Cricket wondered whether Blue could tell that the LeafWing was actually happy to see him, or whether it was only Cricket who was getting used to the mostly hidden expressions under Sundew’s scowls. “So are you actually a flamesilk? Can you make fire?”

  “I feel like I can.” Blue held out his talons and glowing flame spiraled from each wrist into smoking curls of light on the floor. Sundew inspected them, nodded approvingly, and scooped them into a small stone jar from one of her pouches.

  While she did that, Blue took a short, shuddering breath and looked at Swordtail, and by the expression on his face, Cricket could tell that he’d already guessed the worst. “Luna,” he said anxiously.

  “I’m sorry, Blue,” Swordtail said, his wings drooping. “I can’t find her. I’ve looked and looked.”

  Blue was quiet for a long moment. Cricket took a step closer to those iridescent wings and gently twined her tail around his. He seemed so much bigger, suddenly.

  “If you haven’t found her,” Blue said, “then she must still be alive. We’d feel it if she wasn’t, don’t you think? Maybe she’s hiding somewhere and hasn’t made it back yet. She’ll find us again. I’m sure she will, Swordtail. She’s probably out there worrying about us twice as much as we’re worrying about her.”

  “Well, she’s not finding us here,” Sundew said, standing up. She dropped her sorted berries into sections of a leaf bag and put it on, then started assembling all her other pouches around her in some careful order Cricket hadn’t mapped out yet. “We’ve already stayed way too long. It’s a miracle the HiveWings searching the coast haven’t found us yet.”

  “It’s not a miracle,” Swordtail said. “It’s you. You hid the entrance to this tunnel really well. I’ve seen HiveWing guards walk right past it as they hunt through the cave. I’ve gotten lost like eight times coming back from the bay, because it’s so hard to spot.” He handed Blue a talonful of kumquats and sliced yams. “I don’t know how she did it. Wait until you see what she did with the vines and the moss … it’s kind of amazing.”

  Sundew made the face she always made when Cricket or Swordtail said something nice about her, as though her expressions had no practice reacting to compliments, so they just threw out a few spasms and then went back to scowling. “Well, it won’t last forever,” she said. “Let’s get to a Hive and find the Chrysalis.”<
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  “The Chrysalis?” Blue echoed between bites, looking at Swordtail.

  “We’ll explain on the way,” Cricket offered.

  “So, what — back to Wasp Hive?” Sundew asked.

  Blue shuddered. “Um … is that our only option?”

  “It’s not the best place to find the Chrysalis,” Swordtail said. “I mean, it’s the most dangerous Hive. Swarming with soldiers. I’m not even sure they have any members there.”

  Sundew gave him a hard look. “I thought you said they were in all the Hives.”

  “I think they are,” he said. “But let’s try another one, just to be safe, is my suggestion.”

  “Where are we, exactly?” Cricket said. She took Sundew’s discarded leaf pouch, flattened out one side of it, and sliced a rough map of Pantala into the thick pale green surface with her claws. “We came from Wasp Hive, up here.” She stabbed a little hole in the spot where Wasp Hive would be on the map.

  “Kind of here,” Swordtail said, pointing to a spot on the coast of Dragonfly Bay, a ways south of Wasp Hive.

  “So let’s think. The next closest Hives are these three.” Cricket poked three holes in the map. “Yellowjacket Hive, Bloodworm Hive … or Jewel Hive.” She hesitated, feeling an old familiar twist like thorns around her heart.

  “What is it?” Blue asked, touching her shoulder. “Why does Jewel Hive make you sad?”

  “It’s — nothing really,” she said. “Just, that’s where my mother moved, when she left us.”

  Cricket could remember that day really clearly. She’d been three years old; Katydid had been twelve, but still living at home and without a partner, chosen or assigned.

  It had felt completely out of the blue to her, like a Hive suddenly collapsing for no reason. Mother had been standing with all her belongings at the door when they returned from school, her books being loaded into baskets by a pair of sturdy SilkWings. She’d looked faintly annoyed that they’d returned before she could disappear. Katydid had cried, but Cricket couldn’t — it was all too confusing. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t continue as they always did, with her mother ignoring them all. Why did she have to go to a whole other Hive to do that?

  “I didn’t know your mother left,” Blue said sympathetically.

  “That’s not an option for SilkWings,” Swordtail pointed out. “At least, not by choice. Nobody gets to leave the partner they’re paired with, unless Queen Wasp tells them to.”

  “HiveWings have to get her approval first,” Cricket said. “I guess Mother really wanted to get away from us if she was willing to go through the whole separation request process. When she left, she said, ‘Across the continent still isn’t far enough from you horrible grubs, but it’ll have to do.’”

  “Whoa.” Sundew hissed through her teeth. “She sounds charming.”

  “Oh, Cricket,” Blue said. “How could anyone say that to her own dragonets?”

  “She’d been trying to leave for a while, it turns out,” Cricket said, fiddling with the edge of the leaf. “But I mean, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like we’ll run into her — it’s a big Hive, super busy. I kind of know my way around from the two times we visited her, so maybe that’ll be helpful.”

  Blue rested one of his wings alongside hers, like a warm azure wave of comfort if she wanted it. She liked that he didn’t push her to talk about it more.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked Sundew. “How do we get into the Hive if everyone’s looking for us?”

  “With punching and biting?” Swordtail suggested hopefully. “And maybe some venomous caterpillars?”

  “I like the way you think,” Sundew said. “But they’re centipedes, dingbat.”

  “Or,” Blue interjected, “is there a way to sneak in where nobody gets hurt?”

  “And nobody gets caught by HiveWing guards,” Cricket agreed. She looked down at her map again. “Jewel Hive. Hmmm.”

  “What what what?” Sundew demanded.

  “Lady Jewel is a little different from the other Hive rulers,” Cricket explained. “Do you guys know anything about her? She’s Wasp’s cousin, not her sister, for one thing. And she’s famous for her … I guess ‘love of art’ is the best way to describe it?”

  “Oh, right!” Swordtail said, lighting up. “Luna was always talking about how she wanted to move to Jewel Hive if we could! She kept going on about the art scene and the Glitterbazaar.” The light went out of his eyes and he looked down at his claws. “She would love to see the Glitterbazaar.”

  “Maybe the Chrysalis will know something,” Blue said to him. “Maybe she found her way to them, or maybe they’d know if she’s back in the flamesilk cavern.”

  Swordtail looked hopeful for the first time in days. “That’s true! If she ended up in a Hive, that’s who she’d look for!” He flicked his tail back and forth. “We should go ask them! Let’s do that! Let’s go now!”

  “Hang on, what in Pantala is a Glitterbazaar?” Sundew asked. “If it involves sparkles, the answer is no. I do not do sparkles.” Which was funny, Cricket thought, coming from a dragon with gold flecks all across her green scales.

  “Only a few sparkles,” Cricket said, “and I think it might be our way in …”

  Cricket hadn’t realized how nerve-racking it must have been for Swordtail and Sundew to creep out of the cave onto the beach every day. You couldn’t get a full view of the sky until you were already exposed on the sand. If HiveWings had been watching from the cliffs, they would have spotted her friends easily, even at night, with the moons lighting up the ocean.

  Raindrops pattered against her scales and blurred her glasses as she stepped into the open air for the first time in days, keeping her body close to the towering cliff face. They were lucky tonight. Dark clouds covered most of the three moons, driving rain obscured the sky, and the fierce thunder-storm was probably keeping most HiveWing scouts at home.

  Of course, it meant flying to Jewel Hive in that very thunderstorm, but Cricket for one would rather battle the rain than another dragon.

  “Bleh. Pffft. Ugh,” Swordtail muttered, shaking wet sand off his talons and snout. “Sorry your first flying experience has to be in this weather, Blue.”

  “It’s amazing,” Blue said. “I mean, from down here.” He lifted his face up to the rain and held out his faintly glowing wrists. Skittering rivulets ran like melted amethysts along his wings. She wasn’t imagining it; his wings were decidedly larger than Cricket’s. It was a little intimidating, until he turned and smiled at Cricket. His smile was still the same; it still took up just as much space in her heart.

  I’m such a moon-moth. Didn’t I laugh at dragons who said things like that in my books? You don’t even know if he likes you back, because he seems to be just that sweet to everybody.

  Seriously, Cricket, snap to it. You’re trying to save your tribe and avoid all-out war right now. And if Swordtail is right about the Chrysalis, you could be this close to solving your brain chemistry mystery.

  “Lead the way,” Sundew said, nudging Cricket. “I’ll watch for HiveWings. Swordtail, you keep an eye on Blue and his new wings.”

  “Will do,” Swordtail said solemnly.

  It was a shaky flight, punctuated by earsplitting thunder and crackling bolts of lightning overhead. The rain battered Cricket’s wings and blurred her glasses and flew into her eyes so she could hardly keep track of the coastline below her. She was very, very glad that they didn’t have far to go.

  She knew her job was to lead the way to Jewel Hive, but she couldn’t help twisting around to keep an eye on Blue every few heartbeats. It was hard enough flying for the first time, let alone doing it in a thunderstorm.

  The first time she’d flown in the rain, it had been a training exercise at Terrarium Academy. And it had been very annoying, not because of the weather, but because of her classmate Bombardier. He was completely convinced that Cricket had a crush on him and was always trying to “let her down gently,” when in fact Cricket would have ve
ry much liked to throw him through a wall.

  She remembered trying to figure out how to flick raindrops off her back wings. Bombardier kept hovering around her, offering unnecessary suggestions.

  “I can figure it out myself,” she’d finally snapped at him.

  “You don’t need to act self-confident with me,” he’d answered condescendingly. “It won’t make me like you more, Cricket. I keep telling you, I’m not interested in you that way.”

  “Neither am I!” she’d tried to protest, like she always did.

  “Of course, of course,” he’d soothed her insincerely, and then smug-faced away while she wished she had any cool HiveWing powers to poison him with.

  Blue was the furthest opposite dragon from Bombardier that Cricket had ever met. He had no idea how wonderful he was, and he would never assume that somebody liked him. He always really wanted to know what other dragons were feeling, no matter who they were.

  He seemed to have less trouble with the storm than she’d feared. His wings looked so new and shimmering that she kept thinking the wind would tear them right in half, but Blue beat them strongly and smoothly, as though he’d been flying forever. Every time she turned to look at him, he gave her his shy smile, as though she had something to do with the wind that lifted his wings.

  Oh, Blue. I won’t let them use you to hurt any dragons. We’ll figure out the mind control and stop Queen Wasp, and then you can use your flamesilk to make the world a better place instead of worse.

  Soon she could see the glowing lights of Jewel Hive up ahead. Flamesilk lanterns lit many of the windows, and as they flew closer, she caught glimpses of a bright party taking place on one of the upper levels. Dragons laughed and danced and whirled, orange-gold scales and green jewels flashing through a ballroom hung with vibrant scarlet and cobalt silk tapestries.