Keeper of the Bees

by Meg Kassel

  I’m standing in the middle of this, waiting for Aunt Bel to finish smelling every soy candle in a packed booth. One of my hands holds Grandma Edie’s, while the other pins down the skirt of my cotton sundress against the breeze. I should have worn shorts.

  People walk by. They have no idea about the medication I take, or the opinions of my psychiatrist, or the fact that my senses are overwhelmed in a place like this. I look like a nice teenage girl at the fair with her grandma.

  A group of teen girls pass by, bent toward each other, giggling at something. It’s been years since I’d attended school. One ugly “episode” that scared some parents and teachers ended my public-school experience. Now, Aunt Bel homeschools me with the help of tutors. I look away from the girls with a pang of longing. For friends. For a sense of belonging. For that underrated state of ordinary.

  Grandma Edie sighs and squints at her daughter, my Aunt Bel, wedged in the press of the soy candle booth. “Don’t know why she bothers smelling them all. She’s going to buy the apple one.”

  I nod. “She always buys the apple one.”

  We’re both having a decent day so far. Neither of us wishes to cause problems at the fair for Aunt Bel, but it’s hard.

  “Too much movement here.” Grandma Edie’s voice is tense. “Too much noise.” She’s right. Everywhere we move through the fair, the sounds change. Near the bandstand, the brass band playing an old Bruce Springsteen hit, while different music pumps out of the Ferris wheel. Noise doesn’t do good things for either of us. It seems the Wickerton affliction has diluted over four generations, but really, you’d think there wouldn’t be four generations. I glance down at Grandma Edie, who stands half a head shorter than me. At eighty-nine, she’s still shockingly lovely, with long silver hair and the bone structure of a Disney princess. Apparently, her beauty was enough to make poor late Grandpa Walt see past her…eccentricities. Neither of them struggles with the Wickerton curse, though it’s debatable with my father.

  Bad luck for me that it skipped a generation. A few of my other aunts and uncles and cousins weren’t so lucky, either.

  Grandma Edie lets go of my hand to fish a peppercorn from her purse. She crunches on it, and I breathe in the pepper. It’s become a comforting smell to me.

  She lets out a long breath. “Something strange going on here this year.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, because I kind of feel the same way.

  Grandma Edie waves a thin hand, encompassing the fair. “There are people here who aren’t people. Pretenders. Creatures hiding behind human faces. Do you see them, too?” I can hear the plea in her voice—the great desire for what she sees to be validated. I’m not the best judge, but I agree with her.

  I gently squeeze her hand. “I saw one earlier this week. He had a thousand faces and smelled like honey.”

  Grandma Edie’s head snaps up to look at me. Her eyes flash, sharp as glass. “You saw him?”

  “Him who?” I blink down at her. “I saw a strange boy, but I’m not sure how much of him was real.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” She draws in a sharp breath. “Essie, did the bees sting you?”

  I go still with surprise. I didn’t mention any bees. “No. He said they wanted to, but he didn’t let them.”

  “You talked to the bee-man?” Her hand grips mine like a vise. “What did he say? Tell me exactly what transpired.”

  I give her the rundown of my conversation with Dresden, more to placate her than anything else. I tell her what I can remember, ending with Aunt Bel’s arrival and my subsequent unravelling.

  “He told you his name. Sweet Lord.” My grandmother’s mouth slackens. “He told you his name and he didn’t allow his bees to sting you.”

  “He did say he was going to kill me, though he seemed sad about it. But I really don’t think that was a real conversation.”

  Grandma Edie’s pale blue eyes water up and lose focus. “Oh, my sweet Essie, I’m quite certain it was a very real conversation. It is a miracle he didn’t send a bee to you, but he isn’t likely to be merciful again. Pray you never see him again. Pray he’s gone far, far from this place.”

  “But—”

  Her grip on my hand turns crushing. “Those bees will send you into a madness you cannot come out of, my dear. You won’t survive it. And he won’t be sad about it.”

  A ripple of panic threads down my spine, followed by the thought—holy crap, maybe she’s serious. “Grandma Edie, what do you know about the bee-man?” I asked this question too late. My grandmother tips her face to the ground and rocks back and forth, singing a little song in a language I can’t identify.

  Aunt Bel returns with a poured candle in a jar. “I got apple-scented,” she announces. Her face falls when she notices Grandma Edie. “What happened?”

  “She said there was a lot of noise.” Not a lie, but not the exact truth.

  Everything about Aunt Bel droops. “I suppose we can go home.”

  I bite my lip. “The parade is starting soon. Why don’t we get some food and go back to our spot? It’s near the house, and if she doesn’t come out of it, we’re close enough to take her home.”

  Aunt Bel brightens. “Excellent idea, Essie.” She says it with genuine delight, and I know how much she’s enjoying the fair.

  I take one of Grandma Edie’s arms, and Aunt Bel takes the other. Together, we slowly weave through the crowded fair to Main Street, where our chairs have been set up roadside since yesterday afternoon.

  We settle into our seats with blooming onions and roasted soybeans and a massive bag of kettle corn, but Grandma Edie does not come out of it. If anything, she gets more agitated, and as the crowds thicken along the parade route, she starts to scratch at her wrist—her nervous spot—where a raised, lumpy scar exists from years and years of so much scratching.

  “Okay,” Aunt Bel announces. “We’ve got to get Mom back. She’s not having it today.”

  “Get her settled in and come back,” I say around a mouthful of popcorn. “I’ll keep your seat.”

  She hesitates. “Are you sure? What if someone approaches you? After what happened last time I left you—”

  I hold up a hand. “I’ll be fine.”

  I know she wants to see the parade. In all her life, Aunt Bel has never missed Concordia’s Farmstead Fair Parade.

  She looks conflicted for a moment, but relents, clasping Grandma Edie close. “I’ll be right back. Stay right in that seat, please.”

  I wave her off with a hunk of fried onion. “Yup. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  6

  Dresden

  the farmstead fair

  Fairs and festivals are favorite places for killers like me. Everyone outside, not paying attention to anything but what they’re eating and where the port-a-potties are. All this festivity for no apparent reason. Here, I am more invisible than usual, and a few bees is not an unusual sight.

  I’ve stung two people. Both men. One of them got a little violent right on the spot, punching the side of a food truck. The other barely noticed. My bees are quiet in my chest. Their queen rests, so I get to rest.

  The crowds along the main road are thickening. The parade is starting soon. I work my way through them. There’s no point in lingering here. I can be out of here before the floats roll in. Maybe I can view a movie at the local theater. I do enjoy the pleasant distraction, and the matinee will be mostly empty today.

  My stride falters as the sensation of effervescence shivers over my skin. It’s familiar in a way that’s appealing and repellant. The instant I remember where I felt this way before, I stop dead in my tracks. My gaze moves with laser focus over the crowds—searching, scanning for the one person I’d been hoping to never see again.

  It’s her. Across the street. Sitting in a folding chair. Eating from a takeout box on her lap. She’s wearing a soft, cream-colored dress. The bees perk up. My legs move without my making a conscious choice about it. The first floats of the parade are slowly tracking down
the street. A marching band breaks into their rendition of “Eye of the Tiger.” I cut through the crowds and cross the street ahead of the parade. She looks up. Her gaze shifts, locks on me.

  There is no fuzzy teasing in her eyes this time. Her fingers pause midair in the process of delivering food to her mouth—a mouth that is currently as round as her eyes. There’s fear in the stark white of her face. She knows I’m not a delusion. I told her I was going to hurt her. Now, she believes it.

  I approach her slowly. Settle down! I firmly think to the bees, and surprisingly, they do. Only because they’re satiated. A dampness coats my palms. My belly quivers. I’m…nervous.

  The girl—Essie—stays in her seat, staring up at me, as I stop next to her. I have to nudge some people aside to gain a spot in the tightly packed crowd. I’m acutely aware of how close I am to her. About a foot of space separates me from her chair. It’s far too close for either of our comfort.

  The bees buzz an erratic pattern in my throat and mouth. They’re confused. Frankly, so am I. There is no logical reason for me to be here, nervous, struggling to come up with something non-threatening to say to a human girl. A target, no less.

  “Hello Essie.” I dip my head. “Are you afraid of me now?” Good God. Nearly a millennium’s existence with humans and I open with the most inappropriate line ever.

  She frowns up at me. “That depends on your intentions.”

  Intentions? I close my eyes and try to figure out what they are. I’m surprised to realize my only wish is to have a conversation. With her.

  “I do not intend to harm you.” I say it softly, with all the sincerity my harsh, bee-droning voice allows. “Not right now, anyway.”

  Her eyes widen. Is she angry or frightened? I can’t tell.

  “So maybe later?” she asks in a hissed whisper.

  “Maybe.” Damn. “I don’t know. I’d rather not ever, to be honest.” My faces are changing rapidly now. I must look frightful. I turn to the street in case she starts panicking. The parade is almost upon us. The band is now butchering an old U2 song. From the corner of my eye, I see Essie fumble for a napkin, wipe her fingers on it, and close the lid of her takeout container.

  I’ve ruined her appetite, apparently.

  “What do you want, Dresden?” Her voice trembles. “Excuse me. I mean, why are you here?”

  She’s trying not to be rude. Sweet, but unnecessary. “I don’t know,” I say again, truthfully. I can hear the bafflement underlying my words. “I saw you and wanted to say hello.”

  Her mouth is surprised. “Really?”

  I smile, just with my lips. I don’t dare open my mouth, not with bees pinging off the backs of my teeth. “Really.”

  She smiles back, and it’s not polite or forced. It’s just a smile. For me.

  “Okay.” She says it just like that, and I’m rendered speechless. Her simple acceptance is more than I expected. Certainly more than a doomed creature like me deserves.

  A woman shoulders through the crowd to join the man standing next to me. I move over, and the distance between myself and Essie reduces to nothing. I gaze down at the top of her head. A crooked part runs through the center of her hair. The strands are lit golden by the afternoon light. I feel a strange peace from standing next to this girl. She bends down, places her food container on the ground. The ridge of her spine presses a curving line of bumps through the thin fabric of her dress. So fragile. She sits up and smiles at me again, and I get a little lost in it. In all those white teeth.

  She points at my mouth and giggles. “Oh, I like that mouth, right there. Can you keep that one on?”

  I blink down at her, then realize I had forgotten how my face is a mess of changing features. For a few precious moments, I was just here with her. Not a monster. Not a killer. Just a boy enjoying the company of a girl.

  “I can’t control the faces.” I turn back to the parade. A pickup truck creeps up the street, pulling a giant soybean float. Three girls with green-painted faces wave from holes cut in the sides.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She leans toward me and says quietly, “I still think you’re pretty, by the way.”

  I swallow hard, sending about a dozen bees to the back of my throat. Twice she’s said this, and both times I’ve been rendered speechless. Not by the compliment, such that it is, but by her easy acceptance. It twists my gut in a way that hurts. I don’t dislike it.

  “I know now that you’re real,” she says. “But how come no one is staring at you? Am I the only one who can see…” She circles a finger toward my face. “All them.”

  Everything about this interaction is so bizarre, I just stare at her for a moment. If she’s not squeamish talking about my legion of interchangeable features, I won’t be. No reason why I can’t answer a few simple questions about myself. “Most human minds turn away from my face. They don’t see it. You do, for some reason.”

  “Is it because of my condition?”

  A smile curves my lips. She is much more self-possessed today than last I saw her, but I suspect it takes some effort to maintain that appearance. “What condition is that?” I ask because I’m curious how she perceives her own uniqueness. One thing I have decided: Essie is unique in a very interesting way.

  “The Wickerton curse.” She tilts her head and taps the side of it. “Runs in my family.”

  There’s a bitter snap to her words, and she doesn’t explain further. “A curse?”

  She lifts one slender shoulder, lets it drop. “That’s what they called it way back when. No one knows what to call it now. The Wickertons can’t be diagnosed.”

  So she calls her condition a curse, as I do, like it’s something that could be lifted, with the right words, with some magic. A mistake on both our parts.

  “I’ve been around many, many people,” I reply mildly. “None have noticed my true face. Most don’t notice me at all.”

  “So I’m special.” Her eyes gleam with genuine pleasure.

  I hold her gaze and say the most sincere thing I’ve uttered in ages. “You are.”

  “My grandmother thinks you’re dangerous.”

  Her grandmother? I hold back questions: What does your grandmother know about me? How does she know what I am? also, You told your grandmother about me?

  “I am dangerous.”

  “Not to me.” She says it with such confidence, I have to look away. I say nothing, because I can’t guarantee that. I may not leave here without changing her into something dangerous. The bees still identify her as a target.

  Her fingers flick through the air, reaching for something unseen to all but her. “If it makes you feel better, no one notices me, either,” she says, ignoring my non-response. “Or, if they do, it’s because I make them nervous. I’ve never hurt anyone.” She says it fervently, as if she needs to convince me, of all people, of her harmlessness.

  “I know.” I know it better than she does, as the darkness of a soul is something I’m acutely tuned to, and hers is all light. I still wonder why the bees want her. I still wonder if they will have her. It would be awful, what their sting would do to her. My hands clench at the thought of it.

  Without warning, a figure abruptly appears to my left. It’s Michael, with a wake of annoyed people glaring at him for pushing through. He’s sweaty, and his eyes are more birdlike than they should be.

  “Dresden.” He’s breathless. His T-shirt is inside-out.

  Essie gapes up at him. Maybe she’s surprised someone other than her is talking to me. Maybe she finds him appealing. I suppose he’d be considered handsome by today’s standards. I prefer the former possibility.

  “Who are you?” Essie asks Michael, but he ignores her and grips my shoulder.

  “We have problems,” he says.

  “What problems?” I ask sharply.

  His hooded eyes turn slowly to the crowd across the street, where I had been before I’d spied Essie. My gaze follows, falling on a tall, thin man. Every bee inside me drops to the bottom of their c
avity inside my body. I cannot move. I cannot think through sharp flashes of a rarely utilized response called panic.

  A wide-brimmed hat shadows a face nearly as disturbing to look upon as my own. Sounds are swallowed by a roaring in my head. There is nothing in this world that frightens me. Nothing, except this: the Strawman.

  Only a few of these creatures roam the world. No one knows what they do or what they are, but the word evil comes to mind. A beekeeper may draw out and intensify the evil in a person’s soul, but a single touch from the hand of a Strawman can turn a pacifist into a raging killer. They have awful power over harbingers and beekeepers, too. Although Strawmen rarely meddle with beekeepers, if this one touched me, I’d lose supremacy over my bees. They would rule me. The last shreds of my humanity would be lost to the swarm.

  Essie would be theirs.

  The thought startles a gasp from me—not because I’ve realized this, but because I’ve realized that it would bother me. I would like to leave this place without destroying Essie’s life. Without wearing her features on my face.

  The Strawman raises a slow hand toward us, and the ground drops out from under me. I hiss out an expletive in the old language. A word lost to the ravages of time.

  According to Michael, the last visit from a Strawman was in response to a harbinger saving a human woman from a fire, which resulted in the harbinger being struck unable to ever fully transform into a human again. He lived for over a decade, either in crow form or in a mutated meld of the two, until he was granted the mortouri ritual by his group and was mercifully pecked to death.

  “What’s he doing here?” Michael asks in a horrified whisper.