Keeper of the Bees

by Meg Kassel

  I’m going to sting Essie. I am.

  Just. Not. Quite. Yet.

  This girl is harmless. She won’t hurt anyone but herself. Even after the cursed bee venom breaks down the rest of her mind, hers will be a miserable death. It will be slow and excruciating because she lacks the tools or the skills or the desire to end herself with economy. The mental image of this sends bile to the back of my tongue. I simply can’t stand the thought of it.

  I listen hard, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. My hearing is no better than an ordinary human’s. She shakes her head and pushes dirt into a pile between her feet. She holds a baseball cap in her hands. Blond hair spills over her back like a smooth sheaf of wheat. Poetry? Please, no. I shut my eyes and mouth, not that I need to worry. The bees are not clamoring through my sinuses, buzzing for release. They are still. They’ve settled deep in my chest, and I don’t know if they’re sending me a message or if they’re regrouping for a big, unpleasant mutiny.

  I wouldn’t blame them if they did mutiny. My behavior is not in line with what they’ve grown to expect. We’re both stuck with this curse, and I am making it worse for them. But it has been a very long time since I have had an opinion about stinging someone. Since I have encountered a person that I should sting but would like not to.

  I was not always like this. I would like to tell her that. I would like her to see what I used to look like. I was handsome, apparently. Handsome enough to turn the head of a queen. Handsome enough to inspire that queen to rip me from my home, from those I loved, and imprison me with the rest of her ill-fated harem of boys and men. To doom me for the rest of time.

  I would like to not sting Essie.

  My fingers clench around the smooth branch I’m perched on. I feel like a harbinger, lurking up in a tree. Michael would say…no. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday. The harbingers weren’t in the motel they’re staying at when I came by. They are still here, though. I’ve seen the crows. They’re watching, wondering what game I’m playing.

  But this is no game.

  I close my eyes and unclench my jaw just enough to release a bee. It falls from my lips with a whispered line of swear words directed at myself. I’ve been a monster for a long time, but stinging this girl takes my self-hatred to a new, loathsome depth. I’m forfeiting my last few shreds of humanity as a sacrifice to the Strawman, and for what? So I can remain the creature I am instead of becoming something worse? Is there anything worse?

  Before I can call it back, the bee zig-zags through the branches, makes a meandering line for her. My hands clench the branch so hard, my fingers dent the wood. Every fiber of my being screams to jump down, snatch the bee out of the air. To save her.

  Essie’s head snaps up with a surprised look on her face, like someone just called out. Maybe she heard the buzzing. The bee is not attempting to sting her with any urgency, but weaving around, as if choosing an ideal spot of skin. Essie, however, is not so hesitant. With speed and accuracy that astonishes me, she whips off her hat and bats the bee from the air. The bee tumbles to the ground, where she smashes her sneaker into it. The entire sequence takes about two seconds. Essie glances around her, then slouches against the bench with a sigh.

  I blink down at her in confusion, elation. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Bees don’t miss. Bees don’t get it wrong like that.

  Not without a reason.

  The hive knots low in my belly. They aren’t reacting to her right now. In fact, they don’t want to go anywhere near her. Strange. And problematic. It took all my will to send that one bee to her. I can’t comprehend sending another. I simply can’t.

  My thoughts are jumbled, but I replay my brief conversation with the Strawman again. Maybe I misinterpreted his words or misheard. Who knows what he was trying to tell me? He never said sparing Essie was wrong. He said the bees weren’t wrong. Perhaps they’re not wrong right now.

  It could be there’s some other wrong I need to correct. Lord knows, I’ve committed a great many wrongs. I don’t consider sparing Essie one of them, although he did affirm that this atonement I must make had something to do with her. But maybe stinging her isn’t the answer. So I have no idea what else to do, but I can take this a day at a time, see how it goes.

  The notion that I may not have to sting her after all makes my every muscle go slack with relief. My body’s reaction makes my bees rumble in one rolling wave, then go quiet again. I feel light, buoyant, but also a little unsteady.

  I gaze back down at her. She’s fallen quiet. Her head turns to a pair of lady joggers springing by on neon sneakers. They don’t look at Essie, and her body relaxes again when they are gone. She lets out a gusty sigh and gets up.

  Her movement is a study in disappointment. An errant thought creeps in my head—an absurd hope that she was hoping to see me. I brush it away. Impossible. She won’t mistake me for an interesting hallucination again, and I haven’t forgotten her first glimpse of me at the parade. I saw the fear lick over her features before I assured her I wouldn’t hurt her. I will do my best to keep my word on that, and the best way to do so is to keep my distance. Just because I am endeavoring to not sting her does not mean I should attempt a friendship with her.

  Essie starts a brisk pace back up the path she arrived by. My primary options are three: Stay here. Go somewhere else. Follow her.

  Against better judgment, I follow her. It’s almost a compulsion, but I change into a swarm of bees and stay up in the tree branches, out of sight. I will track her safely back to her home, then avoid her completely until it’s time to leave this godforsaken town. That day can’t come soon enough.

  With the scattered, omnipresent consciousness of the bees, I see her from many angles at once. From above, the side. I send a part of me to well in front of her, so I can see her face. Her mouth is unhappy. She wrinkles her nose and tugs at the ends of her ponytail, hard.

  All of a sudden, her attention snags on something in the woods to her left. She comes to an abrupt stop, eyes narrowed. She peers through the trees at something, craning her neck, squinting. I gather my bees on the edge of a tree and send a few out to see what’s caught her interest.

  There’s a dead body in the woods. A woman, narrow and blond, in a short blue dress. The body lies facedown and half suspended on the bent and straining branches of low bushes. She looks to have been hastily abandoned.

  There is blood, but not a great deal of it, coming from the cutting off of the woman’s—

  Essie! I remember her with a jolt. I am unmoved by sights like this, but Essie, with her unpredictable mind, is not the one who should discover this scene.

  I send a few bees back to check on her, and panic disorganizes my buzzing swarm. She’s here already, through the trees. She climbs around thick brush, only to reel backward in horror. Her hands fly to her gasping mouth. She turns, rushes blindly into the impenetrable bush, losing her blue hat to the snarls of a thorny bush.

  I immediately draw all the bits of myself together and fly to the forest floor. I take my human form right in front of her, without thinking. Bees compress into arms and legs and head, and I’m standing before her. Her eyes widen to perfect circles of terror. Her mouth opens.

  My hand claps over her mouth before she releases the scream. “Shush.” My voice is a growl. Not reassuring. Not soothing. “Relax. You’re safe.”

  The scream fades from her throat. I release my hand from her mouth and bend down to examine her. “Are you okay, Essie?”

  “How did you…?” Her voice is squeezed, pitched high. “You were just…” She shakes her head, and her terrified gaze begins to slide from me and back to the body, but I move to block her view.

  “Don’t look at that. Look at me. Right here.” I point at my eyes, then remember I am no less scary to look at than the sight of the murdered woman behind me.

  But Essie does look at me, and inexplicably, some of the terror eases from her eyes. My chest constricts, almost painfully, at the sudden knowledge
that this girl finds looking at my face less scary than the harmless corpse behind me.

  “Dresden.” She’s breathing too fast. Her face is too pale.

  Dresden. My name was once incredibly long, full of the bouncing consonants and rich vowels that came with life on the Mediterranean Sea. Somewhere over the years, most of it went missing, along with much of the rest of me. Now Dresden is all that remains of it, and it feels woefully lacking. I want to give her more. I want to show her something of what I once was.

  “Easy now,” I say. “Calm down or you’re going to pass out.”

  She seizes the front of my T-shirt. I freeze at the feel of her tense knuckles against my chest.

  “Is he still here?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “The-the…person who k-killed that poor woman?”

  She doesn’t think it’s me. Even knowing that I’m neither human nor a proclaimed good guy, there isn’t a shred of suspicion clouding her clear blue eyes. I look out at the forest, draw awareness to my skin, but the only unstable mind I detect is Essie’s. Certainly not the slicing mania I would feel from a person capable of squeezing the life from another. “No,” I say. “He’s gone.”

  She looks up at me, lips slack and colorless. “Are you s-sure?”

  “Yes. I’d sense him if he were nearby.” I try to smile. Try not to think about what my face is doing right now. I hope the features on it at the moment are pleasant, at least. “You’re safe,” I say again.

  She closes her eyes. Her breath hitches. Then she does the improbable and throws herself against me, wrapping her arms around my waist.

  I am paralyzed. Motionless, breathless in my first embrace in a millennium. To be touched… My eyes close as I tremble from head to toe. The pain is glorious, excruciating.

  “Thank you,” she breathes against my chest. “You calm my mind. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.” Speech takes an unbearable effort. I’m overwhelmed in every single possible way—destroyed on a level she can’t begin to comprehend. My arms hover, uncertain how to return her embrace and unsure if I should. Unable to push her away. I feel as though I will shatter if I move, but my arms slowly close around her. One of my hands falls on her hair, where her elastic has loosened. The thin band slips from her hair and falls into my hand. My fingers close around it.

  There’s a buzzing in my ears, but not from my bees. The swarm sits low behind my ribs, unsettled and unsure. They make no move to climb up my throat. Maybe they think we’re about to die. It could happen. Right now, a lovely human girl is holding me. Anything is possible.

  “Essie.” Her name slips from my mouth. A prayer. An offering. My very undoing.

  She is shaking. “Is she still there?”

  “Is who still where?”

  “The woman. The d-dead woman.”

  My breath releases with a shudder. Essie is oblivious to the effect she has on me. She has no inkling of the wound she’s sliced open. Of the beasts awakening inside me that howl and gnaw at my mind with maddening ferocity. And she mustn’t know. The depth of my feelings at this moment is monstrous. “She’s not going anywhere without help.”

  Essie leans back with a frown. But her arms stay around me. “Are you joking?”

  “No.” I swallow thickly. Act normal! “That woman is deceased, Essie. The life has left her body. She cannot touch you or harm you in any way.” Whoever did this to the woman is another story.

  Her frown stays, but it’s no longer directed at me. It’s a thinking frown. “Who is she?”

  I don’t know, of course. Essie clamps her lower lip between her teeth and peeks over my shoulder. I don’t try to stop her this time. She can’t see that much. The woman’s face is tilted away, a good deal of her is obscured by the bushes, but Essie takes a long, quiet look. Her nostrils flare. Her nails dig hard into my waist. It’s such a sweet pain I can scarcely breathe.

  Then she closes her eyes and presses her forehead against my breastbone. I let out a quiet gasp. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

  “Her toes,” Essie squeaks. “They’ve been…cut off.”

  I don’t say anything. I saw the toes. In bee form, I also saw the purple mark around the neck and the scraped-red hands that tried, briefly, to fend off whoever was squeezing her throat.

  “M-my great-great-grandmother cut off her toes,” Essie says. “All of ’em. Just like that.”

  I did not know this. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. Everyone knows about it. Opal Wickerton. The first one with the Wickerton family curse.” Her breath warms my shirt and the skin beneath it. Can she hear the bees, boiling under my ribs? Can she feel the uneven rise and fall of my chest? If my heart beat normally, it would be pounding right now.

  She raises her head, looks up at me. Her eyes are glassy. “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  Probably. “Probably not.” My first lie.

  She steps back and fumbles at her waist. “I have a phone. I need to call the police.”

  I cover her hand with my own. “No. You need to go home. Tell your parents.”

  “I live with my aunt.” Her brow creases.

  “Fine. Bring her here if you need to, but you shouldn’t be the one to call the police.”

  “Why?”

  She’s really asking this question? I won’t lie to her this time. “Because it’s not a good idea. Get your aunt to report it.”

  Her face pinches. “They’ll think I did it?”

  I place one finger under her chin and tip her head up. “There will be a lot of questions. You’ll need support.” I pause, unsure for a moment if I am giving correct advice. Her aunt could be a horror on two legs. I’ve seen enough of humanity to know that people who require caregivers, like Essie, are the ones more often abused. “Is your aunt someone you trust?”

  “Yes. Aunt Bel is wonderful.” She swallows, making the muscles in her slender throat move. “She doesn’t see me as a burden.”

  I let out a breath of relief. “If you are a burden, I am a nightmare.”

  “No, Dresden. You are a dream.” She holds my gaze, blinks slowly. “Thank you. It’s kind of amazing that you appeared like that. Were you following me?”

  I drop my finger from her chin. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I was talking myself out of killing you. “I saw you and wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

  “What’s with the-the…bees?” She asks it hesitantly, as if unsure if she’s crossing into forbidden territory.

  I smile and feel a mustache tickle my upper lip. Great. “The bees are a story for another day.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “It’s a very unpleasant one.”

  She goes still. “The most interesting stories usually are.”

  Neither of us speaks. I don’t know what’s happening here, but she’s gazing at me with, of all things, affection, and it’s sending me into a dangerous state of euphoria. My head doesn’t feel entirely attached to my neck. I can’t read her mind, but in this moment, I am sure neither of us are thinking about the dead woman lying six feet away.

  “Maybe someday,” I say thickly. “It’s time you get back.”

  “Okay.” She tucks errant hair behind her ear and pauses. “I was looking for you, you know.”

  My heart gives an erratic bump, but I say nothing. Emotion has a grip on my throat so tight, it’s a fight for air, let alone words.

  “Someone was murdered in the college dorms yesterday,” she continues. “I wanted to ask you if you knew or heard anything about who did it.”

  “You didn’t think it was me?” I rasped out.

  “No, you were at the fair. Besides, you don’t murder people, do you?”

  What a question. Hard to answer. I think of myself as a murderer. Right now, however, I want her to think the best of me, so I choose the literal interpretation of her question. “No.”

  Because I don’t use guns or knives or fists to take people
’s lives. I just release bees whose sting pushes the dark-minded over the edge and makes them do terrible things. It doesn’t matter that it’s not my choice.

  I reach out and draw back the snarl of brush she climbed through. “I’ll keep watch over you. No one will touch you,” I say, then remember how very unpredictable her faculties are. “Are you okay on your own?”

  “Yes. I—” She pulls in a deep, shaky breath. “Will I see you again, Dresden?”

  My throat goes dry and raw and aching. “Do you want to?”

  However she answers will be excruciating. There will be no recovering from this encounter. From the memory of her touch and her wide, trusting eyes. Good gods, from her embrace.

  She nods.

  I am doomed. “I’ll find you later. I’ll…” What? Knock on her door and ask her aunt if I can invite her to the movies? Not in this universe. “I will see you again, Essie. I’m not sure when.”

  “I’ll look for you,” she says, finally releasing her hold on my T-shirt. “Be careful.” And she’s gone, disappearing into the woods, back toward the trail.

  I catch a glimpse of blue fabric and golden hair streaming through the trees. The hair elastic is like a living, pulsing thing in my hand. I vow to keep it with me as I transform into bees. I stay high in the trees where she can’t see me and examine every person within a thirty-foot radius of her with deadly intensity. I follow her until she opens the door and disappears into her house. God help anyone who tries to hurt her. I would become a murderer, then.

  9

  Essie

  just the toes

  I don’t think Aunt Bel believed me.

  I told her about the body in a rambling rush while she stared at me, cigarette angled over the sink. She glanced at the tear in my leggings and the twig in my hair. With a sigh, she turned on the sink and drowned the cigarette in a stream of water.