Keeper of the Bees

by Meg Kassel

  “And how would I identify this girl you’re protecting?” he asks reasonably. “Assuming my bees identify her as a target.”

  I am out of my depth. Henrik likely thinks I’ve lost my mind, and I can’t make any assurances that I haven’t. I pull a green hair elastic out of my pocket and hold it out to him.

  Henrik looks from the elastic to me. A few of Essie’s blond hairs twine around the thing, making her scent distinct. The fact that I have this is actually a big deal. There is no amusement on Henrik’s face as he takes the elastic and holds it up to his nose. He closes his eyes and breathes deep.

  “There is no fear on this.” His voice is incredulous. He places the elastic back in my palm.

  “No.”

  Henrik’s nostrils flare. “Who is she to you?”

  “She is…” The void that should be there for this question floods with a thousand descriptions, none of them right. Some of them frightening. “My friend.”

  Henrik’s faces begin to change rapidly, the surest sign that he’s unsettled. “Beekeepers don’t have friends.”

  I won’t argue that, although I suppose I could. “Nevertheless, I won’t see her harmed.”

  “Is this why the Strawman is here? Because of her?”

  I wince at that, and my bees sense it. They swarm out and surround my mouth like a hideous mask. I don’t bother trying to contain them. “A Strawman’s motives are never clear.”

  He opens his mouth, and bees empty from it like black and yellow buzzing vomit. “Look at me, brother,” he says. “Look at me and see yourself. Now tell me how any human could care for you. For any of us.”

  For the first time in this conversation, I’m at peace with my reply. “It doesn’t matter if she cares for me. I care for her.” My fist closes around the hair elastic. “This girl is not to be touched. Please.”

  He looks at me for a long time, then nods. “Very well, Dresden. I will not sting her. And I will pass on your message, if I encounter any more of us.”

  “Thank you.” My words come out with more relief than I can afford to show.

  “But if you have drawn the interest of a Strawman because of your…infatuation, your ‘protection’ will do her more harm than good. You should take the advice you just gave me and stay away from her.”

  He’s right. I should know better than to get within two miles of her. I look away without replying.

  Henrik shakes his head. “Fool.” He bursts into a cloud of bees and disperses into the trees.

  Yes, that I am.

  …

  It is night. Finally. I spent the afternoon watching the sun crawl toward the horizon with unreasonable impatience. All that waiting so I could be here, crouched in the elm tree outside her window like some lurker. Sheer white curtains fall in front of her window, but I can see the shape of her inside. Oversize pink T-shirt. Hair up in a bun with two pencils holding it in place. Long, beautiful neck. Bare feet. She’s lying on her bed with a laptop, humming to a song playing through the computer’s speakers.

  Abruptly, she snaps her laptop shut and gets up. I watch her disappear from view, presumably to a desk to the side of the window, but suddenly she’s at the window, jerking the curtains open, removing the screen. I go dead still in the tree as she sits on the sill, back against one side, one foot dangling outside. Her gaze is on the stars, not the tree. I am hidden for the moment, hopefully to remain that way. She’s so close. Six feet away, maybe.

  There’s a slight breeze. It ruffles the tendrils of hair escaping her bun. Her nightshirt slides up her thighs, bunches around her hips. My throat goes dry, and my palms go clammy, and it takes me a moment to realize that what I’m feeling is attraction—not just the mental bit, but the physical element.

  It’s like a discovery—the memory of something so long forgotten, it’s brand new again—and I’m not sure how to rid myself of it. Thoughts, images unfold along the lines I haven’t had since I was a human man, so very long ago. They come unbidden—touching that smooth thigh, learning the texture of her skin, kissing her until we’re made of breath and sighs. Feeling her touch…I close my eyes and recall her embrace in the woods. What an unexpected agony it had been to feel her pressed against me. But to be touched for desire rather than comfort—the thought is unendurable. And pointless. Whatever feelings Essie may have for me, attraction isn’t one of them. My bees rumble a warning, but as usual these days, I ignore them.

  “Dresden.” Her soft voice drifts through the night air. It’s the purest torment. A molten brand, searing my skin.

  My belly contracts. My gaze snaps to her, breath held, but she’s still only looking at the stars. There’s a dreamy look on her face; a small smile playing on her lips. Long fingers slide along the ends of her hair. “Where are you?” she asks, so plaintive. So lonely. She doesn’t expect an answer. She doesn’t expect anything.

  “I’m here.” The words just come. I should want to take them back.

  Her lips part on a tiny gasp, and she peers into the tree, searching for me. Henrik is right—I really am a fool, powerless to resist her. I push away from my spot against the trunk and emerge from the shadows.

  Essie spots me. Her mouth breaks into a wide smile. I can’t look away from it.

  “It’s you?” she whispers. “You’re real?”

  “Yes.” My words come out sounding like a growl. “Very real.”

  She leans out a little more, and I thrust out a hand. “Be careful. Please don’t fall.”

  She laughs, a little too loud for the quiet night. “I could say the same to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I fall.”

  The dog next door starts barking. Essie looks to the street, narrows her eyes on the houses, a passing car. “You should come inside.”

  My stomach does a painful dip. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, don’t be dumb.” She climbs back into her room and gestures me inside. “Come on. Before someone sees us.”

  I hesitate. Lurking outside her window is one thing. Going in is another. Essie’s room is a forbidden kingdom. I don’t belong in there. Or rather, it’s the invitation that feels illicit. And there’s the fact that my thoughts about this girl are not brotherly.

  “Please, Dresden,” she says. “It’s not safe out there.”

  One day, I will say no to this girl and I will mean it. One day, I will walk away.

  But not today.

  11

  Dresden

  her room

  I change into bees as gently as I can, as she’s so close, and aim my swarm for her open window. She steps back as I enter. Her face is alert but unafraid. I work to hasten the transformation back to my human shape. The sight of a huge bee swarm in someone’s bedroom is a scary thing, but Essie stares in fascination as I re-form into the Dresden she knows. Her eyes are wide with wonder. Only a touch of uncertainty showing around the whites, revealing the sliver of her that wonders if what she’s witnessing is real. My bees don’t even react. Hopefully they’ve given up trying to get to her. I won’t allow it, and besides, I’ve let them sting plenty. Too much, even. Their urges are satisfied, at least.

  “I’m sorry about the entrance,” I say. “I didn’t know how else to—”

  “It’s fine. I’ve seen you do it before.”

  I try to keep my face in shadow. “I’m glad I didn’t frighten you.”

  “I’m fine,” she says again. “Were you out there long?”

  “No,” I lie, prideful creature that I am. “Just wanted to check on you. Are you distraught over…your discovery in the park?”

  “You mean the dead woman we found? Yes and no.” Her voice drops. “Did you know—when Aunt Bel and I returned, the body was gone. Did you know that?”

  My eyes narrow. “I did not.”

  “All that was there was a plastic baggie containing her…toes. Detective Berk says they’ll do everything they can to find the rest of her, and to find out who did it. It almost doesn’t feel like it was real, you know?” Sh
e twirls the ends of her hair, then lets it spring back to straight.

  “I wish it wasn’t.” I drag my gaze from her hair. “Real, that is.”

  “Me too. Poor Aunt Bel. She’s so worried.” She moves to the bed and sits on the edge, hands folded on her lap. It looks like it’s taking effort for her to be still. “You don’t have to hang out in the tree,” she says. “Next time, just knock.”

  I smile faintly, not from amusement. “I don’t think your aunt or grandmother would approve of me.”

  “Not on the door, silly.” She rolls her eyes and waves her hands wildly in front of her face. She looks as if she’s swatting bugs from the air—something only she can see. “On the window. I’ll always let you in.”

  I close my eyes briefly. Does she have the slightest inkling how her words fill me with impossible thoughts? How she makes me want things I can never, ever have? Of course, she doesn’t. Bees cluster in my throat, causing it to ache terribly. I shove my hands in my pockets and focus on a poster on the wall. It’s a vintage movie poster from the mid-1980s and features a tease-haired goblin king, played by David Bowie, lording over his goblin subjects, surrounding the lovely girl trapped in his land. The film was called Labyrinth, and it was a good movie, despite the reviews it got at the time. I liked it. “Is it the movie you like, or Bowie?” I ask.

  “Both.” She looks at me in surprise. “You know who he is?”

  “Of course. I enjoy going to the movies. It’s a hobby, you could say.” I move closer to the poster to put space between us. “Does that surprise you?”

  “It does. You don’t seem like you do many social things.”

  “There is nothing remotely social about watching a movie. No one notices me when I’m in a theater, anyway.” I nod at the goblin king. “That was some hair, wasn’t it?”

  “And some pants,” she says wistfully. “But that’s not why—oh dear.” Her face goes scarlet.

  I can’t help but laugh, and she does too. There’s no denying Bowie’s pants from the movie were spectacularly revealing, especially for a kids’ movie.

  “But seriously,” she says, “I like Bowie because his music still smokes most of what’s out there now.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” I murmur.

  “…and he was odd, and talented, and dangerous, and he didn’t care what anyone thought of him,” she goes on, grinning. “And the movie…well, you don’t ever know if the whole thing was real or Sarah’s imagination, do you? I can relate to that.” She pats the space next to her. On her bed. “Come sit with me.”

  I shouldn’t, but my feet move before I’ve consented, and I’m seated next to her.

  The power this girl has over me is terrifying.

  She gives me a sideways look. “Can I show you something?”

  My general policy would be to say no. But this is Essie. “Sure.”

  She slides off the bed and goes to the desk. That’s when I notice the sketchbooks. A stack of black books, warped thick from paint and things glued inside. She chooses one and thumbs through it, brows furrowed. Somewhere in the middle, she picks it up and hands it to me. I take the book delicately in my hands and pull in a surprised breath. Goblins of her own design dance over the page. Hideous, misshapen creatures made beautiful by the hand of an artist.

  “You drew these?” I ask stupidly.

  She nods, going pink again. “They’re some of the things I see,” she says. “They’re not all scary,” she adds quickly.

  I turn the pages with fingertips, careful not to smudge anything. The next page explodes in a vibrant watercolor of a dragon. As I keep going, I notice most of her pieces are fantasy or sci-fi based, with very few renderings from life. Then I come to a page of a simple pencil drawing of a man’s face with a forked tongue and horns. There is a likeness here she’s worked to achieve, and a tightness to this drawing that pricks my senses. “Who’s this?” I ask.

  She makes a face. “My psychiatrist, Dr. Roberts. I don’t like him.”

  “Clearly. Is this how you see him?”

  “Some days.” She scratches her arm in an area that was already red and irritated looking. She opens her mouth, then closes it with a shrug.

  “What?” I ask her. “Say it.”

  “He sits too close to me,” she says. “And he wants me to live in Stanton House—it’s a home for people like me and my family—but I don’t want to. I really like living here, with my aunt.” Her words tumble out in a rush. She bites her lip and glances away, as if she’s ashamed to have an opinion about her circumstances. As if her life is a burden which must be thrust on someone.

  I place a hand over her compulsively scratching fingers. They still instantly, and I pull my hand away. I don’t want to get too used to touching her. “You should stay where you are happy,” I say. “I can’t imagine you are a burden to anyone.”

  She looks up at me, face solemn. “Thank you.”

  I take one last look at the drawing of Dr. Roberts’s menacing face and forked tongue, then give her the sketchbook. She returns it to its spot on the shelf. I wait until she’s sitting next to me to ask my next question, which seethes inside me. It takes great effort to not allow my voice to sound menacing. “When you said he sits too close to you, does he…touch you?” I growl out that last bit. If she says yes, I’ll sting the bastard to death.

  “No, he’s just icky. But he’s never…no. Nothing like that.”

  I relax my shoulders. “Why don’t you get a different doctor, if he makes you uncomfortable? Can’t your aunt find someone else?”

  She hugs her arms around her middle. “We’ve tried, but my father has joint custody of me and insists on Dr. Roberts. Says he’s the best around.”

  “And your mom?”

  One corner of her mouth dips down, and I know this is a question I shouldn’t have asked. “She was an aid worker. She died of fever in a South American jungle when I was four.”

  I can feel my jaw going tight. This girl has no one except for an overwhelmed aunt, a dependent grandmother, and a potentially dangerous doctor. Her father isn’t part of the day-to-day—just involved enough to make things difficult for her, and not enough to be even slightly useful. I can’t do anything about her father, wherever he is, but I can, and will, take a closer look at this Dr. Roberts with the forked tongue. “I’m sorry.”

  She tilts her head, gazes up at me with those pale, water-blue eyes. “Can we talk about something different?” she asks. “Tell me something about yourself. Something I don’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.” I gaze over at her, at the pink still staining her cheeks. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  Essie rolls her eyes. “Yes, I do, but whatever. I’ll start. I was accepted to art school. A good one, in Rhode Island.”

  My brows go up in surprise. “That’s wonderful.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” She smiles, but her eyes are sad. “I’m not going, of course, but it was cool to be accepted. My grades are good, you know. When Aunt Bel can’t teach me, she hires smart tutors.”

  “You’re a very talented artist,” I say. I don’t ask her why she’s not going for the same reason I shouldn’t have asked about her mother.

  “Thanks.” Her smile wavers. “It’s okay, you know? Even if I could go, we couldn’t afford it. And my dad wouldn’t help, but…” She shrugs. “But I’ll always have that acceptance letter.”

  I nod gravely but say nothing this time. There’s nothing I can add that would make her feel better, although I wish there was. A college curriculum has enough strain and anxiety to test the most mentally fortified.

  “Now you,” she prompts. “Tell me something about yourself that would surprise me.”

  “Surprise you?” I rub my chin and think. Most everything I could tell her about myself would surprise her. Terrify her. But there’s one thing she might find interesting. Maybe. “A long time ago, before I was what I am now, I was married,” I say, and am rewarded—or perhaps punished—with a l
ook of pure shock.

  “You were married?” Her easy gaze shifts to one of intense examination. “Shut up.”

  I smile at the abrupt shift in her scrutiny. “Okay.”

  “No, you’re telling this story. All of it.” She shifts closer. A dark flush works up her neck and into her cheeks. “Are you even old enough to be married? I can’t tell your age by your face, obviously, but you seem young. What are you—seventeen? Eighteen?”

  “I’m much older than that,” I tell her. “But you are accurate, too—eighteen is when I stopped aging physically. People got married earlier than they do today. They usually didn’t live as long, either.” She stares at me expectantly, but I hesitate. “Do you really want to hear about this?”

  “Yes! Spill.” Her gaze flickers over me, brows arched. “Who was she?”

  Her voice is tight with something when she asks this. I can’t define it, but something about it fills me with a strange elation. There’s an edge to her hesitancy, and I can’t deny my heady pleasure at the way she’s considering me right now—as someone who was desired, loved, once. Worthy of love, capable of loving in return.

  “She was a girl in my fishing village.” Sadness pinches my chest. Like my own, I’ve forgotten her name, as well as a clear mental image of her. The details have eroded to a flash of smile, long, black hair, the general knowledge of lush, Mediterranean beauty. I have long since finished mourning the loss of my human life, but sometimes I mourn the loss of my memories of it. Still, it’s hard to think about anyone other than Essie when I’m in the same space as her.

  “We grew up together as children. Best friends,” I say. “We always knew we would marry. We had only been together as man and wife for a few months when I…I was taken from my village.”

  Inwardly, I wince, because what comes next will be the story of how I became what I am. The story I have been dreading to tell, but also can’t wait to share with her. “I was not always like this—” I circle a hand over my face, with a touch of relief. “I was a fisherman, working with my father and brothers on our boats. The seas were abundant, then. It was work I loved—work of the soul.”