Hive

by A. J. Betts

  Chapter 4

  I found Celia at the lattice climbers. Her eyes widened when she saw me.

  ‘Hayley, what have you done?’

  Done? I looked down at my bloodstained dress.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ I shrugged it off with a laugh. ‘Listen.’

  She muttered as her fingers fussed at the fabric. ‘You’re hurt.’

  ‘I’m well. Listen . . .’ I stopped to check if anyone was near. A boy was higher up with the broad beans. ‘Really, I’m wonderful.’

  I wanted to shout out loud that I wasn’t mad – that the drip had been real! – but instead I reached for her hand and started to sign.

  Son. Mending.

  But Celia squeezed my hands silent and stared at me.

  ‘Hayley, you’re bleeding.’ Her face was as stern as a teacher’s, and it made me laugh some more.

  ‘I just tripped and broke the collection box, that’s all. I fell on a piece. It’s only a scratch. It was an . . . accident.’

  ‘A what?’

  The boy was now watching us from the beans. He, too, had noticed the blood on my dress.

  ‘You’re making a scene,’ I whispered. ‘It’s just a little accident.’

  Abruptly, Celia tugged me over to the stacks of spinach. There, leaves concealed us. Her face was close, her breath strawberry-fresh.

  ‘Can you hear yourself?’ Her voice had a hard edge. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Accident is a real word. It means –’

  ‘Have you been imagining?’

  Her question stopped me short. ‘No. And I didn’t before. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

  ‘Are you imagining right now?’

  ‘Celia, I’m well. It was real.’ Why wasn’t she thrilled for me? ‘The son has a special tool that can make a flame jump up out of nothing. Like magic. It reminds me of the . . . what’s the name of that monster in the story? The one that breathes fire.’

  ‘A dragon?’

  ‘Yes – exactly! The son has a tiny dragon he keeps in his pocket, did you know? Do you think the judge has one too?’

  Gently, Celia swiped hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. Her own hair, lighter than mine, was freshly braided. Some other girl must have done it while I was in the engine house. I wondered if it had been Krystal.

  Calmly, she said, ‘Let me take you to the doctor.’

  It silenced me. Stunned me. Why didn’t she believe me?

  ‘The drip was real,’ I assured her. ‘It’s not there now because the son mended it, but it was real yesterday. It’s true. Not imagined.’

  Celia’s eyes lowered to my dress. ‘For the wound, I mean. Let the doctor tend your wound.’

  But the cut was shallow; the bleeding had stopped. I didn’t need a doctor and I certainly didn’t want to explain how I got the wound, particularly as I didn’t understand it myself. The flame. The mending. The son, unspeaking, in the dark.

  ‘I’m well,’ I promised Celia, squeezing her hands. ‘I’m really perfectly well. It isn’t madness. Believe me.’

  She chewed on her lip, her frown softening. ‘I do.’

  In my relief, I’d forgotten about Geoffrey and his accusation of adultery. I forgot him altogether, until dinner.

  He wasn’t there. The other aunts and uncles sat on stools around the perimeter of the commons, but Geoffrey wasn’t among them.

  All three hundred people of our world bowed their heads, but me. While the priest led the prayer – Our Father, who art in heaven – against the constant sound of the source water trickling into the well, I scanned the commons, searching for Geoffrey’s familiar face.

  I must have stiffened, for Celia took my hand in hers.

  Her fingertip made a small circle. Okay? it asked.

  No.

  I checked the commons again, this time looking for other absences. On the stairs that skirted up around the commons stood members of the council, but fewer than there should have been. The judge wasn’t among them. Nor was her son. The senior doctor was also missing, along with two elects – Llewellyn and the enginer.

  Celia’s finger tapped into my hand. Pain?

  No. Trouble.

  We had no sign for adultery. There’d never been a need for it.

  Twelve stairs led up to the platform of the nursery and sickroom. From there, ten more stairs led to the upper house. It was the house where the source began. The house where the judge and son lived; where the council assembled to make decisions for the world. The place where sins were discussed and their consequences decided upon.

  Adultery was the worst sin of all.

  I didn’t know what it meant; not really. Teacher Florence had shown us, as children, a picture of a tree with many branches and twigs, one for every person in the world who’d ever lived. She said it was the history of us, from the first days, long ago.

  ‘Do you know what happens when one twig marries the wrong kind of twig?’ she’d asked. We’d giggled. It sounded like a riddle. Twigs didn’t marry. But Teacher Florence remained serious.

  ‘Bad fruit?’ I guessed, making the other children snigger.

  Unexpectedly, Teacher Florence nodded. ‘In a manner, yes. Two wrong twigs will make a bad fruit baby.’

  Later, through the gaps in bamboo walls, we spied what we believed she’d meant by a bad fruit baby. After a full day of a woman’s screaming then crying in the sickroom, a baby had been delivered without God’s blessing. It wasn’t right: its melon head was funny-sad. It didn’t live for long.

  ‘That is why there are important rules for marriage,’ Teacher Florence explained.

  Adultery meant an unmarried male and a female together in a room, hidden from the rest of the world; two people between whom anything might happen, though I couldn’t think what. We were always careful not to find ourselves in such a position. I didn’t understand, then, why a girl would choose to be alone with a boy.

  But adultery was exactly what Geoffrey believed I’d been doing in the engine-service way with the son, which meant he was probably upstairs in the upper house, reporting what he’d seen – what he thought he’d seen – to those missing members of the council.

  I pictured him stuttering out his account of finding a girl and a boy – the son, no less – lying together in the dark. Unmarried, unlawful. Unthinkable.

  But I hadn’t meant to be alone with the son in the way. The judge would know this, wouldn’t she? God would know. He knew everything. He saw everything. He must realise I never meant for this to happen.

  I clutched my stomach and leaned in to Celia. ‘I don’t want to have a bad fruit baby.’

  Baffled, she made a face, then stood, as did the other gardeners around us. It was our turn to choose a dinner plate. She helped me up then whispered to me to be normal.

  ‘You’re speaking nonsense.’ She gripped my arm and tugged me forwards. ‘Don’t say another word.’

  ‘Hayley,’ came another voice. I swung around, looking past the other gardeners who were moving eagerly towards the tables. Only Celia looked at me strangely. I wondered if I’d imagined the voice, but then it came again. I looked up.

  Llewellyn was standing on the platform twelve stairs above. Even from that angle, I saw her disappointment.

  The motion of her hand was clear. Come, it said. You’re wanted in the upper house. The council is waiting.

  I went.

  I climbed the two sets of stairs, my legs stiff with fear, my thoughts frenzied.

  Should I tell them the truth: that I’d trespassed in the way not for adultery but to appease my fear of madness? If I did, I’d have to explain my headpains. Was this preferable to adultery? I wondered.

  The upper house door was open, but I hesitated on the threshold. Closest to God, this was a house of purity. I sensed His nearness. It wasn’t a p
lace for a gardener girl with secrets.

  My feet were filthy. The judge would notice. I hoped she wouldn’t think less of me.

  As a child, I’d entered this room in awe. It was here I’d learned my earliest lessons. We were taken into the centre of the upper house, where we stood and beheld the topmost beginnings of the source, witnessing with quiet reverence the water that came flowing down from God, tripping through the wide cylinder’s walls, its stream wending between rocks, coursing down through layers with stones, then pebbles, then filtering through sand and charcoal before trickling out into the well of the commons below where it would drip continuously, ready for our grateful drinking.

  How I’d marvelled at the upper source then. I remember tapping the outside of it with a fingertip, trying to alter the course of the bubbles. You come from God, I’d thought. If only you could speak, you’d tell me how He smells, and how His voice sounds when He sings.

  Now, I didn’t care about the source, only what lay beyond it at the perimeter wall. The meeting table was positioned there, the councillors too, gathered in judgment, though it was difficult to see them. The curve of the source played tricks with my eyes. Was that the hunch of an uncle’s back? Was that the son? Bodies seemed warped. Their voices, too.

  ‘Hayley, are you there?’ It sounded like the judge.

  I swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then come, please.’

  I walked around the source, my hands across my stomach, though I’d already scrubbed my dress clean of blood. My fingers fluttered there instinctively, as if a bad fruit might already be growing inside. Like that I crossed the floor, heading to the meeting table at which some of the council members were sitting on stools.

  I saw the judge first, then the enginer elect and the senior doctor. Llewellyn sat down to join them. The son was there too, his chin resting on his knuckles. His calmness surprised me, considering he was the one Geoffrey caught me with behind the way door. He seemed too relaxed for a boy accused of a terrible sin.

  The mood was wretched. Desperate to break the silence, I said, ‘It was an axey . . .’ Nerves made me stumble. What was that word again? ‘An axe . . .’

  The judge, listening, tilted her head. The enginer elect leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms. This distracted me. Flustered me.

  ‘An axeman,’ I blurted, then paused. Was that right? Or was that the name of the man in the story who’d saved Little Red from the monster?

  I looked to the son for guidance but he gave none. His expression was as bare as the ceiling of that unused way. It was as if he knew nothing; as if he hadn’t even been there.

  It was the judge who spoke, not unkindly. ‘Hayley, you’re not a child, and this isn’t a time for stories.’ I wished I could wither like a vine. ‘We want to hear about the rogue.’

  ‘The rogue?’

  ‘The rogue bee in the engine house this morning.’

  It confused me. The judge was responsible for all the rules and routines of the world. Why should she care about a bee?

  I blinked, searching her face for an explanation, then looked again to the son. Strangely, he seemed almost bored, with his gaze elsewhere and his fingers mindlessly tapping at his cheekbones. It annoyed me that he could be so indifferent when we were both under suspicion of adultery. His careless tap, tap, tapping was at first an insult to me – an arrogance afforded by his position as the son – but the longer I watched, the more I wondered if it was less a sign of boredom and more a method for speaking to me. The tapping seemed too deliberate; too repetitive. Was he using a kind of hand language, as Celia and I did?

  ‘Hayley,’ Llewellyn said patiently, though there was worry in her voice, and her eyes. ‘You need to tell us about the bee. It went rogue, didn’t it? To the engine house?’

  I nodded. Had the son told them this? Or Geoffrey?

  ‘We need to know what type it was,’ Llewellyn continued. ‘Was it a blue-banded or a honeybee?’

  I forced myself to concentrate. What was it? I recalled the bee’s tickle at my neck. How the thing had zigzagged up and up to the ceiling, past the flame in the son’s hand. I could see, in my periphery, that same hand still tapping at his cheek. The rhythm mesmerised me. I needed to know what it meant.

  ‘Hayley?’

  ‘It was a banded,’ I said numbly, looking back to the judge. It hadn’t been a rogue, though. I’d deliberately trapped it inside the collection box. The son knew this; he knew I was lying. What were his fingers trying to say?

  ‘And you found it in the engine-service way?’

  ‘Yes. It probably got through the holes where the vents used to be,’ I said in a rush. ‘I heard the buzz so I went in. I know it’s not safe in there, but it’s my job. Bees aren’t allowed anywhere near the engines.’ I was talking recklessly, reminding them of what they already knew.

  ‘You were alone in that way?’

  Imperceptibly, it seemed, the son’s chin dipped a little. A nod?

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I mean, I was alone with the rogue. I shouldn’t have gone in, but the bee was inside and it was agitated –’

  ‘Then Geoffrey came in. Is this correct?’

  No, I thought. Before Geoffrey, there’d been the son. He’d been in the dark, breathing beside me. I’d tried to run but he’d held me down and told me to be quiet.

  I understood then what the son was communicating with his tapping fingers. Be quiet, Hayley. Be quiet and still. This is our secret.

  The council didn’t know we’d been in the way together. They didn’t know about our supposed adultery.

  Nor did they know of the reason I would go there. The reason both of us would go there.

  For even though the son had mended the vent-holes, he’d stayed behind, lingering in the dark as I often did. Was it possible that he’d been standing in the same spot as me, for the same reason as me? For the quiet relief from headpains?

  I felt the secret stretch between us, shared and unspoken. The son had headpains too. That serious furrow of his brow wasn’t just from disdain; the occasional squint wasn’t one of judgment. I recognised his pain, then. I understood his fear. For he was just like me.

  ‘Hayley?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Geoffrey came in?’

  ‘Yes. Geoffrey came in. There was just Geoffrey and me, and the rogue. Is that a sin?’

  The judge smiled, and it comforted me a little. ‘No, Hayley. Geoffrey’s an uncle.’ She leaned forwards. ‘So tell us what happened then.’

  ‘Then I went back to the garden.’

  ‘Before you left the way, Hayley. What happened with the bee?’

  ‘Geoffrey caught it,’ I said.

  ‘Caught it, did he?’ For the first time, it was the enginer elect who spoke. His tone was grating. ‘You’re trying to tell us that old Geoffrey caught a bee?’ I thought he was mocking Geoffrey, until I realised he mocked me.

  ‘It surprised me too,’ I admitted. ‘Geoffrey’s quicker than he looks. Quicker than me.’ I wanted the son to back me up – to praise once again the old man’s reflexes – but his gaze remained unfixed. Uninvolved.

  The enginer made a clicking noise with his tongue. With condescension he said, ‘An uncle caught a bee. Well, wonders never cease.’

  ‘Not caught, so much,’ I said, ‘but . . .’ I slapped the air with my hand as the old man had done. ‘He squashed it against the wall.’

  The enginer scoffed. The judge, ignoring him, persevered.

  ‘Hayley, what we need to know is this: had the rogue been behaving unusually at all?’

  ‘Unusually?’

  ‘Did Geoffrey provoke it? Did he tease it, at all?’

  ‘Why would he –’

  ‘You little liar.’ The enginer’s loathing was staggering. ‘The bee attacked.’

  Attacked?

  �
�No!’

  Attacked wasn’t a word for bees, especially not the blue-bandeds, who were passive and solitary.

  ‘Admit it!’ The enginer elect jabbed a finger at me, then turned his face to the judge. ‘This girl is clearly lying. The bee chased Geoffrey. The bee attacked Geoffrey then stung him.’

  ‘The bee was just . . . just trying to get out,’ I stammered. ‘That’s all. It was trapped. Geoffrey squashed it, that’s all. Ask him.’

  In disgust, the enginer elect turned away. It was the judge who sighed then spoke.

  ‘Hayley, Geoffrey’s dead.’

  Chapter 5

  I followed the others to the sickroom.

  An ill-fitting name: sickroom. Geoffrey wasn’t sick. I sensed his death before I entered.

  Geoffrey was dead. Because of a bee.

  Because of me.

  It made no sense. I’d been stung plenty of times, especially while training as the junior. Bee stings hurt but the swelling went away. A sting never killed a person. Not as far as I knew.

  The councillors crowded the sickbed but I hung back, standing by the bamboo wall separating the nursery from the sickroom. I could hear the racket of children returning from dinner on the other side. Some were arguing over whose turn it was on the rocking horse. Others resumed their games of snakes-and-ladders, dice rattling across the floor.

  How I wished I could be just a child in the nursery and not a girl burdened with an old man’s death.

  Along the sickroom wall, potted medicinals hung on hooks. My elbow bumped one, causing it to spin on its rope. Though it smelled like sage, I knew it wouldn’t be. Plants grown in the sickroom were purely for healing, not eating. As children, we’d been told the long name for each medicinal. We’d learned that some were for cramps, some for sleeping, some for tired blood or sore eyes or crying babies. Some, like feverfew, were for headpains. Medicinals could be dangerous, we were told, which was why they were only grown in the sickroom, under the watchful eyes of doctors. But of the hundreds of medicinals, why wasn’t there one to heal a bee sting?

  I stared at the small rounded leaves of the sage-like plant. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the body.