Hive

by A. J. Betts

  ‘My name’s Luka.’

  ‘Luka,’ I repeated, offering a smile. ‘So I was hoping –’

  ‘I don’t want to marry you.’

  He was serious! It caught me off guard. I barely managed to stifle my laugh.

  ‘I don’t want to marry you either, I promise. I just want to know about the light on the beast’s head. Was it anything like a flame that could be removed?’

  ‘Let it go, beekeeper,’ he said bluntly. ‘Forget I ever mentioned it.’

  ‘Why?’

  He stomped a foot quietly then turned as he whispered, ‘Because I shouldn’t have told you. I shouldn’t have even seen it.’ He nodded briefly at the stack of diaries. ‘It wasn’t from one of these, but a really old one, in the upper house. I just wanted to practise my drawing, all right? There aren’t many beasts anymore. The senior diarist said I could borrow an old diary if I promised to stop pestering him. That’s the word he used. He called me . . . insatiable. But how else am I supposed to improve? I found the picture of that beast, and others, but I wasn’t supposed to so stop bothering me about it.’

  Luka glowered at the drawing he’d made before promptly tearing it in two.

  ‘Hey!’ I exclaimed. ‘That was good!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m only the junior: my job’s the dead ones. The senior’s heaps better.’ He glanced over and I followed his gaze.

  Crayon in hand, the senior diarist was sitting high up on a ledge of the examining tank, inside which the octopus had been lowered. Either side of him, aunts and uncles were peering over the edge. Some of the children sat high on netters’ shoulders, prattling wildly. An aunt was using the long-handled sickle to prod at the creature within. It may have been shrinking, or creeping, or fighting. From the wall where I stood I couldn’t see it, but I wanted to. I wanted to know how it fought with eight arms and how it moved without legs. I wanted to observe the emotions on its soft and changeable face.

  I understood why the diarist was charmed by it. ‘I think it’s my favourite beast, too,’ I said.

  The diarist eyed me. ‘I won’t marry you,’ he reminded me.

  I clapped a hand to my mouth, remembering. Celia. She was the reason I was here at all and I’d forgotten her completely. I was supposed to be helping her choose a boy. Panicked, I scanned what I could see of the netter house, checking the ladders at tanks and the perimeter walls.

  It was the camellia I glimpsed first, out of place in this house of metal and rope and salt-sticky floors. She was among a group of netter girls and boys, all sitting on upturned spools. Even from a distance it was easy to see the effect she had on the boys. One of them ran quick fingers through his salt-crusted hair. Others smiled and leaned in, their talismans dangling from the bands around their necks. Encircling their wrists were bands of knotted rope; a knot for every story.

  The boys in this house were not boisterous like the ones in our garden. These were calmer, more assured, confident of their muscular bodies – strong arms and shoulders – and what they were capable of.

  Celia, too, appeared confident and poised beside them. How delighted she was in their conversation. I realised she didn’t need my help to speak to the boys at all. Celia, it seemed, knew exactly what to do.

  She must have sensed me watching for she turned towards me. I gave her a wave, but it wasn’t returned. She held my gaze for a moment then returned her attention to the boys.

  ‘Do you think she’s mad at me?’ I said to the diarist, hoping he’d convince me otherwise.

  But he was already marching back to the examining tank, carrying a fresh piece of paper.

  Chapter 8

  In the garden, other girls bustled around Celia.

  ‘There was a beast,’ she told the girls breathily.

  ‘An octopus,’ I added, though Celia ignored the correction, and me. I hadn’t been the friend she wanted me to be.

  ‘Aunts say the beast is an excellent sign,’ she continued.

  But the girls didn’t care about the beast, only for the details of Celia’s chosen boy. They were voracious with their questions. What did he say? How did he smell? What were his best features? Celia answered them all, and more, describing his hair, his talisman, his muscles and hands, his smile. Such things seemed trivial to me then.

  The girls carried on – chinwagging, the aunts would have called it – but their chatter sounded jarring to me and their talk of perfume was sickeningly sweet. Everything bothered me, then. My mind felt restless. I was desperate for space. Air. Solitude.

  ‘Hayley!’ Celia called after me. ‘Where are you going?’

  I turned to face her. ‘To the kitchen.’

  If Celia noticed the worry in my eyes, she didn’t say so. Marriage was what preoccupied her now: boys and banquets and the promise of a baby. My concerns, it seemed, were minor.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I need fire to smoke the hive.’

  But it wasn’t the day for combing and she knew it.

  ‘It’s for you,’ I added. ‘You’re allowed fresh honeycomb on your marriage nights, remember? The aunts say it brings good fortune.’

  Helen agreed. ‘It is. You should have it, Celia. You can have anything you want.’

  ‘Then I will.’

  Krystal moved behind Celia and began loosely fashioning her hair. The girls’ conversation returned to perfume – freesia and honeysuckle – and I was glad they were there to do the things I couldn’t.

  From the wall of tools I removed the smoker, then went to the forest where I peeled away two strips of paperbark. I wasn’t planning on using them – I had no intention of smoking the hive – but I needed a reason to go to the kitchen, where the ovenfire was tended. I needed to know how a flame could be sparked and held in a hand.

  It was only a small lie. God wouldn’t bother with such a trespass, I figured. God understood when to turn a blind eye.

  As always, the kitchen house felt like a sanctuary to me. I was at ease there among the comforting smells and the steady rhythms of chopping, scraping, stoking. Whenever I could, I would take time to admire the shiny, pretty tools that hung above the sinks. I especially liked the knives and ladles, and the copper pots which had boiled every vegetable the gardeners had ever grown. Along the benches were laid out other ancient utensils which had, since the first days, pounded pastes, pressed oils from almonds and made powder from chicory root. I marvelled at each tool, and the boys and girls, women and men who were gifted at working them.

  The kitchen held another kind of charm for me, for it was the house of the woman who had birthed me. Each time I visited I would wonder which one she was. Was it her, boiling fruits into syrups? The one fermenting kimchi or drying leaves for tea? Was it her, emptying gourds and shaping them for bowls? Or was she one of the women whose feet were constantly stained purple with wine? I wondered if I would recognise her at all. Or if she’d recognise me.

  Though the teachers had shown us the drawing of the family tree, they’d never told us which twigs we were, or the names of the women who’d birthed us. It wasn’t relevant, they said, especially when there were so many teachers and mothers to tend to us properly. ‘We’re all God’s children,’ Teacher Ava had answered when I’d asked.

  ‘Except the son,’ Edith had corrected. ‘He’s the child of the judge.’

  ‘Yes, which means he’s even closer to God than the rest of us.’

  After I’d been housed as a gardener, it was easy to do the sum: a gardener baby was made from the marriage of a seeder man and a kitchener woman. This narrowed things down, but not enough. There were twelve women in the kitchen who could be the right age. It was partly out of curiosity that I looked for her, but mostly because I wanted to see if she was like me: if she also suffered headpains that were too harsh, too frequent to be normal.

  ‘What if it was her?’ I asked Celia once, aft
er waking from a feverfew sleep. ‘What if it was the mad woman we’d teased through the nursery walls?’ I recalled her strange cries before she’d died.

  Celia dismissed the idea. ‘She looked nothing like you, remember? The woman who birthed you is well and beautiful and happy. I bet she’s best friends with the woman who birthed me. Both of them will be chattering right now as they flavour the stew for our dinner tonight.’

  Still, I looked for her, hoping Celia was right: that she was happy, flavouring stew, boiling leaves or chopping sweet potatoes.

  Whichever job the woman had, I hoped she wasn’t one of the four ovenkeepers. Those women were never happy. Their faces were always hot, their tempers hotter as they took their turns at the entrance to the oven, monitoring the flames for purposes of cooking and warmth, scrutinising everything that went in and came out. The entrance was too narrow for them to lean into, but perfect for the pots and pans that they pushed in with sticks. The women wore their burn-scars with a fierce kind of pride.

  It was Patty on duty then, and she scowled at me, hands on hips. Even though she knew me – I came to smoke paperbark every tenth day – she never ceased to assail me with a lecture, as if I were too stupid to remember the dangers of fire. As if anyone could forget the lesson of doors melting shut and the whole service house burning.

  I remembered. But what I needed, that day, was a different kind of lesson in fire.

  Patty regarded me and the items I carried: smoker in one hand, paperbark strands in the other.

  ‘You’re three days early,’ she grouched.

  ‘We need fresh honeycomb for the marriage,’ I explained as I passed her the paperbark.

  Patty snatched it from me, hooked the strands onto the end of a poker, then turned to feed the poker through the oven entrance. With her body blocking my view, I peered over her shoulder, as I always did, to watch the bark cower at the heat. The low flames were mesmerising.

  Patty was exacting – she knew precisely how close to hold the paperbark and how long to wait for the flames to take hold. She knew everything about the nature of fire. She also knew who took it, and when.

  ‘Patty?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Has anyone else come for fire recently? I mean, anyone other than usual?’

  Apart from myself, only the two priests and five of the aunts were permitted to take fire from the oven. The priests needed it for ceremonial candles, while the aunts used it for lighting kettles in the houses for tea.

  Did you give fire to the son, I wanted to ask, so that he can magic it, again and again, when he chooses to?

  With her back to me, Patty’s response was muffled. It sounded something like, ‘Don’t be daft.’

  I pushed on. ‘Have you ever known fire to be . . . kept?’

  She grunted. ‘Kept?’

  ‘Like how I trap a bee in the collection box and keep it inside. Can a flame do that? Could it stay alive?’

  Patty drew back the poker. With tongs, she flicked the lit bark into my smoker and clapped on the lid. Inside, the flame would already be snuffing out, causing the bark to smoulder and smoke, which I’d release in thick puffs to calm the bees.

  Patty checked inside to ensure the fire was out – not even beekeepers were trusted with flames – then held onto the smoker as she scrutinised me. Sweat dribbled down her cheek and dripped from her chin. ‘Are you testing me, girl?’

  ‘Testing? No.’

  ‘Are you being sensible?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Fire’s not a plaything.’

  ‘I was just thinking of a story, that’s all, the one with the dragon that breathes fire. You know it?’

  ‘I don’t do stories.’

  ‘It’s for Celia, you see. I want to draw a story for her, as a gift, for her marriage,’ I continued, feeling my own sweat bead and slide. ‘So I need to know how a person – in a story – would magic fire. Could they keep it in a tool and make it come to life like this?’ I twisted my fingers as the son had done. ‘Or would that be too silly even for a story?’

  Patty blinked. ‘That would be . . . imbecilic.’

  With the smoker in her grip, her eyes pricked me – not with suspicion of madness, but with distaste for tomfoolery.

  I tried to smile as Celia did when she wished to please.

  ‘You’re right. Of course. It would be far too silly.’

  I took the smoker from her hand, stoppered the funnel, and fled the kitchen house before she could interrogate me further.

  I carried the warm smoker to the garden. It wasn’t the hive that I aimed for, though. It was the forest.

  I slid between bamboo and weaved a path through brambling bushes, heading for the blackwood tree. There I slumped between its lumpy roots, sinking into soil and solitude. Except for the low hum of bees, I was alone.

  I shouldn’t have been there. The forest was only for the yellow of morning harvest, when boys and girls came to collect whichever fruits had fallen in the night. In the green of afternoon, I should’ve been with the others in the farm – harvesting, mucking in, contributing – but their chatter was too shrill, and none of them spoke about anything that mattered. For the first time, I wondered if I truly belonged in the garden, or if I’d been housed incorrectly. Should I be somewhere else? And if so, where? The kitchen house? The seeders?

  I inhaled the sweet smoke of paperbark, hoping it would calm me as it calmed the bees. If only I could fall asleep while someone took apart my world, cleaned it up and put it back together in a neater version than before.

  I bumped the back of my head against the trunk. ‘Focus,’ I scolded myself. I’d come here to work on the puzzles in my mind. ‘Think.’ I’d always been good at problems, so the teachers had told me. Think on it, Hayley, you’re a clever girl.

  The fire that burned in the kitchen oven had been given by God in the first days and had burned constantly ever since. That fire was the only one in the world, and yet the son’s tool defied this. His tool was unknown to the ovenkeepers. It had been a mystery even to Geoffrey, and he’d been one of the oldest uncles.

  So if the son’s flame hadn’t come from the oven, or from the dangling, flickering light of a beast, then where?

  From God Himself? A special gift handed to the judge and her offspring?

  There was no other explanation.

  ‘Hayley?’

  Startled, I looked up to see Llewellyn, the gardener elect, standing by the wattle tree.

  ‘Are you . . . unwell?’ she asked, and I told her no, too quickly. I pushed myself to standing. My vision spun with the effort.

  ‘You’re here alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were speaking,’ she said.

  ‘To myself,’ I explained, and instantly regretted it, for this was what mad people did. ‘What did you hear?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why did you follow me?’

  ‘Follow you? Hayley, I came because of the smoke.’ Llewellyn looked down at the smouldering smoker by my feet. ‘I was beekeeper for twelve years, remember? Why are you burning paperbark today?’

  ‘Celia wants honeycomb,’ I said, though it didn’t account for me being in the forest. ‘I know I shouldn’t be here . . .’

  ‘There’s no need to explain, Hayley. I understand.’

  ‘You do?’

  She smiled. ‘I was young once, you know? I felt just like you do. It’s completely normal.’ Llewellyn leaned against the bulk of the blackwood. ‘But we can’t stop the seasons, Hayley. Change is as important for us as it is for the garden. Celia’s about to become a woman, and one day soon you will too. I know it feels like you don’t matter to her, and perhaps she’s being . . . self-absorbed, but she’s nervous, and it’s normal, and the truth is she needs you now more than ever. You will alway
s need each other, long after the novelty of boys and babies has worn off. You’ll see. When you’re both women, back here in the garden, you’ll be the best of friends again. Better than ever.’

  She reached for me in the manner mothers used to. There, there, they’d say, stroking my hair when I’d had a bad dream or a fight with another child. There, there; everything’s going to be okay.

  But I flinched at her touch. Llewellyn’s sympathy was misplaced.

  ‘I’m not jealous of Celia’s marriage,’ I told her, feeling the frustration simmer within me. ‘There are bigger things –’ I caught myself. No, not bigger. Smaller. A drip. A flame. A lie.

  Llewellyn frowned, confused. ‘What could be bigger than marriage?’

  I wondered: could I really ask her? Perhaps she might know, as a member of the council, the meaning of inexplicable drips and magical flames.

  ‘The day that Geoffrey died,’ I began tentatively, observing her expression, ‘the things that took place in the way . . . they were confusing.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Hayley. We already told you that. Geoffrey was an anomaly.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘It means God works in mysterious ways.’

  ‘But it was my rogue –’

  ‘He must have had a . . . sensitivity in his blood to make him react badly to a sting. You couldn’t have known that.’

  ‘Everyone thinks Geoffrey died of old age, but it’s a lie.’

  ‘It’s our responsibility. Oh, Hayley, you can’t keep feeling guilty about this.’ She held me and I let her. ‘There, there. You’re a good girl, but you’re too young for such things. We’ve asked too much of you. If Geoffrey’s death still worries you . . .’

  ‘It does.’ I gulped. That and more.

  ‘Then the doctor can help. He has a medicinal that makes you forget.’

  It wasn’t the response I was expecting. I looked up at her. ‘Forget?’

  ‘You forget the things that worry you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The medicinal takes away your troubles but leaves everything else.’