Hive

by A. J. Betts

  ‘It works?’

  ‘It does. Would that make you happier? If you could forget how Geoffrey died?’

  The idea comforted me. So did Llewellyn’s stroking hand. There, there. If I forgot about the morning in the way – my lie, the son, the flame and Geoffrey – then perhaps I would feel better. Happier.

  The growlights dimmed. I heard a faraway cheer and the sound of tools being dropped. The end of harvest and the start of leisure.

  Llewellyn waited for my answer.

  I whispered. ‘What if I’m the anomaly?’

  Her hand stroked my hair. ‘You’re not an anomaly, Hayley. You’re a good girl who sometimes thinks too much. The doctor will help you forget and it’ll be just what you need. Why don’t you sleep on it. Get back to me tomorrow?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good girl. Now, come on – let’s make you pretty for the dance.’

  I was the last gardener to enter the commons for dinner. I didn’t join Celia. I could see she’d already been flanked by other girls. A thick braid snaked down her back, with three camellias positioned more perfectly than I could have managed.

  I sat near the back, by the gardener aunts on stools.

  After the priest’s sermon and prayer, the children performed their play of Uncle Geoffrey’s life: his housing in the engine house; his two marriages; his training with the barograph and skill with the piano accordion; his special aptitude for carving chess pieces from bamboo; his peaceful death. In their play, the hunchbacked old man died as God intended.

  I looked to the councillors to see them applaud, along with the rest of the world. Even the son joined in, though he knew the truth as clearly as I did: Geoffrey’s death was neither peaceful nor timely. How could he pretend that it was? How could any of them?

  Was this all it took to change a truth? A play enacted by children, with a song and a happy ending? This story would be repeated and passed along until even those who knew otherwise would come to believe this better version. Maybe, one day, I’d be fooled as well.

  The doctor has medicinals to make me forget?

  I didn’t join in the dancing, though I should have. I stood by a wall, watching, finding familiar faces in the giant, whirling dance. There was Luka, the diarist from the netter house, serious and prudent with his steps. There was Edith and Gemma and other girls I’d grown up with, cackling as they spun. Younger children were showing off, adding extra stomps and turns.

  I sipped from my cup of wine. We were all given wine on the evening after a death to celebrate the life that was led and their triumphant collection by God. But that evening the wine dizzied me more than usual. Or was it the spinning of the girls and boys, men and women? I shifted my gaze to the musicians who played by the stairs. Near them, the oldest aunts and uncles clapped and tapped in time, as did the judge and the other members of the council. Everyone was there but the son. He was nowhere, but then, in a blink, he was right in front of me with arms outstretched.

  I murmured, ‘I don’t want to dance.’

  But his hands were offered in assistance, not invitation. He caught me. I hadn’t realised I’d been falling.

  ‘You’re not well,’ he said.

  I pushed against him, trying to stand. ‘I am.’

  It wasn’t adultery to be this close – there were no doors shut; the whole world was in the commons with us – but even so, it flustered me.

  ‘I’m well,’ I repeated forcefully.

  ‘Is it the wine?’ he said.

  ‘It’s the lies.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lies and the liars.’ I pulled myself free of his grasp. Confronted him, though I shouldn’t have. He was a member of the council. The son. The next in line to be the judge. ‘They sicken me.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You sicken me. You lied to the council about being in the way with me. Then you lied to me about the drip and the tool.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The thing you made fire with. The dragon.’

  ‘A dragon?’ He laughed as if I was a child. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘There is!’ I closed my eyes against the spinning. ‘Don’t try to trick me. Don’t say it was in my head. It wasn’t imagined, it was real and I know that because Geoffrey died.’ I opened my eyes and stared him down. ‘Was it you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That killed him?’

  The son’s eyes widened as he pulled back. There was shock on his face, and hurt. ‘It was the bee,’ he whispered, and I believed him. ‘I would never . . .’

  ‘But you lie. All the time. You keep secrets, like the dragon.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘And your headpains. You get them,’ I said, knowing it to be true; knowing he was just like me. ‘You hide them because you’re scared of the madness.’

  The son shook his head as he leaned in. ‘You’ve drunk too much. You’re speaking nonsense –’

  ‘No!’

  I pushed past him and ran, drunk with fear, heading through the way and into the garden house, past the bamboo and the farm and into the female sleeper, where I scrambled up the ladder and dived into my bunk.

  The son wouldn’t follow – that would look too much like adultery – but still I listened for footsteps, just in case. My heart raced. My body thrummed. The ceiling felt too close.

  I want the medicinal to make this all go away, I thought. I just want to be good. A good friend. A good girl. Normal.

  And I knew Llewellyn was right: I could never be happy until I forgot Geoffrey’s death and the unsolvable puzzles tormenting me.

  The gardeners were loud when they returned, slurring and silly. Out in the farm, an aunt told off a man for peeing on a lemon tree, though he laughed and said it was good for it. From further away, I heard energetic, off-key singing in the baths.

  When the women eventually trailed into the sleeper, I suspected Celia might not join me. It wasn’t unknown for girls to switch bunks if friendships had been tested in the day.

  So I was grateful when she climbed up and flopped in beside me. Perhaps Llewellyn had urged her to. She wriggled closer and sighed. Her slippery skin smelled less like strawberries and more like sweat and wine.

  ‘You didn’t dance, Hayley. Why didn’t you dance?’

  ‘I’ve been . . . unwell; it’s my cycle,’ I said, choosing the pain she understood most, hoping she would sympathise.

  ‘I thought you were jealous.’

  ‘I’m not jealous,’ I said honestly. ‘I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Do you approve of Noah?’

  Noah? He must have been the boy she’d chosen; the one with the shell.

  ‘I do,’ I said, recalling Llewellyn’s advice that Celia needed me now more than ever.

  She giggled. ‘So do I.’

  ‘I’ll help you get ready,’ I promised. ‘Bouquets, perfumes, hairstyles – you can be as demanding as you like. I only want the best for you.’

  ‘I know,’ she answered, squeezing my hands before rolling onto her side.

  The growlights dimmed and the sleeper became more grey than thistle. Sheets rustled, and a woman called out to Celia asking which foods she’d requested for her private banquet. In the dull light, Celia’s face was aglow with an effortless smile. I was thankful for it.

  ‘Figs,’ she began, and all the women and girls in their bunks seemed to lean in. ‘Honeycomb, for good fortune.’ She paused, allowing for the audible expressions of agreement and desire. ‘And cocoa.’

  Cocoa. The word was collectively moaned. Cocoa. It came from a seed I’d never seen but had heard of through stories. Women and aunts disagreed on many aspects of marriage, but were unanimous when it came to cocoa. The kitchen’s precious stock was a closely guarded treasure, reserved strictly for marriage requests.
r />   The last curfew chimed, the door locked with a click, and the sleeper faded to black. Despite the night-rule, women continued sighing fond memories of cocoa, and the aunts didn’t shush them. Recollections then extended to other details of marriage nights. Some spoke of the wide double bed by the fire, and the boy, more nervous than they’d anticipated. Some mentioned embarrassment. Others a clumsy nakedness. Marriage was fleeting, one said. Painful, remembered some. Boring. Lovely. Strange. Funny. The youngest girls listened in wonder.

  Celia’s laughter warmed me. How could I be jealous of that? She was my closest friend, the sharer of our private language, and the keeper of my feverfew secret. How many times had she watched over me as I slept in the forest? How many times had she brought me hoarded food and assured me I was safe from the madness? Celia deserved happiness in every form it could take: cocoa, a boy called Noah and, eventually, a baby. She deserved a friend who was wholly committed to her marriage over the next few days. I owed her this, and more.

  I was happy for Celia – it was true. And I was thankful I hadn’t burdened her with my troubles and she could go on delighting in the best of the world rather than worrying about drips and bee stings and lies.

  Perhaps, after I took the forgetting medicinals, I’d remember how to be delighted too.

  Chapter 9

  I woke with the certainty of what must be done.

  Forgetting.

  When I took Celia to the sickroom for her final, private lesson of marriage, I remained close by, waiting on the stairs for it to finish. That’s when I’d go in, I’d decided, to ask the doctor for the medicinals that could wipe away the memory of Geoffrey’s death. I hoped they’d erase the other memories too: the drip and the flame; the son’s trickery-lies. I wanted to be free of them all.

  From there on the platform, I had a bee’s-eye-view of the commons. I watched over the heads of seeders, enginers and gardeners as they came and went. Some held jars filled with water from the well. Others carried engines or tools. Three gardener boys tended to breathers.

  And then I saw Luka, the netter diarist. He was standing near the entrance to the commons–seeder way. Unlike the others, he wasn’t moving or working. He simply stood in one spot and looked up at the ceiling in a manner I knew, for I’d done so myself. He was looking at the ceiling as if something had fallen from it.

  I descended the stairs and crossed the commons to reach him. Sensing my approach, he stepped aside to let me pass.

  ‘Diarist,’ I said.

  His eyes flitted towards me, before returning to scan the ceiling.

  ‘Beekeeper. I don’t have time for you now.’

  Beside him, I looked up too. Had he seen a drip? A mended circle?

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s it to do with you?’

  ‘Everything.’

  But it wasn’t a drip he was seeking. He told me he was searching for an eye.

  ‘An eye?’

  ‘Can you see it?’

  I checked his upturned face. Was this another one of his silly riddles? Another competition in strangeness? If it was, he undertook it with great seriousness.

  ‘Look. There.’

  I followed the direction of his finger.

  ‘An eye. Is it?’

  ‘It’s a passion flower,’ I said, though the pattern did seem eye-like from that angle.

  A seeder came near so I pretended to tend a vine. Only when she’d gone did Luka confide in me. ‘The octopus escaped,’ he said softly.

  ‘The beast?’

  ‘Shh. They’d moved it to a smaller tank. I wanted to practise again, you know, to get it right.’ His voice trailed upwards like smoke. ‘But it must have been holding the underside of the lid because when I opened it –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you. It clambered out.’

  ‘Out?’

  ‘It ran.’

  ‘Ran?’

  ‘Shh! The netter elect will have a fit. She can’t know. Or any of the council. They’re smarter than you think . . . octopuses, I mean. They’re intelligent. They can change their colours –’

  ‘They can’t,’ I said, disbelieving.

  ‘Even their patterns. It’s called camouflage. It means they imitate other things, like walls, air vents, vines . . .’

  ‘Diarist –’

  ‘It’s Luka, and I’m telling the truth. I don’t care if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I believe you,’ I said, wanting to.

  I helped him look. Along the walls, I nudged aside leaves and lifted bunches of grapes. He did the same with careful movements, and I recognised then a shared sensibility. Luka was someone like me, intrigued by beasts and anomalies. Someone unafraid to look up.

  People walked past us from time to time, but in the quiet moments between, I felt the impulse to share my secrets with him. Here was a boy who believed there were more beasts than flowers in the garden. A boy, I knew, who wouldn’t tease me or doubt my saneness, no matter what I said.

  So I asked if he’d ever seen anything fall from a ceiling that shouldn’t.

  ‘Like what?’

  Luka stepped aside, peering from a different angle, looking for an eye that didn’t belong. I felt safe with him. I could say anything.

  ‘Like water. A drip.’

  ‘I’m not mad, beekeeper.’

  ‘It’s Hayley, and neither am I,’ I countered. ‘But would it be possible, do you think? I mean, there are stranger things, you said so yourself, like that story of the beast with the light –’

  ‘It wasn’t a story, it was real, just like the pumpkin beast was real, and the boy was real . . .’ Luka winced, then lowered his gaze. With a cough he said, ‘Are you helping me look, or not?’

  ‘The boy?’ I asked. He’d never mentioned a boy.

  He shook his head. ‘Forget it. It’s not here.’

  I persisted. ‘What boy?’

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Luka grumbled then sidled closer. ‘It was just a drawing.’

  ‘There was a drawing of a boy? So what?’

  As children, we all drew portraits of each other. It was normal. Maybe one got mixed up in the diaries.

  ‘So he’d been pulled up during a catch. In a net. Like meat.’ Luka grimaced in recollection. ‘It was a few years before I was housed here. The diarist didn’t want to talk about it, but after I found the drawing I bugged him until he did. It’s meant to be a secret.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I am.’ Luka bit his bottom lip and glanced around. ‘When they were pulling the boy up, he got stuck. A netter and the diarist had to descend and cut him free. By the time they got him out, the others had gone to the commons for prayers, so they were the only two who saw, and when they did, they dropped him back down. They weren’t even sure if he was real. He looked . . . weird.’

  ‘Weird?’

  Luka scowled at me for interrupting, but how could I not? A boy was pulled up in a net? What kind of sign from God must that be?

  Transfixed, I asked, ‘What made the boy weird?’

  ‘There was a . . . thing, on his back. Hooked over his shoulders. Something else was on his face like a mask. And he’d been coloured in wrong. Maybe the diarist didn’t have the right colour crayon. He was brown.’

  ‘A brown boy?’ I asked, trying to imagine it. ‘Are you sure?’

  Luka nodded. ‘He had a penis.’

  I screamed – not because of the word but because of the sudden split in flowers and the gush of the octopus dropping from the ceiling and landing with a slap at our feet.

  Luka shrieked wildly as the beast flipped itself and ran – ran! – remarkably, impossibly, over the threshold and out into the commons, towards space and light, where people were shouting and diving
from its path as its eight slim tentacles shimmied swiftly along the commons floor, a trail of darkness following it as it scrambled to the edge of the well, where four tentacles hooked the ledge before other arms – a man’s arms – reached out and gripped the thing.

  The son. He was fast.

  Instantly, a netter man was beside him and they worked in unison in a wordless language. The son planted his feet and pulled with strength, rolling the beast back and throwing it over, where the netter fell upon it with hard knees and fast hands, and all the while the beast fought with the arms that remained free.

  It was just as Luka had said. The beast pulsed with colours as it writhed and coiled, even after the son had stabbed it and tugged through its body with a kitchen knife. Blue blood spilled across the floor. The shock of it. The beauty.

  ‘The blood’s blue,’ I muttered in awe.

  ‘Of course it’s blue. Everyone knows that.’ Luka’s face was colourless.

  With a whimper he turned and pushed past me, hurrying towards the way of the netter house, bumping into netters who were running out to see the cause of commotion, hearing the story that was already being retold, already embellished. The magic of the beast! The speed of the son! The foolishness of the diarist! His scream!

  Two kitcheners were quick to clean the floor. The son simply walked up the stairs, wiping his hands back and front on his apron until they were clean.

  I watched those hands. I knew them. Those hands had silenced me in the unused way. They’d magicked fire. They’d washed the body of Geoffrey in readiness for God. Now those hands had killed an octopus.

  I wondered what else those hands might have done. I wondered what more they might do.

  When Celia stepped out of the sickroom she looked down on the commons with bewilderment, unable to make sense of the excited netters acting out the scene with the octopus.

  I waved. She saw me and sniffed, making me wonder what new thing I’d done to disappoint her. She walked down the steps slowly and I met her halfway across the commons. When I asked if she’d finished with the doctor she waved a hand, saying he’d been occupied with someone else. She hadn’t even got to see him.