Hive

by A. J. Betts

  ‘Geoffrey.’

  The cloth stopped.

  ‘What did you say?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Geoffrey.’

  My left eye was prised open into light and the face of a mother. Above her, planters with buttercups hung from hooks. A honeybee hovered. Hello, I thought. What are you doing in here?

  My eye closed and the mother spoke. ‘You must be feeling better.’

  ‘Geoffrey.’ I said. What happened to Geoffrey?

  ‘Do you mean Geoffrey, the enginer uncle? The one who died last month of old age?’

  ‘Bee.’ Spit bubbled on my lips. Not old age. It was a bee. A blue-banded.

  The woman sounded worried. ‘Let me get the doctor.’

  My fingers found my stomach wound and pressed it. It was real. The memory was real. It had all been real – the son, the bee, Geoffrey. The drip.

  ‘Real!’ I cried. The son! I remembered. It was the son!

  Footsteps. A bumping of planters. A rustle.

  Leaves in my mouth, my head on a pillow.

  Sinking again into darkness.

  A visitor. A waxy scent of crayon.

  ‘Is this . . . my fault?’

  A boy was standing close to me. This pleased me. I wanted to see him but my eyelids were too heavy to lift.

  ‘What makes you ask that?’ The doctor.

  The boy sounded young, his voice funny-sweet. ‘She went mad the night we were supposed to marry. Was it fear? I was frightened too.’

  No, I thought, it wasn’t fear. What was it, though? What was the emotion that I’d last felt?

  ‘That the girl’s madness should manifest on the night of her marriage was God’s doing. Hayley had broken many rules to cover her headpains. She’d have known very well that marriage wasn’t possible for someone like her. Madness simply cannot be passed on.’

  Madness? The word made me giggle inside. Mad people said funny things. They behaved in funny ways.

  ‘Can Hayley and I still be friends? When she’s well?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  A boy wanted to be my friend? I smiled.

  I wished I knew his name.

  The nights were best. The air bloomed.

  In moist soil, new medicinal seeds clicked open, unlocking their secrets. Roots creaked and moaned as they pushed against their pots. Tendrils scratched at walls and each other. Petals unravelled, burgeoning into cool still air. Stems stretched up as leaves prickled outwards. Sickroom walls strained with the pushing.

  Some nights, though, would offer another smell, out of place. It was smoother than the soil, which was soft and fetid-sweet. It was like brine, but not. Known, but not. Not plant, not meat, not monster, not God.

  Unnameable.

  The girl’s name I knew. It came to me as a strawberry taste.

  Celia.

  When she whispered close to my face, I sampled the sweetness of her breath.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hayley. I’m so, so sorry.’

  A sniff. Why was she crying?

  Don’t cry, Celia.

  I felt a drip on my shoulder. Then another. It tapped me like a long-ago memory.

  ‘I wasn’t permitted to marry and then suddenly it was you. You, Hayley! With all your headpains and things you imagined . . . You weren’t even supposed to get married.’

  My hand was turned, held in hers. How soft she was. How kind.

  ‘I was upset, of course, but I didn’t mean this. I only told Krystal about your hidden feverfew. She must have told the judge. I didn’t know she’d do that, Hayley. I didn’t mean for this . . . I’m so sorry, Hayley. You know that, don’t you? I’m so, so sorry.’

  My finger made a circle in her palm. Round and round the mulberry bush like a teddy bear. I let it circle around and around. It felt like the right thing to do.

  Celia’s voice stopped. Her hand stilled. Listening.

  My finger kept making the circle. No, it wasn’t a song about a mulberry bush, but a word. Okay, it was saying, in an almost-forgotten language.

  A whisper. ‘Hayley? Can you hear me in there?’

  Yes. My fingers tapped the word that my mouth couldn’t form.

  Strawberry breath so close. Celia, my best friend.

  ‘Hayley. Are you awake in there?’

  Yes. Help.

  I don’t know what made me think of stars. Swirls at a boy’s feet. Blue in his eyes. I’m sorry, he’d said. Why did everyone keep saying they were sorry? Why was everyone so sad?

  I pushed her hand open to make space to sign in. What could I tell this girl named Celia? What was important to say?

  Listen, I began with a sign. I felt I should tell her about stars and the son, though I couldn’t remember why.

  Not mad, my finger told her. Drip.

  ‘Celia!’ A man’s grumpy voice.

  Her hand twisted but remained with mine. I heard apologies. Hers.

  ‘I’ve been bleeding heavily,’ she said, ‘and it’s too early for my monthly. It hurts – here.’

  ‘Go to the baths and I’ll bring you ginseng. As you can see, it’s too soon for visitors.’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’

  Help, I signed.

  How?

  Help.

  I’m sorry.

  Then her hand slipped away.

  Footsteps. The doctor’s. Moving from planter to planter. A snip of scissors. A tocking of water, drips falling to the floor. Not alarming; comforting.

  ‘Don’t worry, Hayley.’ The doctor’s musty breath. ‘You’ll be better soon.’

  Thirst woke me.

  It was night. I smelled it.

  I twisted to my side and pushed myself to sitting. My head dizzied. How long had I been lying down?

  I eased my legs across so they hung from the edge of the bunk. The cold floor made my feet tingle. It felt good to sit. To stretch.

  My eyelids were difficult to open. When they did, I could see only the same darkness as I had with my eyes closed. I looked slowly, my vision adjusting gradually until shapes began to appear. I could just make out the outlines of things, as if they were drawings. Edges of planters. Contours of leaves. The corners of cupboards that belonged in the sickroom.

  Looking down, I found myself: thighs, knees, feet. How small my feet seemed beside the other two.

  My thoughts were slow, my mouth even slower to form a sound that got muted anyway as a hand pressed softly at my lips.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the voice, but I wasn’t. I was wondering how I might know that voice, that warm hand, and the smell of a body too close. A familiar boy I wasn’t afraid of.

  When his hand peeled away, one finger remained at rest on my lips.

  ‘Don’t run,’ he breathed, though I didn’t want to. Why would I run? ‘Don’t cry out.’

  I wanted to do as I was told, so when the boy told me to drink I gulped the water gratefully, one jar after another. The boy watched me in the almost-dark, his eyes glistening.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and I beamed. I knew this.

  ‘I’m a good girl.’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘You are. And who am I?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Who am I? What’s my name?’

  What a poor boy, I thought. His memory must be broken. Everyone should at least know their own name.

  ‘You’re forgetful,’ I said, but he didn’t like being teased for he lifted me up, one hand sliding under my knees, the other behind my back.

  Like that, I was carried through quiet doorways and rooms. Descending the steps, it seemed like I floated.

  I was envious of this boy’s freedom to walk in the night. I pitied him, too, a boy without a name. My arms linked around his neck. I was glad to have made a friend.

  ‘Who am I?’ he asked again as
he carried me.

  ‘You should ask the doctors to treat you,’ I suggested. ‘They can make you well. It doesn’t hurt a bit.’

  ‘Who am I?’

  I soon grew weary of the riddle and the insistent manner in which he asked it. I decided to get down – I was a big girl and could walk for myself – but he held me tight as he took me across a cold bare room then through a way and into a house where engines hummed pleasantly as we passed them. He carried me to another door, which he slid open with one hand. Even then he didn’t let me go.

  ‘Who am I?’ he repeated, after he’d stepped through and pulled the door closed behind us.

  ‘Where is this?’ I asked. It was small, like a way, but entirely dark and its air tasted thin and old. For some reason, it made me think of ghosts. I didn’t like ghosts, I remembered, so I squirmed to get free. My kicking toppled boxes as he carried me further into the darkness.

  There he set me down, placing me on a box where he held me still for a moment before his arms slid away.

  ‘Who am I?’

  ‘You’re mean.’

  In the dark, he rummaged. I heard a thud. Then a swear word.

  ‘For God’s sake, who am I?’

  The boy was surely mad. ‘How should I know?’

  Then there was the shock of a flare that blinded. I flinched and turned, my eyes scrunching tight. Even then, behind my eyelids, the boy’s silhouette remained, for in that vivid instant I’d seen him.

  ‘Hayley,’ he said. How did he know my name? ‘You can open your eyes now. It’s safe. I promise.’

  Slowly, I did. An orange flame was hovering in the darkness. Fire? There was nothing else but the flame and a shimmering crown around it that shone golden light on the boy’s hands, chin, mouth.

  ‘Think of it like a puzzle, Hayley. Who am I?’

  ‘I’m good at puzzles,’ I said. Someone must have told me that once.

  ‘I know you are, so concentrate. Who am I?’

  Who was he? He was someone who walked in the night and magicked fire.

  ‘You’re God.’

  A sigh. ‘No. Try again.’

  I stared at the boy, looking for clues. He was tall with strong arms. His eyes were kindly but solemn, with lines stitching his brow. His nose came to a point at the end. His hands were familiar, with broad knuckles and sinewy fingers.

  It wasn’t this that triggered my memory, though. It was something else. It was the sound that came from behind him.

  A single drip.

  Water?

  Intrigued, I stood. Looked up.

  A second drip fattened on the ceiling and when it fell, I saw it. How strange, I thought. Why should water drip from the ceiling of a way? Water only came from God, from the source. Everybody knew that.

  I shouldered past the boy with the flame, moving closer to where a third teardrop was forming. I lifted my hand to catch it, then put it to my mouth. It tasted of salted memory. Bitterness pricked my tongue and flooded my senses.

  Awakened, I was pulled right back: back before the sickroom, before butchery and falling. Back to a drip. A drip that shouldn’t have been there. A drip that had started everything.

  With my old eyes, I saw him, and I knew. ‘You’re the son.’

  Relieved, he smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m being treated for madness.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I’m not mad.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I never was.’

  There was too much to fathom. I’d been mad-but-not. Treated-then-stopped. Brought to the engine-service way in the night-time.

  With no words to make sense of it, I could only sit and watch as the son mended the drip in the firelight.

  The substance he used was solid in its pot, but it melted to liquid when he held the flame beneath it. It sent out a smoky, salt-sweet scent, like brine. Like him. The son’s smell, all along, had been this . . . bond. How did I know that word, and that it was made from seaweed? Had the son told me these things already? I seemed to have imagined them in a dream.

  He stood on a box to reach the ceiling. With a stick, he spread the softened bond across the surface. It was thick and honey-like, and he worked it back and forth until there were no more lines visible, and no more drips. There was only the son, and me, and the realisation that he wasn’t lazy at all but exhausted from working through the night, mending dripping ceilings and carrying bodies to the netter house. Tired from watching over me during treatment. Altering my treatment.

  For I recalled how his sweet-brine scent had lingered some nights in the sickroom. I’d sensed, at times, his quiet presence beside me. On those nights, I would taste a leaf that was different to the ones the senior doctor had given me.

  The son held the flame up to the wet patch of ceiling, watching as it dried. His eyes stared fixedly while golden light danced about him. I saw the long stretch of his neck, and the Adam’s apple that bobbed when he swallowed. I saw the sweat that moistened his hairline. Saw him breathing, slow and steady. I saw his focus. His purpose.

  I saw him as if for the first time: a son burdened by secrets. This – me – was another.

  ‘You woke me up,’ I said. ‘Yes?’

  His response was small. A nod. As if it hardly mattered. As if he hadn’t broken many rules to do so.

  ‘The world thinks I’m mad.’

  Another nod. Yes.

  Everyone else believed I was in the sickroom being treated, and I should have been, yet here I was in a way with the son while he mended drips like they were wounds. Was this adultery? It felt wrong. Dangerous.

  ‘So why did you wake me?’

  ‘You didn’t want me to?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ I didn’t know. ‘But you broke the rules.’

  ‘There are worse things . . .’ His voice trailed off as he lowered the flame.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like losing you.’

  The tool slipped from his fingers and the flame vanished. I heard a clunking bounce followed by a swear and a thump, then rummaging as the son searched for it.

  I couldn’t sense where he was anymore: high or low, left or right. In the darkness, he seemed to be everywhere.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, wanting him to explain. ‘Leave it be.’

  ‘I need it.’

  ‘Leave it. Stop. Tell me why you woke me up.’

  The sounds ceased. The night held its breath.

  ‘Because I didn’t like it.’

  ‘You didn’t like it?’

  ‘Do you realise what those medicinals do? It was hard to watch –’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have watched.’

  ‘It didn’t seem . . . right.’

  ‘So you changed my treatment?’

  ‘When I could.’

  ‘And woke me up.’

  ‘Is that wrong?’

  The whump of my heart. How I wanted to see him – his eyes, his hands – to know the truth behind his words.

  ‘So you woke me up . . .’ I began, carefully, thinking of the right way to put it. ‘You woke me up to . . . rescue me?’ It sounded foolish – a word borrowed from childhood – but rescuing used to happen to girls in stories, once upon a time.

  ‘I can’t rescue you, Hayley,’ he said in the dark. ‘It’s far too late for that.’

  Too late? It inflamed me. If I couldn’t be rescued then what was the point of waking me?

  ‘Then you should have let me sleep.’

  ‘You don’t want that –’

  ‘I don’t have a choice!’ I cried. If I had to be ‘mad’ in the eyes of the world, then I wanted it over. If I couldn’t be normal, I’d rather be oblivious and empty-headed like Fiona in the garden, knowing no better. That would surely be preferable to this – a yo-yo between waking and sleeping, forgetting and
remembering. A plaything for the son so he’d have company on a lonely night. ‘You should have left me alone.’

  ‘They were turning you into a child.’

  ‘Good!’ I slapped the wall beside me, wishing it was him. ‘I’d rather be a child than be teased with this: a brief kind of waking, knowing what I’ve lost. I’d rather be a stupid child, believing God exists –’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘And monsters –’

  ‘Them too.’

  ‘I’d rather . . .’ The sad truth washed over me. Emptied me. ‘I’d rather be dead.’

  A pause. An exhalation. The son said nothing.

  ‘I would,’ I insisted to the darkness. ‘I’d rather be dead than go back to the sickroom.’

  A sudden blaze sent me pitching backwards. The flame raged bright in his fist. When had he got so close?

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘What?’ I said, forgetting.

  ‘Rather be dead?’

  I nodded.

  Fire danced in his eyes. ‘Good.’

  Chapter 15

  It wasn’t death the son meant for me. Not a true one. It would be death in the eyes of the world.

  Everyone would wake in the morning, he said, to learn I had died from my treatment during the night, and that God had collected my body for heaven. They would mourn me. Eventually, they would forget about me.

  ‘But they’ll still see me,’ I said. Even if I hid in the highest tree of the forest, someone would find me there eventually and return me to the sickroom. I could hide for a day, perhaps, but not for the rest of my life.

  ‘No-one will see you,’ he murmured.

  The son was stepping over boxes, moving further into the way. He was heading to the other door – the door that had once opened into the service house in the first days. It was one of three that had melted shut when the service house burned, long ago, trapping the servicers inside. It was a door that went nowhere.

  The son leaned into that door and did the unthinkable. He worked with the flame and another tool, chipping at the door that couldn’t open – shouldn’t open – though I pleaded for him to stop. I wasn’t brave, then. Whatever courage I’d known had abandoned me.

  ‘You chose this,’ he said.