Hive

by A. J. Betts

  ‘Not this.’ Not that. Not opening the door that sealed in ghosts. Not entering a house of ash and bones. ‘I said I’d rather die –’

  ‘I won’t kill you, Hayley.’

  He punched with a tool and something cracked. Solid crumbled. The son’s fingers became levers.

  I could turn and run, I knew. I could race back to the sickroom where I wouldn’t know this pounding fear. I wouldn’t know anything ever again.

  But my feet refused to move. They stuck me fast, caught between two awful futures: forgetting, or this, whatever it was.

  ‘What if there are ghosts in there?’

  He laughed as he answered, ‘Hayley, there are ghosts everywhere.’

  ‘What would you do,’ I asked, ‘if you were me?’

  The son didn’t hesitate. ‘I’d do anything.’

  Beneath his hand, another piece broke free. The gap it left was big enough for an eye to look through, if it should wish to.

  I didn’t wish to, but curiosity was a hook. Hesitantly, I edged closer, unable to resist the urge, creeping towards the gap and the son who must know more about this world than all the teachers combined.

  He resumed his work at the seal, punching and twisting, widening the gap until the door came sliding sideways, the son sliding with it.

  Even then, I could have turned and run back to a careless, empty-headed life.

  Instead, I reached for the son’s hand. His fingers grasped mine and I helped him up.

  We stayed like that, the threat of adultery long gone. I felt his pulse in my palm. It was faster than mine.

  The air that found us was cool. I gulped at its thinness, ancient and unbreathed.

  Possibility flickered inside me. I’d do anything, the son had said.

  And I realised, then, I would too.

  I’d never known such quiet.

  There was no humming of engines. No chatter of people. No murmuring bees.

  There was only the dust that shifted under our feet.

  The service house didn’t smell of ash or death, or even the decay of plants. There wasn’t a trace of fear. This house felt calmer than the oldest uncle.

  The flame cast a glow around us as we walked beside a wall, the son’s hand sliding along its surface until he found what he was looking for. He closed his eyes and said I should do the same. I didn’t want to. I kept them open and watched as his hand pressed a switch to start the day.

  Far above us, growlights came to life. They shone with the pink-blush of morning, the colour out of sync with the rest of the world. The brightness intensified, hurting my eyes, so I lifted my hands to shield them. How many weeks had I lain in the dark?

  After a time, the son opened his eyes too. He squinted from wall to wall to wall in quiet contemplation. I followed his gaze as it touched on each surface, surveying the hexagonal service house that had for so long been colourless, timeless. The son’s face glowed with wonder.

  Unlike the other houses, this one was uncluttered. There were no smaller rooms separated by bamboo; no tanks or cupboards or trees. This house was simply wide and plain and almost empty. Only at the centre of the house was anything to be seen at all. There was a cluster of ghostly things. They weren’t the ghosts of people, though, but solid objects, gathered in clumps beneath white sheets.

  I’d thought this house had burned. I’d been taught that fire had destroyed its people and plants and all the tools that had once fixed nets and made fabric out of flax. I’d believed this lesson of fiery destruction and scrambling chaos, for why wouldn’t I?

  It was clear, now, the servicers hadn’t died in chaos. There’d been no panic or desperate scratching at melted doors. Instead, the people of this house had taken their time to push these things to the hub in the centre, where they’d stacked them neatly in place, then covered them. Even the sheet corners had been carefully tucked in.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ I asked.

  The son was looking up, gazing at angles. He wasn’t stunned, as I was. In his profile, I saw a slow recognition. A welcome familiarity. Then he pushed himself from the wall and began to walk to the centre.

  ‘So you’ve been here before?’

  ‘Yes.’ His nod was slight and thoughtful. ‘I think I have.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. How could anyone forget coming here?

  ‘I’m not sure.’ His words sounded detached. He was lost to his own dreaming. ‘The judge brought me here, I think – when I was young.’

  ‘Do the others know?’

  ‘The priest knows . . . a little.’

  ‘What happened in here?’ I asked.

  The son was nearing the collection of objects. His feet left footprints for me to follow, which I did, at a distance, observing the bare walls and ceiling and each of the open doors leading to the sleepers and baths. There hadn’t been a fire. So what would make fifty people leave a house and seal it shut behind them?

  As the son reached the closest of the covered items, he paused, then stretched out a hand.

  ‘Don’t!’ I called. It felt wrong to intrude on the peace of this house. Whatever things were beneath the sheets had been put there in the earliest days. They shouldn’t be disturbed. ‘Let them be.’

  But the son’s fingers pinched a sheet and lifted it gently. He stooped like an uncle, lowering himself to peer under it.

  ‘Don’t!’ I called again, but it was too late. The son stepped, disappearing from view like a child playing hide-and-seek in a forbidden place. Fabric swayed in his wake.

  ‘Son!’ I shouted, reluctant to be in this house without him. I needed to see him, to feel less alone. ‘Son!’ It sounded strange to call it aloud, and for the first time I wondered if he had a name of his own.

  What I heard was a throaty kind of laughter, followed by a sheet swishing free, and then there he was, crouching beneath a small table and grinning like a madman. I barely recognised him.

  ‘It’s a desk!’ he whooped, shaking the thing by its legs. ‘A desk!’

  ‘It’s just a table,’ I said, though admittedly it was smaller, with drawers down one of its sides.

  The son crawled along beneath it, hidden again under sheets.

  ‘Son!’ I called, wishing he had a real name.

  Another sheet went flying, scattering dust that flecked pink in the air. He was opening other drawers and rummaging through objects, some of which he named.

  ‘Cable! Battery! Keyboard!’ Foolishly, he tapped. ‘Look! A screen!’

  I stared, transfixed, as he held up a rectangle the size of an apron pocket but hard and dull. ‘People used to look at screens in the first days. The judge said there were pictures inside.’

  He was turning it, shaking it. He was more excited than a child in a game; more ecstatic than netters at a catch. It was dazzling and unnerving and a little bit wonderful.

  ‘Look, Hayley, a chair!’ he hollered as he dragged out a thing that seemed to glide. There were wheels at its base and when he sat down, he spun and spun like a top, only to fall then pick himself up and do it again.

  And the world thought I was mad?

  ‘So what do I do now?’ I asked, for I wasn’t interested in chairs or screens, or what they once did. I didn’t even care, then, what had happened to this house. None of it mattered, for I wasn’t here for a lesson. The son had brought me here to hide.

  Soon, he would leave this house, and me. He would reseal the door behind him and return to the world as before – a son; the keeper of secrets – where he would tell the world I had died, while I would remain here, not mad, not dead, but alone in a quiet house in absolute solitude and nothing else to hope for.

  ‘Hayley, look! A phone!’

  I snatched the thing from his hand and held it behind me. Reflexively, the son dived to grab it. When he saw my face, he hesitated, remembering. His wil
d grin wavered.

  ‘Morning is coming,’ I reminded him.

  For though this house shone pink, the rest of the world was in darkness. Soon they’d be waking and the son would need to be back there.

  ‘Tell me what I do now,’ I said. ‘Is there even food in this house?’

  ‘Food?’ He furrowed his brow as if the question were stupid. ‘Why would there be food?’

  I let the phone drop. Part of it shattered and I kicked it away.

  Clearly, the son had no concern for my wellbeing. He’d brought me here as an excuse to play with these ridiculous, ancient toys. He didn’t care what happened after.

  My survival, now, was up to me.

  And my first priority was food.

  The doors that led to the two other ways were sealed tight. The first, had it opened, would have taken me into the commons. The second would have led directly to the netters’ house. Somewhere, on the other side of that way, Luka would be sleeping. When morning came he would learn that I’d died in the night. I hoped he wouldn’t be too sad. I hoped he’d be chosen for marriage, one day.

  I went to the baths. It was empty of tubs, toilets, or any evidence that servicers had once used them. I looked around, trying to picture people here in the first days. Had they gossiped as they’d washed themselves, or sung as they’d scrubbed their clothes? Had they soaked in scented water as we had, taking hours just to brush each other’s hair?

  The female sleeper was also bare. There were no bunks, pillows or drawers; no hooks with aprons hanging from them. No scents lingered here either. No ghosts. There were only two baby cribs pushed against a wall. This surprised me: cribs belonged in the nursery, with mothers. It was strange to think of babies being kept in the same room as girls, women and aunts. Surely no-one would sleep with the crying.

  The male sleeper, too, had cribs. Against the opposite wall were other things, hidden under sheets. I uncovered the lot, hoping to find jars of pickles or jam, fermented cabbage or wine. Any of these would have given me comfort, but none of the boxes contained food. Instead, I found a bag plump with marbles. A pot for perfume. Glasses like the doctor wore, but shaded black. Pointed sticks like crayons but not. Small containers filled with rings like the one worn for marriage. I counted thirty-seven. There were other objects, square and hard and shinier than knives in the kitchen. So many pretty, useless things.

  Another box held papers. Most of these had been drawn on, though they weren’t like any diaries I’d seen. They were glossy and multi-coloured. After a time, I recognised some of the pictures as stories.

  I saw the golden-locked girl who’d been fussy with her porridge. The walls of her house were strange, though, for they were broken into parts, allowing monsters to peer through. I didn’t like these monsters so I swapped the papers for others, finding the story of Jack and his beanstalk, though this was also wrong, with a ceiling too blue and too high. I chose another, recognising the red-hooded girl who was just as the teachers had described as she skipped through the forest with a basket. But her forest was not like ours. Its trees were odd – their colours odder – and the monster, when I saw it, was small and vicious. Strangest of all, the monster chased the aunt and gobbled her up!

  Hoping for a better story, I raked through the rest of the papers, but every picture told a new lie: an ugly aunt with an apple that was green; a rocking horse that had four separate legs; people wearing coloured fabric on their feet; countless monsters with big eyes and big ears and big teeth to eat you with. The drawings were awful, every one of them, and I didn’t blame the servicers for leaving them behind.

  I wanted to leave them too, and in my rush to get out I knocked against one of the cribs. I would have kept going if I hadn’t felt it knock back.

  It wasn’t the crib, though. It was something inside it. Something had rocked from within and it made me stop. Listen. Look.

  I peered over the crib’s edge. Its mattress and blanket had been removed, but even so, something was in there. Two little feet. Two chubby calves. Two knobbly knees.

  A baby!

  Its eyes were open, its stumpy arms outstretched as if it had been waiting for me. It was wearing a white marriage dress with layers of white lace that must have itched its skin.

  It didn’t smell like a baby did. Nor did it behave like one. Unmoving, its eyes seemed too bright, its arms too still. When I lifted it stiffly, those blue eyes blinked at me.

  Every child in the world had made their own dolls with twine, bamboo and seeds, but none had ever been as intricate or lifelike as this. I touched its sharp eyelashes and the curly hair on its head. In response, its eyes blinked again. When I lifted the dress, I saw it was a girl. Above its privates was a protruding belly button, and above that was another circle, soft and unexpected. My finger found it, pressed it. That’s when the thing spoke.

  ‘Hello.’

  With a clunk, I dropped the doll into the crib where its fat hands kept reaching for me, fingers clawing the air. The thing giggled then began to sing with a childish voice. ‘Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop . . .’

  ‘Stop it!’ I shouted. ‘You’re not real!’

  ‘When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Hayley?’

  I shuddered. How did it know my name?

  ‘Hayley!’ came the voice again, not from the doll but beyond the sleeper.

  The son!

  I ran through the door and out into the house. I was desperate to see him, my only connection to the world that I knew. I would plead to return to the sickroom, I decided. I didn’t want to die here among ugly stories and sinister dolls.

  ‘Son?’ I called, not seeing him. Had he left already? Had I merely imagined his voice? ‘Son!’ How I wished he had a name.

  ‘I’m here.’

  I had to push through chairs and desks to find him. He was lying on the floor with papers scattered about him.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The son beamed. ‘I’m reading.’

  He explained to me, as he turned another page, that reading was a language of markings. As a child in the upper house, the judge had taught him lessons of reading and writing. It was a language only they could understand.

  ‘You’re looking at stories? Now?’

  His head shook. ‘Not stories. Books.’

  ‘There’s no food in here,’ I said. ‘There’s only fake pictures and a doll that speaks!’

  His head popped up. ‘Really? Show me.’

  ‘No! It’s awful. Everything here is awful. I want to go back.’

  He made a humming noise as his eyes returned to the page, his finger resuming its quick line from left to right.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I told him. There wasn’t food and I didn’t care for books or dolls. ‘I want to go.’

  ‘Out?’ he said, not looking up.

  ‘Yes. Out.’

  A nod. An unfinished smile. ‘That’s the idea.’

  Out, to the son, was not a return to the sickroom. Out, to him, meant something else entirely.

  His memories were hazy, he admitted, but the writing was clear. Books never forgot.

  The service house wasn’t where flax had been grown or where fabric had been made with fancy tools. This was a house, the son told me, where people once used screens and phones to communicate with the other world.

  ‘You mean the other houses?’

  ‘I mean the other world.’ The son’s eyes flicked briefly up to mine then he slid the book away and dragged a new one to him. ‘There’s another world. Out there.’

  ‘What do you mean out there?’

  ‘Not in. Out.’ His hand gestured at a wall.

  ‘But how –’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’

  ‘Explain now.’

  ‘Morning is coming; you
said so. There isn’t time.’

  He continued to read, his brow creasing, his finger speeding across the words. His lips made clipped, indistinct sounds.

  Forgotten by him, I turned to look at the pink-lit walls.

  Out there?

  I sized up the breadth and height of this house. It was just like every other, with three perimeter walls and three joining ones. It was a hexagon. Our world was made up of nine hexagonal houses. Everyone knew that. The commons was central with six houses around it and two above it. It was our world. How could I envision anything else?

  My heart fluttered. Not in? Out there?

  It was the bees’ hive I pictured then, made up of honeycomb cells. I thought of the countless rows of hexagons in the hive, and how each connected outwards and upwards, layer upon layer; how they’d probably keep expanding if I let them.

  What if . . .?

  The thought crept up my body with tiny, furry legs.

  What if each house was just like a honey cell? What if this servicer house, for example, joined to another? Then another? Just because a wall had no way to connect it to another house, it didn’t mean there wasn’t a house on the other side. Did it?

  What if . . .?

  What if we were just like the bees?

  I tried to picture it: unseen houses adjoining this one; others stacked on top; more attached below, like the vertical frames of a hive.

  What if . . .?

  What if the son was right? It sounded impossible, but hadn’t I tasted water that dripped from another place? Hadn’t I seen blue stars rise up from beneath a hub? Hadn’t I felt that I didn’t belong to this place?

  The son continued reading with fervour. I knew how smoothly he could lie, but even so, I wanted to believe this was true. Another world that was out. Another world that I could choose.

  This was what he’d meant for me: not forgetting in the sickroom or starving in this empty house, but going to a world where I wouldn’t be considered mad. Out to a place where I could start again.

  Within me, the truth unfurled, opening as a flower. I breathed as if for the first time.

  I looked at each of the six walls, seeing them – seeing everything – anew. Just because this world was all I’d ever known, it didn’t mean it was all there ever was.