THAT EVENING AFTER Samantha had supped with the king and queen and kept them updated on the progress so far, she received a knock on her bed-cell door. For a moment she thought Lizzie had returned from the anthill, until Mad Jack popped his head in and asked to see her. Before he entered, he scanned both directions down the corridor, then quickly shut the door and, to Samantha’s surprise, locked it. He was also without his spade.
“I found it!” he said, hopping from one leg to the other, unable to contain himself. “I found it, Samantha! I actually found it!”
Samantha gestured for him to calm down. “What is it? What did you find?”
Mad Jack reached into the front pocket of his overalls and removed what looked to Samantha like nothing more than a small stone. “Honeyroot!” he whispered.
She took the stone from Mad Jack, who was rather reluctant to let go of it, and held it up to her eye. It was amber in colour, the colour of purest honey, and clear, like the waters of the lake, so clear in fact she could see Mad Jack’s face when she looked through it. It was also weighty, though not as heavy as a rock or pebble of the same size.
“So this is honeyroot,” she said, also whispering.
Mad Jack took his amber stone back. “No, this is what honeyroot does. It turns stone into honey, which is this, solidified honey,” he said, continuing to admire it. “Think of it as honeystone, a gem. It’s worth a fortune.”
Samantha wondered if it were truly as valuable as Mad Jack believed. “Where d’you find it?” she asked.
“Where I should’ve looked all these years,” he said, putting it back in his pocket. “At the roots of the honeywood tree.”
Honeyroot. Honeywood. It suddenly made sense to Samantha, too.
“I don’t know how it happens, all I know is that wherever honeywood trees grow, there’s honeystone,” Mad Jack said. “These carpenter bees don’t know what a fortune is buried outside their cavern. They always chop a honeywood tree down and leave its roots alone, you see. I, on the other hand, found it difficult to use an axe. So I decided to do what I do best, dig! I discovered the honeystone at the base of the tree I was trying to fell. That’s when the connection between honeyroot and honeywood hit me. I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams.”
Samantha smiled. She smiled because her friend had had the courage to search for his dream against the odds and found it. She smiled because it was also a reminder never to give up hope in searching for what she believed in. And she smiled because now, armed with the knowledge of honeyroot and honeystone, she could finally return to her old hive and see her parents again.
But before then, she had a destiny to fulfil.
FIVE DAYS AFTER leaving, Lizzie and the hunting party returned from their expedition to the ant colony. Lizzie was different, somehow. Her skin looked shiny and new, and she was no longer scratching it. Behind her trailed a dozen or more ants carrying cardboard boxes on their back, which the prince instructed to be stored in a cave adjacent to the factory. Samantha recognised the leading ant as Lieutenant 7725695P, her security guard, and was a little wary.
Lizzie took her arm and led her to the back of the factory. Mad Jack was scratching around with his spade, testing the hardness of different spots on the walls and ground. His spade made annoying chink! chink! noises as it hit hard rock.
“There are soft spots in the cliff,” he said as they approached. “These caves and tunnels must have been eroded by the wind and the water. I always wondered how it was possible to dig into rock.”
Lizzie ignored him. “Don’t look so worried,” she whispered to Samantha, glancing at the ants. “The lieutenant’s only here to do a trade. By the way, I had to promise them a lot more honey to bring the material here. They drive a hard bargain, you know. I hope you’ve managed to get some while I was away. They won’t be happy to go back without any payment.”
Samantha was at a loss. Her mind had been so busy (and not just with work, if she were being honest) she had forgotten all about the honey. What was she going to do? She stared at the ants, then back at Lizzie, her mind blank. It was impossible to think with all that noise from behind. The chink! chink! chink! of Mad Jack’s spade was driving her up these rocky walls. Couldn’t he do that somewhere else?
“Mad Jack!” She shouted so loud her throat hurt. He immediately stopped. Then, as if his spade had chinked through a wall in her mind to reveal a hidden treasure, she suddenly saw what she needed to do. “Mad Jack,” she said, her voice now sweet and calm. “I need something from you.”
Samantha convinced him to part with three of his smallest honeystone gems. He was happy to on the proviso she talked with the prince on his behalf; he needed royal permission to claim a small plot of land where the honeywood grew. Samantha called the prince over and discussed the deal. The prince immediately agreed, claiming he would personally ensure the queen gave him the grant. Samantha wasn’t sure the prince knew what he was giving away, but they needed Mad Jack’s honeystones. It wasn’t only the ants that could drive a hard bargain.
She handed the gems to the lieutenant and began to explain what they were.
“Honeystone!” he said, and sprayed a delightful perfume of vanilla and rose. “Can you believe it? Our splendiferous leader, the magnificent Procruste Ant will be ecstatic.” He looked up at Samantha and Lizzie. “If you should require anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask. We’re more than happy to establish new trading partners, especially when they pay as prompt and as much as you.”
With relief, Samantha watched the ants leave. “How were things at the anthill?” she asked Lizzie.
“They’re still rebuilding what was damaged by the floods, but they seem in good spirits,” Lizzie said. “Almost everyone made it to high ground and survived. They’ll be back to normal soon enough.”
Lizzie then showed Samantha what they’d been able to acquire from the anthills, opening all the boxes in the adjacent cave, now storeroom. “I’m afraid we could only get poor-grade cotton,” Lizzie said, showing some of it to Samantha. “It’s all they could spare. And we’ll have to make do with assembling a spinning wheel from spare parts as well.” She peered into another box and rummaged around. She looked distraught. “They could only give us scraps of denim, too. I’m sorry, Samantha, there’s virtually nothing.”
Something is nothing and nothing is something, Samantha thought. “We’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got,” she said. “We’ll patch everything together.”
Soon thereafter, the real work began on the construction of the flying machine. First, Samantha helped Lizzie reassemble the spinning wheel. Like the early days of their capture in the anthill, they took turns in spinning the cotton into thread. Then, with the sewing skills she learnt in Hive Prison, Samantha began stitching the scraps of denim into one large, patchwork sheet (she had made a last minute decision against using the palace silk, even though it was lighter; the denim was more durable and less likely to tear). The prince and Mad Jack went to collect more honeywood and to stake out Mad Jack’s new plot of land. Samantha also wanted Prince Robbee, upon his return, to build a pulley mechanism large enough to anchor the kite during its flight, and in her spare time she sketched its design using the bobbin on the spinning wheel as a model for its construction.
The following evening Samantha was alone at the mouth of the factory cave. She was patching two pieces of denim together with needle and thread, gazing across the mirrored waters of the lake. She heard Lizzie approach from behind.
“You miss him, don’t you?” Lizzie said.
“Who?” Samantha said, returning to her sewing. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Lizzie chuckled at her evasiveness. “You can’t fool anyone, Samantha. We’ve all seen the look in your eyes when he’s around. It’s the same look he has for you, too.”
Samantha kept silent, wondering if Lizzie was telling the truth.
“You always said that you’d find your Bee Dream at Beebylon,” Lizzie said. “Maybe it’s time you s
tarted believing your own words.”
PRINCE ROBBEE AND Mad Jack arrived late the next morning carrying two logs of honeywood over their shoulders. Samantha greeted them, relieved that the prince had returned safely, but barely let him rest. She showed him the design of the pulley mechanism she wanted him to build, which, with Mad Jack’s help, he set to straight away.
In the meantime, Samantha and Lizzie twined the cotton they had spun into rope, and two days later the pulley (essentially a large barrel mounted on supports) was completed. Under tight security, it was taken to the base of the cliff and guarded. Now it was time to assemble the kite.
Samantha instructed the prince and Mad Jack to lay one pole of honeywood across the other like a ‘t’. She then lashed them firmly together with one end of the rope she and Lizzie had twined, now many hundreds of yards long. When the poles were securely fastened, Samantha dropped the free end of the rope over the precipice and watched it fall to the base of the cliff. The prince was waiting for it. He gathered the rope and looped it around the barrel-pulley, like cotton spinning onto a bobbin.
Samantha, Lizzie and Mad Jack then mounted the patchwork wing-sheet onto the cross frame. They trimmed it and sewed it and lashed it securely, a task that took up most of the afternoon. The kite now had the shape of a large diamond. With the exception of its colour and size, it was just like the kite she had seen flying in the field near her old hive.
“Now for the harness,” she said to the others.
She made some simple adjustments to her old pair of overalls and secured it to the underside of the crossbeams. She had with her a loose knot of string she’d tied earlier. This she also secured to the crossbeams.
“What’s that for?” Lizzie asked.
“You’ll see,” Samantha said. “Hopefully I’ll never have to use it.”
She, Lizzie, Mad Jack and the prince stood back to admire the flying machine. It was ready.
That night, they supped with the queen and king. Talk was of only one thing: the first test flight. Even the king seemed excited. He spoke of nothing else.
“It’ll be just like the old days,” he said, his face cracking into a smile. “We used to buzz through the forest and up to the top of the cliff. I even touched the clouds once.”
“The clouds? Wow,” Mad Jack said, with that dreamy look in his eyes.
The others laughed and the king winked coyly at Samantha, who said little, just content to listen and take joy at what she was hearing.
Hope.
PRINCE ROBBEE WOKE Samantha the next morning in her bed-cell earlier than normal and accompanied her and Lizzie to the factory cave. Eagerness and enthusiasm were shining from his eyes. Today was the big day, though most of the citizens of Beebylon were oblivious to what was about to happen. Samantha looked out through the mouth toward the sky. Large fluffy clouds drifted across the blue heavens. It was a perfect day for flying.
In the distance, a blackbird came swooping from the forest treetops toward the cliff. Samantha marvelled at its skill in flight. She could see its magnificent feathers glisten in the morning sunshine. As it swooped by the cliff face, its long tail twitched ever so slightly and it turned in a majestic arc back to the pine trees. Its voice echoed across the lake: “Get up! Get up! Get up! The day is new. The sky is blue. Get up! Get up! Get up!”
Samantha took a deep breath. It was time. She checked the kite once over and made sure the overall-harness was fastened securely to the underside of the crossbeams.
“If something goes wrong,” she said to Lizzie and the prince, grabbing the knot of string she had fixed yesterday, “I’ll pull this release cord. I can then buzz safely to the ground.”
Lizzie and Prince Robbee lifted the kite so that Samantha could slip into the harness. The prince remarked how light it was. Samantha slid the last strap over her shoulder and smiled at him, belying the tension that was gnawing at her belly like a hungry ant. “All right. Let’s do it,” she said.
While Lizzie and the prince held the kite, Samantha shuffled to the mouth of the cave and stood on the edge of the precipice. She peered down. The rope lashed to the central crossbeam ran all the way down the face of the cliff, tethering the kite to the barrel-pulley. Assembled next to it, Mad Jack, Queen Beelinda, King Bernard, six royal guards, and only the most trusted of the prince’s hunting party, were staring up at her. Her heart was thumping and she suddenly felt moist and clammy inside the harness.
“There’s no need to be so nervous,” she told herself, whispering under her breath. “You can do it. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But she couldn’t do it. It was such a long way down. It was far too dangerous. The temptation to step back and pull out was overwhelming. She glanced over her wings at her two friends, about to apologise that she couldn’t go through with it, when the song she used to sing as a little grub suddenly hummed in her mind.
I am a little honeybee
And Samantha is my name.
I buzz and sing and laugh at things
‘Coz to me it’s all the same.
I like to fly as high as crows
Then dive into a rose.
‘Coz a honeybee is not afraid
To bee what she is made.
“Good luck,” Lizzie said, and then unexpectedly leaned forward and rubbed Samantha’s antennae.
The prince wished her luck, too; and to Samantha’s surprise, he also rubbed her antennae.
It was just the encouragement she needed. She made a quick prayer for the Great Mother’s blessing and jumped over the edge. She heard the kite rip from Lizzie and the prince’s grip. For more than a horrid second, the kite dived straight toward the rocks below, but a gust of breeze picked it up and sent her soaring above the waterfall.
Suddenly, she felt a jolt. The rope tethered to the barrel-pulley had unwound to its end, anchoring her. This was the limit to which the kite could fly. She felt annoyed. She wanted to take it higher. She wanted to see how far this thing could really go. It had been so long since she had flown, she had forgotten what a joy it was.
Part of that joy was the feeling of peace. Part of it was the sense of freedom. A smaller part was physical, the wind through her antennae, the lightness of floating, even the unique contours of the landscape from up high. Another thing she’d almost forgotten. It was as if things were drawn on a colourful, two-dimensional scroll – the blue waters stretching southward, the wiggling grey river down which she had escaped from the ants, the streak of golden sunflowers, the blur of green pines. There was more. Behind, far on the western horizon, the source of the waterfall emerged from a range of mountains she hadn’t even known existed. From the base of the jagged peaks, the river sliced its way through valleys and forests before throwing itself over the edge of the cliff. What queendom, what mysteries, existed west of here? The world was far bigger than she had ever imagined.
From below, she heard faint cheers and laughter coming to her on the updraft. Lizzie and the prince had rushed down and were waving at her, along with the rest of them, even the queen and king. Samantha waved back. She was doing it. She was really doing it.
She began singing her childhood song again when, unexpectedly, the wind changed direction. From a pleasant updraft, it flipped into a nasty downshift. The kite was ill prepared for such a sudden change. It plunged into a downward spiral. Round and round and round she went, twisting, twisting, twisting. She heard distant groans of horror from below. Instinctively, she grabbed hold of the crossbeam to control the plummet, but it made no difference. The kite kept spiralling like a leaf in a tornado.
“Pull the cord!” Prince Robbee yelled. His voice was faint and hard to hear. “Pull the cord!”
The rocky ground was shooting toward her at an astonishing rate. The kite kept spinning. The cliff face rushed past. It all blurred into one terrifying kaleidoscope of horror.
“Pull the cord! Pull the cord!” she heard again. Now it wasn’t just the prince. Everyone was yelling.
Samantha re
ached up and yanked the cord. At first it didn’t appear as though she’d been released, for she was still hurtling toward the rocks. Then she flapped her wings and on impulse performed a blowfly back flip, a full reverse-loop with a half-twist. Moments later, the kite crashed with a sickening crunch! into the base of the cliff.
Samantha landed on the ground faster than she anticipated and collapsed into a heap. The prince was the first to her side, cradling her to his chest, asking if she was all right, demanding that she respond.
Through the slits of half-opened eyes, Samantha saw everyone crowding over her, all talking at the same time, asking each other whether she was dead or alive. Even the king was there. He was the only one not talking, his expression grave. Then the prince said something else, just as she felt herself beginning to faint.
His distraught face was the last thing she remembered before blackness descended.
SAMANTHA AWOKE WITH a start in her chamber later that evening. At first disorientated and feeling a little worse for wear, the memory of what had happened flashed across her mind. She rubbed a throbbing wing as she slipped out of bed.
“You’ve been through worse,” she muttered, heading for the door. “There’s no time to feel sorry for yourself.”
When she arrived at the factory cave, Mad Jack and the prince were huddled over the wreckage of the flying machine, oblivious to her. She went over to examine the broken pieces. The cross poles had snapped and the wing-sheet was torn in numerous places, a complete catastrophe.
“Samantha, what are you doing here?” said the prince. Mad Jack jumped as if he’d seen a monster from the Crazy Lands. “You should be…”
Samantha shot a look that cut him short. At that moment, from across the lake, a blackbird chirped its night song: “To bed! To bed! To bed! The day is old. The night is cold. To bed! To bed! To bed!”
Samantha Honeycomb Page 13