by Laline Paull
The driver yelled in fright and thrashed his hairy forearm around his head, knocking Flora to the ground and maddening the wasps. As they stung him from all sides, Flora crawled into a groove of dirt and hid. The driver screamed and pressed on the horn so that the vehicle itself bellowed like a wounded bull, then he wrenched open the door and staggered out. At the touch of air on her wings Flora dragged herself over the metal step and fell to the concrete floor. While the wasps descended on the writhing man she crawled toward the light and air. The weeds pulsed their scent to help her, and she used it to pull herself forward until she felt the sky above.
THE CLOUDS WERE VIOLET-GRAY and the cold air trembled in bursts and stops. Fighting off the numbing fog of the formic acid, Flora struggled for altitude, her wing-joints burning. Below her she could still hear the enraged buzz of the wasps and the shouts of the men running to drive them from their screaming victim.
Flora climbed higher, trying to pick up the azimuth of the sun with her sugar-jangled antennae. She thought she had filled her crop with sugar, but it was light and empty.
Ashamed at her failure to forage and sick from the taste of the sugar, all that Flora now wanted was the scent of home. She turned again and again, but nothing registered. All she felt was the racing pulse of sugar.
Flora cursed her pride—she of all kin should have listened to the weeds. If she lived to see another sunrise she would kiss every one of their mouths. She flew in a circle, then in a figure eight, trying to pick up the scent of the orchard, of the great road, of Congregation, of anything familiar, but great waves of wind collided and she had to flatten her antennae and tighten her wings lest they be ripped from her body. A colossal cold swell threw her sideways and a warm front flung her back. With a tearing flash of light, the storm broke.
A water bomb hit Flora on her right side, and she felt her wing-latch breaking between the front and rear membranes. Clenching her thoracic muscles to hold her wing panels together, she aimed herself into the racing air current streaming toward the tree line. Pelting raindrops knocked her lower and lower, and with a great lurch of strength she flung herself into the nearest canopy of leaves. She tumbled down the dripping green slides trying to grab hold of anything, but her claws slipped and she fell to the earth.
Directly ahead under the drumming leaves was a place of shelter. To reach it she must crawl across a shining track left by some unknown creature, but if she did not move, the water bombs would take away all choice and she would lie drowning with broken wings. Nothing was in sight so Flora stepped quickly across it. She was almost at the dry sanctuary of twigs when a sound made her look around.
It did not look at her, for it had no eyes, but a great brown slug pulled its way back toward her along the silvery mucus trail, its orange frill rippling as it moved. It was nothing but a rhythmically convulsing sack of muscle, then it raised its gaping, drooling mouth, and made a sound between a grunt and a moan. Two flaccid horns engorged and lifted, and then its tiny eyes bulged out from their tips. It moaned again as its slime spread behind it.
A forager’s suicide in the rain was better than cowering on the ground waiting to be engulfed by the slug. Soaked and battered, Flora fought her way higher until a snarl of air caught her up and sucked her tiny body into the roaring mouth of the storm.
Twenty-Three
FLORA’S BODY HIT SOMETHING SOLID. SHE COULD MOVE neither wing nor limb of her waterlogged body but tumbled down through the leaves and bounced against hard branches until some spongy lichen slowed her fall. Her claw caught and she hung there in the rain. Gradually, she managed to dig more hooks in, and found that none of her limbs was broken. She hauled herself the right way up and pushed her cuticle bands apart. Water drained out. Very carefully, she crept toward the great bole of the tree and pressed herself into a dry crevice.
It was an old tree and true, after the vile pretense of the metal one. She could feel its strength drawing deep into the earth as it stretched its countless arms wide, welcoming the storm passing through. It was a beech; she recognized the leaf pattern from one of the trees at Congregation, and for a wild moment she hoped that when the rain stopped she would see drones of her home livery emerging from their hiding places, and they would all shake themselves out and fly home together.
The rain slowed, then stopped. The tiny, bright eyes of cars moved slowly across the dark plain of the fields, and far beyond that shone the lights of the town. Flora tried to lift her antennae to read even one scent, but storm-wracked and sugar-rushed, they told her she was still in flight. She checked her numb wings. On both sides the latches were smashed and the membranes showed tears in many places.
Flora began to shiver uncontrollably. Not for her the dramatic oblivion in the storm, with the Queen’s Prayer coursing through her body so that death would find her in a state of grace, nor even a forager’s Kindness, meted with respect and a strong, merciful bite. This death would take time. How bitterly now did Flora crave the sweet dark warmth of home and the comfort of her family around her, like those noble sisters who went to their final rest in their own berths with peace in their hearts. Praise end your days, Sister . . .
Flora wept in shame. She had been reckless and proud in trying to forage in the town without following any bee’s dance—then tricked by the wasp who had promised her safety and sugar. It hurt too much to try to open the inner channels of her antennae, but she already knew that Lily 500’s knowledge was destroyed. She clutched herself as if to feel a sister’s touch, searching her body for any last remnant of the Queen’s Love. There was not one molecule left, only the racking physical need for her lost home and family. At the thought of her second child, her little drone son who would now starve to death, Flora howled out her heartbreak, knowing she had done this to herself.
A rabble of crows cawed across the darkening sky. By primal reaction her alarm glands fired and she instinctively scented for any answering flare of support—but there were no sisters, and nothing changed but the sun, sinking at that precise moment behind a bank of cloud. The azimuth! If she had felt it shift, all was not lost. As the birds grew louder Flora blocked her fear, searching deep inside her body for that magnetic sensor that could show her the way home—but the flickering awareness had vanished.
Acrid waves of air came blowing toward her, then the raucous mob of birds came clattering and shoving down through the leaves. They snapped their blue-black beaks and swore at each other as they grabbed for better perches; they clacked and clambered about the branches stabbing at crawling insects, and their fire-rimmed eyes roved the branches for more. Flora kept very still.
More crows came down from the air and filled the branches, then with a heavy flapping they all shook themselves dry. A great black feather came spinning down past Flora, then jarred against the trunk, its bone-white point stuck in the bark. Behind it stretched a long, deep shadow, leading into the trunk itself.
Flora waited until the crows were once again swearing and arguing before daring to move. She drank fresh rain from the bark to wash away the sickly taste of the wasps’ sugar, then crawled and slid down the slippery trunk toward the feather. Her war gland automatically blasted alarm at its flesh-feeding smell, but she forced herself to go closer.
Its point was wedged in an old split in the bark. Behind it was a hole. Flora stood on the edge behind the feather and forced her throbbing antennae up. She could not sense any movement inside, nor smell anything but the living beech. She edged deeper into the cavity and scanned the space: hollow, dry, and empty. Near the entrance was a pocket in the bark almost the same size as a rest hole in the hive, but to fit it she would have to close her wing-latches. As she brought the torn panels together she could not help buzzing loudly in pain.
With a rustle of feathers, a jagged black shadow jumped down from a high branch. Flora held herself completely still as the crow clambered down to search for the interesting sound. Its red gaze zigzagged over the trunk toward her hiding place, and when it could not see her, it pe
cked hard at the bark to try to flush her out. When she still did not move, it made some low croaks deep in its throat, shook out its feathers, and settled down to watch.
Its smell was strong and bitter from the old sweat between its feathers and the red mites that ran across them. Only when the crow lowered its head into its chest did Flora clamp her wing-latches shut and press herself into the tight gap in the bark. The sense of enclosure was some comfort, and with the crow sleeping a few branches above her, Flora settled herself to watch the darkening sky and wait for death.
The beech leaves surged and shimmered in the wind. Far below, a vixen paused to stare up, then melted away. Stars burned tiny holes in the twilight and then a pale moon traced a slow silver arc through the sky. Its beauty made Flora’s heart burst with love for her lost egg, and only the shadow of the crow above stopped her sobs. To die without holding it again, or breathing its sweet and tender scent—and then when it hatched—
Her cheeks pulsed and her mouth moistened with royal jelly. It was sweet and she swallowed it down, for there was no more sin to commit, nor sister to rebuke her. Alone in the dark, cut off from the Queen’s Love, Flora swallowed another mouthful of the precious liquid, wasting it on herself and willing death forward.
She gazed out into the darkness, waiting. Somewhere across the scented night was her lost orchard home. She imagined it under a bright blue sky, the sweet bouquet spreading in welcome as she drew near, sun on her wings and her body loaded with nectar and pollen. She imagined her ten thousand sisters dancing for joy, Holy Mother wrapping her in Love—and somewhere, hidden deep inside all that she loved, the secret that could be no crime, for its memory filled her with bliss.
In her mind’s eye Flora saw her rough white crib under the shadow of those three tall cocoons, and in it, her precious egg, pulsing strong with the golden glow of life. She imagined its fragrance, and something inside her broke.
My child, my sisters, my Mother, my home.
Love filled her heart and Flora wept with joy, for she found she could pray again.
MORNING LIGHT LEAKED OVER the ridge. The leaves turned from cool silver to glowing green and a warm, woody fragrance rose through the bark of the trees. Flora woke at the smell. She scanned around her in shock. No sister could survive a night outside the hive—yet here she was, alive and lying in a crevice in the bark. A warm slant of light fell through the hole across her body. She was sore, but her legs were unbroken and her wing-latches had knitted back together. She straightened her antennae and winced at the pain—but data pulsed through again.
The flight, the storm, the wasps—
Flora crawled to the edge of the hole into the sunshine. The crows had gone, and this great sheltering beech was one of many, high on a hill and overlooking the fields and the distant town. Bright specks of insects wove across the air, and on the moist earth below two blackbirds stretched a worm to a wet brown thread.
Flora groomed herself and made a detailed inventory of her injuries. Under the bruising and windburn, her antennae slowly restored their function. There . . . was the place of the murmuring tree . . . and the wasps’ warehouse.
And there—Flora shouted for joy—there was the faintest scent of the hive. To reach it, she would pass through that scent of foreign flowers she had tried to find before. The sweet thread came stronger as some petals opened in the still dawn air.
Flora touched her antennae in gratitude to the beech that had sheltered her. She would not go home empty; she would complete her mission and redeem herself. She would find forage for her sisters, she would dance, and then she would go to her egg.
THE LITTLE GARDENS were already crowded when she arrived. Bees from hives unknown moved purposefully from bloom to bloom, along with ants tending their aphid flocks on the roses and flies that stank of putrefaction. Honeybee sisters, no matter from what hive, united in barging every fly out of their way, whether they wanted a flower or not. For their part, the flies took pleasure in advancing so close to a sister that she was forced to either touch the unclean creature or leave her flower to its filthy embrace.
Flora watched from above, trying to decide which bloom to visit first. Some were dewy and plump from the rain, thrusting their faces at any who wished to touch them, while others dipped shy heads and could only be approached with skill from below. Flora chose a newly opened dog rose with pure, sheeny petals and thick golden clusters of pollen. She drank the nectar for the instant energy transfusion, then worked her way over the rambling bush until her panniers were almost packed full. Then she went to investigate other gardens.
Many were neat paved deserts dotted with garish tubs of flowers neither scented nor nourishing, but in one small overgrown plot, a buzzing crowd of insects could not restrain their excitement at the thrilling foreign smell.
Towering spiked echium plants, tall as sapling trees, made an ultraviolet forest of treasure. Silver hairs along their slender green trunks and tapering branches illuminated their silhouettes and the multitudes of insects whirring for joy at the bounteous harvest. Each of the countless purple florets showed an ultraviolet line pointing to the nectar, and bees, hoverflies, hornets, flies of every kind, white butterflies, meadow browns, red admirals, and fritillaries greeted each other and gorged together. The big furry bottoms of Bombini bees bounced white, yellow, and red as they rummaged, and Flora waited for a gap between them before diving into the sweet abundance. She filled her crop and panniers to maximum capacity and then set off for home.
With each wingbeat her excitement at seeing her sisters grew stronger until, despite her heavy bounty, she was racing at full speed. Her antennae found the scent vector to lead her in, but as she neared the orchard she smelled the change.
The bouquet of the hive was drenched in the smell of its own honey and coiling with smoke. Thousands of her sisters swirled above the hive and in the trees, choking in the dazing smoke.
“The Visitation!” some screamed. “The end of the world!”
“Thief!” shrieked others, alarm glands flaring uselessly. “Thief!”
Dagger at the ready and determined to defend her home, Flora tried to keep to her homecoming path, but the rising smoke forced her back up into the orbit of her raging helpless sisters, foragers and house bees alike.
The smell of honey rose stronger, and the cause was obscene.
Twenty-Four
THE ROOF OF THE HIVE LAY UPSIDE DOWN ON THE GRASS so that the top story was totally exposed to the air. The smoke came from a spouted canister, held by an old man in a red dressing gown and bare feet. He crooned to the bees as he waved it, sending them higher into a smoke-dazed gyre. Slow and stiff, he lifted out an entire wall of the Treasury, dripping golden wealth from its broken vaults, and slid it into a white plastic bag.
Unable to come down through the powerful smoke, sisters glimpsed the atrocity and roared in disbelief. The air was filled with the rich, golden fragrance of their stolen wealth, and smoke, and their helpless panic.
“The Visitation!” they cried out to each other. “It is all true—the Visitation!”
At this word Flora reeled back in the air. The Visitation—the third panel in the Queen’s Library. Now the smells and symbols fitted together in a fearful shape—the ugly gaping hole in the top story, brutal damage to the beautiful labor of generations of sisters. The honey and the smoke.
The old man bent to pick up the angled wooden roof. It was heavy and he staggered as if he would fall—then with a great effort he replaced it over the exposed hive. He stooped for his smoker and the white plastic bag, and shuffled barefoot back through the orchard.
THE SAGE TOOK CHARGE. Many sisters were set to lay homecoming markers on the landing board and scouts were sent to bring in house bees still whirling in fear at the farthest reaches of the orchard. More Thistle guards were stationed in full public view, to repel any of the Myriad that might be drawn by the uproar and smell of honey. Inside the hive all scent-gates were canceled to allow sanitation workers full access to t
he desecrated top floor and bring down the dead and wounded, crushed as the Treasury walls reared into the open sky.
Her crop still distended with her full load of nectar and her panniers with pollen, Flora waited for a receiver. None came, for the smoke had provoked a deep atavistic urge for the bees to gorge on whatever food they could find, and now their crops were full. Returning drones thumped down onto the board and barged past their sisters, appalled at the disorder and eager to be safely inside.
No peace was to be found there either, for somewhere during the trauma of the Visitation the Queen had disappeared, and now every sister ran through the hive searching for her and craving Devotion. The comb echoed with their piteous cries of Mother, Mother—and the exhausted Flora dragged herself into her ravaged home to join the search.
She could not smell a single molecule, and judging by the rising wail in the air, nor could any other sister, for the raw ugly void on the top story had affected the entire scent balance of the hive. Everything was in disorder, from the coded floor tiles to the air itself, which screeched a maelstrom of signals. Then the comb shook.
Find the Queen!
The voice of the Hive Mind stopped each sister’s wailing and united them in a systematic search to find Holy Mother. Flora moved up to the midlevel, where a strong fragrance of new wax floated on the air. It was so pure and beautiful that, despite their mission, soul-hungry sisters paused together in the lobby to breathe it like Devotion.
It was exactly that, for the veil of scent parted to reveal the doors to the Chapel of Wax, from whence the Queen herself walked out, her ladies behind her. She was clothed in a mantle of pure white waxen lace, so light it flowed like air around her. Her divine fragrance was now blended with the wild air that had blown through the broken and ravaged hive, and when she smiled on her daughters, bright and steady waves of love and reassurance flowed through the air.