by Laline Paull
Flora listened for any other sisters who might still be awake. Her mouth was dry and the base of her tongue felt tight. She wanted a shining drop of water from the cool green groove of a leaf. She wanted the soft velvet slide of petals on her body, not the cold clutch of her sisters’ claws. She could not sleep and she could not fly and her wings were locked cold down her back. If she completely relaxed her antennae she might be able to sleep, but to do that might release dreams of her egg. Flora jerked her legs at the thought of it and sanitation workers on both sides mumbled and moaned in their sleep.
Was it so cold outside she would die? That might be better than this—she would die of boredom and frustration if she failed to sleep. Flora now desperately wanted to call out to the other foragers—surely they would be struggling as well, for foragers only rested for short periods, and already the Cluster felt like an eternity.
Flora concentrated on calming herself, trying to synchronize her nervous system with her sisters’—but her mind streamed with memories of the air, and her travels, and the life she had lived before. Her tongue twitched to unroll into the sticky little mouth of a mallow, or gather up fat creamy grains of poppy pollen. She could almost feel the capsules weighting her fur and smell their savory aroma as she combed them into her panniers. She wanted to draw in the cool, herbal tension of plant stems under her feet, not the dust from some sister’s back. But more than anything, she wanted dew.
She must have slept, for she woke because the Cluster was stirring, rotating its layers so that all bees moved up toward the top where they would eventually be fed, then revolving back down. In this way the Cluster would travel the walls of the Treasury, opening honey cells as it went, and always would the Queen be fed first.
The smell of honey percolated through the layers as a new kin group was fed, and Flora’s appetite returned with a burst. She looked around for the source of the food, but after several hours, the Cluster had already re-formed and the sanitation workers had barely moved. As she scanned up the dense ball of her colony, Flora knew it would be many days before they ate.
She carefully extricated herself and joined the two workers next to her together to seal the gap she left, then picked her way across the surface, treading lightly on her sisters’ thousand backs so as not to disturb them. At last she smelled a faint trace of sky and found the ragged wing-tips and toughened thorax of another forager.
“Madam Rosebay.” Flora whispered, for she saw the other stirred restlessly. “Can you sleep? I cannot.”
“No! And I cannot bear this confinement, and do not tell me about the Last Feast, for my belly eats itself. How long before our layer moves in for feeding?” Madam Rosebay’s voice was hoarse with anxiety. “Foragers should not have to wait, foragers do not need to Cluster. Why are we even here?”
Other bees shushed them from all directions.
“House bee prisoners,” she retorted. “I will not hold a sister’s hand for the rest of my life—I have spent my life on the air, I will find food for us now.”
“Sister . . .” Flora could hear the wind roaring in the night. “Not now—”
“Yes, now! I go wild with this confinement—”
Madam Rosebay broke the link with the two house bees on either side of her and climbed unsteadily onto the surface of the Cluster to stand with Flora.
“Sister, please, it would be better in the morning—”
“I cannot bear another moment here.” Madam Rosebay unlatched her wings and Flora saw they were withered on her back. At her look of horror Madam Rosebay pulled one round and gasped. “My wings. Oh, my wings. What has happened—help me close them, Sister. It must be the cold—they will come straight again.” She tugged at them and they tore. “These are not my wings,” she whispered to Flora, “my wings are whole and strong. They must be underneath. I must shake these free outside.”
Madam Rosebay ran down the Cluster, waking many bees. She jumped for the Treasury wall but could not hold on. Scrabbling and clawing at the walls she fell to the bottom of the chamber, crying out in pain.
“Forager sister!” she called out to Flora from the black depths of the Fanning Hall floor below the Treasury walls. “Help me to the landing board! My flowers are waiting for me, they will not open until I reach them—please, you must help me!”
Flora ran to the edge of the Cluster and jumped onto a Treasury wall. She climbed down over its sealed vaults all the way to the bottom, where many sisters’ bodies lay dead upon the ground. Madam Rosebay stood among them, struggling to spread her withered wings. Her legs gave way and she reached out for Flora.
“My flowers,” she whispered. “They are waiting. You must go.”
“Yes, Sister.” Flora sat down beside her and stroked her antennae. “Tell me of your flowers, so I shall know them.”
“Willowherb,” said the broken forager, “has the best nectar. Remember that.”
Flora waited until Madam Rosebay was still, then laid her with the other bodies.
“You are very kind,” said a familiar voice. “I never knew.”
Thirty-One
IT TOOK A MOMENT FOR FLORA TO SEE SIR LINDEN, SITTING hunched and small at the foot of a broken Treasury wall. The sight of him made her glad.
“I could have shown myself at any time before this,” he said, “and met a quick end. Now I must die of starvation, like the coward I am.” He looked up. “Unless I call out for someone to come and finish me off.”
“Do not disturb their rest. Where did you hide?”
“In plain scent—I joined your work party: look.” And Sir Linden pulled his antennae in short and blunt, hunched his back, and dropped his head. Even his wings seemed lower set. He scuttled from side to side, his gait quick and anxious like a sanitation worker’s. “I think they smelled the difference, but of course none could speak it. Or perhaps . . . fool that I am . . . I thought them kind enough to allow it.”
They both looked up at the Cluster. Flora hesitated.
“There is room up there, among us. At least you would be warm.”
“Oh, yes, one’s own blood flowing freely from one’s wounds is very warming, for a short while anyway. Do you think me crazy?”
“The bloodlust is past. No one will hurt you now.” Flora began to climb back up the Treasury walls.
“Wait.” Linden followed her, his movements weak. “Could it work? Why would you do this for me? You are unnatural. Though that is not news.” As he drew level with her he tried to puff his thorax. “Yes, thank you. I agree to your plan,” he whispered, “but surely my noble groin will draw great interest? Some sister will long to groom it—”
“You will be quite safe.”
“Good,” he whispered back, “for my popularity fatigued me in the Season, you know. Very greatly.”
THE SANITATION WORKERS hung silent in their latticed sleep. Flora signaled Sir Linden to wait while very gently she unhooked a couple of sisters, then she beckoned to him. They murmured and stirred as she joined him between them. He grimaced as he sniffed them, then entwined his arms and legs.
“Still quite a strong-scented bunch, aren’t you?”
“Be glad of it.” Flora let a wave of her own scent cover him. “And be quiet.” She trod on him as she climbed up one level of hanging sisters.
“Wait—where are you going?”
“You talk too much.” After her journey to the Fanning Hall floor Flora was glad of her sisters’ warmth. Carefully she squeezed herself back into position and the scent of the Queen stole up through the slow-breathing Cluster. She waited until she was sure her sisters’ scent covered that of the drone, then a weary peace soaked through her body, and at last she slept.
THE CLUSTER MOVED VERY SLOWLY, the great mass revolving on itself to travel the Treasury walls, and the sisters did not wake, only stirred in their sleep as they shifted their grip on legs and hands, rising or sinking as the Cluster turned. When the great ball shifted again, the smell of honey spiked hunger in Flora’s belly, strong as when s
he broke out of her emergence chamber. Her whole body felt empty and trembling—and when she saw how far she was from her turn to eat, she wanted to wail in despair. There were maybe another thousand mouths to feed before the turn of the sanitation workers—if they had strength to wait.
Her limbs ached from holding her position, but all around her the other floras slept on, as did the strange new sister she had joined into them. Flora did not want to wake them, but she could not bear to remain like this. She drew in her consciousness and tried to pull shreds of the divine fragrance around her antennae to soothe her impatience. There was not enough and the effort only exacerbated her need for food or escape from this dark, crowded confinement. Other foragers were also awake—she could feel their frustration pulsing through the Cluster. She pushed more energy into her senses—the air had changed and the wood of the hive smelled different. It was drier, and the wind had subsided. Very softly, Flora unhooked herself.
THE VIEW FROM THE LANDING BOARD was a shock. The orchard raked black branches against a white sky, and beyond it raw brown fields stretched to the high and distant tree line. Several foragers stretched their cramped limbs and looked at each other. All were ravenous. They shivered as they raised their antennae and scented the cold air. There was no wind or rain, and a pale haze in the cloud showed the sun still lived. One by one they started their engines. The sound was loud and unnervingly different in the winter air. There were no Thistle guards to do it, so each of the foragers laid down her own homecoming marker to guide them all back in. Flora watched them. A Calluna forager nodded to her in approval.
“You have the right.” Her voice was cracked and dry, and Flora could hear how empty her belly was. “And your kin-scent is so strong—”
“None of us could ever miss it!”
“Do it, Sister.”
For the first time in her life, Flora laid her kin-scent down on the landing board, proclaiming her kin could forage. The homecoming marker immediately absorbed the new chemical signature and it rose up more strongly. The sisters started their engines.
Flora’s wings were weak from their long time folded and the cold air shocked her as she struggled for altitude. Every scent and air current had changed, and the smell of the warehouses was stronger. Her antennae suddenly flashed with an incoming message—and to her delight she recognized the unique frequency of Lily 500’s data running in her brain. A foraging location, with coordinates over the town.
Cage of glass, cage of glass, were the only words attached. Flora had no idea what it meant, but the coordinates were so insistent that she began her descent over the houses and their dirty green patchwork of gardens.
The wind grew stronger, and with it, the cold. Each pump of blood to her wings took more fuel than before, and a lightness in her crop signaled danger. Her pride again, insisting she would find forage in the hardest conditions, in the farthest fields. Now she would have to chase the sun’s dropping azimuth home without refueling—
Cage of glass, insisted Lily’s data in her brain, cage of glass!
“Be quiet! Be quiet!” Flora whirled in the air, her energy level sending a warning to her brain. If she touched cold ground now it would suck the last of it from her body and she would never rise again.
She caught a trace of sweetness—bright and young and pure. A flower—a young, beautiful flower. Flora locked onto it. Fragrant beyond buddleia, iris, or even honeysuckle, a thread of the sweetest fragrance curled from a cube of light against the side of a building. Flora veered away from her reflection before she crashed into the huge window.
Inside the cage of glass were plants, some bright and luscious of petal, some tiny and white. The sweet scent she followed was inside, coming from a flower calling to her, imploring any bee, any pollinator to come in—but Flora did not know how to enter. The wind dragged her along the glass wall and she caught the scent more strongly. It came from a little gap halfway down.
THE AIR IN THE CONSERVATORY was warm and humid, and the plants did not grow out of the earth but from brightly colored pots on stands and on ledges along the walls. A metal dish of mashed meat was on the ground and several flies fed from it, but more lay dead or dying on the windowsills and on the floor. Flora ignored everything but the beautiful plant calling to her with its pure, sweet scent, open and untouched and longing for a bee.
First she had to avoid the drunken bluebottles contaminating all the bigger flowers. Many alighted on the heavy orange lily heads still waiting to open, drawn by the thick bead of nectar showing at the ruched tip of the petals. Other flowers also waited, and Flora did not know if they were ready, for their petals were fleshy and green like peapods, their pursed and meaty red lips edged with strange white tendrils like fangs. Feeling her wingbeats they murmured lasciviously to her and pushed their murky perfume across her path, but they held no appeal.
Amid their lewd clamor rose the one true scent that called to Flora, the virgin bloom of a little orange tree, a tortured miniature graft of three different plants. Its tiny ultraviolet florets shone in the dull winter air, and she felt its desire for her straining from its roots.
“Hush, hush.” Flora pushed her own scent through her feet as she settled on the dark, glossy leaves. The plant’s citrus sweetness immediately brightened her senses and the fatigue of her journey fell away. There was not one other bee in the glass room, and Flora’s panniers opened in readiness for the haul of pollen and nectar she would surely be able to take back to the hive from this marvelous place. She climbed up and positioned herself over one of the creamy white florets, and the contact of her feet on the flower’s virginal petal made them both tremble. Flora held it softly, then sank her tongue into its depths. The exquisite taste sparkled through her mind and body like sun on water, and she drank until each floret was empty.
Behind her, the green-fleshed flowers waited their turn. As Flora combed the minute gold pollen beads of the orange blossom into her panniers, she felt their patient desire. When she looked again, their green lips had parted to show a glimpse of inner red, and their white fringing had a more festive look. Their thick coarse nectar could not compare with the near-divine bouquet of the orange blossom, but it was plentiful, and the way it rose to her attention was very flattering.
Despite herself, Flora’s own scent pulsed more strongly from her body. So strong was these flowers’ desire for her that they actually moved toward her, their inner petals moistening under her gaze. Flora hovered, mesmerized by their lust.
“Come to me instead,” crooned a high voice. Flora looked up to see a big black Minerva spider sitting in her hazy cobweb. “What a sweet servant. Come let me hold you.”
“I have seen your kind,” Flora called back. “No thank you.”
Her wings beat harder with the adrenaline of spider-danger, exciting more thick perfume to rise from the green-fleshed flowers. Perhaps they were a kind of weed. In these conditions sisters would drink spurge if they could find it, and it would be a fine thing to go back with a cropful of fresh nectar, no matter its provenance.
The fleshy blooms gaped wider, encouraging her decision. Who knew when the weather would permit another forage? Perhaps she could drink the orange blossom nectar herself, and then bring back this more plentiful one. Flora opened up her antennae channel a little more in case Lily 500 had any comment, but there was no signal of any kind.
The green flowers suddenly pumped their scent, flooding Flora’s brain and forcing her attention back to them. Their red mouths gaped wider, and on each inner lip stood three long white filaments like pistils or anthers, except they bore no pollen. The only nectar was a viscous slick at the join of the petals—crude but plentiful.
At the cloying smell, Flora hesitated. Shamelessly, the vulgar flowers begged for her touch, swelling even more nectar so that the thought rose in Flora’s mind that here was enough to feed the whole Cluster.
Before she could decide which bloom to choose, the air swarmed with flies driven wild by the same scent. Flora swerved out of t
he way as they buzzed crazily around the green flowers. The bluebottles shouted crude compliments and kicked at the white fringes with filthy feet to tease them. They swooped and swirled until the air twisted with the heavy perfume of the flowers and the carrion and excrement on the flies’ bodies. Some of them crashed into the bright glass and fell to the ground, stunned and buzzing. Irritated by their antics but mindful of the Minerva in the corner, Flora rose higher. The spider peered out between her sticky curtains.
“Bee with secrets,” she whispered. “I can smell them from here.”
Flora moved away but a jet from her alarm gland escaped her, and the spider laughed. “We will have some entertainment today, I think. First, watch the fools.”
The flies taunted the green flowers, zooming close so that the petals gaped red, then screeching past without touching them. But the largest of the strange blooms had not forgotten Flora, and forced its fragrance up to her where she hovered.
“They always want you!” a bluebottle screamed at Flora as he tore past in the air, demented by the flowers’ smell. “But we are as good! Our very name tells you our skill: fly! We are lords of the air! Watch me!” His body was a metallic turquoise and he scrawled lines of obscene poetry in the air behind him. Flora felt dizzy watching him, and his smell made her sick, but his companions roared their approval.
The young fly tore through the air between Flora and the lusting green flower. He kicked along its white fringe with a filth-encrusted foot, and to Flora it looked as if the petal moved to touch him.