The Honey Farm

by Harriet Alida Lye

  “It’s so good to get out of the house,” Silvia says, sighing a little. “I love forests in the winter.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t it amazing how they look dead but they’re actually alive?” Her cheeks, pinked, lift to the sky, to the tops of the trees.

  THE LAKES are patent-leather black, darker than in summertime. No ice has formed round the rim of the first lake, and the edge seems to have stayed in the same place: the drought has not affected the size of the Black Falls Lakes. (Their true name was revealed by Hartford a couple weeks ago. Not revealed, Ibrahim reasons—it was never hidden. But he still thinks of them as Big and Little Cynthia.)

  Silvia remembers Monique, the frogs. Now all the animals are hiding from the winter they’d known was coming—which they’d been preparing for—since the last one ended. The frogs, any of the survivors, will have buried themselves in the mud and be sleeping at the bottom of the lake.

  She walks to the water’s edge. Her body feels unbearably heavy. Her legs, her groin, her belly, her breasts, her arms, her eyelids; her tongue is like an anvil behind her leaden lips.

  Ibrahim is watching her. She can feel him watching her.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” she answers, looking up at the sky. “Just that . . . well, I think there’s something about Hilary and Cynthia and their baby, but I don’t know. Meg said something about how she was sorry about what happened, but it was hard to follow what she was talking about. I didn’t understand.”

  “Huh.” Ibrahim is quiet but she can tell he’s alert. “I’m sure she was just trying to be polite. I’m sure it’s nothing, but either way, it must be hard for Cynthia to talk about. Hilary took the baby away, right? That would be hard, for sure.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t seem like that was it. I don’t know.”

  They wordlessly agree to simply stop talking about it, perhaps knowing that they can’t—or don’t want to—know the answers.

  “I’m cold,” Silvia says, feeling it suddenly all through her bones.

  “Really?”

  “Ibrahim, I’m freezing.”

  “Okay, sure, of course. Let’s go back and get you warmed up.”

  He wraps his arm around her shoulders and they make their way back to the farmhouse.

  X

  THOUGH WINTER CAME on slowly, it has now hit full on. There’s that expression about being cold to the bone, but this presupposes that the cold stops there. This far north, it goes straight through—bones, marrow, everything. Moisture in the air turns into snow crystals, even though there’s still no precipitation; the wind picks up the fine frozen powder; it sparkles in the light.

  Ibrahim was meant to help Hartford that morning, but he woke up late to chalky sunlight filtering pale through the window and Silvia’s light snoring. As he starts out of bed, she shuffles under the covers.

  “Good morning,” he says, oddly cheerful.

  “Not good yet,” she grumbles. “What are you doing?”

  “Late for Hartford.” His head pops out of his brown scratchy-wool sweater.

  “Oh.” Another day stretches empty ahead of her.

  “What’s the matter?” Ibrahim asks.

  “Nothing,” she says, shaking her head, “I’m just still half asleep.” She had a dream, she’s remembering now, in which she was a child playing in her backyard, the sound of the ocean turning into the sound of the bees. She was only a child, so she obviously wasn’t pregnant—none of this new world existed. In the dream she’d had the freedom of a child and her body was her own. Nostalgia isn’t enough to cover the feeling she has now, upon waking, upon pulling her foot firmly out of the dream-ether; neither is regret. It’s a feeling that has become dulled by fact, the emotion of it all chewed out. She blinks.

  He kisses her on the forehead in a way she finds patronizing. “See you later!”

  She slumps back onto the bed and tries to escape the remnants of the night and her dream, of which she can remember only the feeling, and the darkness that’s swarming.

  HARTFORD AND IBRAHIM are in the toolshed, the only place on the farm that has an unadulterated warmth, as it’s where the heater is located. Outside, a thin layer of frost covers everything, but inside they work without coats, only one layer of socks and sweaters. They’ve used a handsaw to remove a piece of drywall, exposing a swarm of bees within the walls.

  “Come on, you guys.” Hartford speaks pleadingly, cajolingly. He’s wearing thick canvas gloves, and his hands move across the bees without touching them. They do not move in response.

  “Holy shit.” Ibrahim is just seeing the mass of insects from which the vacuum-loud buzzing is coming. He’s also wearing gloves, but stands back.

  “There we go.” Hartford’s voice is straining slightly; the bees still do not move. He grunts. “Cynthia is so much better at this—I don’t know why she asked me to do it.”

  “Do they do this often? The bees?”

  “Once in a while. If the old queen leaves before the new queen has taken her place, then she takes the colony with her.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s just the way it is. Power, trust, I don’t know.”

  “What if the new queen was already there but the bees just liked the old one better?”

  “Never happens.”

  “Never? Really? How do you know?”

  “Science.” Hartford stands back, puts his hands on his hips. “Here, you give it a try.”

  “Me? What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just pick them up. With your hands. Try to get as many as you can and put them in that bucket there.”

  “What will we do with them once they’re in the bucket?”

  “Take them back to the hive.”

  “Why can’t we just let them stay here?”

  “Ibrahim.” Hartford crosses his arms and looks down at Ibrahim, crouching over the bucket. “Not only would it ruin the whole structure of the building, but bees are valuable, and they belong to us, and so we need them to work for us.”

  “Right.” Ibrahim squints a little. “Okay.”

  The funny thing about Hartford’s face, Ibrahim realises as he stares at him from this vantage point, is that his eyes start farther than halfway down his head. He can see now, with sharp clarity, how the bare expanse of Neanderthal-boned forehead stretches an extra inch or so down Hartford’s head, thereby squeezing his eyes, nose, and mouth—the only valuable parts of a face, really—into a space too small to seem at all right. He wonders if Hartford knows.

  Slowly, by persuasion, the men are able to place the bees in the bucket. But it is by magic that the bees stay in the bucket, or at least that’s how it seems to Ibrahim.

  As the men work, they talk. It’s always easier to talk about serious things if your given task prevents you from looking the other person in the eye. Driving, walking, working. Given this distance, Ibrahim feels he can ask anything he wants. “How did you hear about it here?”

  “Cynthia put out a call for a private singing instructor.”

  “Oh yeah? When was that?”

  “Twelve years ago.” Hartford speaks very matter-of-factly as he scoops bees from the wall and smoothes them down into the bucket.

  “So when did the singing stop?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Like, did you and Cynthia ever have a—”

  For the first time Hartford stops what he’s doing. He looks at Ibrahim, his face red with heat, his eyes dark. He shakes his head. “Ibrahim. No. It’s never been about that.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” He wants to ask, of course, what it was about, but doesn’t.

  Silence for a moment. Neither of them gets back to work.

  “Hey.” Ibrahim points to the ground next to Hartford. “Can you pass me the water bottle?” He glugs back half its contents, then changes the subject. “What about your family?”

  “Died. That’s why I wanted to come here.”

  “Hey, man.”
Ibrahim backs up in that deferential way men do when avoiding a fight with a drunken stranger on the street. “I’m sorry.” His voice drops. “My ma too. Cancer, nine years ago now. It’s the worst, the absolute worst.”

  It’s true, it is the worst: a layer of sadness is the underpainting of his life and work, and while things might be bright and beautiful on the surface, they’re anchored in this grief, which sometimes lends itself to mild paralysis. It’s why he has to keep moving.

  Hartford looks around, then flicks one last bee into the bucket. “We’re done here. Thank you.”

  “Oh.” Ibrahim stands up, taken aback. “Sure.” He takes off his gloves.

  He catches his reflection in the windowpane before leaving, but it takes a minute before he recognizes himself. His beard has grown lumberjack-long, and his face, thinner than ever before, is floating hollowly over the barren landscape. He blinks, imagining himself as a painting, then walks out.

  XI

  HAVING SPENT the entire morning and afternoon in bed, looking at the ceiling, Silvia decides to go outside on a little walk, maybe stroll the perimeter of the forest or at least go through the gardens, but when she’s just through the front door, she runs into Ibrahim on the lawn.

  There’s the sound of bleating, almost like a moan, and then a loud crack. Then again: bleating, crack.

  “Did you hear that?” she asks.

  “No, I just got—” And then he hears what she’s talking about.

  “What is that?” Silvia asks Ibrahim. She’s confused, doesn’t believe what she hears. She’s trying not to let the terror translate to her voice.

  A new sound: a slow whine turns into a grunting shriek, the panting sounds of terror, then the crack, louder now as they move closer to the noises.

  Ibrahim senses Silvia’s distress, and as the two of them turn the corner of the big stone house and near the honey hut, they come across a pile of sheep, four or five of them, their legs tied, their fleece bloody and dark against the hardened grey frost. She can feel warmth coming off their bodies; they must be freshly dead. Who would kill the sheep? She puts her hands on her knees and bends down, about to retch.

  “Come on, honey, let’s get you inside.” Ibrahim tries to guide her away, but then they see it.

  Blood, fleece, corduroy.

  Scrambling legs and an open mouth.

  The sharp flash of a silver knife.

  It’s a sheep—bleating, bleeding, suspended by its back legs from a tree branch. Cynthia is standing behind it, gently touching its thick body, twitching. Then she slits its throat, and blood spills into a tin bowl on the ground.

  “What—” Silvia tries to speak but can’t.

  Cynthia notices them. The knife is still in her hand.

  “It’s okay,” Ibrahim whispers, putting his arm around Silvia, trying to steer her away, but her body is fixed.

  Cynthia walks over to them, around the pile of sheep. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” she says.

  Silvia shakes her head.

  “It’s the kindest thing to do,” Cynthia continues as Silvia buries her head in Ibrahim’s flannel jacket. “Hartford doesn’t like it either, but they’re sick. It needs to be done.”

  The last thing Silvia sees is the blood matting in the sheep’s wool coat, and the last thing she feels is her own blood suddenly cold in her veins. She closes her eyes, seeing the pieces fit together, and then darkness.

  XII

  My father woke me early. I could see him, his body a shadow, standing in the doorway to the room I used to share with my brother. My father did not come into the room. “We are going to Mount Moriah,” he said. His voice sounded different.

  This is the mountain where we make sacrifices. I knew this. It takes three days to get to the mountain. Donkeys are required. I have been there before.

  I was still in bed. I was still sleepy. “Father, what will we sacrifice?”

  “A lamb, Isaac.”

  My father is a good man. He loaded the donkey before the sun rose. Wood for the altar, bread, water. He brought two servants.

  We journeyed for three days and two nights. My father let me sleep on the back of the donkey, where it was warm and soft. He and the servants slept on the ground. On the fourth morning we arrived at the base of the mountain.

  My father said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

  My father asked me to carry the wood. I ran up the mountain. I was not tired.

  The sun had not yet risen. The sky and the earth were the same colour: the colour of wine, and of new leaves. I saw a bird fall and swoop. It looked just like the fall and swoop of the scythe as it slices through wheat. I could not tell what bird it was.

  “Father, where is the lamb we will sacrifice?”

  “Have faith, Isaac.”

  I fell back to keep time with my father. The logs were starting to feel heavy on my back. Something was starting to feel heavy inside me too.

  “Father, what are we doing?”

  “I said have faith.”

  When we reached the top of the mountain, there was still no lamb. My father asked me to put the logs onto the flat stone where the slaughters are performed. I obeyed. The heavy thing in my belly got heavier. Then my father built the altar. I knew then that I could not leave.

  “Father,” I said, “why are you doing this?”

  “It is God’s wish, my son.”

  He took a rope from his satchel and took me by the wrists. I did not struggle. If this was what my father wanted, what God wanted—

  My father put his big hand over my small face. He is an old man but he is a strong man. I did not close my eyes. Beyond his palm I could see the flash of a blade as it caught the light. The sun must be rising.

  My father told me that we must fear God. But he also told me that we must love God.

  I do not know how to do both at once.

  XIII

  SILVIA WAKES UP disoriented and deeply troubled, her world blurred. The moon is in the middle of the window, casting silver blocks of light into the room. It feels as though light and shadow are one, even now, even in wakefulness. She blinks. She doesn’t remember coming to bed; she doesn’t remember having fallen asleep.

  Bad dream. Someone died, or nearly. Was it her? And who was the person doing the killing? It was like her mother, but it wasn’t her mother.

  Ibrahim sleeps deeply, unmoved. She doesn’t want to wake up, but she needs to leave the bed because the dream still inhabits it.

  A knife. A betrayal.

  She wants something to drink.

  Her head still caught between two places, she is unaware of the walk between her room and the kitchen, unaware of whether she flicked on the light there or it was already on, but a voice startles her.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Silvia sees Cynthia sitting at the table, an open notebook in front of her.

  “I was having trouble too. But early mornings are a lovely time to write, I find. Peaceful. May as well take advantage.”

  Silvia nods and looks away, not wanting to see Cynthia: something about her teeth, about her eyes, troubles her. She opens the fridge to see if there’s juice, but when she turns, there is a glass already out—she doesn’t remember putting it there—and it’s filled with milk. She wants to say something but finds her voice isn’t quite working yet—it’s the middle of the night; it’s the bad dream, moments of it flashing back to her; it’s the surprise of not being alone.

  She’s trying to remember more about what happened in the nightmare, trying to figure out why she feels so troubled. She had a feeling of being hunted, but who was the hunter?

  “It’s okay, Silvia,” Cynthia says as she stands up, moving in slow motion. “It was just a bad dream.” She takes Silvia in her arms and holds her tightly as Silvia starts to cry.

  “The sheep had to be killed. It wasn’t a choice. They had a fungus,” Cynthia says. “A fungal plague
in their lungs. We had to kill them, or else it would spread to the bees. To the baby, even.”

  “A plague?” Silvia repeats.

  “Yes, you know, an illness.”

  “I know what it means.”

  A plague. There is a plague on the honey farm, and it arrived with her.

  XIV

  BACK IN HER ROOM, still holding the glass of milk, Silvia knows she has to leave, but she also knows that they will find her, that they will try to bring her back. And that would only make it worse. How could she explain this to anyone? Should she call her parents? Would they be able to help her? Ibrahim is sleeping soundly and she knows she should wake him; she knows he’ll want to come with her, but she also knows that if she wants to protect him, she must go alone. The punishment is only for her; it is she who is bringing the plague.

  She puts a sweater over her pyjamas and goes back down the stairs, avoiding the kitchen, and slips out the always-unlocked front door.

  A few steps into the dark garden and she looks back at the house, unlit, asleep.

  She runs.

  Air catches and swells her lungs. Looking behind her, she tries to scan the forest to find the source of the sound, snapping twigs, fast breath. She can’t see anything. Then the sound gets bigger, monumental—it’s coming from above. It’s thunder, breaking through the vaulted ceiling of the sky. It’s dark, but she can tell the dawn is coming. Through the canopy of winter-bare trees, the February sky is the ethereal grey of premorning, prelife, like a lamp behind a movie screen.

  Trees flash by, and when she turns her head it seems as if the trees themselves are moving. She goes faster, until her breath runs out, until she gets a cramp. The baby—she doesn’t want to upset the baby, even though she’s certain that the baby is the source of the pain. But what can she do? What should she do?

  She grabs a tree round its trunk. Tears are streaming down her face, but she’s not crying, she’s sure she’s not actually crying, it must just be the wind, the cold, but then her chest starts to heave with choking sobs. She looks up, trying to see the top of the tree, but it’s too tall. It must be hundreds and hundreds of years old. She knows she should feel comforted looking at this tree—if it has survived the world around it, maybe she can too—but there is no comfort there. It doesn’t even have a name.