by Jean Gill
‘I was the only one,’ she confessed, ‘and the Maturity Mages kept everything very quiet so as not to embarrass Mage–’ she broke off prettily, her hand to her mouth as if she had realised she should not speak so freely, ‘–other late starters.’ All wide-eyed innocence, she continued, ‘I don’t know what usually happens. I was a child for eighteen years.’
The ladies were hanging on every word, shaking their heads, trying to imagine such an interminable childhood.
‘Awful,’ summed up Hannah. ‘I was thirteen.’
‘I was thirteen too,’ Georgette said. ‘But not at the same Ceremony as Hannah. I’m a year older than her.’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Eleven,’ the others chimed in.
‘And now we’re ready for the Courtship Dance!’ That brought the smiles out again but Mielitta wasn’t ready to find out more about the Dance. That could wait. She should feel guilty about abusing their trust but she didn’t. She found it difficult to tell the ladies apart in any deep way, so alike were their experiences and responses. Perfect responses. No wonder they were excited at meeting a newcomer and hearing her stories.
‘I was tested in the Barn,’ she gambled, ‘Was that the same for you?’
‘Of course,’ Hannah replied and the others nodded agreement. ‘Whichever Maturity Mage is leading the Ceremony unlocks the wards on the Barn and takes all the candidates inside.’
They’d obviously compared their experiences before as Georgette followed on smoothly from Violet. ‘The boys are on one side and the girls on the other.’ A thought struck her. ‘If you were on your own, you didn’t see what happened to the boys? You just took your drink?’
‘Yes, I just took my own drink. There were no boys,’ Mielitta improvised.
‘Oh, well, as you know, we were given the pink cups, and the boys were given blue ones, so the tests were different.’
‘We think the tests were different,’ corrected Ninniana.
The other two looked at her with contempt. ‘Well of course the tests were different. The cups were different colours,’ pointed out Hannah.
‘And,’ Georgette gave the clinching argument, with indisputable logic, ‘men and women are different so it’s obvious the tests were different.’
‘My test was in the drink,’ Mielitta said, guessing.
‘Yes, that’s always how it’s done and I felt all floaty, full of Perfection and so glad to be female, made for procreation and dresses and dancing.’
Ah. Mielitta could do this. ‘It made me feel so gentle, wanting to be held by somebody strong.’ Drones she thought. Mating flight.
‘Exactly like that.’ Georgette looked at her in approval.
‘And then you feel the change, that you’re an adult now. So good to forget all those childish things you did!’
‘You forgot everything?’ Mielitta wondered how Hannah could know they were childish things if she’d forgotten them all.
‘Of course. Didn’t you?’ The ladies frowned at Mielitta.
She screwed up her face as if racking her memory, then giggled. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’
Hannah and Georgette giggled too.
‘Of course, my mother has told me some stories about when I was little,’ confessed Georgette.
‘And mine. But that’s not like remembering being a child.’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ said Mielitta. The ensuing sympathy distracted the others from pondering any odd responses, or odd questions. She hesitated before asking but she had to find out, for Drianne’s sake. ‘I was worried, beforehand, in case I didn’t pass the test.’
‘But we did!’ Hannah pointed out.
‘And we’re all here!’ The ladies laughed as they chimed in at the same moment.
‘What about the ones who didn’t pass the test? What happened to them?’ asked Mielitta and held her breath.
The ladies looked at each other, confused.
‘We all passed,’ Hannah repeated, shrugging, and the others just nodded agreement.
‘Everyone who went into the Barn with you?’ Mielitta knew she was pressing too hard but she had to find out. ‘You all passed the test and came out as adults for the Ceremony. All the girls and all the boys who went into the Barn came out as women and men?’
Hannah considered the matter. ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t they? What a strange question.’
Georgette’s expression cleared, her eyebrows lowering to their customary state of mere surprise. ‘You wouldn’t know that, if you were on your own but there were adult clothes ready for each one of us. There would have been spares if anybody had failed the test.’
‘And everyone I know passed the test.’ Ninniana enunciated each word as an absolute truth.
‘So you don’t need to worry about your children,’ Hannah reassured Mielitta. ‘They will all be fine, just like us.’
Mielitta smiled at this wonderful prospect and listened to the ladies describe their first dresses, which segued neatly into a discussion of what to wear to the Courtship Dance. With as many smiles as her face could manage without setting into rigor, and interjections of ‘lace trim’ or ‘V-neck’, Mielitta’s unease grew.
Why was it called a test if everybody passed? Shenagra’s tests in the schoolroom had contained a threat, created the same atmosphere as when she identified the eleven in the Hall and the traitor mage in the Council Chamber. Mielitta could still see Crimvert diminishing to a pile of ash, blown into the fireplace. She could still hear the discussion between Rinduran and Bastien in the library. ‘Weak people are the result of weak tests. We won’t make that mistake… use the Maturity Test to choose a mate… my advice is to suppress her.’
Another picture came to mind: the interior of the Maturity Barn. She’d scoured the dark corners, seeking clues as to what happened there and she’d found nothing. Except for a pile of ashes. Her blood ran cold. Suppression. Ashes.
She excused herself as quickly as she dared and as soon as she was out of sight, she raced back to her chamber to collect her weapons. She would spend the day in the Forest, in target practice and preparation for Drianne’s rescue. Tonight, the volunteers would report back and Mielitta would seize any chance to grab the girl and escape to the Forest.
She rolled her britches up in her servant’s jerkin so she could change into more practical clothes once out of the Citadel. Then she strung her bow and shouldered her quiver. She could make up some story of taking it to the archery yard for a man. A beau. Enough fluffy giggles seemed to overcome most suspicions.
Help. We need you.
‘Not now,’ she told the bees. ‘I’m coming to the Forest anyway so I can look at the hive, see if I can help. Just give me a little time.’
Now, was the inexorable response and Mielitta just had time to lie back down on her bed before the dizziness swirled her away, into her bee’s body and the darkness of a teeming hive. Into the mother of all thunderstorms.
The bees’ wooden home shook and Mielitta’s antennae went numb from the crashes that detonated all round them. Between deafening blasts of thunder, the wind howled, forcing its way through any tiny holes in the hive walls, whistling ghastly threats. Trees groaned, creaked and splintered. One cracked completely and crashed to the ground, shaking the earth.
Still nauseous from the transition, Mielitta cowered in the dark centre of the hive, hiding from the noise and searing light that found the same pinholes as the wind to enter the hive. She sought comfort from the multitude of furry bodies surrounding her, in their protection.
Instead, she found worse horrors than the storm. The colony vibrated with panic, incapacitated with fear, spreading the scent of doom as quickly as they usually passed nectar. Mielitta was drowning, drenched in the bees’ certainty that their community was dying, in the futility of action. The stench was overwhelming. There was no point fighting the weather, even if they could have routed the invaders.
Invaders? Just as Mielitta was informed of this other danger, she saw something
black charging towards her, cutting a swathe through the bees as if they were mere pollen in its path. She held her ground but had no defence against its full body armour. The bees’ attempts to sting bounced off its carapace, useless. Even though it was little bigger than a bee, it was more solid and carved its path through the colony, without hesitation. Hive beetle. And there were more of them.
Mielitta’s eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to make out the comb either side of her and then she joined in the keening despair. Some of the brood had been damaged by the heedless tracks of beetles and in their place were maggots, breeding the next generation of destroyers. Compared with the murdered young, dribbled honey and stolen pollen were petty crimes. The trail of damage in the wake of hive beetles was highlighted in each flash from above.
Once more the hive shook in the earth-shattering rage of the skies. Then, after a pause, the unnatural light sought entry, its ultraviolet menacing, with no hint of flowers.
Every instinct screamed at Mielitta to crowd tightly, to die with her people, but part of her remained human, separate from the bees, and fought to survive.
There was a pause, she thought, remembering her survival book. That meant the storm was moving further away from the hive. Weather would not kill them, at least not this time.
‘The storm is going,’ she told her bees. ‘It won’t hurt us now.’ There was a tiny relaxation in the tension but not for long. Some other force was contradicting her.
‘Where’s your other queen?’ she asked but she already knew the answer. She could hear the high, frightened cries, like the song of the rival queens in their cells when they heard her coming for them.
I can’t go on! Keep them away from me, please. So rough, so many of them. We’re all going to die and I don’t know what to do. I’m too young to be queen. You should have chosen another queen and let me die. I’ve let you down and it’s all my fault. All for nothing, my babies dead, dying. They’re all going to die.
Mielitta located the Young Queen’s voice as being somewhere below her, between the same comb cliffs, further from storm light but subject to more contact with the invaders. No wonder the Young Queen was going crazy and the hive with her. Fear and its smell pulsed in waves, infecting all but the black beetles, leaving only debris and maggots in their wake as they scuttled wherever they wished to go, unhindered.
‘I am your First Queen,’ Mielitta told the bees. What would calm them and allow her to neutralise the damage the Young Queen was doing, while she figured out how to fight these armoured invaders? She mustn’t think about the damage they were doing or she would go crazy too. What she had to do was stop them. The storm could be ignored. The sky grumbled at her resolution, then roared its anger once more. She ignored it.
‘Work,’ she informed them, ‘You have work to do.’ The mood lightened instantly and the Young Queen’s lament was less insistent.
Mielitta sent a patrol to seal any chinks in the walls or roof with propolis, while the lightning was revealing where these tiny openings were. She insisted that cleaning and nursery duties be resumed, despite the beetles’ vandalism, and that cleaning should include re-capping leaked honey.
‘Let’s feed on any spilled honey,’ she told them. ‘Consider it a bonus in compensation for your ordeal.’ This caused confusion in bee thinking so she simplified the concept. ‘Feeding on the spilled honey will be flowers for us, after the storm.’
Flowers. Their buzz was hopeful and the thought was passed around the hive. Flowers. Happy times.
‘Drones, warm the hive. It’s cold after the storm.’
‘At once, Queen Mother,’ a large black-furred bee told her, one of the more mature drones. She suddenly felt very old and not just because of her new title. How much time had passed in the beehive since she had last been here?
‘Is he…?’ she asked her inner queen.
Bee laughter tinkled. Yes, he’s one of yours.
Mielitta felt faint and gulped, watching the drones cluster in the centre of the hive, thrumming as they created a warm, beating heart around the Young Queen. If the hive was too hot, they would cool it by fanning their wings. Now, they regulated their beats to create heat. How many of them were her offspring? How many of them had died during the Young Queen’s maiden flight?
Everyone knew where babies come from but suddenly it felt personal to know too much about where the brood came from.
‘When I laid eggs,’ she said. ‘I could decide whether they would be drones or workers. The drone eggs came from a different part of my body. Why was that?’
‘They are unfertilised,’ explained her inner queen. ‘They are made by your body alone.’
How strange. Her sons, blood of her blood and wing of her wing, her descendants. But stingless. She laughed. She would think twice before calling Jannlou a drone in the future. The word was too good for him.
She made her way past the drones to the Young Queen, who still quivered and cried but more quietly. Mielitta used her right feeler in the traditional greeting, vibrated reassurance.
‘I am here now. We will fight these beasts. I have a plan,’ she lied, with as much confidence as she could muster. The Young Queen’s shaking calmed a little but would no doubt return at the passage of the next marauder. Mielitta went looking for a plan.
She shut down her emotions and catalogued her observations. In the damaged comb, there were tunnels, random vandalism and a smell of decaying oranges from honey that frothed. Small maggots where there should have been young bees. The beetles were invincible with no chinks in their armour, they were unaffected by the bees’ attempts to sting them, barging their way past any attempt to combine against them. However, they showed no sign of intelligence, no communication among themselves, no capacity to plan. Each beetle followed its own random path.
As she traversed the upper half of the hive, she noted that huge sections of comb were untouched, replete with brood, pollen and honey. There were enough provisions and more to allow the hive to recover and repair the damage. If they could get rid of the intruders.
Then she made her discovery. In between several of the comb cliffs, near the top, was a building like a miniature stable, a sort of shed behind a row of openings. Mielitta stuck her antennae through and sniffed. She didn’t like the oily smell and clearly the other bees had felt likewise, as the stalls were all empty of bees. Man-made, like the beehive itself. Mielitta looked at the size of the openings, the enclosed nature of the buildings and she considered their use, if not for bees. Then she thumped her orders so they could be heard throughout the hive.
‘Round them up! Drive them, herd them upwards and into the sheds.’
She waited, at the top of a cliff, where she could look down on the scene at the shed below and see if her plan worked. It relied on the beetles being docile enough to go in the easiest direction and stupid enough to fall into the traps.
The hive buzzed with a chorus of Work! Push! Upwards! as the bees united to herd the beetles into the sheds. Bees swarmed past Mielitta to ensure that the upward path was blocked beyond the shed as the first beetle was driven up and into an opening. There was a small liquid squelch and the beetle remained in the trap.
As more beetles followed and the bees became more efficient at herding, Mielitta vibrated her pride in her people. She extended her praise to the Young Queen, letting the whole colony know that their great courage and matchless work skills came from their leader, who had held the hive together until help came.
‘May the stones be praised!’ Oops. Mielitta felt the bees’ puzzlement and tried, ‘May the Queen be praised. All hail the One!’ This was well-received and Mielitta thought it time to leave beetle clearance to the workers. There was only one bee left who had to be convinced of the Young Queen’s worth.
‘I let them down,’ the Young Queen told Mielitta. ‘You left our people in my care and I let you down too. After all your work repopulating the hive. I am too young and when anything goes wrong, I don’t know what to do. You shoul
d stay here, be queen again. I will crawl into the trees and leave.’
Mielitta tapped the Young Queen with her right feeler, emitted positive vibrations, felt the bond between them, then told the truth. ‘I’m young too, in my world. And I’m shit scared, most of the time. Correction – all of the time. I’ve been alone all my life.’
Alone aroused consternation from the Young Queen. ‘Until our bees found me,’ Mielitta added. ‘And I don’t want to be alone ever again. You don’t want to be alone.’
Silence.
‘Our bees cannot live without their queen and I must go back to my other people. Somebody there needs me too,’ Mielitta said.
You have another people?
Drianne. ‘Yes. And there is no queen who can take my place there. We have a duty to our people. Every queen is young at first and must learn.’ A sudden thought struck her. ‘Who called on me for help?’
We did. The Young Queen obviously considered the question silly.
‘Then you are a good queen. You work together. And help came. You know what to do now.’
My work, said the Young Queen and the air filled with hope, then turned bitter again. I stopped laying.
‘That is a queen’s choice.’ Mielitta was firm but she remembered fullness in her abdomen, the compulsion to lay eggs, and she knew that holding back was no light matter. ‘And a queen’s duty. Your mating flight was a success?’
Sixteen, was the response, vibrating with pride that she’d beaten Mielitta.
A bee’s face did not smile but Mielitta’s spirit did. ‘Then you must fill the comb in honour of sixteen drones.’
Work, agreed the Young Queen. Then she raised her voice again but not to wail this time. Let’s work, she exhorted her people and she waddled off to an undamaged, empty piece of comb, where she started laying eggs, in a neat outward spiral.
Heartened, the worker bees organised their duties: a watch over the beetle-sheds and parties to evict and clean the maggot-infested cells. The nursery cells were cleaned and more prepared for the new eggs.