The Bee Maker

by Mobi Warren

  “Let me guess. Llama cheese?”

  “Nah, they’re guard dogs. No coyote ever gets past Hera and Athena.”

  The teens sat down in the shade of an oak tree and Melissa took a swig of her water. “You seem to like Greek stuff.”

  “I devoured holo-comics about Greek myths as a little kid, but it’s their sculpture I find interesting now. That’s why I’ve been suspended three times this year.”

  “For liking sculpture?”

  “No, for modeling with clay when I should be taking notes or answering test questions. I tend to blow off stuff I find boring. Some teachers take it personally.”

  Even now, Melissa noticed, he’d pulled out his ball of red clay and was molding it as they sat there.

  “You’re always fiddling with that ball of clay.” Of course, she often had a piece of origami paper in her hands. Would the teachers here suspend her, too, she wondered?

  “It’s practice. Like practicing the piano, building muscle memory in my fingers. I want to capture the essence of people and animals. Like you do with origami.”

  “I don’t know. Origami’s more like engineering than art.”

  “But your bees, they have true bee-ness. That’s what I like about them.”

  “They’re just paper.” She paused then added, “I liked the little Hermes.” Beau, she realized, had perfectly captured Hermes-ness in red clay.

  “Thanks.” He picked a long spear of grass and nibbled the end. “You said your Mom would like the whorl, why?”

  “She’s an archeologist.”

  “Cool. Do you ever get to go on digs with her?”

  “Sometimes, but she’s in Crete right now, on a little island called Dia.”

  “Divorced?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your parents, they’re divorced, right?”

  Melissa didn’t know what business it was of Beau’s. “Yeah, but it’s no big deal.”

  They sat without speaking for a minute and then Beau said, “So how come you’re folding so many bees?”

  “No reason really.”

  “Okay, don’t tell me, but I know there’s got to be a reason.”

  Melissa stood up. “I really should be going home. I left Hermes in the house.”

  “You won’t show me how to fold a bee then?”

  Melissa hesitated. “I really do need to let Hermes outside.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll come over with you and then you can show me.”

  He was obstinate, this Beau. Couldn’t he take a hint?

  She sighed, and said, “Fine, if you really want, come over and I’ll show you how to fold one. But I warn you, it’s a lot of steps.” She stood up and turned to go.

  “I may surprise you.” Beau tossed the spear of grass and joined her.

  As they sat on the cypress bench, Hermes napping beneath it, Melissa showed Beau the folds and had him practice on larger squares of paper until he got the hang of it. He had a quick memory and his folds were sharp and neat. Melissa noticed he had nice hands, brown and long-fingered with wide palms.

  They folded without saying much. Sunlight glinted through the oak tree’s brittle leaves and Melissa looked up to see two turkey vultures trading rings of flight in the sky. Halfway through folding a bee, she rested her hands for a moment to watch their graceful flight. They swooped low enough for her to see the white tips of their black wings before they soared high in the sky again.

  Without warning, a sudden chill raced down her arms to her fingertips and the faint sound of a flute reached her ears. She stiffened but didn’t take her eyes off the vultures and again they dipped low enough for her to see their white heads and golden brown wings. Wait. Hadn’t their wings been black, tipped with white, just a moment before? She blinked and when she opened her eyes again found she was standing near the edge of a low cliff overlooking a sparkling turquoise sea. She turned her head slightly and saw a boy sitting on a large flat stone staring blankly ahead.

  He had been attaching strings to a lyre balanced on his lap. His legs were crossed, but she could see he had a deformed foot that looked like a hoof. It was the same boy she’d seen before. In the distance someone else, the girl no doubt, was playing the flute, the same song that mingled with coyote cries when Melissa drifted to sleep. As she stared at the boy, the sound of the flute faded, replaced by the rattling drone of cicadas. A quick tremor passed through the boy’s body and he looked down at his palm with an expression of surprise. He looked up and his eyes met Melissa’s. At first his eyes widened in terror but then he bowed his head and raised his hands. What was he holding? It looked like, but no, it couldn’t be. He closed his hand in a soft fist and lifted it to his ear, his face filled with wonder. Then he faded from sight.

  “Mel, are you alright? Melissa!”

  Melissa startled as Beau’s face came into focus. His eyes searched hers and he clutched her arm in a firm, concerned grasp. She shook his hand off, realizing with horror that she had had a seizure. This was no brief staring spell; she had traveled again to that place by the sea. There had been the haunting sound of the flute, the same odd boy. This time, the boy held something in his hand. Melissa looked down at her own empty ones.

  “Are you sick or something? You turned so pale I thought you were going to faint.”

  Melissa tried to collect herself. “I’m not used to the heat, that’s all.”

  “Mel, you were staring in space like you couldn’t see or hear me.”

  This was what she dreaded, having a seizure in front of other kids, and then forever after being thought weird or damaged. She wanted to run into the house, slam the door, and never see Beau again, but she turned to him and steadied herself with a deep breath.

  “I have epilepsy. I get seizures where I blank out.” There, she’d said it.

  “Are you going to have convulsions?” Beau looked worried.

  “No, it’s not like that. I don’t have that kind of epilepsy, I just…” Her voice faltered as she blinked back tears. She turned to look at the meadow.

  Beau touched her arm lightly as if to reassure her and asked, “Can I do anything to help? Do you need to lie down?”

  “I’m okay.” She lifted a finger and rubbed the small bump at the bridge of her nose, that place where her Asian and Scottish ancestry met to make her nose neither Asian nor Celtic. Why, oh why, did she have to have a seizure in front of Beau? Now he would know she was a girl with holes in her mind. He was so darn nosy and talkative, he would tell everyone else. Soon the whole town would know.

  “Should I call your father?”

  “What? No. Ba doesn’t need to know.”

  “Ba?”

  “Ba is Vietnamese for Dad. It’s what I call him.”

  “Like baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool?”

  Melissa grimaced.

  “Sorry, stupid joke.”

  Melissa smiled weakly. “I don’t need to bother him. He’s got enough on his mind.”

  “Look, I know he’s trying to save civilization and all, but he’s your father. Shouldn’t we call him?”

  “No. Really. It’s not a big deal.”

  “You get these spells often?”

  “No, hardly ever.”

  Beau gave her a dubious look. “I can call your Dad.”

  “No,” Melissa said more forcefully. “Look, I think I’ll go inside and read a book or something.”

  Beau’s green eyes searched her own. “Okay. Thanks for showing me how to fold an origami bee.”

  “You must have whorls on your fingertips.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing, it just means you’re good at it.”

  “You’re an odd fish, Mel. Well, if you’re sure you’re okay, I need to get back home and finish my chores.”

  Beau stood up and without looking b
ack, leapt over the low fence and jogged across the meadow. Melissa didn’t expect she’d see him again any time soon. What boy wanted to hang out with a girl who had staring spells?

  The rest of the afternoon she lay on her bed, Hermes curled against her. She had that scary, weird feeling again that something inside her had been drained or erased. She didn’t know which was worse, to lose parcels of time or hallucinate things that weren’t really there. Why did she keep seeing that goat-like boy? And why on earth had he been holding an origami bee?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE BEE MAKER

  On her way to meet her brother, Amethea passed Kimon sitting in the shade of a wild chestnut tree. He nodded respectfully then returned to whittling a piece of wood. He was making a new flute to sell at market alongside Dika’s baskets of sesame seeds. His father, Amethea knew, had been a sculptor, a trade Kimon would have followed if he hadn’t been captured in a raid and sold as a slave. He’d offered to carve a marble stele for her mother’s grave but Karpos had dismissed the idea. She also knew Kimon longed to work again with marble and bronze as much as she longed to run. If circumstances were different, she might have asked him to carve her victory statue. Her shoulders tensed and she frowned. Despite efforts to banish thoughts of the Heraea Games, they continued to rise with a power of their own. Why should she, after all, abandon the talent that was hers? Hadn’t Karpos hinted he might be willing to take her to the Games? Or had she imagined that’s what he meant?

  The goats were scattered nearby like a handful of tossed knucklebones. Some rested beneath squat pine trees; others had climbed to sit on low branches to chew their cuds. A stalwart patriarch of the flock with curved horns that swept back from his head, browsed the rocky meadow for thistles and sea squill. Here and there, wild thyme and rosemary grew in thick tufts and pink peonies and spiny acanthus poked through the rocky soil. The hum of honeybees made a drowsy music.

  Hippasus was in his usual spot on a flat white stone close to the shrine, a half-strung lyre in his lap. He appeared to have stopped in the middle of attaching and tightening strings and was staring straight ahead, unaware of Amethea’s arrival. This, too, was not unusual. Hippasus frequently had spells, moments during which he seemed to travel far away. Dika liked to claim he was communing with Pan for she believed that his goat foot and head bumps were a sign of patronage from the shepherd god she revered. To her, an association with Pan was nothing to be ashamed of. Hippasus, for his part, never spoke about what he saw or heard during his spells. Sometimes after an episode, he drew shapes in the dirt, lined up sticks, or arranged pebbles in patterns.

  Amethea did not disturb Hippasus but took a hard look at him, at his hoof-like foot and the bumps that resembled small horns on his head. She couldn’t deny it. He was goat-like. Had her mother been right to save him at birth? She felt her cheeks flush with shame. How could she think such a thought?

  But conversations with Karpos had led Amethea to think more about her father than she had in years. If Hippasus had been exposed at birth as her father wanted, a proud Adelphos would this very summer be accompanying Amethea to the Heraea Games. Why had the gods granted her swift legs if she could never prove them in a race?

  Hippasus sat with his good leg tucked beneath him and his goat-foot stretched out before him. It was how the goats preferred to rest, one leg tucked under, one leg stretched out. His misshapen foot was a hindrance that hobbled his walking and he could not run at all—though he could scramble up and down the low coastal cliffs of their island home nearly as well as the goats. Even his coloring was goat-like. His skin was light brown and his chin-length hair was the same color as the dark brown band around the kri-kri goats’ necks. Unlike the goats, of course, his eyes were pale blue, not amber, and his pupils were round human ones, not vertical slits.

  Hippasus shouldn’t be alive, not really. Infants with deformities like his were exposed at birth, left to die in the wild. Their mother had defied custom. She knew it was the father’s legal right to decide whether or not a child was to live or be exposed, but Adelphos had been away on business the day Hippasus was born. Amethea’s mother had held the newborn to her breast and let him suckle, cooed and sang to him. Days later when Adelphos returned, he was livid and ashamed when he saw his son. The divorce came soon after, then the exile to Dia.

  Hippasus blinked and seemed startled to see Amethea standing before him.

  “Wake up, brother,” she said with a burst of impatience. “I’ve brought you food.” She placed a folded leaf that held a serving of chickpeas cooked with wild greens on his rock, along with a heel of barley bread and a handful of plump raisins. He nodded thanks but didn’t reach for the food.

  Amethea then noticed that Hippasus’ right hand was curled into a loose fist as if he were holding something. He slowly opened his fingers and there in the center of his palm sat a small object that looked very much like a large honeybee. It was made from some kind of unusual material she couldn’t identify. A special kind of cloth? A thin sheet of hammered gold? No, neither of those.

  “What is that, Hippasus?”

  “A magic bee,” he responded, “from the Bee Maker.”

  Amethea stared at the origami bee. It wasn’t a real, living bee, though it was a good likeness. It even dangled legs that bulged with pollen sacs. She had seen bees embossed on seals and coins as well as bee-shaped beads and earrings before, but this was not the pressed bronze of a coin nor an ornament fashioned from gold leaf. She picked it up and held it carefully between her thumb and forefinger, careful not to crush it. She held it close to her eyes to examine. The material was soft yet firm, light as air. Was it made from a special kind of papyrus? A sudden image of a girl running flashed before her eyes and so startled her, she gave a little cry and dropped the bee back onto her brother’s hand. Her grey eyes opened wide. She narrowed her glance as she turned again to her brother.

  “Hippasus, where did you find that? Who is the Bee Maker?”

  Her brother’s face was filled with wonder as if lit from a lamp within. She shivered. Had her brother been visited by a divine being, a nymph or goddess, or Pan himself? Some said the sound of Pan’s pipes could plunge a person into madness. Her brother didn’t look mad; he looked calm. But her skin erupted in goose bumps. She sensed the strange bee held a rare power and it frightened her.

  Hippasus stretched both legs out before him and paused before answering. He seemed to taste and turn his words over before giving them voice, chewing his words the way a goat chews its cud. If Hippasus had turned into a goat on the spot, it wouldn’t have surprised her. He was so goat-like! Why couldn’t he just answer her the way any other boy might? No wonder he was the brunt of other boys’ taunts, “Goat boy! Goat boy!”

  Hippasus was silent for so long she feared he had fallen into another spell. She shifted her weight from foot to foot impatiently. If he was like a goat, she was a restless mare.

  At last he spoke, “Nymph or goddess, I don’t know, Amethea. But she makes bees! I was listening to the shrine bees hum and they allowed me to see Her.”

  “Who is she?” Amethea asked again, her voice tinged with doubt.

  “She was young, Amethea, a maiden like you. She drifted in and out of sight, all wavy as if she was wrapped in sea mist. And she was making bees, folding their bodies from squares of gold and black, placing them in a basket. For an instant, I could see her perfectly clear. Such strange clothes! Then something wriggled in my hand and when I looked down, it was one of her bees and it was moving, alive!”

  “But this bee is not alive, Hippasus. It looks like some kind of ornament.”

  “After it perched on my hand, it fell asleep.”

  Hippasus gently stroked the origami bee’s back. To Amethea’s astonishment, the ornament stirred. The wings began to beat and the bee lifted from Hippasus’ hand and flew towards the snag that housed the shrine’s wild hive. It disappeared into the dark mouth of t
he hive’s entrance. Amethea looked at Hippasus, her eyes a mixture of disbelief and awe.

  Solemnly, Hippasus said, “She saw me. Before she disappeared, the Bee Maker looked right at me. I am sure of it.” Hippasus closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he whispered, “Do you think it was Artemis?”

  Amethea shivered. Was it possible? Bees had welcomed Hippasus at his birth, a sign, their mother always claimed, that he was under the goddess’ protection. She waited to see if the ornament bee would return but it did not, and Amethea found herself doubting what she had just seen. She sat down and did what she always did when she needed to collect her thoughts or ease some mounting worry in her breast. She reached into the pouch slung across her back and pulled out her aulos. She lifted the double flute to her lips and began to play while Hippasus ate his barley roll and raisins. What did it mean, her brother’s vision of the Bee Maker? Was it an omen? Was the Bee Maker Artemis? Or perhaps Artemis had sent a messenger, a bee nymph, to confirm that Hippasus was her own? Rather than feeling relieved or comforted, Amethea felt uneasy. Doubt gnawed at her. She put down her flutes and watched Hippasus play with his pebbles. Sun glinted on his little horns.

  What if Hippasus was not quite human? What if he really was the spawn of a goat-god and able to commune with the hidden gods of the wild fields? That would mean her mother had consorted with or been seduced by Pan or one of his kind, just as Karpos had accused. Was it possible? Perhaps her mother had protected Hippasus out of fear. If Hippasus were the child of Pan, the god would not have taken kindly to the baby being exposed at birth.

  Amethea took a deep breath and chided herself. Hippasus was an odd child, physically deformed, at times vexing, but surely he was a human boy, her own brother. They shared the same oval face, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes of their mother. And only an hour earlier, Karpos had reassured her that he would take Hippasus under his care. The tightness in her chest loosened slightly and she half-laughed at her far-fetched thoughts. All would be well, hadn’t Karpos told her that? Amethea placed her aulos back in the pouch and laid her hand gently on her brother’s shoulder. He smiled at her, his eyes still lit by the wonder of seeing the Bee Maker, whoever or whatever she was.