The Bee Maker

by Mobi Warren

  All will be well, Amethea repeated softly to herself. Even so, she was unable to entirely suppress a darker, more sinister voice that whispered in her ear. What good is a Bee Maker to you? the voice taunted. You will never race at the Heraea Games. No statue in Hera’s Temple will honor you. She sat down on a low boulder at the edge of the shrine and chewed a few of the raisins Hippasus had left uneaten. She watched him arrange his pebbles into patterns. The raisins tasted bitter to her. High overhead a pair of golden vultures traced wide circles in the cloudless sky. Vultures were death seekers. Perhaps it was the death of her dreams they were after.

  Neither sibling was aware of the energetic dance taking place within the hive, how the origami bee excitedly wiggled and waggled, unfolded and refolded itself, as the other bees watched, their bodies vibrating. Nor did Amethea and Hippasus notice when the origami bee emerged from the tree and flew up into the blue sky like a spark of sunshine, then vanished as if pulled through an invisible hole in the firmament. And when they turned to follow the path back home to their cottage, they did not see the origami bee return with a swarm of living honeybees whose faces, if you could read the faces of bees, were filled with the joy of those who have returned after a long, hard absence. The bees disappeared into the snag.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A HURRICANE

  OF HOPE

  The last person Melissa expected to see the following morning was Beau, but he appeared with Amaltheia in tow just as Melissa sat down on the cypress bench to fold an origami bee.

  “Hola, origamista!”

  “What?”

  “Hi, Mel.”

  “I thought you were only suspended for two days.” The goat pranced up to her and Melissa placed a hand over her basket to prevent any more bees from becoming a goat snack.

  “Uh, it’s Saturday.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Hermes trotted over to Amaltheia and assumed the downward dog do-you-want-to-play stance. The goat bleated, kicked up her dainty hooves, and dog and goat dashed around the yard together.

  “Look at that!” Beau crowed.

  “I guess they’ve decided to be friends.”

  “Think we might do the same?”

  “I guess.” Melissa tried to focus on her next fold but felt suddenly self-conscious.

  Beau sat down beside her. “Still making bees, I see. Is this like folding a thousand peace cranes or something? Because if it is, I’d be glad to help you get there.”

  Melissa looked at him, half in exasperation and yet half pleased to see him. He wasn’t going to quit bugging her; that much was clear. “If you really want to know, I do plan to fold a thousand. It’s a surprise for Ba.”

  Beau looked thoughtful and said, “Like a prayer for his work to bring the bees back.”

  Beau had surprised her yet again.

  “I know it’s silly. A bunch of paper bees can’t replace the real ones.”

  “I don’t think it’s silly. It’s beautiful.” Beau took out his ball of red clay and divided it into two pieces. In moments he had sculpted a miniature Hermes and Amaltheia that he set on the bench. He wiped his red hands on his cut-offs and took a piece of origami paper.

  Just then Melissa’s holo-band chirped. She waved a finger over it and received an audio message from Noi. “I’m installing the moth quilts at the Modern Art Museum today so I’ll be out of pocket but I keep thinking about your seizures. Call soon, nhé!”

  Beau looked at her, a question in his eyes.

  “That was my Vietnamese grandmother.” Melissa wished Noi hadn’t said anything about the seizures. Beau would think she had them all the time.

  “She makes quilts?”

  “Yeah, she’s an artist.”

  “Cool, what’s her name?” Beau stretched out his long legs, then made a crisp fold on his origami square.

  “Mechtild Tran.”

  “Mechtild? That’s sounds more German than Vietnamese.”

  “That’s because it is.” Melissa placed a completed bee in the basket. She hoped Beau would ignore Noi’s comment about seizures.

  “Mind explaining?”

  “It’s a name my Noi—Noi means paternal grandmother —took for herself after seeing a painting of a nun named Mechtild.”

  “Why would she do that?” Beau flipped his paper over and made another crease.

  Melissa explained, “Mechtild was a mystic who lived like a thousand years ago in Germany. When Noi saw the painting, she says she felt so strong a connection, she wept.”

  “That must be some painting.”

  “Here, I can bring it up on a holo-vid.” Melissa traced a pattern in the air over her holo-band and a copy of the painting rose into the air before them. An abstract figure wearing a nun’s dark habit stood with arms flung open as she walked between two trees. The foliage of the trees made her appear surrounded by pale green light as if she had wings.

  “She looks like a large, luminous moth,” said Beau. “Like a Luna moth.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?”

  “So are you a mystic, too?” Beau stopped folding and gave her such a direct look, she blushed.

  Fidgeting with her bee’s wings, she protested. “Me? No way. I’m the engineering type, a math geek.”

  “Hey, math like the kind Bella does, can get pretty far out there.”

  “That’s different. Mystics talk about being absorbed into some kind of nameless one-ness. That just sounds scary to me.”

  “But are your seizures ever like that?”

  Melissa shot him an accusing glance. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Drop it.”

  How could she explain to him how defective her seizures made her feel? How they stole parcels of her life? How she worried about falling into blankness and never coming out of it, like a honeybee that forgot its way home? Or maybe like a quark blinking out of existence?

  “Some famous artists were epileptics,” Beau observed.

  “You don’t know the first thing about it. I hate having seizures so don’t make me talk about it.”

  Hermes trotted up to the bench and she leaned over to bury her face in his black fur. She breathed in his comfortable doggy scent. When she sat back up, Beau was concentrating on a wing fold. She wasn’t sure, but he looked like maybe she had hurt his feelings.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just that..”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. He placed his finished bee in the basket.

  “I want to show you something,” he said, and pulled a soft tablet shaped like a pencil from his pocket. He unrolled it into a flat screen and tapped it. The screen seemed to come to life as thousands, no millions, of orange and black butterflies swooped gracefully across it

  “Are those monarchs?” Melissa asked.

  “My Abuelita made this video twenty years ago. When monarchs still migrated. I’ve been experimenting with my tablet’s 3-D and sensory functions to expand the video. Watch.”

  Melissa sat entranced as monarch butterflies spiraled from the flat screen into the air. An enormous cloud of 3-D monarchs soon surrounded them. They sat in the calm eye of a hurricane made of butterfly wings. Now and then, a butterfly would swoop close in and delicately brush Melissa on the cheek or hand. After several magical moments, the butterflies slowly drifted back down into the screen. Beau rolled the tablet back up into a pencil and tucked it in his pocket.

  “The real ones, they’re mostly gone now, aren’t they?” Melissa said softly.

  Beau turned to her. “Do you ever feel really, really angry at how ruined the world is? At how many species humans have killed off?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Melissa didn’t have words for all her feelings.

  “But you’re folding a thousand origami bees.”

  “I know. It’s stupi
d. It won’t help anything.”

  “No, I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s like you have hope.”

  “Sometimes I’m afraid hoping will only make things worse if nothing works out.” She didn’t explain to Beau that folding the bees was also about finding a way to connect with her father. And that was pretty hopeless, too.

  “But you’re still folding the bees.”

  “Yeah.” She was silent for a moment, then added, “I’m glad you’re helping.”

  “Me, too.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  PEBBLES AND POMEGRANATES

  Amethea placed her heels on the start line marked with a stone and took a few deep breaths. She was dressed in a plain knee length chiton. Hippasus perched on a large rock to cheer her on. He had devised a way to time her sprints by plucking the strings of his lyre. The fewer the plucks before she crossed the finish line, the faster her pace. Dika had urged her to get out and run again. “It will ease your grief and protect you from fever,” she claimed. Dika was a firm believer in fresh air, sun, and exercise to ward off illness. “Your mother would have wanted you to. Your running pleased her.”

  Amethea ran with abandon, knowing these sprints would likely be her last on Dia. Soon she would join her uncle’s household in Larisa and do what was expected of every young woman. Spin and weave long hours each day. But she wasn’t in Larisa yet, and though she didn’t dare mention anything to Hippasus or Dika, she wanted to believe that Karpos had meant to hint he might take her to the Heraea Games. She must be ready to race! She threw her head back, shook her copper curls loose from her headband, and ran two plunks of the lyre faster than her previous sprint. She collapsed beside Hippasus, her breath coming in rapid bursts, a big grin on her face.

  The earth sent coils of energy through Amethea’s bare feet that made her feel like a bounding hare. Dika was right, running did lift her spirits. She couldn’t help notice, however, that as her own spirits lifted, Hippasus’ mood darkened. He spent more and more time alone at the shrine, often refusing to return to the cottage at night to sleep. Finally, she confronted him.

  “Hippasus, you spend too much time alone. And anyway, I need you to help me prepare for our move to Larisa. Karpos said you will not need to bring clothes, but we’ll pack the inkwell Mother gave you, the one shaped like a beehive. You’re fond of it, aren’t you?”

  “I doubt I will be needing an inkwell, Amethea.”

  “Of course, you will. Karpos will hire a proper tutor for you.”

  “Did he say so?”

  “I am sure he means to.”

  “Karpos will take you to live in his fine house, Amethea. Not me.”

  “Nonsense! He’s making arrangements for both of us. It will be a different life than the one we’re used to, but we must think of it as an adventure.”

  Amethea looked at her brother in exasperation. He was a boy; things would go better for him. Couldn’t he see that? Hippasus, a male in a family of three daughters, would be favored in her uncle’s household. His freedom would expand as hers shrank.

  Hippasus picked up his lyre and plucked a string. “Run another length!” he urged.

  “I will!”

  Amethea was determined to remember every stone and tuft of grass beneath her feet. She wanted to carry Dia in her feet forever, to remember what it felt like to be swift and strong. Soon her daylight hours would be spent indoors and before long, Karpos would choose a husband for her. Her life would be spent spinning and weaving for her family’s needs. That was the way of it. But today, today she could run.

  As she took her place at the start line, the voice she had tried to suppress hissed in her ear. If your father had not abandoned you, you could have been a young Atalanta. If Hippasus had been born like other boys. She bit her lip. Why couldn’t she escape these unwanted thoughts? They were like vipers writhing in the pit of her stomach. She tossed her head as if to shake the thoughts away and then ran fast, faster, so fast no thought could follow.

  “Another two plucks faster!” crowed Hippasus.

  Amethea slowed to a jog to catch her breath. How fast, she wondered, would she need to be to equal Atalanta’s pace?

  When she sat down beside him, Hippasus surprised her with a question. “Is it true, Amethea, that our father was a great athlete?”

  “It’s true, Hippasus. But we have no claim on him as father.”

  “Because of me. Do you blame me for that?”

  His question caught her off guard. Had he guessed her darker thoughts? She forced a smile and protested, “Hippasus! I love you as Mother did. Our father left because he had a restless spirit.”

  Hippasus straightened out his leg and pointed at his deformed foot. “You don’t need to protect my feelings. It’s no secret our father divorced Mother after she gave birth to a goat boy.”

  Amethea detected a tone of bitterness in her brother’s voice.

  “Who told you that?” she demanded.

  “I figured it out for myself. I may have the foot of a beast, but my mind is clear.”

  “Well, it makes no difference. It changes nothing.” Amethea tried putting her arm around his shoulders but he held up a hand to stop her.

  “No, Amethea. It makes a very big difference. You will go with Karpos, but he will never accept me.” He passed a hand over the bumps on his head, then looked back at Amethea as if daring her to contradict him.

  “Karpos gave his word. I’ve already told you—”

  Hippasus lifted his hand again. “I’ve been thinking, Amethea. Karpos doesn’t want me to pollute his household. I can ask Kimon and Dika to let me stay on Dia with them. I can help Kimon with the goats. He can teach me to sculpt.”

  Amethea stood up, her red curls like flames in the sunlight, and placed her hands on both hips. “Hippasus, do not speak so! I don’t think Mother intended you to become the ward of slaves.”

  “They are freed now, Amethea. Kimon and Dika are like family.”

  Amethea felt momentarily ashamed for she knew Hippasus was right. Kimon and Dika would never have treated Hippasus the way Karpos had, but Karpos had softened on that last day. He had given his word.

  “Karpos will fulfill his obligations as our uncle. I am sure of it.” She sat back down and grasped Hippasus’ hand to reassure him.

  “When he was here, he refused to look at me. He called me a satyr’s son. Karpos would be happier if I did not exist.”

  Amethea frowned. It was true that Karpos had avoided contact with Hippasus, ordered him out of the room. But he would warm up to her brother once he got to know him better.

  “I must return home. Will you join me?”

  “I want to spend more time in the shrine. I’m working out a new pattern with the pebbles. And I want to be there when the Bee Maker returns.”

  Hippasus had not spoken of any more visions and Amethea found herself doubting whether the bee had ever come to life in the first place. More likely a breeze had blown it from Hippasus’ hand and fooled them both. In fact, she suspected the bee was not a sign from Artemis at all but a clever ornament that Hippasus himself had made, though how or from what material she couldn’t guess. It irritated her that he would try to fool her by claiming a vision. Why couldn’t he behave like other boys? Karpos would find such strangeness even more galling than his deformed leg and horns.

  Impatience rose in her breast. “Play with your pebbles then.” She turned and hurried down the path back to the cottage. There she filled a trunk with garments for herself and a few beloved objects including the inkwell her mother had given Hippasus, her dolphin brooches and spindles, a gold and garnet necklace her mother had worn. Most of their household goods—dishes and pots, wine and water jugs—she would leave behind for Dika and Kimon. A sudden rush of tears filled her eyes. Hippasus was right, Kimon and Dika were like family. She would miss them both terribly.

  When the sun hu
ng low in the western sky over a lapis lazuli sea, Hippasus slung his lyre over one shoulder, picked up his walking stick, and pushed himself to standing. Dove, as always, walked close beside him in case he needed to lean on her. Hippasus reached into his tunic to make sure the two pomegranates were safely tucked inside. He had plucked them from a small tree that clung to the cliff edge behind the shrine. Pomegranates were Amethea’s favorite fruit. Pleased with his gift, he whistled a tune of his own making and did not hear the steps or ragged breathing of the local tanner until the man lunged across the path and blocked his way. Hippasus tried to move aside but the man swayed, lost his balance, and heaved against Hippasus, causing him to stumble. Dove flattened her ears and snarled at the man who staggered back a step.

  “Call off your mongrel or I will gut her!” he shouted and reached into his robe to pull out a knife. Hippasus smelled undiluted wine on his breath. The man’s hands and arms were stained with oak tannins used to soften animal hides and his body smelled bitter.

  “We mean you no harm, Sir. You startled us, that’s all.”

  A line of spittle dribbled down the corner of the tanner’s mouth. He jutted his head forward to get a closer look at Hippasus. His beady eyes hardened and he spat.

  “Spawn of a goat! You are the demon that killed my son. By the gods, I will take my vengeance!” He lifted his dagger but before he could plunge it into Hippasus, Dove leapt and caught his wrist in her sharp teeth. His knife fell and clattered on stones. Then, to Hippasus’ surprise, the man fell over in a heap. Kimon stepped out from behind a bush holding his shepherd’s crook. He had given the man a hard knock on the head.

  Kimon knelt down and checked the tanner. “Drunkard,” he said in disgust. “He will wake with a well-deserved knot on his head.”

  “You saved my life, Kimon, and you, too, Dove!” The boy’s face was drained of color. Dove stood over him protectively.