The Hive Queen

by Tui T. Sutherland

  She opened her eyes and found herself curled tight around the egg. Cool scales rested against her back, and when she peeked over her shoulder, she found Blue asleep with one wing tented over hers.

  Sundew had brought them to a peninsula northeast of Jewel Hive, to a cave at the bottom of the seaside cliffs, but when they arrived late the night before, there was no sign of Belladonna or Hemlock. It had still been raining when they crept into the shallow nook and curled up on the damp rocks, but sometime in the night the rain must have stopped. There was no more thunder; the howling wind had finally dozed off. She could see the waters of Dragonfly Bay outside, leaden and gray like the clouds above them.

  Carefully Cricket slid herself up to sitting and checked the egg.

  There was a crack along the top of the shell.

  Her heart stopped, and she touched it gently with one claw, then held the egg up to listen to it. Is the dragonet all right? Did I crack the egg?

  As soon as she lifted it, a brisk tapping sound came from inside the shell. Something poked at the crack from the other side.

  Is it HATCHING?

  Cricket knew she shouldn’t be quite so alarmed. Hatching was, in fact, what eggs did. This one had to hatch at some point.

  But she’d really thought she’d have a few more days first! How could she possibly have grabbed an egg that close to hatching? The queen had originally planned to visit three days later — surely she timed her visits to catch all the eggs before their hatching times?

  “No,” Cricket said firmly to the egg. “It is NOT TIME TO HATCH YET.”

  The tapping paused, and then picked up speed.

  “Stop that!” Cricket said. “What are you doing? You’re not ready to hatch! You can’t come out!” She put one talon over the crack, covering it up.

  The dragonet inside jabbed her palm with one of its claws.

  “Stay,” Cricket ordered. “Stay IN THERE.”

  “That sounds like it’s going well,” Sundew commented from across the cave, opening one bleary eye to glare at her.

  “It cannot possibly be time for this egg to hatch,” Cricket said.

  “I think it disagrees with you,” Sundew observed.

  Blue sat up, yawning, and looked over Cricket’s shoulder. “Maybe it thinks it’s time to hatch because it’s not in the Nest anymore.”

  “Oh my stars,” Cricket said. “Is that a thing? A real thing? Can it really tell it’s not in the Nest?”

  “Well, the light is different, and the noises outside the shell, and it’s being moved around a lot more — so maybe?” Blue guessed.

  “I thought you were the one who knew things,” Sundew said to Cricket.

  “Not about eggs and dragonets and hatching!” Cricket said. “I’ve never studied those! I know about seeds and dirt and plants and … oh no, Blue, you might be right. Are eggs like seeds? Like if you put them in the right conditions, they grow?”

  He spread his wings with an “I have no idea” expression.

  “Baby,” Cricket said to the egg. “Small dragon. This would be a VERY SILLY place and time to hatch. Do not do it.”

  A claw poked straight through the crack and wiggled gleefully at her.

  Cricket gave Sundew a helpless look.

  “This was your brilliant idea,” Sundew said. “Don’t look at me. I don’t want anything to do with any dragonets. Especially a HiveWing dragonet.” She jumped to her feet. “I’ll go get us something to eat. Yes, that’s what I should do.” She hurried out of the cave, casting the egg a suspicious look as she went by.

  “It’s going to be very confused,” Blue said. “Don’t you think? Or maybe not; I guess it probably doesn’t have any expectations about what hatching will be like. I wonder if it’s scared.”

  The egg was rocking merrily back and forth, emitting tiny squeaks. “Somehow I think not,” Cricket said.

  More cracks spidered out from the first one. Delighted with its success, the dragonet kicked harder, finally sending a fragment of eggshell flying off to whap into Cricket’s nose.

  “I’m serious!” Cricket yelped at it. “Stop hatching right now!”

  The eggshell cracked in half in her talons. The pieces fell away, leaving a small black-and-yellow dragonet sitting between her claws, happily shaking bits of eggshell and goop off her wings.

  “Whoa.” Blue leaned closer and blinked at it.

  “Oh no,” said Cricket.

  “Yim!” declared the dragonet, accidentally whacking Blue in the snout with her tail.

  “Awwww,” Swordtail said from across the cave. “Look how cute she is!”

  “Rrrrpt,” the dragonet agreed. She seized one of Cricket’s claws and started chewing on it.

  “No, thank you, OW,” Cricket said, tugging her off and lifting her up so they were eye to eye.

  “OW,” the dragonet mimicked solemnly. “OW.” She reached for Cricket’s ear with a hungry expression.

  “She is cute,” Blue said, smiling.

  “She is trying to eat me,” Cricket pointed out. “Sundew! I know you can hear me! Did you find any food?”

  Sundew poked her head into the cave. “I perhaps should have mentioned this sooner,” she said, “but I rather intensely dislike small dragonets.”

  “GORB,” the dragonet said sternly. “OW.”

  “Here,” Sundew said, tossing a fish across the cave to Cricket. Blue jumped forward and caught it for her. “But don’t you dare let it think food comes from me!”

  Cricket gave the fish to the dragonet and set her down in a small hollow in the rocks. The baby stuck the fish in her mouth, chewed vigorously for a moment, and then keeled over and fell asleep.

  “So cute,” Swordtail said again, inching closer to grin at her.

  “She needs a name,” Blue said. They all looked down at her black scales, striped with wide fuzzy swaths of bright yellow.

  “She looks kind of like a bumblebee,” Cricket said.

  “Bumblebee,” Swordtail echoed. “I like that.”

  “Me too,” Blue agreed.

  “I have no opinion,” Sundew offered from her spot halfway out the door.

  “Come peek at her,” Swordtail said. “It’s safe while she’s sleeping.”

  “Not interested,” Sundew said firmly.

  Cricket leaned down and picked up the two halves of the eggshell. The dragonet seemed normal, as far as she could tell, if perhaps a little noisy and hyper and ravenous. Although she really had no idea what a normal dragonet should be like. Bumblebee hadn’t gone white-eyed in the twenty heartbeats she’d been awake, anyhow. Cricket wasn’t quite sure what the next step of this experiment was. Wait until Queen Wasp did look out of her eyes? If that happened, what would they do with Bumblebee? Abandon her somewhere?

  I won’t ever do that.

  But it’s not going to happen. She was only injected once. Like me, probably. She’ll be free.

  Something caught her attention and she squinted at the eggshells for a moment.

  “Blue,” she said, “do you see this?”

  He leaned over and looked. “That’s the inside of Bumblebee’s shell? It looks kind of … greenish.”

  “Let me see.” Sundew crossed the cave and Cricket held the shells up to the light. There was definitely some kind of green residue dusting the inside of the shells.

  Sundew took one shell and poked the green part, but it didn’t brush off. It looked like a thin green crust, almost baked onto the shell. She frowned at it for a moment, then lifted it to her snout and sniffed it.

  “Yuck,” Swordtail declared.

  “I know this smell,” Sundew said. She stared out at the bay for a moment, then sniffed it again.

  Cricket sniffed the one she was holding. It had a dark, leaf-rot scent, with something unpleasantly peppery lurking inside it. There was something a little familiar about it, but nothing she could identify.

  “I spent four days surrounded by this smell,” Sundew said.

  “What?” Cricket said, start
led. “Where?”

  “It comes from a plant,” Sundew said. “And Queen Wasp’s private greenhouse is full of it.”

  Cricket gasped. “The greenhouse where we met you?”

  “Where we captured you,” Sundew corrected her.

  “The one that says ‘Queen Wasp’s top secret greenhouse keep out or I will dismember you and then kill you some more’?” Blue asked.

  “That’s the one,” Sundew said. “There were other plants in it, too, but that’s the main one. It’s everywhere in there. And it smells terrible.”

  “Sundew — is that what she’s using?” Cricket asked. “Could a plant give her mind-control powers? Maybe for instance if she ate a lot of it and then injected it into her victims?”

  “I don’t know!” Sundew snapped. “I’ve never heard of a plant like that, but I’d call this a clue, don’t you think?” She waved the eggshell at them.

  “Yeergh,” Blue said, wrinkling his snout at the green stuff. “I wonder if it tastes as bad as it smells.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Swordtail said. “I hope she has to eat Hiveloads of it.”

  “This could be the way to save the dragonets,” Cricket said, meeting Sundew’s eyes. “Right? Couldn’t we destroy her supply? And then she won’t be able to eat it or inject it into them. Or do it to any grown-up dragons like Lady Jewel, either.”

  “Like you,” Blue said. He sat up with an alert expression. “Then you’d be safe from her. Let’s do it.”

  “You had me at ‘destroy,’” Swordtail offered.

  “I’m up for it,” Sundew said, spreading her wings, “but it’s not that easy. Wasp Hive is swarming with soldiers since we stole the Book of Clearsight and broke into the flamesilk cavern. There are guards patrolling the greenhouses all the time. Queen Wasp is in their heads more than half the day, keeping watch. I don’t see how we’ll get anywhere near it without getting caught.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Cricket’s mind was spinning through possibilities. If this was the answer … if they could take the queen’s power away … it was a start, at least. It might not stop the LeafWings’ plans for war, but it would give the next generation a chance against Queen Wasp … if they survived that war.

  “We’ll tell my parents,” Sundew said. “Belladonna will know what to do with this information. Maybe they can take a pod of LeafWings to attack the greenhouse.”

  “A what?” Cricket asked.

  “A pod,” Sundew repeated. “Like, a small group, part of the warrior force.”

  “Are you part of the warrior force?” Swordtail asked.

  Sundew made one of her inscrutable faces. “Sort of. I’m … kind of my own pod.”

  “Where are your parents?” Cricket asked. “Why aren’t they here?” She glanced over to make sure that Bumblebee was still sleeping and saw that she’d flopped over on her back with the fish still hanging out of her mouth. Tiny snores emitted from her snout.

  “I don’t know. They should be.” Sundew went back to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the bay. “I hope nothing went wrong,” she said quietly.

  “Um … what’s that?” Blue asked, pointing south across the water. Cricket joined them on the edge of the rocks, followed by Swordtail. All four dragons squinted out into the gray morning.

  A column of black smoke rose into the sky on the southern horizon.

  Her heart pounding, Cricket turned to Sundew. “What is that?” she asked. “Did the LeafWings do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Sundew said, and for once her frown looked worried instead of angry. “They didn’t tell me they — I mean, they weren’t supposed to —”

  Cricket threw open her wings and flew to the top of the cliff, high above the sea. From here, on a clear day, you could almost see to the far ends of the continent.

  This was not a clear day, but she could still see the spire of Wasp Hive to the west and Jewel Hive in the southwest. The column of smoke came from beyond Jewel Hive, farther south.

  “It’s not Jewel Hive,” Sundew said, landing beside her.

  “Bloodworm Hive,” Cricket said.

  “Yes.” The LeafWing stared out at the smoke as though it was something she’d ordered at a café, but it had come in the wrong color and covered with maggots. “They went ahead and did it. Without waiting for me.” She blew out a long exhale.

  “All those dragonets,” Cricket said, feeling as if her roots had been sliced off. “The eggs in their Nest. The SilkWings who can’t fly.” She closed her eyes. Could I have saved them? If I’d been faster and smarter and found the answers sooner?

  “They said they would wait for my report. But I guess they were LYING ABOUT THAT.” Sundew looked sincerely angry, in a different way than usual, Cricket thought. “Maybe they didn’t care what I was doing. Maybe they were just planting their seeds for the last six days, moving all the pieces into place.”

  “Did you know all the pieces?” Cricket asked numbly. “Did you know what they were planning?”

  Sundew hesitated. “I knew most of it. This plan was in motion before we met you. But I thought — I really thought they’d wait for me.” She ducked her head to look sideways at Cricket. “One thing changed, though. Because of you three, we learned about the Chrysalis. I wouldn’t have believed they existed, before … I mean, that SilkWings could even think about fighting back. We found Bloodworm Hive’s Chrysalis and gave them a message to evacuate their dragonets from the Hive and to stay out of the webs last night.”

  Cricket shot her a look. “I’m sure that didn’t arouse suspicion at all.”

  “You’d be surprised how little attention your tribe pays to what SilkWings do,” Sundew said pointedly.

  They were silent for another moment.

  “I’m sure they’ll get the eggs out, too,” Sundew offered, shifting uncomfortably on her talons. “Once they realize they can’t save the Hive, that’s the first thing the HiveWings will do.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Cricket said. “I hope someone remembers the SilkWings in their cocoons, too.”

  Something swooped across the sky to her right and Sundew tugged her down, throwing her wing over Cricket’s back so they were both flat to the earth and partly camouflaged by Sundew’s green scales.

  HiveWings were swarming toward Bloodworm Hive, hundreds of them rising from Wasp Hive and Jewel Hive and somewhere farther north; Yellowjacket Hive, Cricket guessed. They flew like a cloud of bats across the sky, south to the burning city. Queen Wasp was sending her Hive mind to try to save it.

  Cricket clutched Sundew’s arm. “Right now,” she said.

  “Right now what?”

  “Now is the time to burn her greenhouse.” Cricket pointed at the dragons disappearing into the distance. “Everyone’s flying to Bloodworm Hive. It’s the perfect distraction.”

  “It’s not a distraction,” Sundew objected. “It’s a blow for justice!”

  “Well, we can use it as a distraction,” Cricket said. “To do something that might actually help dragons instead of hurting anyone. If we go right now.”

  “My parents,” Sundew said, glancing at the smoke again. “I’m supposed to wait for them — I’m not authorized for another mission.”

  “Seriously?” Cricket arched her eyebrows at the LeafWing. “You need to wait for permission? You?”

  “No,” Sundew barked. “I’m just wondering where they are, that’s all! I don’t need them! Let’s go kill some plants! Oof, no, I don’t like the sound of that at all. Let’s go destroy some HiveWing stuff! That’s much better.”

  Bumblebee did not wake up as Cricket wrapped her in her scarf sling and tucked her into her chest. She snorted and gruffled and stuck sharp little claws into her, but Cricket poked the fish back into her mouth and Bumblebee dozed off again.

  They flew along the south coast of the peninsula, staying below the level of the cliffs to avoid being spotted. Cricket noticed that Swordtail couldn’t keep his eyes off the bay; he kept turning to search the beac
h below them. The fifth time he crashed into Sundew by accident, she nearly threw him into the ocean.

  She glanced at Blue and saw him turning to look out at the islands, too.

  Oh, she realized. They’re looking for Luna.

  I hope she’s all right. I hope her flamesilk is helping to keep her safe.

  There were no more HiveWings in the sky when they reached the grassland on the outskirts of Wasp Hive. They landed and slipped into the shadow of one of the greenhouses. Cricket could still see the smoke in the distance, now with small figures wheeling around it.

  “If Bloodworm Hive falls,” Blue said, leaning against her side, “so do the webs between it and Mantis Hive and Jewel Hive. That’s a lot of SilkWing homes.”

  Sundew hunched her shoulders and dug her claws into the ground. “I’ll go scout ahead.” She hurried off between the glass walls.

  “It’s weird,” Blue said, watching her go. “The posters always said the LeafWings were going to do something terrible to the Hives, and I always believed it until we met Sundew. And then, the more I knew her, I guess I started thinking the LeafWings would all be like her … mad on the outside but kind on the inside, right? Like, of course she could blow up a whole Hive and maybe she’d even want to, but she wouldn’t actually do it. So I thought none of them would actually do it. But now they have. So was Queen Wasp right and I was wrong? I don’t know what to think.”

  “I think you’re still right,” Cricket said. “I mean, that Sundew wouldn’t have done it herself. And I hope there are other LeafWings like her.” She looked south again, at the smoke that seemed to be painted onto the clouds forever now. Did this mean the HiveWings and LeafWings were at war again? It felt so clear to her that they shouldn’t be. They all had one enemy, the same enemy: Queen Wasp. If only she could get them to see that.

  But she was just one little dragon. How could she get anyone to listen to her?

  Sundew appeared around a corner of a greenhouse and beckoned to them. They hurried to her on silent talons through the wet grass.