by Starhawk
Within her own body flowed rivers of scent and taste, and suddenly she knew them in a way even she, a healer, never had before—knew the scents her sweat could produce and what each signified and how they could be messages and conversations and offerings. The bees rasped at her sweat with probing tongues. Was it human hands or gauze wings that stroked her until honey dripped from her breasts and streams of nectar poured from between her thighs? Something was tasting her, tasting what she offered, and all was sweet.
The Melissa touched the center of Madrone’s forehead, where the stung place still throbbed. With a tiny knife, she opened a flowerlike wound. A drop of blood appeared, and the bees swarmed, curious, to taste.
“We share nectar with the sisters,” the Melissa said. Then she packed the wound with propylis. Madrone would have a small blossomlike scar. The sweat that beaded on that scar would be sweet, her own nectar to feed the sisters.
Slowly Madrone became aware that she was no longer in the cave. Time had passed; she had no idea how long she had been lying in the shade of an arching, pale sycamore. Bees hummed lazily around her; their sound was now like music to her, operas and symphonies and oratorios, and at the same time like a crowd of gossiping friends, telling her everything she needed to know. A piece of acorn bread lay under her hand, and as she ate it she felt her mind beginning to return. She felt a sense of vertigo, almost a double vision. She could see through multifaceted insect eyes more easily than she could look at things straight on in her old human way.
The humming grew louder, and her vision shifted as the energy changed again. The Melissa was sitting beside her.
“How do you feel?” the Melissa asked.
Madrone was surprised to hear the question in words. They seemed awkward, clumsy, unnecessary when a molecule of scent could convey the same thing. She gave her answer as she had learned to do, in a bead of sweat on her eye spot that carried in its chemistry the taste of wonder and confusion.
“No, answer in words,” the Melissa said. “It is time for you to take back your words. You will need them.”
Madrone closed her eyes. She knew there was an answer to the question, but words seemed primitive and inadequate compared to the delicate subtleties of taste and smell.
“You must speak,” the Melissa said.
“Why?”
“Because you must return to the human world and be the healer needed there. The hive is not for you.”
The buried nugget of her human self stirred and shifted. I know that, Madrone thought. It smells right. But the hive is sweetness and rest and peace and soft bodies endlessly brushing and touching and pleasuring one another. Remembering, she let the odor of her body plead to stay.
“You would not want it forever. You would resist and beg for your name back.”
And that also smelled right. Madrone sighed and opened her eyes.
“How do you feel?” the Melissa asked again.
“All right,” Madrone managed to say, and laughed at the imprecision of words. “A little—disoriented.”
“It will pass as you eat more. Rest today, and practice your new powers, and tomorrow perhaps we will take you back to camp.”
“How—what—”
“You must anchor the bee vision, so you can call it back or shut it off at will. Here, touch your forehead, on the bee spot. And remember your old self, and call her back. Say your human name.”
“Madrone.” She shook her head slightly, as her vision cleared and the world resolved itself back into separate objects.
“And now touch the spot again, remember the hive smell, and let the bee sense return.”
Again, vision shifted, letting scent replace sight and knowing replace thinking.
“And now call yourself back again.”
Madrone hesitated, the words not making sense, until the Melissa picked up Madrone’s hand and placed it on her forehead again. “Your name,” she reminded her.
“Madrone.”
“Practice that change, until you can remember it when you’re in your bee mind and do it at will. Can you do that?”
“Yes. I’ve been doing stuff like that since I was a baby. I just need to work at it a bit—and to want to come back.”
“That is always the challenge. The hive is very sweet.”
“But you—you stay in the bee mind, and yet you walk and talk and interact with other humans.”
“As little as possible. But I have many many years behind me of this shapeshifting, and the other Melissas also. You are very new, and we have given you only the small initiation.”
“If that was the small one, Goddess save me from the big one!”
“It may come to you in time, but I think that dance is not yours. The big initiation takes everything, and when you emerge you are yourself no longer but part of us, as every bee is part of the hive. But we have taken nothing from you—not your name, not your power. All will be as it was before. You are not of the hive, as we are, but you will be able to draw upon the sisters for help and nourishment and protection.”
“How? How do I do that?”
“Through your bee spot. Come into your bee mind now, and I will teach you how to call the sisters when you need them.”
Madrone touched the spot and let her breath and memory take her back into the sweetness. The bees cloaking the Melissa’s face shifted, like the parting of a veil, and from the blossomlike scar in the center of her forehead a crystal bead of sweat emerged. Madrone leaned forward and touched the tip of her tongue to the drop. Her whole body came alive with longing. She was called, she had to come, she wanted to come. The taste changed. She sensed danger; she was filled with rage, it shook her body and she was ready to rip herself apart and die in defense of the source of sweetness. And then the taste changed again, and she knew hunger, an emptiness demanding to be filled, and then again it changed and she knew she was meant to carry a complex scent back to the hive and dance. Then her hand was being slapped against her own forehead again, and once more she returned to her human self.
“Today we will work on just these four things; the call to the bees, the call for protection, the call for food, and the message call. If you can learn these four, you will do well.”
“And the healing that you do with the bees—can I learn that?”
The Melissa shook her head. “That comes after the big initiation, and even then it is tricky and dangerous. It goes against the nature of the little sisters, which is to kill the sick and wounded for the sake of the whole, not to cherish the individual parts.”
“And what you’ve taught me, does that go against their nature?”
“What I have taught you works with their nature. It is how they communicate. Even so, never make the mistake of thinking you control them. They are wild. They will aid you if they wish to, but they will not always understand you, and with all you have learned in these days, you still only barely begin to understand them.”
“How did you learn all this? Who taught you?”
“The old woman taught me, as she taught us all.”
“And who is the old woman?”
“In the time of the great sickness and the hunger, when the Stewards came to power, she fled to these canyons to live quietly and secretly, for she was a Witch. She grew a garden and kept bees, and when her friends and family died in the epidemic, and she was lonely, she spoke to the bees and grew more and more like them, until she shared some of their secrets and learned to brew the nectar that opens the bee mind. She trained us all.”
“Is she still alive? Can I meet her?”
The Melissa was silent. Madrone lay back, suddenly exhausted. Through the dappled shade, spots of sunlight shone red behind her lids.
“Rest a bit,” the Melissa said. “I will bring more bread, and then we will practice again.”
She dozed. In her dream, she saw Lily’s face. The old woman cupped her hands and lifted them to the center of her brow, where there was a waterfall. She held them out to Madrone, offering her a drink. Mad
rone dipped her face into the cool water, lapped with her tongue like an animal. She tasted urgency, and fear.
17
It seemed to Maya that the whole City had come to Council. She recognized many people, some she hadn’t seen in years, since she stopped going to meetings of the Writers’ Guild, but they were surrounded by ranks of strangers crowded into every spare corner of space, practically sitting in the laps of the masked Voices. The crowd provided visual relief from the tension in the room. San Franciscans had always loved costume, Maya reflected. Now fashion had become tribal; one’s garb announced one’s loyalties and identity. The contingent from northside favored high-collared jackets in soft brocades, chrysanthemum-patterned silks, sarongs, or plain denim trousers vaguely reminiscent of the China of the 1970s. The neighbors of Black Dragon House sported ponchos and brightly embroidered cotton shirts. The tecchies wore unadorned jumpsuits in solid colors, the delegations from the Tribal Lands upriver wore their full traditional regalia complete with feather cloaks and basketry hats, while the Fairy men from center city were bedecked with scarves and costume jewelry. Within those broader categories were hundreds of variations: a woman with five dangling earrings in each lobe, a slim man in a rhinestone-studded vest, a tall person of indeterminate sex in a leotard and tutu. Hair was shaved, sculpted, braided, twined, cornrowed, dreadlocked, colored, beaded, and freely hanging loose. Maya herself wore crone’s black. Simple, she thought, and well suited to her age and purported dignity.
In one corner sat groups from the Forest Communities to the east and north, sporting rough work clothes and heavy boots. Around the room sat clusters of representatives from the other cities that hugged the Bay and the habitable spots of the river valleys. Against the far wall sat the representatives of the Wild Boar People, their matted hair caked with dirt. Council had sent them a special invitation for this meeting. People left a moat of empty space around them, and windows were opened in their vicinity.
The crowd settled down after a great deal of jostling, shuffling, and adjusting of feet and arms and legs. Bird sat squashed against Maya’s right side, with Sage crammed between his legs. On her left, Nita perched on Holybear’s lap. When everyone was settled, a man and a woman rose in the center.
“I’m Joseph.”
“I’m Salal. We’re the Crows, the facilitators, for this morning.”
On the signers’ platform a young woman began translating the words of those who preferred not to speak and sign simultaneously. The meeting had begun.
Joseph lit a candle, and Salal formally invited in the spirits of the Four Sacred Things. Maya felt the atmosphere of the room deepen, as the Voices went into trance. A woman in a white headcloth and flowing skirts stood up and called Elegba the Trickster, God of the Crossroads. Sage rose and called Hecate. A very young man stood up and invoked the ancestors. Sister Marie, who was seated not far from them, asked for the blessing of the Virgin. A man Maya recognized from the Seder recited the Shema. The calling went on and on, until finally Sam stood up.
“Look, I don’t want to step on anybody’s religion. But we can call all the spirits in the universe, and in the end we’re still going to have to decide what to do. Maybe we’d better get on with it, before the Stewards’ troops get over San Bruno Hill.”
There was a slight ripple of laughter, as Joseph asked, “Are we ready to begin the discussion?”
“Yes,” the room thundered.
“All right, then.” He peered around the room with his dark, narrow eyes, running his hands over the brush of his clipped black hair. “There’s only one main question on the agenda today, and that is: What the hell are we going to do?”
“Can we hear a report from Defense first?” Salal suggested. “What exactly is the situation?”
The woman who rose to speak looked to be in her eighties. She had clear gray eyes and short-cropped white hair, and Maya recognized her, suddenly, as Greta Jeanne, one of Las Cuatro. Beside her, Lily was seated, dressed in a simple black shift. She and Maya exchanged nods of greeting.
“There’s an army of approximately five thousand marching up the old Highway 101,” Greta said. “They’re repairing the road as they go, and we assume that when they reach the good stretch on the peninsula, which should be in about a week, they’ll bring up trucks from the South. Along the same route they’re also laying rail, which the Santa Cruz and peninsula councils have been sabotaging rather systematically. They’re well armed with laser rifles, handguns, and, we assume, other weapons.”
“Five thousand—that’s not so bad,” someone murmured.
“That’s only the advance guard. Their main purpose seems to be to protect the road-building operations. There’s more on the way.”
“How many more?” Salal asked.
Bird stood. All eyes in the room turned to look at him. He felt almost ashamed, as if by bringing news of the invasion he were somehow responsible for it. “From what I saw last summer,” he said, “there could easily be at least ten times that many.”
“How the hell do they feed all those people?” someone murmured.
“They feed on people like us,” Bird said. “They’ll eat up our gardens, our fields, and our optimism pretty quick.” He sat down.
“And what do we have in the way of defensive resources?” Joseph asked.
Lily stood up and carefully enumerated the numbers of available weapons in the City’s defenses. The discussion left Maya somewhat lost, but she could see Bird’s face looking more and more grim. Holybear wore a glum mask, and even Manzanita wasn’t smiling.
“Why didn’t we start weapons production three months ago?” a young woman asked.
“We have no factories to make guns and bombs and laser rifles,” said a large man whom Maya had seen before, speaking for the Technicians’ Guild. “We have no consensus to build them. And if we had, it would have been at the expense of something else, food production or communications or transport. Especially if you remember that we were recovering from another epidemic, and it’s been hard enough to keep basic services going.”
“That’s exactly what they wanted. We could have tightened our belts,” said a young man who was, in Maya’s opinion, already far too thin.
“Maybe,” the big man said. “But if we start choosing guns over food and water, we become what we’re fighting against.”
“But if we lose to the Stewards, we won’t have the luxury of choosing food or water or anything else.”
“That’s the dilemma patriarchy has posed for the last five thousand years,” Greta said.
“I don’t find that grounds for optimism,” Sam said. “In all those five thousand years, has the peaceful side ever won out?”
Why is it so hard to believe in war? Bird thought. I’ve been to the Southlands, I’ve faced their power, and yet I still can’t grasp that they’ll succeed in imposing it here. He wanted to ask Maya if every war she’d lived through had seemed unreal.
“Isn’t that our collective challenge, then?” Lily said. “If we don’t have guns, we have vision and imagination.”
“A vision ain’t much protection against a laser rifle,” a voice called from the back of the crowd.
The talk went on interminably, as strategy after strategy was proposed, examined, and eventually abandoned as unpromising, if not hopeless.
“Don’t give up,” Lily addressed the room as discussion lagged. “We are simply challenged now to extend our imaginations beyond solutions that have been tried before.”
“Well, we seem to have exhausted all practical, rational, and reasonable approaches to this situation,” Salal said. “What it comes down to is, nobody can see a way out. Am I wrong? So either we need a miracle, an evacuation plan, or a proposal for how to go down with dignity.”
She doesn’t believe it either, Bird noted. Not really. Otherwise how could she sound so cheerful, tossing her flame-red hair and smiling as she talks of despair?
The Speaker stirred and made her careful way to the west, bending her
ear to Salmon.
“Friend Salmon says, ‘You have placed spawn in Los Lobos Creek, and we will return. Don’t give up. Listen to the storyteller.’ ”
The masked figure inclined its head toward Maya. She found herself staring into its eyes.
She had hoped to avoid speaking today, had prayed that Defense had some secret plan that would absolve her from sharing her vision. And it’s partly embarrassment, she admitted to herself, that for over half a century I’ve been spokeswoman for the Goddess, and here at the crucial moment I turn up with a visitation from an Old Testament prophet. Am I merely getting senile? More than that, the implications of her vision scared her. It seemed to call for qualities of courage and vision she was not sure that anyone possessed.
Reluctantly, she stood up. “I’m a storyteller,” she said, “and I had a vision. I don’t much like it, and I’m not sure what good it might do us. But for what it’s worth, here it is.” She told them about her visit with the prophet Elijah, and they listened respectfully. She finished with the words Elijah had spoken to her: “What happens to the enemy who is invited to share the feast? Does the enemy not transform? Tell your enemies this: There is a place set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us.”
