The Honey Month

by Amal El-Mohtar

  He does not follow; he never saw her. He has never wondered at her name.

  DAY 24

  Apricot Creamed Honey

  Colour: Today’s booze-related colour is lager, specifically Beck’s.

  Smell: In keeping with creamed honey form, more belly-button fuzz!

  Taste: A juicy sweetness, fresh; the honey’s liquidy, and the sweetness has a liquid edge to it as well. It doesn’t dry out the mouth at all, and calls up fruit without tasting specifically of apricot.

  The bees come when she lets down her hair.

  There is a simple brass stick, two-pronged, with which she binds it up until the moment is precisely right. When she leans over a railing to gaze at the sea; when she bites into an apricot and closes her eyes; when the rain ends and the air drips with the scent of wet leaves, she pulls the stick from her hair, releases it, lets it tumble down in chestnut waves. It smells of honey and ginger, and the bees love it.

  When they surround her, she breathes in the vibration of their bodies, exhales music, breathes it in again. They crown and armour her, they hide her while she dissolves into a joy too keen for eyes that come in simple pairs, eyes that could not possibly appreciate the peace, the thrill, the trembling, the way those thousand bodies do. They sing her aching silence out, they chime their wings like champagne flutes, they pat her cheeks and lashes with more love than is commonly thought to be possible. You smell so good, so good, they cry, we love the way you smell. And when the trembling subsides, when their joy ebbs like a wave from the sand, they bestow a final kiss against her hair, her skin, before flying off.

  She gives them so much. She gives them all she can. And so it is only natural and proper that they give her something in return.

  There are days where the hair-stick falls, days when her curls bounce against her shoulders with a dimmed shine, days when her hair smells less of honey than of salt, of ash, of pitch. There are days when the bees come and find her curled up against a wall, days when the sea clings to her lashes, when no sun nor storm lights up the sky, when she forgets the taste of fruit. On those days the bees know what to do.

  They come, they gather around her, they form a black-banded ribbon of gold from their hive to their quarry. Each comes bearing a lick of honey in her mouth, presses it against the girl’s in a kiss. They offer her honey made of sun and sea, honey made of apricots, honey made of rain-wet leaves. They offer her honey scented with the ginger of her hair. One kiss at a time, they fill up what she has spilled from herself, never speak of the mess it’s made on the rug.

  Each one says to her, as she sips from them as best she can, remember.

  DAY 25

  Raw Manuka Honey

  Colour: Pale cloudy yellow, the colour of late morning light.

  Smell: Strongly anti-septic; a cleaning product smell.

  Taste: It’s thick without being crystallised, heaps out onto the wand, and tastes clean and sugary without the chemical smell interfering. A flavour not dissimilar to anise.

  She curls up on the beach at night, limbs tucked in tight as coral, just shy of the tide’s reach. She does not let it touch her for fear of a knife’s edge on her skin, for fear of a longing so keen it would slice her heart in two. But nestled close, half-burrowed into the sun-warmed sand, she can almost imagine herself in the water.

  Give us your hair, they said, and we will take such care of you. You will never want, save when you touch the sea; you will never hurt, save when you seek the waves. You will never want home, never need anything more than the sun and the sand and your husband’s body, and all other love will fade to foam in the dawn.

  There is a ring on her finger. It hurts when she tries to take it off, digs deep grooves into her skin.

  Her husband is a good man. He dutifully inquires after her day at dinner, dutifully nods his head when she answers, dutifully makes love to her in the wide feather bed they share every second evening.

  She used to dance, she remembers that. She used to dance to her own singing. She would lift her arms above her head and jewel-coloured fish would swarm about them like bees, darting between the long strands of her green hair, through the space between her fingers. She never needed kisses, then; her mouth was for eating, for music, nothing else.

  You will have a husband who tastes like bread and salt, they said. What need will you have of fins, of gills, of ocean storms?

  She believes him when he says he loves her. She does not believe herself, anymore.

  An overzealous wave reaches the tip of her finger, and she cries out as if cut. No blood wells up, no parting can be seen in her perfect skin. Water is not, after all, sharp.

  All she wants is to sleep as she used to. All she wants is to close her eyes and feel warm, to feel the salt flushing her arms, scouring her tail. But the sea-bees have made a hive of the hair she gave them, and she cannot swim without it, cannot have a tail without something to comb.

  She presses a kiss into the sand; it cuts where it’s moist. Quickly, before she can change her mind, she lifts herself into the sea, shatters the glass surface of it, cries out when its shards carve a path inward, deeper and deeper, soaking her through.

  There is a great deal of foam, come morning. It tastes strangely sweet.

  DAY 26

  Blackberry Creamed Honey

  Colour: Red as melted garnets, Pinot Noir, blackberry syrup cut with water. This is the reddest honey I’ve seen yet.

  Smell: Qurban, the bread served at funerals.

  Taste: The honey takes a back seat to the blackberry. It’s like a blackberry syrup, like toot, mulberry syrup my mother would mix up with water to make us a summer drink. Delicious, sweet and smooth.

  He is bitter as ash left cold on the grate,

  white as soured milk, wry as bread left to spoil

  and very, very sad. He smiles a twist of fennel

  every now and then, laughs anise and asphodel,

  but buries it beneath a deep, damp soil

  that grows nothing but rye.

  He carries an amphitheatre in his back pocket,

  pulls it out when company calls,

  breaks his voice against its walls and makes them echoes, keeps

  a cedar forest between them and him, a host of shattered sounds

  to splinter the ear.

  She comes prepared.

  She stops her ears with brown beeswax,

  slicks her lips with garnet wine,

  blackberry honey, a touch of mint,

  hides cardamom beneath her tongue

  and knocks against his door.

  Out come the echoes, six by eight,

  ten by twenty-two, in octagons

  and triangles, all sharp, all edged as teeth

  to worry her to the stoop, push her out,

  hedge himself away.

  You’re mad, he says, you’re mad as mad

  you’re silly and small, and so naive,

  you speak too much and laugh too loud,

  you tire me.

  She walks towards him, tangles them. Don’t worry,

  she says, I’ve done this before,

  and takes his milk, his bread, his ash,

  his fennel and anise, his rye,

  draws them close against her blackberry mouth

  and swallows them all down.

  The air is still when she’s done with him,

  turns her back on his ash-grate hair,

  leaves him quiet and crunching on cardamom,

  licking honey from his lips.

  DAY 27

  Leatherwood Honey

  Colour: Chardonnay. I look at its pale yellow-gold and imagine the buttery aftertaste. Beautifully, stickily liquid and clear.

  Smell: Candy-sweet with a creaminess to it, white flowers and sugared milk.

  Taste: High sweetness; on the register of sweetness this would a top note. A sweetness you taste behind your eyes. Petals and light.

  To be given honey is a great gift, fraught with special significance. As Victorians
chose their nosegays, as they elaborated a language of petal and thorn and stem, so too is there a language of honey, a dialect of nectar and pollen, that must be learned and recited in appropriate situations.

  To give clover honey says I am a fair-weather friend. I am sweet and I am light, and I see the same in you. Let us mix when it is convenient, but never too deeply, for our flavours blend well only when they are similar. Let us be pleasant together.

  To give Manuka honey says I care for you more than I care for your caring of me. I care for you so much that I will hurt you to see you well, that I will put foulness into your mouth because I know it to be medicine, that I will take your scowls and hatreds and fold them against my heart like a locket full of hair because I will know you to be well.

  One gives raspberry honey for loving friendship between women; buckwheat honey to fathers on Father’s Day; red gum honey to a best friend with whom one has quarrelled, seeking solace. One gives rose honey to girls with brown eyes, black locust honey to boys with green, in token of gentle, unassuming love.

  Leatherwood honey is rarely given, for it signifies commitment of a deeper sort.

  I want you, it says, because your skin lacks my mark on it. I want to push you against a wall and twist your arm behind your back and breathe against your neck to show you my want, to show you how much I value you. I will love you hard and strong because I suffer in loving you, and will make you suffer with me. I will lay honey on a collar and tighten it around your neck the better to lick the excess from its edges, where the red welts show. I will have you for my own, and you will have no choice but to like it.

  To accept leatherwood honey seals an important compact. It is not for the sweet-toothed maiden who has run out of thistle, not for the indifferent young man to whom all sweetness is equal, to whom sour and bitter are much the same thing. One must take it with a gaze full of the giver, and upon receiving a jar of the precious stuff, bow one’s head down low.

  DAY 28

  French Chestnut Honey

  Colour: Sunshine in Ottawa, and a little paler still.

  Smell: More than a flower, something else, something earthy and nutty and malty at once. Hints of green and smoke, substance.

  Taste: A burnt wood taste, hints of anise; this is a honey that tastes very brown and black, dark with slants of light in it.

  Once upon a time, there was a girl who forgot how to kiss.

  It began with touching, as so many things do. She lived in a beautiful place, and as she walked by stone, by leaves, by flowers, a longing rose in her that needed to spill out through her fingertips to reach the petals, the thorns, the grass that prompted it. Where she could not reach the beauty she saw—the clouds, the stars, the moon all being so far away—she touched her lips, instead, and blew them a quiet kiss. They never kissed back, but why should they? She was not an eighth so lovely as they.

  But there lay the difficulty. Boys are not so lovely as storms, girls not so lovely as cresting waves, and she, well, why should she be even as lovely as boys or girls? Let the earth take her kisses without cracking, let the water touch her lips without hissing, and she would be content. They did, of course; what was a girl to them? She pressed kiss after kiss to bark and current, blew kiss after kiss to sunlight and shadows, and soon forgot the shape of lips against her own, the taste of honey and salt mixing. She shied away from the gazes of boys and girls, bound her hair in brambles, braceleted her arms in vines, filled her mouth with chestnut honey to say away, keep away; I have forgotten how to kiss, how to be kissed, and do not want to remember.

  It was the honey that drew the bees.

  How they laughed at her astonishment when they nuzzled her lips! How they danced about her bramble-thick hair, her green-ringed arms! How she all but melted as they kissed and kissed and kissed her, took her kisses to flowers in fields and forests, buried her breath between stamen and pistil! How they dusted her mouth with pollen when they returned!

  She kissed their buzzing wings, their stamping feet, their beautiful black-banded bodies. She let them into her mouth, let them scour her tongue of chestnut honey, wept to feel its curious loss, the ache of a wood-burnt aftertaste filling her mouth like incense.

  Why are you so sad, girl, you who love us so much? asked the bees, as she wept.

  I am sad because I love you, because I love you so much, and because I am not a bee to buzz with you lightly. I am not a flower, not a tree, not a rain-hewn stone. I am not a storm or a cresting wave, not a thorn or a vine. I am not the sun stinging the water, not the moon on the snow. I am not a star in the dark. I am not the dew-wet wind, not the cloud-stained dawn. I am only a girl, a small, plain girl, a girl who must smear her lips in honey to be found sweet.

  Oh, said the bees, oh, oh, oh. But your kisses reach so far, girl, your kisses touch the sky!

  That may be, said the girl, but they are not enough to please the sky, and so cannot please me.

  Oh! laughed the bees, oh, oh, oh! You are so silly, you are so sweet! Sweet silly thing, the sky is not a girl!

  The girl said nothing with wide, wild eyes. They laughed with their wings, their feet, their black-banded beauty.

  A flower is not a girl, and a tree is not a girl. A stone is not a girl, nor a storm, nor a wave; a thorn is not a girl, nor a vine, nor a star. The sun-stung water is not shaped like a girl, the cloud-stained dawn cannot bind its hair in brambles. But they kiss and kiss and kiss you all the same; can’t you feel them? You are a girl, and that is beautiful.

  They kissed her one by two by six by twelve, they sipped her tears away. They stamped the brambles from her hair, they slipped the vines from her wrists, they ate the ache from her chestnut mouth. And soon, soon, she learned to see storms in boys’ eyes, cresting waves in girls’ hair, and tasted honey on every tongue.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have so many people to thank. First, thanks to Danielle, for the generosity and creativity that sparked everything off, and for being the kind of person who inspires me to aspire; next to Catherynne Valente, for accepting a gift of honey from me one February in Ottawa, becoming my dear friend, and introducing me to hers.

  Deep, heartfelt thanks are due to Caitlyn Paxson and Mike Allen for their comments and suggestions, but most especially to Claire Cooney, who sank her knuckles into this manuscript and kneaded it as no one else did, who showed me line by line how it could be tightened and sharpened and shaped. Thanks, too, to my sister Dounya, for tasting Manuka honey with me, and to James Williams, for his willingness to keep the strange girl in the wine bar company while she sucked sweetness from unstoppered vials in public.

  Thanks to everyone on my Livejournal friendslist who read along as I was writing this day by day of a February; to Nicole Kornher-Stace, who was the first to suggest that these small things should be collected; to Jessica Wick, for the unwitting loan of her Ogress and Dream-Thief; to Deborah Brannon, for putting in time and energy to promote it; and to my parents, for their encouragement, kind words, lullabies, and for reading beyond the Peach Creamed Honey.

  I will be forever grateful that Erzebet saw something here worth touching with her bone-sculpting hands, and that Oliver Hunter has lent his unbearable skill to this project. I have always longed to see my words made into art, and am more humbled than I can say that such brilliant artists have engaged with it.

  And thanks to you, of course, for reading to the very end.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amal El-Mohtar

  Amal El-Mohtar is a first-generation Lebanese-Canadian, currently pursuing a PhD in English literature at the Cornwall campus of the University of Exeter. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in a range of publications both online and in print, including Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Cabinet des Fées, Sybil's Garage, Mythic Delirium, and Ideomancer; her short fiction has also been broadcast on Podcastle. She won the 2009 Rhysling Award with her poem “Song for an Ancient City,” and co-edits Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly dedicated to fantastical poetry, wi
th Jessica P. Wick.