Samantha Honeycomb

by Scott Zarcinas

  Then she remembered another piece of advice from her godmother. “When I was searching for meaning, I was like a bee on a tulip petal looking for a tulip.” She had then paused and smiled. “So my advice to you, young lady, is this: When you are searching for meaning, look no further than where you are.”

  Samantha had to admit she didn’t really understand what her godmother had meant, but she supposed there was no harm in trying to follow her advice, and so began to cast an eye over her new living quarters. There was not much there – a straw bed, a bucket, and a stool – and above her head on the adjacent wall, a bright white- and black- striped square cast by a ray of dusty light filtering through the bars of the cell’s solitary window. No, not much here at all, really, she thought.

  The cell’s grim reality made her feel even more depressed; and as she contemplated her miserable lot, something caught her eye, a shadow on the wall, like a black fly buzzing back and forth. At first she didn’t know what to make of it, and then she realised that something was flying past the window. She sprung onto the bed and peered through the bars.

  The window, surprisingly, looked directly outside the hive. Through the branches and leaves of the maple tree, she was able to see what was casting the shadow, a red, diamond-shaped kite, swaying to and fro in the sky. Who or what, she couldn’t make out, was piloting it in the field of tall grass that spread west toward the hills of the Crazy Lands. When the kite passed back again, its shadow crossed her face. Watching it soar filled her with a quiet sense of joy. She momentarily forgot her prison cell, flying free with the kite.

  Then quite unexpectedly, it stalled in flight. Within the beat of a wing, it plunged toward the ground, spiralling and spiralling and spiralling until it dived into the tall grass and was lost to sight.

  Samantha waited for it to rise again. After ten or so minutes she gave up and lay back down on the bed, then curled into a tight ball and cried herself to sleep.

  THE TRIAL DATE was set for one week.

  Samantha was allowed no visitors, not even her parents, and she had to make do with only one meal a day, stale honeybread and water. The wait was unbearable. Often she whiled away the hours peering through the bars in the hope of spotting the kite again, but she never did. It only got worse. As the trial date neared, she became even more agitated and anxious. She couldn’t sit still for a moment, as almost every minute was spent dreading what was to become of her. If she had to spend the rest of her life in this prison cell, she thought she would go as mad as a wasp. Execution would be more merciful.

  As it was, she was already having strange and unusual dreams, and on the night before the trial she had the oddest one of all. Seated in the middle of an old theatre, Samantha found herself surrounded by rows and rows of empty seats. Ahead, on the bare stage, an old actress sat on a single chair. Apart from Samantha, the actress, who looked remarkably similar to her godmother, was the only bee in the whole place.

  “Hello Samantha,” the actress said, “what scene would you like me to act?”

  Samantha didn’t know many plays, but she was aware of a famous writer who’d apparently written some pretty good stuff. “What about some William Shakesbee?” she said, hoping this to be sufficient.

  “My, my,” the actress said, and paused, trying to remember her lines. “All right, let me see what I can do for you.” She went to the edge of the stage, then puffed her chest, tilted her head, and said: “There are more mysteries, Horatio Bee, in hive-heaven than can be dreamt in your hive.”

  The actress stood frozen, waiting for applause, but it was a number of seconds before Samantha realised what she was meant to do. “Bravo! Bravo!” she said, clapping. “Bravo!”

  The actress looked very pleased and dropped a curtsy. She turned to face the absent audience and gestured for silence. “To bee or not to bee, that is the question.” She flapped her wings to stress the point. “Is it better to suffer the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or oppose them?”

  “Bravo! Bravo!” Samantha applauded again, this time with more vim. “Encore! Encore!”

  The actress shook her head. “You now know all you need to know,” she said. “There is no more I can teach you. It is now up to you to go and bee.”

  Samantha woke early the next morning with one thought buzzing through her mind: To bee or not to bee. She was still lying on her bed, wondering what in the world it could mean, when she heard movement outside her door, then the rattle of keys, and then the unlocking of the door. The prison guard walked in, followed by the captain of the royal guards. “Get up!” the captain said. “It’s time.”

  Samantha sat up straight away. She suddenly felt very awkward. She looked shabby and smelled rather grim, really in no state to go to trial, but the captain was having none of it. She was hauled outside the cell, where five more guards were waiting to escort her to the courtrooms. Two in front, two behind, and one on each side, she was marched out of Hive Prison to the central bee-way and the long walk to the fifth level.

  It seemed that word had spread that a poacher had been caught with her claws in sacred nectar, for many bees had taken position along the route to witness the procession, a once in a lifetime event. The size of the crowd was somewhat daunting. Six guards felt rather inadequate for her protection, and although most of the crowd watched her pass in silence, she heard some nasty comments from several older drones in front of the nursery on the second level, reinforcing her fears.

  “Rot in jail!” shouted one, shaking his clenched claw at her.

  “Prison’s too good for you!” said another.

  Their comments were followed with murmurs of approval.

  Samantha’s fear grew the closer she got to the courtroom, as did the numbers in the crowd. On the third level, onlookers were lining the bee-way almost three deep. The air was thick with the smells of pollen and nectar from the factories, smells that were as familiar as home-baked honeybread but unfortunately only reminded her of the hardships she was suffering. She was struck with a pang of homesickness, and desperately scanned the crowd for her mother and father. Unable to see them, she wondered where they were. It would be a terrible humiliation for them. Would they attend the trial or stay inside their hive-cell? She could hardly expect them to show their faces in public, yet she knew she couldn’t go through this alone. She had never wanted so much to be with them in all her short life.

  The guards then led her through the central bees-nest district on the fourth level. The crowd was now five or six deep. Samantha even caught many faces looking down on her from the old nests, the tallest of which touched the ceiling nine or ten cells high. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pairs of eyes were staring at her. A newspaper drone was selling this morning’s paper, hot off the press.

  “Get your Daily Bee!” he shouted above the restless crowd. “Trial of the Century starts today! Read all about it!” It seemed he couldn’t sell them fast enough.

  Samantha finally arrived at the courthouse in the eastern sector of the fifth level, where a menacing crowd had gathered with placards demanding her immediate execution. As the guards led her on by, Samantha heard someone shout, “There she is!” The crowd surged forward, baying and screaming and shouting obscenities. Samantha thought she was going to be ripped apart, but the guards closed ranks and pushed a path through the unruly mob. A moment later, she felt one of her wings being grabbed. Her squeals alerted the guards, who shoved the offending bee to the ground, and then marched on.

  It was a struggle, but after a few minutes they were inside the courthouse. The doors were barred and they hastened down the empty corridor to Courtroom 3. Samantha breathed a sigh of relief, but her reprieve was only momentary. To her dismay, the tiny chamber was packed with hundreds of bees. Reporters had taken over the whole section behind the witness stand, some already writing on their pads, and the upper and lower levels of the public gallery were crammed. The low hum that was reverberating around the room hushed when she entered. Her wings flapped and she buzzed fretful
ly, a childhood habit she’d never outgrown, and now wished she had.

  Not wanting to look at the crowd, Samantha eyed the queen’s golden throne. It sat empty on a high dais backing the far wall, on which a portrait of the queen herself was hanging, Queen Beetrix Bee IV. From the seat beneath the dais, the magistrate watched her every step as the guards led her to the prisoner’s stand directly opposite. The room was still hushed.

  “Prisoner in the docks!” the captain shouted.

  Samantha cringed with embarrassment. Turning, she glimpsed the frightened faces of her mother and father in the upper gallery behind her. She was glad they were here. Her mother tried to smile, but her face was wracked with worry. A murmur then began buzzing around the chamber.

  “All rise!” said the magistrate, and the room echoed with the thuds and scrapes of hundreds of bees standing as one.

  After a moment, the queen duly entered from a door behind the dais and sat on her throne. Queen Beetrix Bee IV was judge, jury and executioner, and Samantha could see she wasn’t in a happy mood. The rest of the courtroom then sat down, except Samantha; there was no seat for the prisoner in the docks, so she remained standing, head bowed. This was the moment she’d been dreading.

  Soon, she’d know whether she was to live or die.

  “SAMANTHA B. HONEYCOMB,” bellowed the magistrate. “You stand charged before Her Majesty, Queen Beetrix Bee the Fourth, with unlawful trespass, poaching and wanton disregard for the law. Do you wish to respond or plea before the proceedings commence?”

  An expectant hush lingered in the air. Samantha said nothing, just shook her head. The prosecution then called the first of the three bees who had stumbled upon her as she emerged (allegedly) from the crimson rose, covered from head to stinger in pollen.

  “I guess at first we didn’t want to believe it,” the witness said. To Samantha, she looked tired and worn out, a worker bee that had come to the end of her wearisome life. “I had already warned her not to trespass on sacred ground. I was shocked when I came back and saw her. She had no right to go in there.”

  The other witnesses were just as reproachful. One of them even dared to call upon the queen to sentence Samantha to death. It was greeted with an approving buzz from a certain section of the gallery, placard-waving members of the Committee for Beenevolence, otherwise known as the CB’s. Worse, the prosecution then stood and called a surprise witness.

  “I call the Guardian of Truth,” the prosecuting lawyer said, a bee with hairy antennae and a bad habit of picking dirt from her claws with her stinger when she thought nobody was looking. “Her Most Eternally Venerate, the Holy Eminent Designate of the Sacred Order, the High Priestess Bee.”

  Samantha heard reverent gasps among the crowd. Even the queen seemed to be in awe of the Priestess as she entered and took the witness stand. Most bees had never seen her in the flesh, including Samantha. The Priestess rarely left the confines of the cathedral, and it was clear she was not amused to be called as a witness. Samantha caught her scornful look as she placed her claw on the Holy Beeble and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her Mighty Goddess.

  “Your Holy Eminence,” the prosecuting lawyer said with reverence, “would you please tell the court why the laws strictly forbid worker bees to trespass on sacred ground?”

  The High Priestess sighed. “Very well,” she said. “As the Guardian of Truth, it is my solemn duty to safeguard the Secrets of Life. You could say that this is the fundamental concern of the Sisterhood.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Is it not true that bees were around for millions of years before flowers even existed?” she asked. The crowd, including the magistrate and Queen Beetrix, murmured in affirmation. “Then flowers, especially roses, are extremely precious, are they not?” Again everyone murmured in agreement. “The Great Mother didn’t just bestow Her gifts onto everybody, did she? No! She gave us her precious gifts so that we would take proper care of them. If the Secrets of Life were to fall into the wrong claws, evil claws,” and here she turned and glared at Samantha, “then chaos would take over the hive.” Then her mouth parted in a smile that made Samantha think of an executioner’s grin. “And if that were to happen,” she said, “then death would surely befall all of us.”

  Samantha gulped as her gaze darted around the room. Everyone, including the queen, was nodding in agreement. A chorus of boos rose from the CB’s who, up until that point, had been overwhelmed into silence.

  “The heart of a rose is sacred because it holds the key to the Secret of Life,” the Priestess said, her initial reluctance to take the stand now replaced by eager righteousness. “In its honey gland, what we of the Sisterhood know as its nectary, lies the sweet essence of the Goddess. It is found in no other flower. This essence is one of the key ingredients that the Sisterhood, with a secret and holy ritual, use to transform nectar into honey, the lifeblood of the hive. Without this sacred essence we could have no honey, and without honey we would have no hive.” She was in a frenzy of speech by now, her face seething with hatred. She slowly raised her hairy arm and pointed. “This bee has broken our ancient law and trespassed on holy ground. Will we allow her the opportunity to bring death and destruction upon us?”

  “No!” shouted the gallery.

  The High Priestess stood and faced the queen. “Then I beg your Majesty to ensure that she never gets the chance to do so.” Without waiting to be dismissed, she stepped down from the witness box and left the courtroom, shouts of approval following her as she went.

  Samantha knew her fate was sealed.

  HOLDING BACK THE tears now welling in her eyes, Samantha’s wings flapped and her legs trembled. It seemed to take an eternity for the courtroom to settle.

  “Do you have anything to say?” asked the magistrate.

  Samantha didn’t answer, too afraid to speak. Every possible outcome was a disaster. Why was this happening? Had she really done something so terrible? Suddenly, an old nursery rhyme she used to sing hummed in her mind:

  I am a little honeybee

  And Samantha is my name.

  I buzz and sing and laugh at things

  ‘Coz to me it’s all the same.

  I like to fly as high as crows

  Then dive into a rose,

  ‘Coz a honeybee is not afraid

  To bee what she is made.

  “Do you have anything to say?” the magistrate asked again, shaking Samantha from her reverie.

  When she said nothing, a restless hum buzzed throughout the chamber, gathering volume by the second.

  “Enough!” the magistrate shouted. The audience hushed at once.

  The queen was sitting patiently on her courtroom throne, contemplating Samantha’s punishment. She gestured for the magistrate to be seated. “Before I pass sentence,” she said to Samantha, “there’s one thing I wish to know.” Samantha looked up at the queen, terrified. “Why did you do it?”

  To Samantha, the answer was as simple and as natural as buzzing through the gardens and fields. “I was called to do it,” she said.

  The whole audience sat with mouth agape. The reporter bees sitting behind the witness box, at first shocked, furiously wrote down every word and every detail.

  “Who called you to break the law?” asked Queen Beetrix. “Name the bee who called you to do this terrible deed and I will spare you.”

  “Nobody made me break the law,” Samantha said. “I did it on my own free will. It wasn’t such a terrible thing, was it?”

  The courtroom gasped and buzzed excitedly and the reporters were furiously scribing once again. SAMANTHA MOCKS THE LAW wrote one of them for tomorrow’s headline. The CB’s booed and demanded her immediate hanging.

  “Silence in the courtroom!” the magistrate said, bellowing like a stung bull. “Silence at once!”

  Queen Beetrix Bee IV waited until everyone was quiet before she spoke again. “Let me remind you that you have been found guilty of a crime that has no precedent in
the history of the hive. This indeed makes it terrible.” She paused, allowing Samantha to fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation. “I have no option than to have you detained in Hive Prison indefinitely, or for however long I deem to be worthy punishment. Do you understand?”

  Samantha understood at once. Her life was over. Detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure in the bowels of Hive Prison was a sentence worse than death. She would no longer smell the garden flowers, nor see them bloom in springtime. Everything she lived for was now to be taken away. She began to cry, and the courtroom looked on in disbelief. No one uttered a word.

  “You will have plenty of time to contemplate the conesquences of your actions,” the queen said. “When I’m convinced that you have shown sufficient remorse for the crime you have committed, then I will consider an appeal for you to be allowed back into the colony.”

  Samantha sniffed and wiped away her tears, wondering what her godmother would say in such a moment of despair. Then the words just seemed to pop out of her mouth. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said.

  “What did you say?” Queen Beetrix said, leaning forward on her throne. “I can’t hear you.”

  Samantha lifted her head and looked directly into her eyes. The renewed determination in her voice surprised even herself. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said, this time loud enough for every bee in the courtroom to hear.

  The reporters got busy once again and the queen’s laugh was full of scorn. “Who taught you that, my dear girl? Everything happens because I say it will. That is the only reason. I have absolute power in this queendom – the power of life and death. Nothing happens without my consent.”

  “You’re wrong!” Samantha said.

  An audible groan lifted from the chamber, then someone from the CB’s yelled for her tongue to be cut out. Her mother even shouted for her not to argue with the queen.