by Brad Meltzer
Foragers were stubborn too, Zig thinking about how many times he’d come home and find a bee so weighed down with pollen and nectar, they’d be twisting in the grass, struggling to get back to the hive. Wonderful creatures, committed to their mission.
Still, after decades of intense study, there was one question about foragers that scientists couldn’t answer: Where do they die? Every single day, foragers go out and come back home. Out and home. Out and home. But for some reason, 99 percent of deaths happened away from the hive. That’s not just luck. That’s a trait. An instinct. A natural law.
For years, like most scientists, Zig assumed it was a way to protect the hive, keeping it free from sickness and disease. Or maybe it was Darwinism—the weaker foragers would go out, but didn’t have enough strength to make their return. Yet tonight, as Zig sat there in his lawn chair, watching this stubborn, lonely bee make yet another fruitless loop-de-loop, he couldn’t help but think that maybe, deep in the bee’s psyche, it knew what was coming. It knew the end was near. So when it left for that final flight, instead of yet another mission for the hive, maybe, just maybe, it would go off on one final adventure.
Or who knows? Maybe more than one.
With a final swig of beer, Zig pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered past Facebook, tapped on a browser, and quickly navigated to one of those online travel sites with a purposely weird name that you could never remember.
Flights.
One way.
Destination?
Zig sat there a moment, wondering if he was being impulsive. Then a new thought hit his brain—the words of The Amazing Caesar, who told him there were only four different magic tricks: You make something appear. You make something disappear. You make two things change place. Or, the one Zig liked most: You change one thing into something else.
Zig stared down at the red hair tie on his wrist. It’d be fun to pirate again. Go around, see the world. And of course, do some good. So where to start?
New Orleans, he typed into the search box. He’d heard it was nice this time of year.
There are many kinds of death, Zig thought to himself. But there are also many ways to live. It’s one of the few things they never teach you at mortician school. Sometimes you need to bury your old life—and make a new one.
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ALSO BY BRAD MELTZER
Novels
The Tenth Justice
Dead Even
The First Counsel
The Millionaires
The Zero Game
The Book of Fate
The Book of Lies
The Inner Circle
The Fifth Assassin
The President’s Shadow
The House of Secrets
Nonfiction
Heroes for My Son
Heroes for My Daughter
History Decoded
I Am Amelia Earhart
I Am Abraham Lincoln
I Am Rosa Parks
I Am Albert Einstein
I Am Jackie Robinson
I Am Lucille Ball
I Am Helen Keller
I Am Martin Luther King, Jr.
I Am George Washington
I Am Jane Goodall
I Am Jim Henson
I Am Sacagawea
I Am Gandhi
