The Bees: A Novel

by Laline Paull

  IN THE MIDDAY LIGHT the webs became invisible, and Flora almost forgot them until she heard the warning yells of the foragers on the board. She veered steeply up above the apple trees and made a vertical descent to the landing board, feeling her fuel level drop at the expensive maneuver. By the tense faces of the other foragers, they had been forced to do the same. Guards approached Flora.

  “My sisters Thistle. I have only a half crop of nectar, but call a receiver and I will go out again and keep searching—”

  “Forgive us, Madam Forager, we have our orders. It must be a full crop, and before the noon azimuth, or we must deny you entry. The Sage will it.”

  Flora breathed in the deep, warm smell of the hive.

  “But I still have good nectar, even from your own kin-flower: smell! The kitchen will surely want it—”

  The guards’ faces showed the pain of their order, even as they blocked Flora’s way.

  “Forgive us, Sister.”

  “But this is my home, you are my family—where else can I go? Give me the Kindness, for I cannot leave here while I can still serve—”

  “Without a full crop, the Sage forbid you entry.”

  “She has it.” The forager Madam Dogwood’s voice was hoarse and her sides still heaved from her hard flight. She went up to Flora. “Show them,” she said to her. “They will see.”

  As soon as Flora opened her mouth to answer, Madam Dogwood bent hers to it, triggered her own crop, and transferred every drop of nectar she could. Before Flora could respond, other foragers quickly did the same, sharing their own loads until her crop was full. The sun shifted.

  “There,” said Madam Dogwood to the Thistle guards. “The azimuth only now rises noon, and she brings a full crop to the board. You will admit her.”

  “Admit her!” shouted the foragers.

  “Gladly.” The guards bowed.

  Flora knelt low in gratitude to her forager sisters.

  “Praise end your days, sisters.”

  “Such sentiment!” The voice was oily and malignant and it came from a spider, hanging soft and wicked in the nearest web and listening to all that passed. “Do not waste your old and useless, trade them here!”

  The Thistle straightened their abdomens in threat. “Do not insult us, foul thing. Every sister is useful.”

  “Not she who first gave her nectar. She . . . is old.”

  The spider trained her four hard little eyes on Madam Dogwood, who flared her venom gland in defiance. Flora stood by her comrade’s side, anger rising.

  “Yes, that one is weak,” the spider said to its neighbors. “Soon they will fight among themselves.” As the webs shimmered again, the bees saw that some held long white lumps.

  “Never!” The Thistle guards held up their arms to the spiders. “You lie!”

  “Oh come, come,” said the spider, “you know we must tell the truth. That is why your Sage trade with us.”

  Flora’s anger lifted her off her feet and her chest roared. “They would not! You are the Myriad and you are evil!”

  “The Sage do not mind.” The spider smirked. “They pay for knowledge.”

  Flora forced herself back down to the board.

  “Is it true?” she asked the guards. “Do the Sage trade with them?”

  The Thistle guards looked down and did not answer.

  “How? Spiders do not eat honey or pollen—” Then Flora looked again at the white shapes hanging in the webs. They were shrouds, wrapped tight around the bodies of sisters.

  “That’s right!” called out the spider. “Spend your old, your weak, your clumsy, and your stupid; buy knowledge of winter to keep your hive alive!” It pointed a claw at Madam Dogwood. “That one’s time is nearly up, I can smell it. Send her!”

  “How would it happen?” Madam Dogwood stared out.

  “No!” Flora held her back.

  The spider inhaled deeply and her soft, moist body pulsed with excitement.

  “A quick bite.” Her whisper crawled through the air and Madam Dogwood took a step forward. “A moment of pain—”

  “Silence, foul thing.” One of the Thistle buzzed a blast of her war gland at the web. “Attend your own business and gorge on flies.”

  “My name is Arachnae. And you bees . . . are my business.”

  Another spider stepped across her own web with rippling feet. “It is just a plea for simple economics, which you of all creatures must admire. You are many, with much treasure. All we have are answers, to questions you dare not ask. . . . But when someone has a question . . . we want to help.”

  “Turn around! Do not look at them!”

  Every bee on the landing board wanted to heed the Thistle’s words and turn her wings on the spiders, but the webs were of hypnotic craft and beauty.

  “Look closer, sisters,” whispered the first spider. “Read your poor hive’s destiny . . .”

  “We are not your sisters!” Flora forced herself to look away. “And our hive is strong, we need no tricks from you!”

  “Knowledge is power,” said the spider, plucking a silvery chord from her web. Every other spider did the same so that the orchard chimed in dissonance.

  “The length of the season, the number of suns before the honeyflow comes again, who will be the next to die . . .” The spider dropped on her thread so that she hung in the air. “With winter coming, your hive could budget to the last sip of honey, the last grain of pollen. With knowledge, you could save yourselves. . . . One bee, one answer. One bee . . . one answer.” She began to revolve, her white belly shining and disappearing, shining and disappearing.

  “One bee . . . one answer . . .” Other spiders dropped down from their webs, slowly twirling pendants beneath the leaves. Brown and white. Brown and white.

  “Look away!” Flora pushed back the foragers who had walked to the edge of the board. Then she saw Madam Dogwood at the far end, unlatching her wings.

  “Praise end your days,” she cried to Flora. Before anyone could stop her she leaped from the board and flew toward the trees. A silver web bounced as she hit it and her whirring wings slowed and stuck. The bees cried out in horror as the spider ran to greet their sister, her fangs bared.

  “Here.” The spider climbed on Madam Dogwood’s back. “Something to calm you.” She bit the forager between her head and thorax and held her until she stopped moving. Then she rolled her in sticky netting, stopped the last of her cries with a clot of silk in her mouth, and ran back to the center of her web.

  “So. Now I owe you an answer.” Malice twinkled in the spider’s four eyes. “What about . . . how to defend your hive? ‘Oh the Visitation, help us Holy Mother, all our honey is being stolen—’ ” Her laugh made liquid move in her body so that her loose brown skin bulged. “Tame things forget how to fight. Arachnae can remind you.” The spider smiled. “And what of starvation?” She ran back to Madam Dogwood and crouched above her. “Your Treasury is not as full as it could be, is it? Who knows if it can last the winter?” She bared her fangs above Madam Dogwood. “Blood and nectar—my favorite.”

  With a great thoracic roar of rage, Flora aimed herself for the center of the web and stopped just short in the air, whirring to try to drive the spider back.

  “Tell us then. How can we survive the winter?”

  “Just a moment.” The spider’s face took on a look of absent concentration, then she reached behind herself and pulled forward a fresh skein of silk. She showed it to Flora, then licked it. “My new ropes taste of nectar and pollen. Now, come a little closer, my dear; I haven’t seen one like you before. Not pretty, so you must be nutritious. That’s always a good rule.” The spider winked two of her four eyes at Flora. “You have a secret as well as a question, I can smell it. We’ll chat after I’ve had a bite to eat. Drink, I should say. Before she dries out.”

  “Answer me!” Flora drew her sting, but the spider just smiled.

  “But which question? The one about your hive? Or that secret desire deep inside you?” The spider sank her
fangs into Madam Dogwood’s abdomen and sucked noisily, then looked up. “Surely it is a relief that I know . . .”

  As the spider drank again, Flora felt her wings tiring and heard the distant cries of her sisters on the landing board, calling her back. The spider paused in her drinking.

  “I will whisper, so they do not hear: You will have one more egg.”

  Flora reeled back in the air. “I did not ask that!”

  “Call it a gift.” The spider looked at Flora slyly. “But why not stay with me now, and sacrifice yourself for your hive? I will credit your sisters three lives, because I really think you will taste quite special.” She indicated Madam Dogwood’s body. “It would not be like this; we could talk for a long time. Think about it.”

  Flora hung in the air as she had seen the wasps do. “I asked about my hive. You gave me an answer I did not want—”

  “You did want it!” hissed the spider. “You long to sin again!”

  “You have your payment, Arachnae, and you owe my hive. Now answer my question: How can we survive winter?”

  “You try to trick a spider?” She spat Madam Dogwood’s blood at Flora. “Winter comes twice. That is all I will tell you, and may your hive suffer!”

  THOUGH IT WAS A SHORT DISTANCE, the malice of the spiders reached up for Flora as she passed above their webs, blurring her sight and willing her down to their clutches. She collapsed on the landing board, and foragers touched her gently in support.

  “What did Arachnae say?” Sister Sage stood on the board, the sun in her wings. “Your private parley was so long, we thought that you would stay.”

  “I will tell you, Sister—but let me first deliver my crop. I have fulfilled the task you set.” Flora beckoned to a young Daisy receiver and gave her the golden load.

  Sister Sage observed without praise. She looked out into the orchard.

  “Kindly repeat the spider’s words.”

  Flora sealed her antennae before she answered. “Winter comes twice.”

  “Strange.” Sister Sage’s antennae gave rapid pulses. “Anything else?”

  “They wish our hive to suffer.”

  “Do they indeed . . . the loathsome traders.”

  Sister Sage drew herself up to her full majestic height, extended her antennae, and pointed them into the orchard. In the trees the webs flashed taut in response, and though there was no wind, the leaves shivered. The priestess turned back to Flora.

  “I hear Madam Dogwood gave her life for yours. Endeavor to deserve it.”

  “I will, Sister.”

  Flora ran inside, her heart tight with guilt and joy.

  Twenty-Seven

  THE SUMMER WAS ENDING, BUT NO EGG CAME. DAY BY day Flora scanned her body for a signal of another egg, but nothing changed except the shortening days and the growing hunger of the bees. Rather than return home empty, many dispirited foragers chose to give their tired bodies to the spiders in the hope the hive would profit. Then a priestess would fly out to the shroud and speak with the spider for a long time.

  The first time she witnessed this strange conversation, Flora watched in dread from the landing board. When the priestess looked back at the hive and nodded, Flora’s antennae searched for the approach of the police, convinced the spider had revealed her secret. But the priestess landed back on the board with a somber face and almost ran to get back into the hive. The Thistle guards and all the bees on the board looked at each other at this discomposure—but none dared speak of it.

  The orchard shrouds became a terrible, and then a normal, fact of life. The diminishing band of foragers grew used to avoiding the webs but each night many died of exhaustion, and each day fewer returned than set out on their missions, for the smallest miscalculation of route could be fatal if their fuel was low.

  Flora kept going, managing to gather what little there was. She discovered golden ragwort growing on the mounds of rubble behind the industrial complex, and though the bread its pollen made was coarse and tough, it provided a day’s food for the hive. Wasps also frequented this area, leaving smeary scent-trails in the air. Refusing to let her fear prevent her forage, Flora took to revving her engine drone-deep and battle-loud as she approached, daring any creature to stop her. The wasps watched her from a distance.

  “Proud cousin Apis,” one called out, and her voice was as drunken and slurred as her wingbeats. “We owe your hive a visit. After winter, when we have slept . . .” She reeled away in the air without finishing her words, her sisters with her.

  IN THE DANCE HALL Flora relayed what the wasp had said. Her sisters buzzed uneasily, for everyone knew that wasps were full of threats, but none had ever heard of them sleeping. The casual quality of “after winter” was also disturbing, as if the wasps had no anxiety at all about their survival—whereas the dwindling rations in the canteens made all the orchard bees food-obsessed, and many were secretly convinced there was not enough to go around.

  All the bees in the Dance Hall began talking and speculating, their voices growing louder and louder—and then every sister halted, her mind transfixed by a strange new signal in the comb.

  It was a vibration, almost imperceptible, yet it carried a pheromone more powerful than the strongest Thistle’s war gland. It was definitely not Devotion, but it demanded their complete attention. As the sisters set their feet to read it more clearly, disturbing waves of energy pulsed into their bodies. The sensation was the opposite of the blissful reassurance of the Queen’s Love; they felt apprehensive and pent-up, as if they were about to defend their hive—and yet there was no call to arms. Antennae poised and ready, the bees waited.

  Sisters! The voice of the Hive Mind was low and intimate. To celebrate the new Age of Austerity, we shall perform the Great Obeisance to the Males. Go each of you and find them all. Allow no delays, but bring them to the Dance Hall.

  The sisters ran to obey. Many of the drones were in their hall across the lobby, but it was with much grumbling and resistance that they were roused to go the short distance, for the smaller rations had provoked their gluttony, and staff shortages their laziness. Gradually they were cajoled out with pleading and flattery, and Flora felt a jab of irritation at their musty smell. Many of them had stale food in their fur, and one, Sir Poplar, refused to go another step without being groomed. The comb pulsed harder underfoot.

  By any means. Bring every drone to the Dance Hall.

  “Bloody Queen needs to know,” Sir Poplar muttered as they coaxed him into the Dance Hall. “Always her fault, when it comes down to it.” The sisters looked at him in shock.

  “A great welcome to Your Malenesses,” spoke the beautiful wall of Sage priestesses, their wings unlatched and shimmering to heighten their kin-scent.

  “Bah,” said Sir Poplar loudly. He looked around the crowded chamber and wiggled himself closer to Flora. “So this is where you old girls rattle and shake, is it?”

  She drew away from him, disturbed by the new vibration in the comb and the alien smell of so many drones in the feminine preserve of the Dance Hall.

  “We have performed our Treasury audit.” Sister Sage came forward. “Before we make the Great Obeisance to the Males, we shall read out the roll of honor. Sir Quercus: gone to glory!”

  All the sisters applauded fervently, the drones less so.

  “Sir Whitebeam: gone to glory.”

  The sisters applauded again, but slower.

  “Sir Alder?”

  “Here.” His voice came from deep in the crowd of sisters.

  “Sir Chequer—”

  “Here.”

  As Sister Sage went on, the roll call of answering drones sounded increasingly sulky.

  “Sir Poplar?”

  He yawned loudly.

  “What? Oh . . . Here . . .”

  “Sir Linden?” Sister Sage waited. “Missing in passion. Honor to him.”

  “Honor to him,” responded the sisters.

  “Clever little git, good riddance.” Sir Poplar pressed closer to Flora. “Very touchi
ng though, how you sisters get these crushes. Even when you know nothing can ever happen.” He fumbled intimately with her wing joint. “The way you followed him around, even to Congreg—” He gasped in pain as Flora squeezed her wing-latch shut and trapped his hand. “Holy Mother, where’s your sense of humor?”

  “Attention.” Sister Sage commanded the chamber. The new vibration came more strongly through the comb and Flora let Sir Poplar retrieve his hand. He glared.

  “All our brother drones are now accounted. Every sister kneel, then rise for the Great Obeisance to the Males.”

  “Yes.” Sir Poplar shoved Flora down. “Back in your place.”

  As the sisters all knelt to the drones, the vibration surged deep into their bodies.

  “Now lay your antennae at their feet,” continued the choral voice of the Sage. As every sister obeyed, the vibration went straight into their brains.

  “Hah!” Sir Poplar’s voice was small and distant and the sound made Flora want to sting him.

  “All rise.” The Sage priestesses came forward to stand in a line of beauty and power. They touched their wings together.

  “Beloved daughters of One Mother,” Sister Sage addressed them. “Sisters of the hive, the turning season draws our prayer—”

  “I’ve had it with that canting old hag.” Sir Poplar tried to get past Flora.

  She broadened her thorax to block him. Anger curled inside her and she felt the urge to hit him. “You will stay.”

  “Surely you are mad.” He shook his head. “You need the Kindness—”

  “We will now observe the ancient ritual,” continued Sister Sage, “given by our Mother in the Time before Time. In the Great Obeisance to the Males, every sister shall play her part in the dance, and her body will know the steps. Accept, Obey, and Serve.”

  “Accept, Obey, and Serve,” the sisters repeated, their voices low and strange.

  “Enough of this drivel; out of my way.” Sir Poplar tried to shove past Flora, but his path was blocked by a close ring of sisters. “Are you all mad? Move!”