by Dawn Steele
She remained in this position for a long while, until a realization struck and she looked up, as if awakened from a trance. Another type of buzzing tugged at the air. Flies were beginning to settle on the body.
A large vulture floated down from the sky to land on a branch.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said to Wolfsbane’s corpse. Her voice cracked.
Gathering her courage, she crept to the body and wrested the hunting knife from his side. She could feel the skeins of steel vibrating within the wooden handle. Then she turned abruptly and ran from the place, never to set foot upon it again.
#
In the center of the Hive, the Wormhole flared crimson and orange and blue and green. A rainbow tongue, not unlike a solar flare, leaped to where Aein stood on the gallery, his heart in his throat.
Find the Blue Planet guilty, no matter what. Thulrika’s request echoed in his ears. This went against everything he had been taught. Everything a Knight of the Redwood Table stood for.
The irony of it. To save Spora, he would have to betray her holiest values.
Mechanical golden beetles swarmed around him and the Blue Planet carapace he would occupy. He gazed at it in its open chrysalis. Its alien form was staggering. And to think that his flesh, his very soul, would be sucked into it and fused; his DNA molded into a moist, molecular soup. The actual metamorphosis would take months, and yet all this would be accelerated in the distorted time of the Wormhole.
He would be in the Blue Planet before he knew it.
He was suddenly floored by the enormity of it all.
On a dais, his mother, the Hive Queen, sat on a makeshift throne. Six feelers squirmed from her head to imbibe the air. She too was malformed. She no longer walked or flew. She had to be carried on a luxurious golden litter strewn with precious leaves and scented twigs. But her disability stemmed from copious childbirth, not genetics. She had born whole and pure, and fed with a special brew to make her Queen. Now, her distended abdomen hung around her in pendulous folds.
“Aein, my son!” she exclaimed, her eyes reflecting his image a thousand-fold. Her voice was thick with emotion. “You have a final chance to change your mind. I found a clause in the legal letter. If you have only one wing and you have a ready successor like Dimynedon, you can walk away from this.”
“No, it’s my birthright to be a Judge.” Aein refused to let his mother faze him. He spent most of his life letting her voice stream through his senses and out his other pores. She was always telling him what he couldn’t and shouldn’t do, which of course made him all the more determined to prove her wrong.
Beside his mother, Thulrika remained unperturbed. The Supreme General’s wings were folded behind her back as she perched beside the litter. As Aein entered the chrysalis, a look passed between them.
Don’t fail Spora, Thulrika’s face said.
Aein’s expression betrayed nothing.
The Queen fanned herself with a scarlet leaf that must have been worth half the Hive. “I can’t bear to look,” she said weakly.
“Oh mother, spare me the histrionics.” Aein forced a note of false cheer into his voice. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
They both knew it might not be true. Despite months of studied preparation, immersing himself in the language, the would-be environment, and as much of the inhabitants’ culture as the golden beetle scouts could transmit, Aein knew the quest would be dangerous.
“By Fytenach the Fair,” he proclaimed, as was the custom, “I swear by all that is holy to uphold justice and fairness.” His voice cracked at the final word because Thulrika was watching every twitch of his facial muscles.
The Chief Biologist made to seal the chrysalis. Aein could smell its alien scent of musk and meat as he allowed himself to fuse with the plush wetness of its interior.
“The navigation crystal?” he inquired.
“It’s embedded within the chrysalis walls for safety,” the Chief Biologist said. “It has everything you need – map, communicator, compass, pulse stick. Do not lose it. No one here can help you otherwise.”
Aein peered at the brownish crystal within a wall pocket. It seemed fairly sturdy. “Thank you.”
He lay back and grimaced. This was his greatest chance to prove himself he was every bit as good as Dimynedon and the others.
#
Snow White’s stomach rumbled. She continued to walk through the forest, stopping every hundred feet or so to rest. Her constant fatigue would be the death of her, she decided, if she didn’t trip into any more wasp nests. Birds sang and flitted through the boughs, rustling leaves.
What are you so happy about? she thought grumpily.
Her leather shoes, which were becoming worn, popped dry twigs. At least she was still alive to pop twigs.
Every now and again, she listened for the galloping of hooves and Tom Cherry’s voice. But they were lost from each other. Her spiral of extremely bad luck was continuing. Now and again, she raised her voice – tinny in its extremely parched throat – to call “Tom!” But there was only the whoo-whoo of the wind through the trees.
Between deep breaths, she muttered:
“Damn, damn, damn, damn.”
“What a stupid situation this is. Of all the stupid, stupid – oh, I’m so angry I can eat hobnails right now.”
Forlornly: “I’m hungry enough to eat hobnails right now.”
“The Queen wants to kill me over some devil pact. OK, I get that it has something to do with her aging. Immortality is overrated anyway. What’s the big deal about aging?”
“OK, so it has something to do with me being beautiful. So I’ll hit my face repeatedly against a tree and I won’t be beautiful anymore. So there!”
After an hour or so, she said angrily: “Why do I have to bang up my nose to spite her face?”
Then over and over, until her muttering became so furious that her mouth felt like the inside of a shoe left out in the midday sun. She fell silent, but her dark thoughts clomped through her boots. Night came. The smell of water in the wind made her press on, her heart swelling for the first time in a long while. The path widened, and suddenly she was at the edge of a pond – calm, glacial and reflecting the round ball of the moon. The scene was so tranquil that her breath caught in her throat.
“Salvation,” she whispered, not wanting to shatter the peace around her as fireflies swooped everywhere in a merry dance. She knelt and drank her fill, wishing she had a pouch or pitcher. Who knew when she would next find water?
The next morning, she rose, unrefreshed from her sleep. Now burning vapors cored a hole into her stomach. She was tempted to stay by the water, but decided she had a mission more important than dying of thirst. That’s right. I have to get to Lapland.
She trotted resolutely north, leaving the security of the pond behind her. The farther she got from the water, the more uncertain her steps became.
A green-and-blue dragonfly swooped by her nose.
“Well,” she resigned herself to saying, “if I don’t talk, I’ll go mad. But if I talk too much, I’ll be thirsty. It’s a no-win situation. I hope you and your friends can lead me to a nice trencher of lamb marinated in garlic sauce.”
She had zero survival instincts and she knew it. She was equally skilled to trap a rabbit as she was to stand on top of a horse. She looked for fruit trees, but the pines and junipers were disappointingly barren of apples and pears. There were rabbits, but she only saw the flash of their tails as they bobbed away, unafraid, from her incompetent grasp.
She saw her doom written in the laughing barks of the trees. The irony. To escape from the Queen’s clutches only to meet starvation and thirst.
Just ahead, where a clump of trees blocked the path, she thought she glimpsed something to interrupt the monotony of bough and smirking rabbit. She couldn’t be sure at this distance, but the crimson glint came again, like light reflecting off a red mirror. Snow White hesitated. She had already experienced a lifetime of children’s n
ightmares. Her stomach growled again.
The dragonfly sped ahead.
“Yes, sure, run away when the going’s good. Leave me all to my lonesome self.”
She steeled herself to approach the anomaly. When she drew nearer, she saw that it was the mouth to an underground cave. A light pulsed within its depths as though a great colony of fireflies glowed in unison inside.
The dragonfly spiraled into the mouth of the cave, as did entire colonies of insects – ants, grasshoppers, beetles, flies. They trooped inside and out again in orderly lines. Snow White observed that the exiting ants carried tiny yellow crystals between their mandibles.
“It’s some sort of food for you folks, isn’t it? I’m not sure I can eat it, but I’m hungry enough to try.”
She stooped to enter the cave, whose entrance was shorter than her by a head. Her right foot slipped against crumbing rocks and she had to grab the wall to steady herself. The light pulsed. She saw a large and long object on the cave floor a little distance away. It was amber in color. When it glowed, its center was like burning coal upon a hearth. Large chunks of the amber exterior had broken off. Insects massed and flew all round it, picking up the crumbling matter and carrying it away in work lines. The object smelt of honey, and for a moment, Snow White wondered if it were a new sort of hive.
“A new species of bee?” she said excitedly.
But wait, she was supposed to be a fugitive, running for her life. And yet, here she was, the scientific part of her as curious as ever. Perhaps this was meant to happen. Perhaps her banishment was a prelude to the greatest discovery ever known to man!
(Or woman.)
Without fear, she approached the object. Up close, its texture was woven like a cocoon. She ventured a questing hand to touch it. It was warm and very alive.
“Wow,” she said. Then she remembered her sack of instruments, lost forever with Coleoptera. A pang fleeted through her when she thought of her horse and her lost life. Back in the castle, she hardly rode Coleoptera and never gave a second thought to the vast number of instruments in her lab, her every whim catered to. But now everything was gone. She had nothing to document this wonderful discovery.
“It’s all right,” she consoled herself, “I have superior intellect, if nothing else. I’ll collect samples.”
Before she could take this significant step for mankind, the cocoon emitted the brightest light she’d seen so far. She had to shield her eyes. For the first time, doubt crept into her. She had never been harmed by insects before, but this was an uncharted species, possibly cranky and dangerous.
From the cocoon came the sound of crackling, as though many sticks were simultaneously snapped. The smell of honey was stronger than ever. The insects ran wildly from the disintegrating structure. Snow White wondered if she should do the same, but her curiosity – the very one that made her venture into the garden barefoot to look for glow worms at three in the morning – stayed her feet.
Cracks snaked all over the cocoon. Tufts of matter fell off. To Snow White’s amazement, a human hand struck out from the top.
It was pale and perfectly formed.
“Oh no, someone’s trapped in there,” she exclaimed.
With renewed vigor, she clawed at the cocoon. The material came away like pieces of a dry cake. The hand was encrusted in a light gold dust. As the cocoon was destroyed from inside and out, more of it emerged – a forearm, then an arm – and before Snow White could bemoan the need for documentation, a man covered in bits and pieces of the amber sediment clambered slowly out.
He was completely naked.
He stared at Snow White, whose jaw dropped to the floor of the cave.
CHAPTER FOUR
Snow White was unable to take her eyes off the man.
She had never been swayed by beauty, but even she could not deny the effortless appeal of the amber-dusted dark hair that fell in a wave across his brow, his shining brown eyes, and his sculptured cheekbones which had a slightly otherworldly cast to them. He appeared to be about twenty, and he stood tall within the cocoon, unashamed of his nakedness. His limbs were long and pale. His very presence held her, as though the air around them was magnetized. She had to tear her own eyes away lest she tremble from the shock that flooded her.
Snow White’s eyes roamed down his magnificently lean and muscled body, and her cheeks began to burn.
I’m not a prude, she scolded herself. I’ve seen plenty of men naked. Well, almost naked. Dozens!
Well, OK, maybe two.
The youth did not move. He appeared to be contemplating what to do next. Confusion flickered on his face as he looked down upon his limbs, then back at her.
I’m not, not, not, Snow White told herself hotly, interested in boys. Never have been, never will be. I’m a rational scientist. I have things to do, places to go, universities to build!
His skin, she observed, was like a newborn’s. Almost as pale as hers, and pink, as though he had slid out from a womb. His chin was hairless, shaven to the flesh. He was so beautiful that he was unnatural. Crafted from an ideal, it seemed.
No! she tore at herself savagely. She must not think this.
Proudly, she held her chin up and tried to avert her gaze from his glaring privates. “I suppose,” she said, coming off a little haughty, “you were trapped by that thing.”
Uh oh, she thought, my princess complex is at it again.
The man did not answer.
“Because if so,” she went on hastily, trying to ameliorate her tone, “I’d like to interview you about your experience . . . for future scientific annals to be stored in my library, of course. I mean . . . what we learn here today might change our paradigm of understanding of the insect world. So this interview is not for myself, but for science.”
When he didn’t reply, she wondered if she had rambled on too much or if he even understood what she said. He might be soft in the head. Or, God forbid, had his brains sucked out like nectar. Anything was possible.
“Well?” she demanded, her natural impatience seeping through.
She suddenly thought of another possibility. Surely he couldn’t be one of the Greek gods come down to Earth? She couldn't even speak Latin, let alone ancient Greek. He was certainly beautiful enough to be a Greek god.
Greek gods weren’t easily offended, were they?
“You must be a native,” the man finally said.
His voice was strong and deep, even though his accent suggested he might be from (Snow White racked her brains to think where) the East, which of course she had never been.
“A native? You mean of here?” What an odd question. “I’m not from Lapland, if that’s what you’re asking.”
His eyes arrested hers. “Yes,” he said softly in that strange accent of his, “a native from here. This world.”
Slowly, the man stepped out of the cocoon. His movements were uncertain, as though he were using his legs for the first time after a long convalescence. He almost fell when his feet touched the ground. He balanced himself by clutching the side of the cocoon.
Snow White began to back away. There was an undercurrent here. It lurked like a shadow in the corner of her vision. Every time she tried to focus on it, it fled.
“What happened to you?” she said.
“I do not remember.”
A sixth sense told her that he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Are you from around here?” she asked.
“No.”
“Where do you hail from?”
A long pause. He was evaluating his answers, she knew. His eyes roamed from her face to her throat, and she suddenly felt more naked than he. He studied the contours of her neck the way a farmhand does a chicken’s when he contemplates snapping it. Unease fingered her marrow. He was a stranger after all, and she had no clue where he came from or what happened to him.
He could be a killer. He could be a mad man. He could be a wild beast!
Had she exchanged one sort of death for another?
S
he took a step back, and another, and considered running for her life, but was held by a crawling sensation at her feet and ankles. She looked down in alarm and saw that an army of insects – ants, beetles – were rapidly ascending her legs. Some wormed their way inside her pants, and if she wasn’t already used to them, she would have leaped.
She stood her ground, afraid that any movement might crush the insects.
She felt the stranger’s eyes on her and lifted her face. He wore an awed expression. A movement caught her eye and she saw that the insects were also massing onto his bare feet and legs, creeping upward, covering them both in a writhing, scurrying, squirming layer of soft bodies.
The insects stopped at the level of her mid-trunk. As for him, they rose to his chest. Where his heart lay beneath, they roiled in a thickened mass, every species intermingling in some cosmic state of harmony. Bees and dragonflies hovered around him, landing on his shoulders and head. He gazed at them but made no move to brush them away.
She raised her hand, and for one fleeting moment, a look of dismay crossed his face. Perhaps he was afraid she would quash the insects. But when a dragonfly settled on her fingertips, fluttering its wings slowly, she gazed upon it in wonder.
They don't want us to harm each other. Not yet, anyway.
When she looked up, the stranger was smiling at her.
He said, “My name is Aein. What is yours?”
#
Clothing him was trickier than she thought. She held up her coat. The sleeves could be tied around his waist like an apron and the rest of it could be used to shield . . . well, whatever.
“This is the best I can do for a loincloth,” she said. “You’re not cold, are you, Aein?”
“Loincloth?” He pronounced it as though it were a suspicious type of medicine.
