Queen of the Warrior Bees

by Jean Gill

  Down and ever dampwards, she ran. Footsteps echoed behind her. Gaining? Or was that a trick of the walls, whichever side they might be on today. They glistened, leaving a wet trace on her hand in a narrow passage. She stumbled on the uneven slippery stone. Historic stone, not mage-crafted cobblette. Why don’t the mages smooth the footing, if not the walls themselves? No time to wonder. Run!

  A prick of light and the sound of gushing water told her she was nearly there. She slowed along the treacherous path between the wall on her right and a water conduit gurgling on her left. Jannlou and Bastien would have to follow in single file if they came this far and, though faster and stronger in any race, they were clumsier than she was on difficult terrain.

  She trailed her hand along the wall as she walked. It shimmered where water trickled down, glittered where mineral traces teased the light. She could see the path end now, in solid wall.

  ‘There’s no way out! We’ve got her!’ came a triumphant shout, bounced by the walls into a dozen fiendish versions of Bastien’s words.

  ‘Agh!’ Someone must have slipped.

  ‘Careful!’ Jannlou cautioned, after the event.

  Careful! The word rebounded, softened in its travels, a whispered warning to Mielitta. She shook her head to clear the strange thought. She wouldn’t put it past Jannlou to use glamour in tracking her. She’d seen his power put to that use with many a new woman, flirting her skirts at the Chief Mage’s son. Mielitta believed herself immune but then, perhaps all Jannlou’s conquests believed likewise.

  She’d reached the curtain wall. She could feel the boundary wards that kept everyone in the Citadel protected. Beside her, water rushed in under the iron gate, a bright rectangle behind it. And behind that, the unknown.

  Mielitta had only to say the password and – and what? And the wards would allow her through, obviously. But how? Could she pass through a wall? She reached out, touched the stone in front of her and felt its solid denial. Through the water gate? It was a gate after all. But what if she was thrown into the water? She couldn’t swim.

  ‘I think I see her!’ She hadn’t been imagining the ring of boots and metal clanking, closing in on her. There was no choice any more.

  She stepped out as far as she could onto a horizontal strut of the gate and clung to the slippery metal, while water poured beneath her, spraying upwards. She swallowed a mouthful, the tasteless liquid of her humdrum life. Protected, she thought. Here, I am protected.

  ‘Radium,’ she pronounced and the gate shimmered from solid black metal to a wavering rainbow. She stepped through.

  Chapter Five

  She stepped through the rainbow gate onto a flat stone in the middle of a stream. The water split spray into a million rainbows, blinding her so that she had to squint to see the stepping stones that took her to the bank and dry land.

  Once out of danger from the rushing water, Mielitta was attacked by heat and light, blazing at her from a fireball in the blue overhead. Sun, she thought. Sky. Trying not to panic, she recited book-words to match the world beyond the Citadel. Then she was attacked from the ground, green spikes prickling her legs. Tiny things with legs. Grass. Insects.

  The words could not protect her from the assault on all her senses and the instinct to run took over. It was too much. She ran away from the dazzle, towards shade, towards things that made shade. Trees.

  Beneath a tree, Mielitta took her quiver from her shoulder and doubled up, panting, her heart racing as after a training bout. As soon as the stitch had passed, she hooked the quiver to her belt, nocked an arrow, waited. If Jannlou and the others came through the gate, she would be ready. No doubt he’d have the password or could get it from his father, if he wanted.

  Reassured by the familiar feel of her bow, she watched, tracing the route taken by the stream. The water burbled across a pebble bed through the grassland she had crossed, to the Citadel wall, where it seemed to disappear. No gate was apparent but it was a relief to Mielitta that the Citadel was visible from this side of the wall. As was the bubble above it. The canopy that the rebel Councillor, Crimvert, spoke of, no doubt, protecting the Citadel inhabitants from sun. Or from any other wildness in the sky. Mielitta racked her book memories. Snow. Rain. Hail. Desert dust.

  She shivered despite the heat. It had been folly to leave the Citadel. She must get back inside and cover up her transgression. A stripe of sunshine reached her arm through the canopy of trees. A different, less effective canopy. The shadows were moving, growing shorter, which must mean that time had passed, with no sign of her aggressors. She should go back.

  She unnocked her bow, slung it over her shoulder, braced herself and stepped into the fierce heat again. This time, she was ready for the uncontrolled warmth playing on her skin, tickling. She laughed. She need not fear the sun.

  She made her way back to the stream, listening to the music of water on pebbles, a song she had never heard. She sat down to listen better, on a comfortably rounded rock, safely above the prickle of grass blades. This was a song like book poetry, not like the schoolroom songs which praised the Citadel and promoted good citizenship, with a side-nod to hygiene and reproduction.

  Her exertions in the heat had made her thirsty and, in defiance of the schoolroom songs, she scooped up a handful of unpurified water, losing trickles between her fingers as she drank.

  As she sipped, she paused to marvel and drank again. Bubbles burst on her tongue like a liquid giggle. Then the water told its history, from snow-capped mountains through forests and meandering pasture, to this small diversion from a mighty river.

  The water told its geology, from glacial tarns through limestone pavements and hard bedrock, picking up a tang of calcite or magnesium, a glitter of gold, en route.

  Then the water told its wildlife. Silver-scaled fish, seething jellies of tadpoles and slithers of eels. This and more, Mielitta could taste in her scoop of water, as she watched a turquoise glitter of tiny wings over the water. Dragonfly.

  She wanted these pleasures again but when she scooped and tasted a second time, the story was different. How could that be? Did one change of pebble, one shadow over the sun, change the taste of water? It must be so. The sadness of change, of death, and the glory of a new adventure, in two scoops of water. She should go back.

  But she was already outside the Citadel. The sun was not to be feared, the stream was shallower than she’d thought, grass blades did not pierce her skin. The Forest could be named and it was just – trees. She’d stood beside one and felt no harm. She should at least explore a little while she was here. She could go back later, when she could be sure it was safe. Maybe Jannlou and Bastien were just inside the gate, waiting for her as she had waited for them. Let them wait!

  Mielitta marched back across the grass to her first tree. She studied the bark, its vertical furrows. She knew this wood from the Citadel fires but now she saw it alive for the first time. In the Citadel it burned fast and erratic. Did it live that way too? The leaves all followed the same form, edged with tiny teeth, curving to a curly point. The same type but each one different. Mage-made objects were not like this. She ran her tongue along a leaf. She didn’t like the taste. She tore a tiny strip of bark in her fingernail, chewed on its bitterness and felt her mouth frothy. How did you know what you could eat in the Forest?

  The next tree was different in kind. The Forest offered Mielitta as many different trees as the stream had offered scoops of water. She felt dizzy with infinite opportunities. Too much she told herself again.

  If she were not to spend her lifetime studying three trees, she must block her senses, gain a broader impression of life outside the Citadel. She forced herself to walk more quickly, deeper into the Forest, ignoring the distraction of trees.

  Eyes were more difficult to ignore. Blinking, flashing, hiding, gone before she could say bird, fox, rabbit. Knowing only words and pictures, she could only guess that strong stink was fox and the branch rustling was bird. What if something wanted to eat her? Even if she m
oved quietly, as she had learned, her banana scent must be alien to Forest creatures. And she’d drenched herself in it.

  She shrugged. Human scent would be as alien as bananas, or worse. The parties of men who’d chopped firewood here must have smelled human and their acts would not have endeared men to the Forest.

  The shadows seemed to grow darker, the trees taller, the canopy thicker. Too dark. She turned towards a part of the Forest where more light broke through the branches above and was relieved to reach a clearing.

  Filtered by the high leaves, the sun striped the glade with green and gold, patterning bark with shadows and limning branches in haloes. Mielitta felt the ground vibrating gently, like a giant’s snore, a sense of rightness.

  She sniffed the air but found only the scents of composting earth, resin and roots, to which the Forest had already accustomed her. No eyes. Or at least, none she noticed.

  On the opposite side of the clearing, a covered box was attached to a tree, the lid at Mielitta’s shoulder-height. Its shape was fuzzy in an ever-changing black cloud and for a moment Mielitta felt her Citadel-bred fears return. Pff. She wouldn’t have felt the sun, tasted the water or met her first tree if she believed all she’d been told as a child. There were many ways to become Mature and this would be her Ceremony, in the Forest. Even if nobody else knew, from today onwards she would be an adult, a new woman.

  She tucked a strand of hair back under its snood. Breeze, she thought. The air smacked her cheek. No, wind! she corrected, as her banana scent was whipped into her nostrils.

  She stepped into the clearing and heard the box hum. A happy, wordless worksong that matched the vibration underfoot. Like the thrum of an arrow shot true but sustained, no beginning and no end. She approached the box and could see now that the black cloud was made up of insects. So many! Flying into and out of the box, humming.

  Was the humming inside the box louder? She thought it might be. What did they do inside the box that gave them this sense of purpose? She could feel it in the air, in the ground, in the trees. Purposeful humming.

  She would just open the lid and peek inside. Then she must go back to Citadel before she was too late for the evening meal. She reached out and lifted the lid off the box.

  She had time to see wax patterns and insects rushing upwards in the box before the insects’ rage hit her in a roar that hurt her ears. Then the arrows hit her from below as the insects swarmed and flew at her, rank on rank. From above too, as the black cloud outside the box fired at her through the snood.

  She started to run but the cloud stayed with her, surrounded her as her tired legs swelled, her head caught fire and she sank to the ground under a tree in the darkest part of the Forest, burning. She shook, sweated, felt the fire spread throughout her body like poison. Bees, she thought. And she died.

  Chapter Six

  Mielitta didn’t want to open her eyes. She could lie here forever, vibrating, vital, breathing the green scents of sap, moss; gold sacks of pollen; and – joy on the breeze – flower hearts ringed in colours she’d never seen before. Ultraviolet. Shades of ultraviolet, from yellowish to purple, opened nectar to her tongue. Then brown of fur hit her nose and her eyes snapped open, seeking the intruder. No furred beast. She raised herself onto her elbows, shaking a dense clump of dead insects from her thigh onto the Forest floor as she turned her head to check behind her. No threat.

  She stood up, slowly, dizzy, and hundreds more tiny striped insects joined the piles on the ground, outlining the form where her body had lain. Dead bees. Their tiny darts were a cluster of black on her thigh and when she ran her fingers through her hair, she swept a shower of dark points onto the ground.

  She repeated the sweeping motion over her hair and head until she no felt no prickles. She remembered the box, the bees’ anger, pain from their stings; then she must have lost consciousness. Now, her body thrummed with barely-contained energy.

  There must have been thousands of dead insects around her. They’d left their stings in her and died, fatally maimed. Poor bees. They must have been terrified to be so angry. She began to hum gently, a dirge for the dead. The ground beneath her vibrated with her wordless song and, as she watched, first one bee, then dozens, began to change.

  From striped amber and black to iridescence, each tiny corpse was transformed. Then it wavered into transparency and a final ultraviolet sweetness engulfed Mielitta’s senses as the bees vanished. She touched a leaf where dead bees had been, the faintest trace of ultraviolet still lingering. Passed, she thought. They have passed. But where to?

  She shook her head to clear the effects of bee venom but, apart from some strangeness in vision, which was clearing already, she felt normal. Better than normal, in fact. Any aches from archery practice and running into the Forest had disappeared, along with the scratches she’d accumulated. As had the visible effect of the bee-stings. Her skin had been covered with red, raised bumps and was now its usual smooth gold. Except on her thigh, where a dark patch remained. She shrugged. If that was the only harm from her adventure, she could count herself lucky.

  The shadows had lengthened and changed direction. She must get home to the Citadel before the evening meal, so nobody would know what she’d done, guess where she’d been. But she’d run from the bees heedless of direction. Where was home? Around her each tree flaunted its difference and was no help. She had not marked her way and there were no paths in the Forest. She was going to die after all.

  No, she was not. She had known and faced down panic many times over the years and she was not some Maturity-tested woman prone to hysterics. She breathed deeply, shut her eyes again, forced panic into an imaginary jar in her deep thinking and stoppered it so she couldn’t hear panic-man shouting.

  She’d decided in a very boring lesson on table service that the Citadel Steward was the personification of panic. Running around, shouting, ‘We’re all going to die!’ was only a slight step up from ‘Somebody’s forgotten the goblets!’ It always made her smile to see his gangling arms being folded into her mind-jar and to hear his last shriek of ‘I knew this would happen!’ before she shut him up. A smile conquered panic every time.

  Where was home? She had to retrace her steps somehow. She conjured up the Citadel, the rainbow water gate, the stream, her first tree, the darkness of the deep Forest, the clearing and the bee box, her flight. Patterns shifted in her mind, like a geometric dance, lining up all the route markers she’d named in her thoughts and moving them until they settled into place. A map. Clear as ultraviolet arrows on trees.

  Mielitta opened her eyes and saw only the same blank-faced trees. But this time she noticed the pattern of where they stood.

  She shut her eyes again, saw the route she must take, and took a few steps forward. Opened and shut her eyes to confirm the shape and placement of the trees she must pass between. And she walked on.

  In this manner, she followed an invisible path through the Forest, trusting her instincts. She moved more quickly as she gained confidence and could see the pattern of grasses, stones and trees with her eyes open.

  ‘Beech,’ she said, as she reached her first tree and the edge of the grassland, where blue harebells and pink campion commanded, Look at me, drink my nectar, here. They fluttered their invitations but she ignored the temptation. The sun had lost its heat but was still warm, edging the grass-blades with amber. She did stop for one last scoop of water, despite a flurry of foolish warning voices in her head.

  Don’t drown, don’t drown!

  As if she could drown in water as shallow as this! She’d have to be the size of a bee to worry about such a stream.

  At the iron gate, she had to put panic-man firmly back in his jar. She’d traversed the gate once and she could do it again. She just had to think for a moment about what she would do when she reached the other side. Carefully, she walked across the stepping-stones to stand in front of the gate, the stream rushing around her and through the wards to the Citadel.

  She reached out, held the
gate firmly, pronounced, ‘Radium.’ When the gate shimmered to rainbow, she stepped through, without letting go, and swung her legs to the left to land firmly on the path. Everything was as she had left it, bar her pursuers, who must have long gone.

  She retraced her steps up into the dry and into the Citadel. Grey was deepening through the windows so she still had time to change out of her bedraggled clothes before going to the Great Hall. If she cut across the courtyard, she could get to her chamber without going past Jannlou’s usual haunts.

  She unlatched a door, walked out onto the odourless green ground, which she scuffed deliberately. It mended itself immediately.

  Fake grass. Grassette.

  There were no shadows anywhere, just the optimum light for pre-evening, diffused through the canopy.

  Fake light. Greylight. Mielitta scuffed the ground again.

  She passed the empty practice-yard, without pausing. She kept her weapons in her chamber, close to hand, although, of course, she couldn’t take them into the Great Hall, nor carry them during her servant’s duties. In theory.

  She couldn’t help humming. If there had been words, the lyrics would have sung of the Forest, its cornucopia; of her fear and achievement. One of Tansies’ sayings: without fear, where is the achievement? The Archery Mage would have been proud of her today. She sang of her maturity, for she was a woman now and had known her own testing; of her escape from the enemy. Her heart sang. And then she heard the unmistakable sound of a girl crying. And stammering.

  Mielitta knew exactly where they would be. She knew all the places where they cornered a victim. If she could hear them, then they were behind the practice-yard, in the barn where the equipment was kept. They’d have their choice of weapons, should their prey choose to fight, so running was usually the best escape option. But a twelve-year-old had no chance against a group of young men, at the peak of their fitness, with a mage for leader and an overdose of male hormones. Mielitta could smell the brash red testosterone and it offended her nose in its brutality.