Honeycomb by Joanne Harris (book series for 12 year olds .txt) 📕

had forgotten for a time that the King was still conscious. Now he smiled again and said:

“I know you now, bird of malchance. You were once the Hallowe’en Queen. You lost your crown to a teller of tales, and your mind for a taste of honeycomb.” His voice was still faint, but to the Watchman and the Clockwork Princess, he seemed more lucid than before.

The Harlequin gave an angry crawk. “More stories. Who told you that? The bees?”

“Ah, the bees,” said the Lacewing King. “The little builders of honeycomb. A million stories; a million worlds all pressed against each other. And the bees are always making more, taking them from World to World, in spite of predators and thieves.”

“Then where are they now? These tellers of tales?” The Harlequin’s voice was silky with hate. “Do you hear them now, my Lord? Do you see into their worlds of honeycomb?”

The Lacewing King shook his head. “I see nothing. And yet—”

“What’s that sound?” said the Watchman. “A sound like that of a swarm of bees—or a river, or a train—”

The sound he could hear was the Night Train, of course. Rushing headlong at the ground faster than the speed of Dream, its engines roaring, its brakes locked fast, the tortured metal shooting showers of sparks into the air. Aboard, the Engine Driver’s hands were locked in place at the controls; steam rose from the stacks; and in the air the Barefoot Princess could smell her own hair burning.

And then, with a screeching and howling of brakes, they came to the city of towers and spires, smashing into the ground like a maul and leaving a crater half a mile wide. They tore through the realm of the Moth Queen and into the Labyrinth of Forgotten Things. There, the Train ploughed through half a mile of passageways and corridors, demolishing walls, collapsing ceilings, and then finally stopped, in a choking cloud of smoke and steam and debris.

For a time there was nothing to see but smoke, and dust, and scalding steam, and tumbling piles of Forgotten Things scattered about the Labyrinth. Then finally, as the noise subsided, and the air began to clear, the Watchman and the Clockwork Princess saw the Night Train lying on its side in the rubble amid a giant wreath of scorch-marks. Blowback from the engines had thrown the two occupants clear of the wreck, and the Driver and the Barefoot Princess were lying half-buried under plaster and dust. For a moment they lay without moving. Then the Princess began to stir. Struggling, she managed to clear the choking dust from her nose and eyes, then pulled herself clear of the rubble and reached for the Engine Driver’s hand.

The Driver was still motionless. The Princess started to stand up but found that someone was standing in her way. Someone was looking down on her; someone who was dressed in black and crowned in dead man’s ivory.

“You’ve led me a merry dance,” said a quiet voice that the Princess knew well. “But now it’s time for you to pay your debt to me. In full. In blood.”

The Hallowe’en King had found them.

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The Ruler of Hel never leaves his realm. It is one of the oldest laws of the Worlds. Life and Death are a balance so fine that if even, for a second, the gates of Hel are left open, then Death itself has no power, and Pandaemonium beckons. And yet, this is just what had happened. The Hallowe’en King had forsaken his oath in pursuit of the Night Train.

The Barefoot Princess looked up at him. His butterfly-blue, living eye looked back almost with sympathy. The empty socket of his dead eye was as dark as an open grave.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your eye back now,” said the Princess, getting up.

“That would be nice,” said the Hallowe’en King.

The Princess sighed and looked around for the amber eye in the dust. But it was nowhere to be seen. She must have dropped it during the crash, and now it was lost in the debris. But from the rubble and settling dust, she could see shadows emerging: the Watchman and the Clockwork Princess, both of them dusty but unharmed; and from behind the wreck of the Train as it lay like a dragon on its side, the figure of the Lacewing King, eyes bandaged, ghostly with dust, but regal still in his tattered cloak and with his crown of centipedes.

For a moment the Princess looked at him, unable to speak for the joy in her heart. But the bees, which had accompanied her on her breakneck journey, knew him at once, and swarmed to him, humming:

“Home comes the fisherman

Home comes the bee

Home from the islands

Home from the sea.”

Then they settled onto his shoulders, so that soon he was wearing a coat of bees; a coat that was soft as thistledown and as golden as honeycomb.

“Father,” said the Barefoot Princess, running to embrace him.

The Lacewing King put his arms around her. “The Harlequin told me you were dead.”

“She is dead,” said the Hallowe’en King with a trace of impatience. “Strictly speaking, you’re all dead. You never survived the train crash, and the Driver was dead already. As for the others—” He paused to pick up something that lay in the dust at his feet. “All of you would have been dead by now, but for a technicality.” The Princess looked at the Driver, who was climbing to her feet. The Watchman was frowning in puzzlement. Only the Lacewing King seemed unmoved. Arms around the Barefoot Princess, he felt a strange sensation. He had never felt anything like it before. He guessed it must be happiness.

Then came a voice from the rubble; a voice that was harsh and contemptuous.

“You left your realm. You fool.” It was the scarlet bird; the bird that once had been the Harlequin. Now it was almost unrecognizable; its feathers broken and blanched with dust. But its eyes were still