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

“No one sees him,” said the nurse. “Not unless he wants to be seen. But you’d know him, if you did. And you’d live to regret it, too.”

“What does he look like?” said the girl.

“Sometimes he looks like a man,” said the nurse. “Tall, with hair like a moth’s wing. But sometimes he is a swarm of bees, or a cloud of dancing butterflies. Sometimes he comes to visit us, stepping between the cracks in the Worlds, and sometimes he walks in the light, although he casts no shadow.”

“Can I see him?” said the girl.

“No,” said the nurse. “But he sees you. With his coat of a thousand eyes, no one can ever hide from him.”

And so the girl began to learn all about the Silken Folk. She learnt how ants can carry loads a dozen times heavier than themselves; how butterflies spend one life as a grub and then grow wings for a life in the air; how bees make honey; how wasps fight, gnats bite and even the cheery ladybird is a predator fiercer than a wolf, biting the heads off greenflies as it travels up the flower stems. She watched how the mantis dines on her mate, wringing her hands in silent prayer; and how the termites shape their nests into great pale cathedrals. She watched them all attentively, but she never saw the Lacewing King.

“Well, of course not,” said the nurse, when the girl complained to her. “The Silken Folk walk in disguise. They never cast a shadow. No one sees them, except in dreams. They’re far too clever and quick to be seen—and besides, they only move when they know people can’t see them.”

“How?” said the girl quickly, having already decided that she was going to see them, however long it took her.

“They move when we close our eyes,” said the nurse. “The Silken Folk have no eyelids. And every time we blink, they move, faster than a dragonfly’s wing. That’s how they can hide away, even when they’re among us.”

After that, the young girl watched more curiously than ever. But this time, she watched from the tail of her eye; spending hours in the woods, or by the bank of the river, staring, trying not to blink. Once or twice she even thought she saw a flicker of movement—and often, there were clouds of gnats, or tiny brown-winged butterflies, or summer swarms of golden bees that circled in the sleepy air.

Time passed, and the nurse became anxious. “It isn’t good for you,” she said, “to be spending so much of your time in those woods. Why do you want to see the Silken Folk? They’re dangerous and cruel, and the Lacewing King is the worst of them all. Best to leave them well alone.”

But the girl didn’t listen. She wanted to see the Lacewing King. She already saw him in her dreams, with his coat of bees and his honey-dark eyes. Sometimes, as she was waking up, she even thought she’d seen him there, watching her from the foot of the bed, but she could never be quite sure.

And then, one day, years later, she came across a stranger in the woods; a man with hair like a moth’s wing and eyes the colour of honey. In the dappled light, she saw that he cast no shadow. But she was not afraid; instead, she came to sit beside him, and they talked all afternoon in the scent of the hawthorn-trees.

“Can I see you again?” said the girl.

The stranger nodded. “I’ll be here. But if you tell anyone, you’ll never see me again.”

So the girl came to the woods every day, and every day met the stranger. He told her stories, taught her songs, and they kissed in the shade of the hawthorn trees. The girl was so happy, she barely knew how to hide her excitement, and yet she did not speak of it to anyone in the village.

But her nurse soon grew suspicious. She saw the roses in the girl’s cheeks, and the sparkle in her eyes, and knew that her charge had fallen in love. For a time, she hoped it was with one of the boys in the village, but knowing the girl as she did, she sensed a different danger. One day she followed the girl to the woods, and saw her, sitting on the ground, talking to someone who wasn’t there. She knew at once what was happening, and leaped out from her hiding place—

The man without a shadow turned. For a moment the girl saw him change; watched his body twist like a curl of smoke as he fell to his knees on the forest floor. She cried out in alarm; but he did not seem to hear her. A blanket of bees seemed to cover him like the folds of a living suit, so that soon it seemed to the girl that there was no man lying there at all, just a multitude of bees, streaming away into the air, leaving only his discarded clothes and the distant sound of humming.

The old nurse said to the girl, “Well, that’s the last you’ll see of him.”

She was right. The girl went back to the glade, but her lover was never there. Sometimes she almost saw him, fleetingly, briefly from the tail of her eye, or when she awoke from deep sleep, but although she begged him to give her a sign, he never showed himself again.

“It’s for the best,” said the old nurse. “You’ll get over him, you’ll see. The Silken Folk are dangerous, and you had no business running after them, nor wanting to see things that shouldn’t be seen.”

But the girl didn’t get over him. Weeks passed. Months passed, and still the girl did not forget. She lost her bloom, which had once been so bright, and her rosy cheeks grew pale and wan. People began to call her mad, because she was always talking to herself, and because