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

If a duck went past the sty, the troublesome piglet would shout out, “Ducks are so stupid. All beaky and waddly. Why do we have ducks, anyway? They’re just a pointless waste of time.”

The ducks rarely responded, having far better things to do, but the other piglets listened in envy and awe, and gradually the troublesome piglet gained a reputation for fearlessness and plain-speaking.

Even the old mother sow felt proud that she had given birth to a piglet who wasn’t afraid of anything. Cats, dogs, geese, cows—not even other pigs were exempt from the piglet’s contempt and scorn. It mocked the other pigs for being fat; ridiculed the donkeys; called the cows all sorts of names; and even baited the toothless old guard-dog asleep in the sun. After a while, the other animals grew to expect the piglet to misbehave, and even encouraged its silliness. They were only farm animals, after all, and they had precious little else to entertain them.

One day, the farmer’s wife came round with a basket of scraps for the piggery. The old sow hid her piglets, knowing that the farmer was partial to roast pork, and that this might be a ploy to catch a sucking-pig for dinner.

But the troublesome piglet would not hide. Instead it squealed at the top of its voice, “Look at the farmer’s wife with her scraps! What a ridiculous woman she is! Well, if she thinks we’re going to come running every time she tips a handful of potato peelings into the sty, then she has another think coming!”

“Quiet! Shh!” said the mother sow. “Have some sense and stop squealing!”

This only angered the piglet more. “How dare you try to silence me!” it squeaked. “How dare you deny me freedom of speech?” (It had learnt this phrase quite recently from a visiting weasel and was keen to use it as often as possible.)

The mother sow tried very hard to calm the troublesome piglet. But this only encouraged it to squeal even louder—so loudly, in fact, that the farmer’s wife was reminded how long ago it had been since she and her husband had enjoyed a nice bit of bacon. She reached into the pigsty and grabbed hold of the piglet.

“Help!” it squealed. “This is oppression! This is censorship! This is an attack on free speech!”

The farmer’s wife paid no attention, but carried off the piglet, which duly found its way onto her plate in the form of a very nice Sunday lunch.

The other pigs lamented the loss of their youngest relative. Some even staged a protest, although their indignation was short-lived. For a while, the farmyard bemoaned the lack of entertainment; and then a nest of weasels moved in under the old henhouse, providing all the excitement they craved. The troublesome piglet and its ideas were very quickly forgotten. After all, as the old sow said, in matters of sense or censorship, whichever way you sliced it, it was only bacon.

18

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In a village of orchards and fields, a woman desperately wanted a child. Since she and her husband had first been wed, this had been her dearest wish; but time had passed and no child had come, and now the couple were old.

The husband was a farmer, and like most of the men of his village, spent his time in his orchard, tending his peach and almond-trees. They were his children now, he said, and he cared for them with love, but the woman had nothing. And so, one night, she left her husband sleeping, and crept through the village in secret to find the court of the Lacewing King, who, it was said, could grant any wish—if you were fool enough to ask.

By then the Lacewing King had earned himself a reputation. Many, many years had passed since his theft of the Spider Queen’s coronet and his wooing of the Silkworm Princess, and he was known both for his cruelty and for never selling his services short. But the woman was desperate. She told her tale to the Lacewing King, who listened in silence from his termite throne, occasionally popping a candied cockroach into his mouth and watching her with his amber eyes.

“I’ll grant your wish,” he said at last, when the woman fell silent.

“And your price?” she asked him.

The Lacewing King said nothing at first. It had been a long time since he had entertained the thought of becoming a father. Now his desire for a son returned, and he looked at the woman with a smile.

“All I ask of you,” he said, “is that neither you nor the child should ever harm one of my folk. Not a wasp, or an ant, or a greenfly. Do you understand?”

The woman (who had been half-expecting a demand for her soul) gratefully nodded agreement. And then she went back home, to bed, and in the morning could not quite recall if she had seen the Lacewing King, or whether she had dreamed it all. But in her bedroom that morning, she found a dozen yellow wasps crawling on the window-ledge, a gift from her strange benefactor.

Her husband wanted to kill them. But his wife, although she hated wasps, would not allow him to touch them. “Even a wasp can serve,” she said. “Go to work, and let them be.”

The next day, there were more wasps crawling on the window-ledge. And by the end of the week, there were so many that the windows were garlanded with clumps of yellow-black blossom. And yet they never stung anyone, but simply waited patiently. And every morning, there were more.

By now the man had realized that something unnatural was happening. He questioned his wife, but she refused to tell him anything about her visit to the Lacewing King, or the promise she’d made him. And so that night, the man stayed awake to watch his wife as she slept.

At first, nothing happened. The woman slept, breathing softly by his side.

Then, she