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

murmured in her sleep, and he knew she was dreaming. And, as she dreamed, a wasp crawled from the woman’s half-open mouth. It crawled across her cheek, black in the moonlight, then dropped onto the bedroom floor.

Then, another wasp crawled out of the dreaming woman’s mouth. And another. Silently, and in horror, the man watched as wasps continued to drool out of the woman’s open mouth, dropping onto the coverlet. By morning there were so many that heavy swags of black and gold hung at the windows like curtains.

By now the man had guessed the truth; but he said nothing. He simply moved out. In the village, the gossips’ tongues began to murmur and speculate. But the woman paid no attention. Instead she stayed home and observed the wasps, which grew more numerous every night. She fed them with peaches and sang to them the lullabies of the Silken Folk. And every day their numbers increased, so that soon they covered the whole of the house in black-and-yellow blossom.

Meanwhile, in the village, the gossips still talked. The husband, who was a fool for drink, let slip a careless word or two. Soon, everyone in the village knew that the woman had given herself to the Lacewing King. The priest denounced her. The neighbours moved out. But the woman didn’t care. She just sat among the wasps, singing and dreaming to herself, crowned and gloved in black and gold, waiting for something to happen.

And then, one night, she woke up cold. Her coverlet of wasps had gone. In fact, every wasp in the house had gone, and in their place, on the window-ledge, she found a baby boy, asleep. The Lacewing King had granted her wish.

The lonely woman was overjoyed. Her son was perfect in every way; dark-haired, golden-eyed, with skin as soft as a ripe peach. She fed him, and rocked him, and sang to him, then wrapped him in a blanket and took him into the village. But the villagers turned away in horror as she approached. Parents called their children inside; women spat on the ground as she passed; and the grocer shut his door in her face and said:

“That’s the spawn of the Lacewing King. You and your brat will get nothing from me.”

And so the woman went back home, and never went into the village again. She built a fence around her house and raised her son there alone. She grew vegetables in her garden, kept hens for their eggs, and never spoke to anyone but the boy, who grew to be strong and handsome. She called him “My Prince” and “My Golden One,” and made his shirts from her wedding dress, which had been fine once, years ago, with a train of white silk and twelve petticoats of the most delicate gauze. The villagers kept away from the house and allowed the path that led to it to become neglected and overgrown. As the years passed, they almost forgot that anyone lived there at all.

The boy and his mother were happy at first. No one dared to trouble them. Their garden was always luxuriant; their crops were never plagued by pests. The boy could see the Silken Folk; and they often came to him while his mother was at work; golden-eyed and cluster-clawed, bearing gifts of honeycomb. From afar, the Lacewing King watched through his coat of a thousand eyes, and over the years, he came to feel a kind of affection for the boy, and little by little, he grew immersed in pleasant dreams of fatherhood.

And then, when the boy was nearly grown, a plague of wasps came to the village. It devastated the fruit trees from which most of the folk made their living. Great swarms of the insects came on the wind, finding their way into walls and thatch, building great nests in the dry ground. A baby was stung to death as it lay in its crib by a window, and at last, the villagers remembered the birth of another child, years before, and the woman who had called him into the world.

“This is her doing,” they whispered. “The witch and her brat must be dealt with.”

And so, one night, after some of them had drunk themselves into bravery, the villagers went to the old woman’s house, bearing torches and cudgels and knives. They broke down the fence and pounded the door, demanding that she put an end to the plague.

The woman was confused and afraid, weakened by poverty and solitude. She knew nothing of the plague of wasps—wasps had never troubled her, and never attacked her garden—and she spoke angrily to the villagers, refusing to let them into her house.

But the drunken, frightened villagers had come too far to be sent away. They broke down the door of the woman’s house and ran wild inside, smashing jars from the kitchen shelves, tearing down the curtains, toppling the dresser with its load of painted plates. The old woman tried to stop them, but they grabbed her and tied her to her chair, while the rest of the mob went after her son.

They found his room; but the boy had gone. His bed was empty; the window ajar. The villagers said that the boy must have changed himself into a cloud of wasps and flown away into the night, as the Lacewing King was rumoured to do when enemies came looking for him. (In fact, there was an apple tree just outside the window, large enough for a boy to climb down; but no one thought that likely.)

And so, in rage, the villagers set fire to the little house, with the woman still inside. And, waving their torches, howling mad, they laughed and danced as they watched it burn, knowing that the only sure way to get rid of a wasp’s nest is by fire, while, from the shelter of the nearby wood, the boy watched the scene in silence, flames reflected in his eyes and streaming down his golden cheeks.

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