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

day, the villagers were very quiet and subdued. No one spoke of what had happened. No one admitted to having been there. Days passed, and folk could almost believe that nothing had really happened, and that the fire had been an accident. The plague of wasps was over. The villagers made preserves from what was left of their peaches. A few went looking for the boy, but they never found him. He stayed in the woods, in hiding, alone, grieving for his mother. The swarms of wasps had followed him; they were his only companions, filling the air with an angry sound that matched the turmoil in his heart.

Sitting on his termite throne, the Lacewing King, with his coat of eyes, saw the smoke from the house fire and understood what had happened. He saw the boy hiding in the woods; and the swarms of wasps that surrounded him. He put on his armour and picked up his bow and his quiver of hornet-tipped arrows. Then he went in search of the boy.

He found him in a clearing. The air was thunderous with wasps. The Lacewing King raised a hand, and the wasps settled gently onto the ground, into the leaves of the nearby trees, onto the shoulders of the boy like a royal mantle.

The Lacewing King looked at the boy. For a moment, neither spoke.

Then the King said, “Son, it’s time.”

And both of them took terrible wing and flew towards the village.

19

D

EATH AND THE

A

RTIST

There once was an artist of great renown, but his work was not immortal. His portraits were life-like; but they had no spark. His still-lifes were real in every way, except that they were not alive. His landscapes were almost perfect, and yet the sun never shone there, nor did they make the heart quicken. And although he had made his fortune from painting, the man was unhappy and unfulfilled, and longed for something greater.

One day, in despair, he consulted Death. Alone, in his bone-white citadel, the ruler of the Land of the Dead had seen generations come and go. If there was a secret to capturing Life, then surely he would know it.

Death listened to the artist’s plea. His living eye, blue as a butterfly’s wing, gleamed with secret knowledge. His dead eye, dark as honeycomb, was filled with grim amusement.

“Can you help me?” said the man.

“Yes,” said Death. “I can help you. There is a word, which will bring to life everything you capture. Every flower, every fruit, every human figure. But we must beware how we use the word—for there are always consequences.”

The famous artist was overjoyed. “Tell me the word,” he begged.

Death smiled and whispered the word in the artist’s ear. “When you have spoken it,” he said, “the secret to capturing Life will be yours. But again, beware—once spoken, the word can never be unspoken.”

The artist fled home from the Land of the Dead and ran straight to his studio. There was an apple there, in a bowl. Taking up his palette, he chose a clean scrap of canvas, and started to paint the apple. Then he uttered the secret word given to him by the Lord of Death.

At first, nothing happened. But as he painted, the artist began to realize that there was something different about his work. The apple gleamed with ripeness. Its skin was taut and shiny. Even its scent seemed to overwhelm the scents of oils and turpentine. And as he worked, the artist saw the apple in the fruit-bowl wizen, and wither, and finally rot, so that by the time he had finished, all its life had been captured in his perfect canvas.

The artist was greatly excited. At last, he had managed to capture Life. He tried a vase of flowers next, with the same pleasing degree of success—although the flowers themselves lost their bloom as soon as his brush touched the canvas.

“These must be the consequences against which my Lord Death warned me,” he thought. “But what is such a sacrifice compared to the pursuit of Art?”

Soon, the artist’s renown had spread far across the country. His paintings of fruit and flowers were admired by kings and emperors. A portrait of the Empress’s lapdog earned him yet more money and fame—still more, because the animal died so shortly after the work was complete. And yet he was not satisfied. He wanted to be immortal.

And so the artist cast his eye over the streets of his city. He saw beggars and street-urchins, gypsies and whores: people whose lives would not be missed, he thought, in the noble pursuit of Art. And so he painted them—perfectly. He immortalized them in paint. His fame grew throughout the Nine Worlds; no man was considered his equal. Royal princesses came to him to have their wedding portraits painted. And if they died soon afterwards, then surely it was a warning to other royal houses to have their children immortalized before the Reaper took them, too.

No one suspected the artist for the wave of deaths that occurred all across the country. People were even grateful to him for keeping their vanished loved ones alive. Kings and queens showered him with gifts, honours, and titles. And still the artist was not convinced that he was an immortal.

Finally, seeing old age approach, once more he consulted Death. Death was waiting, a hint of a smile in his half-living features.

“You want to be immortal?” he said. “There is only one way to be sure.” And, beckoning the man closer, he whispered the secret into his ear.

The artist went back to his studio, filled with triumph and certainty. He pulled up a great gilded mirror alongside his easel and started to paint a self-portrait. And when his servants came the next day to bring him his morning coffee, they found him lying dead on the ground in front of a marvellous canvas from which their master’s eyes seemed to shine with