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

The boy listened to her tale in growing indignation. The Spider Queen’s story confirmed everything he’d heard about the Lacewing King. His cruelty; his deception; his guile.

“And to think that you are his son,” said the Queen, clicking her mandibles beneath the human Aspect she had assumed. “His only son, my Prince; his heir. To think that, one day, you will wear his crown—”

The Prince shook his head. “I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

The young Prince explained how he and the King had taken revenge on the villagers, and how much horror he still felt at the memory of that day. The Spider Queen listened attentively. Until that moment, she had planned to simply devour the troubled young man. But now she had a better idea.

She poured the Wasp Prince a cup of wine. “It still disturbs you, doesn’t it? How easily your rage took flight? How crisp and keen the air felt? The joy that filled you, the joy of revenge?”

The boy looked up with tears in his eyes. “Am I a monster?”

“My Golden One. There is no shame in enjoying revenge. I’ve enjoyed those pleasures myself.” And the Queen took the boy in her many arms and rocked him gently, and sang to him in the voice of his mother:

“Long ago, and far away,

Far away and long ago.

The world’s our honeycomb, you know;

The world’s our honeycomb.”

And at this the boy wept and rested his head in the lap of the Spider Queen, and said, “Oh, Mother. I miss her so much.”

The Spider Queen smiled and poured the boy another cup of wine, and said, “I can be your mother, my Prince. I can keep you safe from the King. I will teach you all I know; and when you are fully-grown and strong, I will help you claim your crown. All I ask in return, my Prince, is what your father stole from me. My coronet of a thousand eyes that he plundered in my sleep. Promise me this, my Golden One, and I shall be your mother.”

The boy looked at the Spider Queen, who looked so like his mother. She even used the childhood name his mother had used when she was alive.

He nodded, eyes still wet with tears. And the Spider Queen smiled and said, “Good boy.”

21

T

HE

C

LOCKWORK

P

RINCESS

Once, there was a Clockwork Princess who lived in a land of forgotten things. The King of this land had long since been forgotten, as had the circumstances of the Princess’s creation, though some told tales of a craftsman, a genius with ceramics and machinery who, half a century ago, had built a girl so perfect, so lifelike in every way, that the King, childless and a widower, had ordered the craftsman to give her up, meaning to adopt her as his own daughter.

Reluctantly, the craftsman had done as he was ordered. But he had hidden the silver key that wound up the clockwork girl’s mechanism, so that within a few days she became increasingly listless. Too late, the King had tried to find the mysterious craftsman. However, the man had already fled, taking the silver key with him; and so the clockwork girl remained, silent, sad, and motionless.

Time passed. The old King died, leaving no heir but the clockwork girl. For a time, the Clockwork Princess reigned over the people. The actual business of ruling was all done by the King’s old Regent; a kindly old man who understood the Princess’s role as a figurehead. But soon her ailing mechanism ran down completely, and the Clockwork Princess went to sleep and would not re-awaken. And yet, for a time, there was no change, and things went on as normal.

But a kingdom needs a ruler. A sleeping Princess is no substitute for a King. For a time, the old Regent ruled in her place, trying to fight off foreign kings and warlords trying to take control. Meanwhile, the Clockwork Princess lay in state, right at the top of the castle tower, looking so like a real girl that over the years, people forgot that she was only clockwork.

But economic collapse, disease, and finally, the passing of time did its work. The kindly old Regent died, and soon the kingdom fell into lawlessness. The castle was looted; the servants fled; and finally, the grounds fell into such decay that all the paths were overgrown; the gate was rusted closed; the trees grew to monstrous proportions, each trying to steal the others’ light, and in the end, the place was first shunned, and then almost forgotten, except by a few old wives, who told the tale of a sleeping girl under a curse, doomed to sleep for a hundred years until her prince awakened her.

Meanwhile, the Clockwork Princess still slept in the ruined tower. She might almost have been alive, except for the dust that filtered through the broken roof onto her porcelain skin, and the fact that she was not breathing. Meanwhile, outside, the legends grew, embellished by the telling. People spoke of trying to find their way into the castle grounds; but it had become so overgrown that many folk were afraid to approach, fearing wolves and witches and worse. Most who ventured in turned back long before they reached the tower; a few went inside but were daunted by the broken stairs and the gaping roof. One young man, alone, found his way through the garden and up the stairs, but when he saw the girl, asleep, under an inch-thick shroud of dust, he lost his mind on the instant, and never spoke a word again.

And so, in time, the Clockwork Princess was well and truly forgotten. Until one day, a watchmaker’s boy came wandering through the forest. A hundred years or more had passed since the death of the old King, and even the walls of the castle grounds were broken-down and covered in moss. The boy, who