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

22

T

HE

W

ATCHER AND THE

G

LASS

There once was a woman who liked to watch. Her life was small, and she lived alone, but she liked to watch through her windows. Through glass, the world seemed smaller, somehow; safer and less threatening. And so, every day, the woman watched the world outside through her window.

She watched the people in the street. She watched the lives of others. She watched the cats and dogs go by. She watched the passing tradesmen. But most of all, she watched herself every day in the mirror, and wondered at the way in which she seemed to grow smaller every day.

One day, a journeyman came to the door. She watched but did not open it. The journeyman was old, and tired. His pack looked very heavy. He knocked once more at the door, but when the woman still did not open, he sighed and went on his way again, leaving behind him an object wrapped in cloth, on the doorstep.

The woman made sure that he had gone before retrieving the object. It was a viewing-box, made of wood, cunningly inlaid with silver. It looked valuable, and the woman wondered why the journeyman had left it there, and why he had been carrying it at all. Perhaps it was stolen, she told herself, and she took the viewing-box away into the backroom of her house and looked through the tiny glass window at the world around her.

Through the glass, the world looked so small and perfect that she almost wept. She went to the bedroom window and watched the passers-by through her viewing-box. Everything looked to her neater that way; clean-edged, bright and gleaming. Anything she preferred not to see was hidden by the wooden frame; everything she viewed became new and fresh and interesting. The woman spent the rest of the day watching the world through her viewing-box; and at the end of the day she looked at herself through the little glass window, and saw every detail, crisp and sharp, and marvelled at her reflection.

After that, the woman only watched the world through the viewing-box. Through the tiny window, even household duties became a source of daily pleasure; food became more enticing; visitors more amusing. There was no scent in the viewing-box; no tastes and no sensations. But through the box, the sun always shone; the world was always entrancing. Through the box, the world was safe; and the woman used it day and night. It was the first thing she reached for as she opened her eyes in the morning; the last thing she put aside before closing her eyes at night.

Time passed. Through the viewing-box, the woman watched as her friends moved away; got married; had children; lived their lives. The woman continued to watch them as they grew smaller and smaller. She fell in love through the viewing-box; watched as at last, her man went away. And time passed, until the day the woman lay on her deathbed, watching the world through her viewing-box and wondering at how small it all was; how delicate and perfectly formed.

Then there came a knock at the door. The priest, who was waiting by her bedside to perform the Last Rites, went to open it. The visitor was an old man; an old man the woman recognized. It was the journeyman who had left the viewing-box on her doorstep so many years before. He went to the woman’s bedside and sat beside her on the bed. The woman looked at him through the tiny lens of the viewing-box, marvelling at how small he looked; how ancient, yet how oddly untouched by Time.

“You have something of mine,” he said gently to the woman.

The dying woman shook her head. She was very weak, and yet her hands were still clutched tightly around the viewing-box.

“I left you this box on loan,” said the man. “Now it’s time to give it back.” And he reached out and took it from the dying woman’s hands.

Suddenly, for the first time in years, the woman could see the world as it was, without the glass or the wooden frame. Everything looked so huge to her now; huge and dark and frightening. Suddenly, she realized that she was actually going to die; and Death was like an enormous cloud, yawning, bleak and shapeless.

“Please, give me the box,” she begged.

But the journeyman simply shook his head. “You have chosen to watch your life go by unlived,” he told her. “Everything you might have been; everything you might have achieved; everything you might have seen, you hid inside this little box. And now I have collected your life, as I have collected so many lives from people who were afraid to live.”

The woman looked at the journeyman, and now she saw him clearly, she saw that under his rags he was one of the many servants of Death; stern and dark and implacable. And she realized, too late, that she had given up the whole world for the sake of a little security. And then she died; and the journeyman collected the woman’s dying breath, and sealed it inside the viewing-box, and put it gently into his pack, and went on with his journey.

No one ever saw him again in that part of the Middle Worlds—except maybe for the honeybees, from whom I heard the story.

23

T

HE

C

OURTSHIP OF THE

L

ACEWING

K

ING

In his court deep under the ground, the Lacewing King was lonely. A long, long time had passed since the disappearance of the Wasp Prince; still longer since he had last sought a bride. Even someone as wicked as he undoubtedly was sometimes feels in need of love, and after ruling alone for years, he began once more to look for a Queen.

It wasn’t as easy as you might think. The King’s requirements were many; and none of the ladies of his court seemed entirely to his taste. But somehow, word soon got around that