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

the Lacewing King was contemplating matrimony; and foreign queens came from far and wide to present themselves and to solicit his favour.

The Cockroach Queen, all in black leather, with her retinue of armoured guards. The Mantis Queen, in eight-inch heels and a dress the colour of poisoned absinthe. The Scarab Queen, wearing the white crown of Isis (and absolutely nothing else).

But the King, in his coat of a thousand eyes, just watched them from his throne and yawned. The truth was, he was already in love. Madly, desperately in love. In love, or in lust, he barely knew—but whichever it was, it had consumed him utterly.

He knew her by reputation alone—they had never formally met. He knew that she was whimsical, volatile, and hard to please. But with his coat of a thousand eyes, he had admired her from afar as she flitted across the countryside in her tumbleweed chariot, drawn by its team of Monarch butterflies, and gradually, he had come to believe that only she could satisfy him. She was the Butterfly Princess; as bright as the Lacewing King was dark; as kind as he was cruel. She lived in her treetop castle in the heart of the forest, and cared nothing for wisdom, or power, or wealth. Love was what she wanted.

But she wanted to be loved for herself. Not for her beautiful butterfly wings, or the narrowness of her waist, or the size of her brilliant eyes, or the thickness of her hair. She wanted something that would last beyond the attractions of physical beauty. And so, when the Lacewing King’s envoys came to woo her on his behalf, she sent them back without even a word of encouragement. She knew of the King’s reputation just as he knew of hers; she knew of his cruelty and his pride, his arrogance and his vanity. So she sent back his gifts unopened; the rolls of silk spun from the wings of dragonflies; the carpets woven from grasshopper silk, the candied wasps, the honeycomb, the mantles made from bumblebees. The Butterfly Princess refused them all, saying:

“Love is humble. Love is plain. If the King will come alone, without his crown or retinue, empty-handed and on foot, I may accept to hear him.”

And so, for the first time in many years, the Lacewing King dismissed his court, dressed in his plainest, simplest clothes, and travelled on foot through the countryside to the court of the Butterfly Princess.

She watched him in secret, from afar. He was much more handsome than she had thought, and touchingly pale and lovelorn. She decided to put his love to the test. And so, on arriving, the Lacewing King found himself face-to-face, not with the Butterfly Princess herself, but with her mother.

This was the Caterpillar Queen, as pale and lumpen and loathsome as the Princess was lovely and delicate; sitting on her green velvet throne and watching him through tiny dark eyes. She herself was mute, but a servant (a golden dragonfly) translated her message to the King.

She said, “I will live in your court for a year, and if I am wholly satisfied, then my daughter will be yours.”

Reluctantly, the Lacewing King agreed to the proposal. A year was not so long, he thought, and then the Princess would be his.

But he found that even the journey home was fraught with unexpected difficulty. The Caterpillar Queen was too heavy to walk. The Lacewing King had to carry her all the way back on his shoulders. She was a prodigious burden, and before the King had even left the forest, he was already sore and aching. She was also very demanding, making all her comments via the dragonfly servant.

“My lady asks why we are stopping again,” it whirred, as the King collapsed to the ground. He was unused to heavy lifting, and the task of carrying the monstrous Queen had quickly brought him to his knees.

“My lady craves sweetness,” said the dragonfly servant. “She asks that you fetch her some honeycomb.”

And so the King had to walk for miles to raid the nearest bee’s nest, by which time the Queen was asleep again, and could not be awoken.

“My lady is fatigued,” said the dragonfly servant. “She wonders that the journey home is taking such a long time.”

It says much for the King’s self-control (and for the power of his desire) that he did not simply throw the Queen off his back and leave her to crawl back home on her own. But worse was to come. On arrival, he realized that his problems were only just beginning. The Queen was perpetually ravenous; devouring ten thousand honey-fried ants in a single meal, with three jars of mealworm marshmallow, and hundreds of candied cockroaches. She never said a word to the King, except through her intermediary, but ate so much that the royal chefs were obliged to work all day and night to sustain her enormous appetite, after which she was thirsty, and drank all the King’s reserves of wine. She also smelt disgusting, and left a trail of pale slime on everything she touched.

Within six weeks the Lacewing King was in despair, and his court was close to mutiny. Within six months, his chef had resigned, most of his other servants had left, and he was forced to wait upon her alone. Soon, the Queen’s demands began to take their toll upon the King. He became careless and neglectful. He would go out for days at a time, forgetting to see to her dietary needs. Once he left for a whole week, roaming the woods, going hunting, swimming in the cool green streams and trying to get the stink of her out of his clothes and from his hair.

But when at last he returned to his court, he found the Glow-Worm Chancellor in a state of extreme anxiety. His Majesty’s guest had been unwell for some days, and that morning, the Chancellor had found her lifeless in her bed. Her dragonfly servant could not explain exactly