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

And so they fought in earnest, Wasp Prince and Lacewing King. Both were fast and skilled and strong; but the King had greater experience. Sometimes the Wasp Prince became a furious swarm of yellow wasps, forcing the King to change Aspect, but the King responded by taking the form of a cloud of tiny pale-green gnats that drifted through the swarm like smoke.

The battle went on, and the Wasp Prince changed his tactic, becoming a phalanx of dragonflies with giant, vicious mandibles. The King returned to his human form just in time, but the Prince changed back into a giant hornet, and stung the King so hard on the hand that he could barely hold his sword.

The Wasp Prince laughed. “Yield to me now, and save yourself further embarrassment. Who knows, I may even let you live, if you promise to serve me.”

Grimly, the Lacewing King shook his head and moved his sword to his left hand. He was the better swordsman by far, but the Prince was aiming to kill, whereas the King was simply trying to disarm his opponent.

“Don’t be a fool,” he told the Prince. “Can’t you see I don’t want to kill you?”

But the Wasp Prince only laughed, and fought back more fiercely than ever.

Deep in her lair, the Spider Queen followed the battle through the skeins of her web. She could sense every movement, every step the combatants made. She knew when one of them faltered, or when the other landed a blow. And with every blow that was struck, her joy increased, until it was almost unbearable.

The fact was, she had never meant the Wasp Prince to defeat the King. The Prince was an able fighter, trained and taught by the Queen herself, but she had no intention of letting him steal her vengeance. Her vow had been to break the King’s heart, and from the way he was fighting, she knew that whenever he struck a blow, he felt the pain of it himself. And so she watched from the heart of her web, teasing the strands with her fingers; and with every moment that passed, with every blow, her pleasure increased.

The battle went on. The stars came out. Both combatants were wounded and stung, but still they went on fighting. The Wasp Prince fought with all his might, but the Lacewing King was holding back, hoping the Prince might see reason. But the Prince was unstoppable, leaping from Aspect to Aspect, passing from a swarm of wasps and back to his human form again, his sword flashing through the shadows, his voice ringing out in defiance.

Finally, the Lacewing King, feinting and dodging among the swarm, landed a final, fatal blow. They fell together on the battlefield, the Wasp Prince pierced through the heart; the King on his knees beside him.

“Why did you defy me?” he said. “I would have given you everything.”

The Wasp Prince shook his head and laughed through the blood that welled from his mouth. “Not everything,” he whispered. Then, knowing his time had come, he sent one last command to his troops.

“Vengeance,” he whispered.

The Spider Queen, at the heart of her web, felt a banner of wasps unfurl across the battlefield on which the Lacewing King knelt by his son. The wounded Prince lay dying; his blood soaked into the trampled ground to mingle with that of his father. He looked into his father’s eyes and saw them filled with sorrow.

“You see,” he said. “You are going soft.” And then he died, and a curtain of death descended onto the Lacewing King—

But just as the avenging swarm was about to reach the enemy, a swarm of bees flew to meet them, sent out by the Honeycomb Queen to protect her son from danger. They were only honeybees, but their loyalty was to the death, and they covered him over, head to foot, so that no harm could come to him. One by one, the honeybees died in defence of their master. But as they fell, more took their place, so that finally, leaderless, drained of their venom, the angry wasps were forced to retreat, and the King was left alone.

The Spider Queen watched him through her web, and though she had won a victory, she knew that the war was not over. Her enemy had suffered a blow, but his heart was not broken. In fact, he returned to his underground court just as if nothing had happened; his evil reputation intact; his royal crown unchallenged. And the Honeycomb Queen went back to her hive, satisfied that her son was safe. But though he showed no sign of it, she knew that something had changed in him; and she continued to watch over him from afar, in the hope that one day he would learn to love someone as deeply as she loved him.

27

T

HE

O

LD

W

OMAN AND THE

R

OCKING

-H

ORSE

Once there was a little girl, who very much wanted a rocking-horse. But only boys could play with such things, and so she would sit and play with her dolls and dream of wooden horses.

Her brother had a hobby-horse and a wooden lance to go with it, and sometimes she would stroke its mane, but she never rode it. Instead, she would watch her brother play, and when he left his toys outside, she would bring them in out of the rain and tidy them away for him. She always left the horse till last, lingering over its horsehair mane and running her hands down its wooden flanks. But she never dared ride it.

Time passed. The girl grew up. She married a man who kept horses. But she was always so busy looking after the children that she never learnt to ride. Instead, she would look out of the window at the horses in the fields and wonder what it would feel like to simply ride away.

Her husband died. Her children grew