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

King, who was not used to rejection, tried his best to be patient. But patience was not in his nature, and soon he became angry instead. There followed a quarrel, after which he ordered the boy to stay in his rooms until such time as his manners improved. Secretly, he hoped that the boy would miss him, feel sorry and ask to be forgiven. The Lacewing King had even prepared a little acceptance speech, to be used when the time arrived. But days passed, and then a week, and still the boy had made no move. He simply remained in his chambers, reading, or playing solitaire, seemingly indifferent to his incarceration.

Time passed, and the Lacewing King began to regret his anger. The more he considered his actions, the more he realized he’d been at fault. The boy needed guidance, he told himself; kindness and understanding. How could he learn how to behave properly if his father failed to give him the right example? He remembered the words of the Honeycomb Queen; that if his son grew into a monster, he would only have himself to blame.

And so he resolved to seek out the boy, and mend the rift between them, even if it meant losing face, or having to apologize. This was a new experience for the Lacewing King, who in all his life, had never apologized to anyone, or ever acknowledged that he had been wrong. But over that week he had suffered more than he ever had before. He had discovered loneliness, regret, self-doubt, and jealousy. It was unendurable.

And so on the eve of the ninth day, he went to his son’s quarters, bringing with him a silver box of the boy’s favourite sweetmeats—violet-sugared scorpion tails—firmly resolved to end the feud. But when he unlocked the door and went in, he found that the boy had disappeared.

The King was puzzled and anxious. How could the young prince have left his rooms? Two cockroach guards had been watching the door, which had been locked with a double bolt. He looked around for a possible route, and found, behind the chimney, a vent, just large enough for a boy to escape.

The King’s anxiety redoubled. The boy was still too young, too inexperienced, to be allowed to roam in World Above without any supervision. Anything might happen to him; he might be attacked by brigands; he might be lost in the wild woods or drowned in the fast-flowing river. He might be abducted; held for ransom; murdered; torn to pieces by wolves. The King was so anxious and afraid that, when he finally picked up the trail a mere hundred yards from his underground realm, his first reaction was relief, rather than his customary rage.

He followed the trail and found the boy less than half-an-hour later. The Honeycomb Child was sitting on a fallen tree by the riverbank, his travelling-bundle by his side, his hat on the ground beside him. His face, sweetly pensive a moment before, hardened as he saw the King.

He turned his back. “Go away,” he said.

The King was puzzled and hurt. He said, “Aren’t you happy? What do you want? Whatever it is, I can give it to you.”

The boy only shrugged and would not reply.

“Why did you run away?” said the King. “Why did you want to leave me?”

Once again, the boy only shrugged.

“What about me?” said the King. “Didn’t it occur to you that I might worry? Didn’t you care?”

“No, not really,” said the boy.

“I command you to care,” said the Lacewing King, finally losing his temper. He grabbed the boy by the shoulders and pulled him roughly to his feet. “I command you to return. I order you to love me—”

The young prince struggled to escape, but the King was too strong, too angry. He picked up the boy like a sack of flour and slung him over his shoulder, meaning to take him back by force—

But the silken skin that the Queen had spun to clothe her manikin of bees was as fragile as it was deceptive. At the King’s rough handling, it split, releasing the trapped bees. For a moment, they kept the shape of the prince; and then they spilled out of the silken skin and into the air, their golden wings blurring into movement, the prince’s voice becoming the drone of a hundred thousand bees.

The Lacewing King soon realized that something was amiss. He felt the weight on his shoulder lift; heard the humming of the bees. He dropped the silken envelope—now nothing but an empty cocoon—and turned to face the swarm of bees, still forming the ghostly shape of a boy in the honeyed forest air.

For a moment the King’s surprise was enough to make him weak. And then, as he realized how he’d been tricked, his rage was uncontrollable.

“No!” he cried, and took a step towards the cloud of honeybees, trying to take the ephemeral shape of the Honeycomb Child back into his arms. “No! Please! Please come back!”

But the bees only stung him, making him howl, stinging him through his clothes and hair, stinging his face and his bare hands until he was burning all over; until at last he retreated, maddened, in pain, stumbling blindly back through the woods to the safety of his citadel.

There, he locked himself in his rooms and would not speak to anyone. He took to his bed with a fever, and for three days he shivered and burned and whimpered with the pain of it. But it was not simply the bees’ venom that troubled him. As the fever abated, he began to feel a deeper hurt, a hurt that seemed to penetrate all the way into his heart, as if the stinging of those bees had delivered some lingering poison that wounded him to the very soul. Never had he suffered so much, or been made to feel so wretched, and the fact that it was all his fault made it all the more frightening.

It was many days before he