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

but never a clockwork woman before, and besides, he sensed that things were about to go very badly for the strange pair.

Sure enough, as the King watched, the young man and his clockwork companion were seized and carried to the water’s edge. The young man cried:

“Please! Don’t! She can’t swim!” But the mob was howling for blood, and no one paid attention.

The Lacewing King now remembered a tale that the bees used to tell, of a Clockwork Princess asleep in a tower, and of the watchmaker’s boy who had saved her. He realized that this unlikely pair must be the couple of whom he had heard. But the prejudice of the Sightless Folk was too much for such a strange love as theirs, and their pleas were in vain as the mob took ropes and tied them back-to-back. Then they pushed the Clockwork Princess and the watchmaker’s boy over the edge of the quayside and into the water, where they sank.

The Lacewing King, who had watched all this, now considered the tools at his disposal. Water favours the Silken Folk, and though he was far from his kingdom, his word still carried authority.

He uttered a secret cantrip, and deep in the river, the Silken Folk, the water-boatmen and river-beetles and dragonfly larvae began to gather, blowing and gathering air into a giant silver bubble, that surrounded the drowning boy and his lady. Then, with their sharp little mandibles, they cut the ropes that bound the pair, so that the boy was able to swim back towards the surface and downstream. But the Clockwork Princess was too heavy to float, and simply lay on the riverbed, her undamaged eye staring up at the light, tiny bubbles rising all around her.

The Lacewing King had seen her plight. He spoke another cantrip, and the creatures that lived on the riverbed crawled into the eye of the Clockwork Princess, and into the gash in her damaged arm. They rebuilt her damaged interior, nibbling away at the rust inside. They mended her skin with mother-of-pearl, replaced her hair with gossamer silk, and set back her eye in its socket. Then, with a million blown bubbles, they floated her back to the surface, downstream to where the young man was grieving for the loss of his love.

Behind them, hidden in the trees, the Lacewing King was watching. He watched the happy reunion and listened to the couple talk. He had no idea of why he had intervened on their behalf, or why he should care if they lived or died. But maybe his travels had changed him. Or maybe it was something else that had begun to work in him, a secret transformation like that of larva to chrysalis. In any case, it was done, and he prepared to go on his way again.

But the Clockwork Princess, whose mechanical eye was unaffected by glamours, saw him, and recognized him at once. And in so doing, she understood who had saved her and her friend. She stood up, shaking her wet hair, meaning to thank him for what he had done—

But by the time she reached the edge of the woods, the Lacewing King had already gone. And so she spoke to the forest instead; to the bees in the woodland canopy; to the earwigs in the ground; to the ants and the beetles and the wasps and dragonflies. And she said:

“If ever one day he needs help—whatever the reason, wherever he is—I want you to tell me. I owe him a debt. Will you tell me?”

In the leaf canopy, from the ground, came a murmur of acquiescence.

The Lacewing King did not hear it, of course. And even if he had, perhaps he would not have believed in the loyalty of a creature without a soul—after all, the Clockwork Princess was only a thing of gears and levers and porcelain, now held together with spider’s web and river-bottom mother-of-pearl. How could such a creature feel gratitude, let alone love?

But Love is a strange emotion; infinitely adaptable. And those who at first seem least deserving of it are sometimes those who need it most. The Lacewing King went on his way without even a second thought for the two strangers he had saved, but the Clockwork Princess did not forget. One day, she told herself, she would repay her debt to him.

She went back to where the watchmaker’s boy was drying his clothes on the riverbank. She had lived a hundred years. She could wait a little longer.

37

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ONGBIRD

To a kingdom far away, there came a man, selling singing birds. The Queen of that country, a proud and tyrannical ruler, heard of the stranger and his birds, and came to see them for herself.

The man was nothing special, but pale, like the men of the distant northlands. His clothes were worn and colourless, his hair the shade of a moth’s wing. His birds flew freely around him, as he fed them with handfuls of dried insects, and their song was bright and powerful, wild as the wind and sweet as the sky.

The Queen was enchanted. She paid the man in gold and took one of the beautiful singing birds back to her palace among the sands. She placed it in a golden cage, sat on a chair beside it and waited eagerly for it to sing. But the bird remained silent.

The Queen summoned her Master of Birds and ordered him to make the bird sing. But for all his skill, the Master of Birds, who knew only hunting hawks and peregrines, was unable to do so.

The Queen then summoned her Master of the Kitchens to bring dates, pistachios, and honey pastries to tempt the bird into song. But no amount of fruit, or nuts, or sesame biscuits, or camel’s-milk sweets would tempt the bird to sing a note.

The Queen grew very angry. She summoned her Captain of the Guard and ordered him to find the man who had sold her