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

KY

Once, in the depths of the Undersea, there reigned a strong and beautiful Queen. She was wise and powerful and luminous as starlight, but she had never been in love.

She was not without suitors, however. Many came to beg for her hand. The Rainbow Prince of the Angel Fish, in his cloak of many colours. The proud Prince of the Warrior Sharks, in his steel-blue armour. The noble Prince of the Sea Urchins, in his waistcoat of rose-pink spines. But the Moon Queen would have none of them. Her folk were the Moon Jellyfish, and like them, she was a dreamer. And at night, when the business of ruling was done, she would leave her coral throne and put aside her starfish crown and her gown of gilded sea-foam, and rise to the ocean surface, naked but for her long train of tiny silver bubbles. There, the Moon Queen would drift and dance in a midnight darkness shot like phosphorescent silk, and she would watch the starry skies and dream of World Above.

Night after night, she would gaze at the stars, which looked to her like silver fish in a midnight-blue ocean. She would gaze at the purple clouds, which looked to her like forests of weed cloaking the shoals of sky-fish. But most of all, she looked at the Moon; the Moon King of the Sky-Sea, and saw him cross the sky every night, and watched his pearly movements across that mysterious ocean.

But the Queen did not see a lifeless rock circling from a great height: she saw a Moon Jellyfish; a powerful ruler like herself; the Moon King of the Sky-Sea; proud and alone and beautiful, in command of an ocean kingdom filled with adoring subjects; and finally, the Moon Queen felt the joyful turbulence of love.

The more she considered it, the more obvious it seemed to her that only the Moon King of the Sky would make a suitable consort. They could merge their territories, make of the Worlds one vast ocean that would stretch all the way into Dream. They would ride across the sky in a starlight chariot drawn by a thousand sea horses. And their marriage bed would be a ship with sails of phosphorescent silk that would drift between the Worlds on a sea of Northlights.

The Moon Queen of the Undersea whispered all these things to the King when she rose to the surface to watch him. She spoke of her regard; her love; her vision of the future. But the Moon King never heard, and went his way, oblivious.

The Queen began to spend more and more time on the ocean surface. She grew impatient with her throne, impatient with her subjects.

“What do those things matter?” she said. “When I am Queen of the Sky-Sea, I shall rule over everything. My joy and that of my consort will fill the whole of the Nine Worlds.”

Time passed. Years waxed and waned. The Queen spent less and less time in her own realm, and more and more gazing at the sky, looking for the Moon King. She tried to attract his attention by singing her most beautiful songs; tried to bewitch him from afar with her most seductive dances.

But the Moon King of the Sky-Sea never seemed to notice her, but kept to his allotted course, dispassionate; indifferent; drifting calmly through the clouds in a trail of star-bubbles.

One night, there was a lunar eclipse. The Queen had never seen one before. She watched as first, the Moon turned red, then began to disappear. She watched in horror. Could it be that some predator—a shark, a whale, a Kraken—was devouring him, that her beloved Moon King was bleeding to death before her eyes?

Desperately the Moon Queen tried to warn him from below. But even then, the Moon King did not respond to her urgent calls, until finally, even his shadow had vanished from the night sky.

The Moon Queen was filled with grief and despair. She fled back to the Undersea, vowing never to visit the surface again. She handed over her coral throne and her starfish crown to another Queen, and warned her never to go up Above, for that world was filled with sorrow. And there she remains, to this day, in the deepest ocean—for jellyfish are immortal, unless devoured by predators—rising; falling; luminous; languid in the inky depths; still searching for something that never was; still grieving for her lost love.

And that is why moon jellyfish never go to the surface—except perhaps to die of grief at the sight of that ocean they will never know.

42

T

HE

B

AREFOOT

P

RINCESS AND THE

S

PIDER

Q

UEEN

Meanwhile, in the court of the Lacewing King, the Barefoot Princess was fully-grown. She had grown to be clever, and wise, compassionate, and extremely well-read, but in spite of these advantages, she still refused to take the throne, or consider the likelihood that the Lacewing King would never return.

The Glow-Worm Chancellor had ruled the kingdom for over a decade. A loyal servant, both of the King and of his father before him, he loved his master, in spite of his faults, and still hoped for his return. But his love for the Barefoot Princess was nothing short of adoration. He pleaded with her to take the throne, to relieve him of his burden. But still the Barefoot Princess refused to believe that her protector was gone for good.

“There must be a way of finding him,” she said to the Glow-Worm Chancellor.

The Glow-Worm Chancellor pointed out that in ten years, there had been no trace of the King, except in stories told by the bees. No one could find him, the Chancellor said, except maybe for the Spider Queen—

The Princess’s eyes lit up at once. “The Spider Queen?” she repeated.

The Chancellor shook his glowing head. “I should not have spoken, Your Majesty. The Spider Queen is a recluse. She does not stir from her silken couch, or concern herself with our affairs.”

The Barefoot Princess