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

coral, not wax, but the resemblance was striking. From below, the whole fortress looked like part of a giant hive, moored in place by ropes of weed, suspended in the water.

Some of these cells were flooded; some held pockets of trapped air. And it was into one of these half-flooded cells that the Undersea Guards flung the Lacewing King and lowered the trapdoor into place, leaving him standing waist-deep in the icy water. The floor of the cell was covered with tiny, sharp little coral spikes that cut into his bare feet, and the air was stale and brackish. The King guessed that he might have an hour or so of breathable air before he started to suffocate.

But this was not his greatest concern. His greatest concern was the creatures he now glimpsed through the holes in the floor. Drawn by the scent of blood, they came scuttling up from the indigo depths; their claws biting into the coral and their eyes swivelling madly atop their armoured bodies. Spiders. Spiders of the sea; some spiky-bodied; some smooth-clawed; some tiny and nacreous, no larger than a fingernail, others as long as nightmare, trailing their legs in the darkness.

From his cell, the Lacewing King listened to the creatures below. He could hear the sound of their claws against the brittle coral. He wondered whether the air would run out before the creatures reached him, or whether he would be eaten alive. Most of all, he wondered whether he could persuade the Queen Below the Water to meet her rival face-to-face and discharge his obligation. Because the Lacewing King had a plan; a plan that hinged on a lucky guess; which, if it were revealed to be true, might solve all his problems.

He thought of the face of the Dragonfly Queen under her warrior’s helmet. Then he thought of the Queen Below, pale and stern and beautiful. He remembered how each of the warrior Queens claimed that the other had started the war, although no one really remembered the cause of their age-old rivalry. But the Lacewing King had suspected the truth from the moment he had first seen the realm of the Queen Below the Water, mirrored in the shadow of the cliff-top realm of the Dragonfly Queen. And when he had seen the face of the Queen Below the Water, so like the face of the Dragonfly Queen underneath her helmet, he had known that he was right. The Queen Below the Water was the image of the Dragonfly Queen—softer; paler, younger, perhaps, but unmistakably her child.

Of course, the Lacewing King was aware that dragonflies are born underwater, living for a time as nymphs, to emerge as warriors and queens. But the two opposing Queens had no idea of this at all. They had been at war for years, unaware that their differences were just a question of maturity. The Lacewing King knew that, given time, the Queen Below the Water would grow hard, shiny armour and beautiful wings, just like her mother before her. Whether he could explain all this to an angry, juvenile Queen was quite a different matter. But now, with the spiders of the sea making their way through the walls of his cell, his time was quickly running out.

He tried calling out to the Undersea Guards. But the cell was half-flooded, and the sound was swallowed up by the walls. Below his feet, the scrabbling of the spider crabs grew louder. The floor of the cell was almost breached. For the first time in his long, strange existence, the Lacewing King was truly afraid.

Then there came a terrible crunching sound as the floor collapsed beneath him. The Lacewing King fell through the hole in a shower of coral pieces. He fought in vain to escape, but the sea-spiders were on him now, dragging him down to the sea floor. He lay there helpless, his air almost gone, with thousands—millions—of the creatures swarming all over his body. He closed his eyes, and his final thought was of the Barefoot Princess, and how he would never see her again. Perhaps that was a good thing, he thought. He would not have wanted her to see him die in this horrible way, stripped to the bone and screaming blood into the turquoise ocean.

But when he opened his eyes again, he found himself breathing and unhurt. And now he began to understand that, far from eating him alive, the undersea creatures had saved his life. Each of the spiders was carrying a bubble of air from the surface—some as small as a pinhead, others as large as a pumpkin—to make a kind of chamber, in which the Lacewing King could survive. And slowly and laboriously, the creatures were rolling the bubble of air across the sand of the sea-bed, towards the wedge of shadow that marked the ship of silk and starlight, in which the Spider Queen awaited delivery of her victim.

50

T

RIAL OF THE

L

ACEWING

K

ING

As the Lacewing King made his escape across the floor of the ocean, he wondered who could have rescued him. He knew of only one person who commanded the spiders of the sea. But the Spider Queen was his enemy. Why would she want to save his life?

There was, of course, only one answer to this. Because she wanted to take it herself. And as the spiders carried him steadily towards the ship, the King began to understand that, far from being safe, he had simply exchanged one peril for another. But he showed no sign of fear. He was, after all, the Lacewing King.

Finally, the bubble of air reached the surface of the waves. The Lacewing King looked up and saw the ship of silk and starlight, with the Spider Queen looking down at him, and said:

“What a charming welcome.”

The Spider Queen’s thin lips twitched in satisfaction. She had made a special attempt to look as captivating as possible; her dress was of moths’-wing velvet, stitched all over