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

time, the Lacewing King had been in the water for hours. He had shed his clothes in an effort to stay afloat; and, drifting naked in the dark, now waited for Death to claim him. But the Moon Queen came instead, in her gown of a thousand frills, and in the glow of her tentacles, she saw that he was handsome.

And now a thought occurred to her. She looked into the clear night sky. There was no moon. She quivered with hope. Could this be her lost Moon King? Could he have survived somehow, and come to her to declare his love?

The Lacewing King was too weak to reply to her eager questions. Barely alive, and delirious, he drifted in and out of consciousness. And so she took him in her arms, and combed the wet hair from his face, and kept his mouth above water (for she knew that her King was a creature of air), and fed him on morsels of urchin and scraps of tender seaweed.

“My King is tired,” she declared to the watchers of the deep. “Dolphins, sweeten his slumbers.”

And so, in her arms, the Lacewing King slept; and the Queen held him close as dolphins sang their lullabies, and the Moon Jellyfish circled around like a chain of floating lanterns. All through the night, the Moon Queen cradled him in her white arms; kissed him with her soft mouth; investigated his body with a thousand loving tentacles. And throughout her embrace, the Lacewing King slept, until finally he awoke, refreshed, just as the first soft light of dawn coloured the far horizon.

Finding himself in the arms of the Queen, he soon understood what had happened. He knew the story of how she had fallen in love with the Moon King, and he knew that his life was in danger. The moment the Queen realized her mistake, her vengeance would be terrible. The sun was already rising; and with it, the threat of discovery. He had to act quickly to save his life, and so he turned to the Moon Queen and gave her his most winning smile.

“My love,” he said. “Here comes the dawn, and with it, my kinsman, the Sun. Soon you must return to the Deeps, and I must attend to my kingdom. But I will meet you here again, tonight, as soon as the sun has set.”

It was a cruel lie, of course, and a tremendous risk to take. But the Lacewing King had no choice. The following night would bring the New Moon, and the Queen would know his deception. And so he smiled and kissed her mouth, and swore he would meet her at sunset.

Then, as soon as the Queen had withdrawn back into the darkest Deeps, the Lacewing King began to swim as fast as he could towards the West. He was an excellent swimmer, trained in the underground lakes and ice-cold rivers of World Below, and he had regained his strength, thanks to the Queen’s attentions. But there was no land in sight, and he knew that if he failed to reach safety before the New Moon rose in the sky, then the Queen would discover his ruse, and she would tear him apart.

The Lacewing King swam for hours that day. The hot sun burned his shoulders. He grew thirsty; his head hurt; his limbs ached and were heavy. And still there was no sign of land in that rolling ocean. Even the nearest islands were a thousand miles away, and there was nothing to cling to; not even a piece of driftwood.

Finally, the sun set and darkness crept across the sky, and the King knew that the Moon Queen would be waiting at their meeting-place. It was hopeless. The miles he had swum were nothing compared to the speed at which the Queen and her servants could travel. Already, the sea around him was filled with leaping dolphins, messengers sent by the Moon Queen to locate her absent lover. And in an hour or less, he knew, the New Moon would rise, and he would be lost.

The King trod water and looked around. Still, there was no land in sight. He could think of no plan to save himself. He was parched, exhausted and sore, and this time, he knew there could be no reprieve. And so once more he waited for Death, while around him the endless ocean glowed with the pale light of Moon Jellyfish as they rose from the distant Deeps to greet the coming of their Queen.

52

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UILDER OF

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OATS

On an island in a far ocean, there lived a humble builder of boats. She was happy in her work, which consisted of building little craft of coconut bark and banana leaves, which sliced through the water like darkened knives, leaving barely a shimmer of wake. She had everything she wanted: food; the ocean; the forest. But in the evenings she would sit and watch the sun go down in flames, and look for the fabled green flash that followed the moment of vanishing, and dream of other places, other worlds to experience.

And so one day she began to build a boat that would take her far away. Not a fishing-boat, this time, but an elegant craft thirty feet long, with a hull of intricate pieces, all interleaved and sealed with wax, and a sail of scarlet silk that stood out bold against the sky. It took the builder of boats six months to make the craft seaworthy, to stock it with food and water and to launch it from the beach. Her friends and family mocked her work, and the elders of her village frowned in disapproval. But finally, the builder set sail, and left her island far behind, travelling to the Edge of the Worlds in her red-sailed barque of dreams.

Now, on another island nearby, there lived a King, who saw the red-sailed boat skimming past, and understood its mission.

“But what a very small boat