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

Then she noticed a lake by the side of the tracks; a lake that, in years of driving that route, she had never seen before. The woman got down from her driver’s cab and walked over to the lake. It was small and perfectly round, and looked very dark and mysterious. And from the depths, the woman thought she could hear the sound of the ocean.

Heedless of the rain now, the Engine Driver knelt by the lake. Now she could smell the ocean, too, and hear the cries of seagulls. And in the water, she could see the reflection of a ship; a great, three-masted ship with sails of spider-silk and starlight. And behind the dream-ship shone a blue and cloudless summer sky.

The Engine Driver sensed that something magical was within her grasp. Without thinking of the risk, she plunged her hand into the water. Ripples moved across the lake, obscuring the ship and the summer sky. For a moment she saw her hand in the darkness of the lake. Then another hand grabbed it.

The Engine Driver was amazed. She held on as tightly as she could to the hand in the water. She felt the weight of a living being struggling to the surface. And finally there emerged from the depths a young woman with weeds in her hair, and covered from head to foot with bees. It was the Barefoot Princess, of course, flung through the window between the Worlds by the power of the Spider Queen.

The girl and the Engine Driver stared, both astonished by what they saw. Then the girl saw the broken-down train and her face lit up in astonished delight.

“What kind of vessel is that?” she said.

“A railway train,” said the Driver.

“A train?” said the Princess joyfully. She ran to the train and put out her hand to touch its metal hide. For a moment her joy was so great that it overwhelmed everything else. Then she turned to the Driver and said:

“But why am I here? And where is the King?”

The Engine Driver shook her head. “Which King? Why would he be here?”

The Barefoot Princess told the tale of how she had followed the Lacewing King all the way to World’s End, only to lose him once again, just when she thought she had found him at last. She told the tale of the Spider Queen, and the coat of a thousand eyes. She told the tale of the Dragonfly Queen and the Queen Below the Water. She told the tale of the Clockwork Princess and how she and her young man had saved the Lacewing King from a sentence of death. And then she wept, because she was lost and alone in a foreign land, and because in all her dreams of travel and adventure, she had imagined the Lacewing King by her side, and now he was lost to her again—this time, maybe, forever.

The Driver listened in silence to the tale of the Barefoot Princess. Not since her childhood had she heard stories anything like these. Never had she known a world in which such things were possible. And never had she encountered anyone like the Barefoot Princess; so vivid, brave, and yet so sweet—and, in the eyes of the Driver, at least—so very beautiful.

“I’ll help you,” she said. “Wherever he is, I’ll help you find the Lacewing King.”

“Why would you help me?” said the Princess.

“Because,” said the Driver, “I too was lost. But you have made me believe again.”

The rain had stopped. The Princess’s bees dried their wings in the sun and took nectar from the flowers that grew along the side of the railway-tracks. Then they settled around the Princess; on her shoulders and in her hair, for bees are the most loyal of all the Silken Folk, and they were bound to serve her.

“Couldn’t your train help us find the King?” After years of reading about them in books, the Barefoot Princess staunchly believed in the magical power of trains, though her faith had been somewhat shaken by the fact that this one had broken down.

“That’s not quite how trains work, I’m afraid,” said the Driver. And she explained about railway lines, and timetables, and advance fares, and first class, and economy class, and minding the gap at stations. The Barefoot Princess was entranced, and it took the Engine Driver some time to convince her that the train could not be commandeered to leave the tracks and to go in search of the Lacewing King.

“But there are other trains than this,” said the Engine Driver. “Trains that can take you to other worlds; stations lost between the stars. The Lacewing King, wherever he is, may be at one of these stations.”

“So how do we find him?” said the Princess.

“The way you found me,” said the Driver.

By the time the engineering crew came to make their repairs, there was no one aboard the train. Nor was there any sign of a lake by the side of the railway tracks. Of course, they had never heard of the Barefoot Princess, and so could not notice her absence; but the Engine Driver had disappeared, leaving no sign of where she had gone except for her engine-driver’s cap, covered in seaweed, on the rails, and a distant murmur of bees.

55

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CARLET

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LIPPERS

In the land of the Sand Riders, where women go veiled from top to toe, there lived a young man who dreamed of love. But he was too young to think of marriage, and according to the customs of his land, he was forbidden even to speak to any of the unmarried women he saw. Instead, he would picture their faces; try to overhear their words as they spoke to each other in their lowered voices. And he dreamed of one day having a woman of his own to love; to cook for him and sing to him; a woman whose