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

her razor claws, she flexed her giant mandibles and prepared, with relish, to tear him apart.

The King looked into the Harlequin’s eyes. For a moment, he saw a maelstrom of stars, and realized in wonder that each was a World—thousands, maybe millions of worlds—an ocean of possibilities. And even as the Harlequin’s claws sank into his back and shoulders, he thought he heard a humming sound, as if something were approaching.

For a moment the Harlequin’s attention was diverted. Its gaze lost focus. Its claws relaxed—though not quite enough. But the builder of boats, recovering, had seen her chance to intervene. She had only the faintest memory of what the Harlequin had done to her, but she knew that the Lacewing King had saved her from a dreadful fate, condemning himself in the process. Of course, he owed her a life’s debt—but she had never imagined that he would forfeit his own for hers. And so, seeing her chance, as the Harlequin seemed distracted from its prey, summoning all her courage and strength, she flung herself at the monster.

By now the mysterious humming sound had grown. It was nearly inaudible, and yet they all felt it distressing the air; shaking the trees; shifting the ground; tumbling birds from out of the sky. The island bees could sense it too. Something was coming, not of this World. Something made from the sound of a million untold stories; something that burned with the energies of a million million lives—

The builder of boats struck at the Harlequin just as it tightened its hold once more. The Lacewing King was caught in its grasp; pinned in the glare of the creature’s eyes. The blow was not a powerful one; but it took the Harlequin by surprise, and, dropping its prey, it turned again, as just at that moment something emerged from out of the space between the Worlds; something like a very bright light, with a sound like approaching thunder.

For a moment, the Lacewing King was aware of two realities. On one side, there was the World he knew; the sea; the beach; the Harlequin; the anxious face of the builder of boats, her mouth forming words he could not hear. One the other, he seemed to see a shining beast of polished steel rushing towards him from out of the dark. His head was filled with black smoke; his arms and back were bleeding. And then something knocked him off-balance; he fell, and suddenly he was tumbling through the space between the Worlds. The Harlequin went after him, its powerful jaws working furiously. But he was already out of reach, and soon both he and the Harlequin were lost in a cauldron of darkness.

The builder of boats could only watch as the Lacewing King and the Harlequin plunged together into the void. There was no way of knowing if either of them had survived, or if the shape that she had glimpsed—a dragon, an unknown leviathan—had already devoured them. She sat down on the sand and wept for the loss of her mysterious friend, who during all of their travels, had never told her his story, or even the reason for his exile. And then she looked for the bees that had been the King’s constant companions, and saw that they too had vanished in the wake of their master.

This cheered her a little. Perhaps the bees would bring him some comfort, wherever he was. And then she stood and looked out to sea, and thought of her own predicament: lost, without food or water, between an endless desert and an equally endless ocean.

Far away, the builder of boats could hear the mermaids singing:

“Leave your shoes upon the shore,

Castaway, castaway.

Leave your shoes upon the shore

And listen to the ocean’s roar

And leave the land for evermore

My little castaway.”

For a moment, the builder of boats wanted nothing more than to join the mermaids; to swim away and to forget everything. But sometimes, an adventurer has to follow the path ahead, regardless of the danger, or of what she may find there. And so she walked back along the beach to her little red-sailed boat, and set sail once more for the open sea, where, in the face of all odds, she survived, living on fish and rainwater, and had many more adventures.

But, in all her travels, she never saw the Lacewing King again.

62

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RAIN

There are many different ways to reach the River Dream. One is Sleep, one is Desire; but the greatest of all is Story: brought from out of the Land of the Dead by the bees in search of nectar. And as the Barefoot Princess told her tale, the humming of the swarm increased, and the spiral dance of the bees blossomed in the gilded air. And now she could hear a different sound approaching along the railway tracks. A sound, or a vibration, growing progressively stronger. No trains were scheduled to come that way—or so the Engine Driver had said. Nevertheless, she almost believed that that she could hear the hum of a train—

Some dreams are islands out of Time. Some dreams are doors into the past. And some are trains, approaching like Death; relentless and unstoppable. There came a silent thunderclap. The Princess’s hand tightened on that of the Engine Driver. And then, in a soundless blaze of light, the approaching train was upon them.

For a moment, frozen in time, the Barefoot Princess and the Engine Driver seemed to be at a junction, with many different railway tracks, like lightning-trails across the sky. Stations flashed by that were glimpses from other Worlds, other stories. An island in an endless sea; a desert as broad as the ocean; an underground citadel lined with books; a silent vortex, with, at its heart, a spinning maelstrom of stars. In that instant, all Worlds were linked, like the cells of an intricate honeycomb, making a pattern that stretched beyond