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

even Death; even Dream. And then, for a moment, the Barefoot Princess thought she saw the Lacewing King, falling—silently calling her name—away from her into the darkness.

The Barefoot Princess watched him fall. He looked very small, very far away, just-glimpsed, already out of reach. And the fact that she had come so close only served to increase her distress.

“We almost had him! He was there. Did you see him? He was there—” Then, addressing the bees, she cried, “Take me to him! Take me back! Take me back to where he is!”

But the bees had ceased their dance. The air was still, almost stagnant. Looking around, the Barefoot Princess saw, with some surprise, that she was in a railway carriage. The carriage windows were milky with age; the seats bled colourless; the scent a compound of dust and bone and dreams forgotten and gone to waste. The Engine Driver was at her side, looking dazed and shaken.

“Where exactly are we?” she said.

Then the two became aware of a presence beside them. They turned and saw a ragged boy, wearing a cap much too large for him, and watching them with frightened eyes.

“Excuse me—are you alive?” he said.

The Barefoot Princess and the Engine Driver looked at one other. Both of them were wondering what kind of a train they had boarded. Around them, in the shadows, sat the other passengers: all of them still and grey-faced and sad, looking blindly through the glass at the Worlds that passed outside. And then, at last, they understood. This was the train that runs through all Worlds, from Hel to Pandaemonium, consuming the hopes and dreams of the Folk in its bottomless furnace.

For a moment, the Barefoot Princess was afraid that perhaps both she and her new friend had died, back there on the railway track, and that this was their final journey. But the Driver’s hand in hers was warm, and her heart was beating fast. Both of them were still alive; and they were on the Night Train.

“How can this be?” said the Barefoot Princess.

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know. The Night Train only serves the dead. The living have no place here.”

“But you’re alive,” said the Barefoot Princess.

“If you can call it life,” said the boy. Brightening a little, he said, “Shall I bring you the snack trolley? I always feel better after a snack. Then I’ll tell you everything.”

And so the travellers ate and drank—sweets and cakes and chocolate bars that were powdery with age; brightly coloured fizzy drinks with names like Buzz and Elektro-Lyte. The Barefoot Princess, at the window, ate a packet of stale nuts and watched the stations flashing by. Surely, she thought, this marvellous train could take her to the Lacewing King.

But when she asked the boy when the train was next due to stop, he looked at her in puzzlement and said, “But I thought you understood. This is the Night Train. It never stops.”

“Then how do we leave?”

“No one can leave. All you can do is ride the train, until the End of All Things.”

The Barefoot Princess was filled with alarm. Had she, in pursuit of her dream, doomed herself and her new friend, either to death, or to the eternal life of a passenger on the Night Train? But she did not lose heart. She had not crossed between the Worlds, braved the wrath of the ocean, or escaped the clutches of the Spider Queen only to give up hope at the very moment at which the Lacewing King seemed to be within reach again.

“I want to speak to the Driver,” she said.

The boy opened his eyes wide. “No one does that,” he said. “Not even I have seen him. His cabin is sealed with runes and lead. Even his door gives me nightmares.”

But the Barefoot Princess was undeterred. She marched along the Night Train, passing from carriage to carriage. She passed through a hundred carriages before reaching the locomotive. She stopped by the door to the driver’s cab and looked at the runes upon it. Then she reached out her hand and touched the dismal surface of the door; a door that was made of human bones and sealed with giant knuckles of lead.

Then, she knocked.

Nothing happened.

The Barefoot Princess knocked again. “Open this door!” she demanded. (In spite of her sweetness of character, she must have inherited something of the Lacewing King’s imperious manner.) “Open this door, in the name of the Silken Folk, guardians of the honeycomb, who were the first to bring the nectar of Dream into the Worlds!”

Behind the door, there came a sound; a soft and somehow loathsome sound, like something large and soft and slow moving over paper.

The Barefoot Princess knocked again. “Open this door!” she repeated. “In the name of the Lacewing King and the Honeycomb Queen, I command you!”

The sound came again. Then, silence. Then, at last, there came the sound of many bolts slowly being drawn. On the near side of the door, the Barefoot Princess watched as the chain of runes that bound the door began to unravel slowly. They made an unpleasant clicking sound, like the claws of some giant crustacean. Then the door began to move, until it was standing slightly ajar, and finally, the travellers saw the Driver of the Night Train.

He might have been a man once; many, many years ago. But time had long since taken that, and now he was a withered thing, all sinew and parchment, bound together by wire and will, his hands on the wheel worn down to the bone. Only his eyes were alive; but as she looked closer, the Barefoot Princess saw that this was because the sockets were crawling with insects: woodlice; termites; death-watch beetles. But they saw her, nevertheless, which was somehow worse than if he had been wholly dead.

The eyes moved up and down her. A sound came from the lipless mouth. A voice, which was neither human nor sane, said, “What do you want?”

The Barefoot Princess