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

the Folk, in the hope that concrete, and plastic, and glass would keep the terrible visions at bay.

But the world of the Silken Folk, once seen, is not so easy to ignore. The man now saw them everywhere; in the streets; in his bed at night; even in the mirror. Moth men; Butterfly women, dressed all in leather and dragonfly lace; Woodlice in their armour; Flies in their sable jackets, and Ants in titanium helmets; all watching him with their lidless eyes and mocking his discomfort.

But the man was stubborn and refused to admit that they were real. Instead, he said, “I am going insane.”

And many people agreed with him.

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Not far away, there lived a boy, who was convinced that his mother was not his mother. She certainly looked like his mother; she had the same hair, the same expressions; she sang the same little songs to herself. She had the same friends; she wore the same clothes; she spoke to him in just the same way. And yet the boy remained convinced that she was not his mother.

Why did the boy feel this way? Not even he knew for certain. He had no father, no siblings. His mother was his only kin. They lived in a cottage in the woods, and they were very seldom apart. When the boy went to school, she was there, walking him to the school-gates. When he went to church, she was there, making sure he said his prayers. When he was feverish, she was there; sitting at his bedside, feeding him broth from a china bowl and singing softly to herself.

“There once was a citadel under a dome

Long ago, long ago,

All lined with silk and honeycomb,

Believe me child, believe me.”

And she was the perfect mother. She always cooked his favourites. She kissed him every morning, as he woke up. She tucked him into bed every night. But sometimes, the boy would wake up and see his mother watching him, silently, from the shadows by his bed, and her face was different then: blank, wide-eyed, and frightening.

He tried to tell his teachers. Nobody believed him. He told the village doctor, who put him on a diet of bitter greens and valerian tea. He tried pretending to go to sleep, and lying awake in secret. But on those nights, she never came, and the boy was none the wiser.

His mother noticed how pale he looked. “What is it?” she said. “What ails my boy?”

But the boy would not tell. Instead he went to the library, where the old librarian lived among his towers and turrets of books. The old librarian often told stories of the Silken Folk, and how they sometimes managed to steal into a person’s body, eating their soul from the inside out, so that nothing was left of them but skin that moved and smiled and spoke—although there was nothing left inside but the Silken Folk in their clusters and swarms.

“But that’s just a story,” said the boy. “No one can really steal your soul. The Silken Folk aren’t real—are they?”

Each time he said this, the old man shrugged. “The Silken Folk are everywhere. In the air you breathe, in the walls, in your bed, in the food you eat, even under your skin. And when you die, they’ll be there still, feeding on you in the dark.”

This, too, was only a story, of course. But as time passed, the boy became more and more convinced that not only were the Silken Folk real, but they were in his mother.

He started to watch her more carefully. He noticed how she never undressed in front of him, and how sometimes she seemed to go for minutes at a time without blinking. Most of all, he noticed how she never killed a wasp or a fly, or even stood on a cockroach.

He asked the old librarian, “How would you know if the Silken Folk had made their home in someone you knew?”

The old man said, “There’s one way to tell. Put camphor under their pillow. There’s nothing the Silken Folk hate more.”

And so the boy saved up to buy a box of camphor. The scent of it was so pungent that he was almost overcome; but he wrapped it tightly, took it home, then, when his mother was making dinner, crept into her bedroom and slipped it under her pillow.

Night came. As always, the boy’s mother came in to kiss him goodnight. The boy waited. His skin crawled with terror and anticipation. The dreadful scent of camphor seemed to be in everything, but his mother seemed not to notice, and went to bed without a word.

The boy waited. The night wore on. The scent of camphor intensified. In the next room, he could hear his mother, tossing and turning in her sleep. Surely, soon, he would know the truth. The mother’s secret would be exposed—

Then, he heard an ominous sound that seemed to come from everywhere; a low, metallic buzzing noise, like termites in the woodwork. The crawling in his skin had become a terrible, loathsome itching. The boy got out of bed and looked down at his naked body. In the moonlight, he saw himself covered in living goosebumps. As he watched, he saw that each one was a tiny, translucent moth, hatching out from under his skin, with dusty feelers and velvety wings. The terrified boy began to scream.

He looked up and saw his mother standing in the doorway.

She said to him, “What have you done?”

But the boy could not reply. He opened his mouth, and a cloud of moths flew out into the warm air. The scent of camphor grew stronger. The itching under his skin grew worse. Now the insects were hatching out of every part of his body; crawling from under his fingernails; swarming out of him in waves; streaming from his nose and eyes; rising into the moonlight that shone through the open window.

The mother ran to his