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

The girl reached into her basket and took out a piece of flatbread. “Are you hungry?” she asked him.

The Lacewing King said nothing.

The girl put the bread into his hand, and the King, who had not eaten for days, tore at it with his sharp teeth. He had no memory of a time when he had not been hungry; and yet, through the mist of his suffering, the young girl’s kindness had moved him. The look in her eyes had moved him, too; and the fact that she could see him. He seemed to remember a time—a place—where someone else had looked at him thus, and he felt a sudden certainty that something was about to change.

He finished the bread, and in silence, held out his closed hand to the girl. Then, he opened his hand to reveal a beautiful moth resting in his palm. The Lacewing King, in his exile, was unaware of his powers, and yet the Silken Folk in that place—the moths, and bees and cockroaches—knew him and served him in silence, knowing him to be their King.

For a moment the moth remained in the palm of the Lacewing King’s hand, then it took wing and flew upwards, out of the alley towards the light. The girl understood that this must be the stranger’s way of thanking her. And in her bed that night, she dreamed of a golden citadel lined with silk, deep underground, and awoke with the taste of salt on her lips and a fleeting scent of honeycomb.

69

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Meanwhile, the Barefoot Princess and the Engine Driver were crossing the barren plain of Hel. Death’s kingdom has no boundaries; no geography; no rules. A person can walk there forever without ever meeting another soul—although the dead are everywhere, their dust distressing the stagnant air. Nothing ever happens in Hel without the consent of its ruler; and he was a stern individual, whom some folk called the Hallowe’en King; some Alberon; some Hades.

From his citadel of bone, the Hallowe’en King watched the travellers. His hair, the shade of a moth’s wing, was held in place by a circlet of gold. One side of his face was a fleshless skull; the other, that of a handsome young man. Such is the traditional Aspect of the Kings and Queens of Hel, whose eyes see both into the world of Dream and into the world of the living.

It had been many, many years since he had tricked the Hallowe’en Queen into surrendering her crown. Since then, he had lived alone, surrounded only by the dead, watching the world that he had lost from his blue and living eye. His son, whom he had last seen when the boy was an infant, had grown to be very like him, but this had given him no joy. The Ruler of Hel has duties that cannot be evaded; and, from the day he accepted them, all he could do was watch from afar, as the boy grew ever more selfish, arrogant and cruel, until finally, he had turned his eyes away from his son forever.

Thus, the Hallowe’en King had not seen the Lacewing King’s change of heart. He had not watched as his wayward son had sowed the seeds of his exile and been banished into the world of the Folk with no memory of who he was. And now, as he surveyed his realm (for the ruler of Hel sees into all Worlds), he did not recognize the girl who now approached from across the plain, or know her as his blood kin.

The King was not used to visitors. Since his arrival, years ago, no one alive had dared to come within sight of his borders. His blue eye saw the living Worlds; his golden eye saw the World of the Dead. He levelled it now at the Barefoot Princess and on her companion. He was suspicious—he himself had taken the throne through trickery, much as his son had stolen the crown of a thousand eyes from the Spider Queen. Could this girl be a spy, perhaps some envoy of the Harlequin? Could she be here to take back his crown and make him pay for his treachery?

And yet the King was curious. Power was all that remained to him, and though sometimes he hated it, he feared that others might steal it away. Besides, it had been so very long since he had spoken with a living soul. His life as Ruler of Hel was bleak, and he longed for diversion. This girl, whose footsteps in the sand left a shimmer behind her, was no ordinary child: and her friend, a woman of the Folk, seemed unusually alert to the secret pathways of Dream.

Who were they? What did they want? And what was the swarm of golden bees that followed them between the Worlds? It was too much for the Hallowe’en King. He had to know the answers. And so he opened the bone-white gates of his floating citadel and allowed the travellers inside.

The Barefoot Princess and the Engine Driver looked around in amazement. There was hall after hall of marble and bone; corridors of dancing dust. There were mosaics of human teeth and passageways of polished skulls. And at the centre, the Hallowe’en King, regal on a throne that was made from a mountain of dead man’s ivory. The Barefoot Princess looked up at his face. One side was a death-mask. The other was that of a living man, who looked so like the Lacewing King that her heart almost broke with joy.

But the Barefoot Princess had listened well to the tales told by the bees. She knew that, whatever his kinship to her, the Ruler of Hel was by his nature, treacherous. She whispered to the Engine Driver:

“If he offers you food or drink, refuse. And take care to