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

her fingers working furiously. But her voice was soft as she said, “My love, my dreams have been terrible. My head aches, I cannot sleep, my body is racked with tremors.”

The Spider King’s voice was soft and concerned. Beneath the helm of a thousand eyes, his face was, as always, in shadow. But now, the Spider Queen could hear the rasping voice of the Harlequin, and hear the sound of its razor claws beneath its silken tunic.

She turned away, feigning sickness, and whispered in a feeble voice, “Oh, my love, come closer. Hold me in your arms, I beg.”

The Spider King came closer and put his arms around the ailing Queen.

“Rock me,” she said. “My head aches so.”

And so the Spider King rocked her, and, as he did, the Spider Queen half-closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, all the while spinning her thread and watching the interloper from beneath her lowered lashes.

When the work was finished, and the King thought she was asleep, the Spider Queen then reached up behind the marvellous helm of a thousand eyes. With delicate fingers, she started to unbuckle the many fastenings. Slowly and cautiously, she worked, taking care not to alert her consort. Then, when the helm was finally free, she wrenched it from the Spider King, and, leaping from her sick-bed, her thread of spider-silk in her hand, she looped the skin of spider-silk twice around the Spider King and, lifting the helm of a thousand eyes, placed it onto her own head.

For a moment, the Harlequin was unveiled, its eyes widening in anger as it understood the treachery. Its eyes met those of the Spider Queen—but instead of a single pair of eyes, the thousand eyes of the helmet reflected its rage and astonishment. Then, as the Spider Queen pulled at her thread, she opened the doorway through the Worlds and spun the Harlequin like a top, projecting it into the darkness.

The Queen’s guards, hearing the sound of a disturbance in the royal chamber, came running to find nothing left of the King but the helm of a thousand eyes, now lying by the bedside, and the Queen, distraught, in her nightdress. Unwilling to confess to her guards how she had been deceived, she spun them a tale of how the Harlequin had planned to attack her in her sleep, and how her new consort had saved her, and had been lost between the Worlds. Then she wept—for she was young, and this was her first affair of the heart—and swore that she would never again give her love to anyone.

It was a vow she was to keep. Although the Spider Queen married again—many times—her consorts never lived beyond a single night of passion. She consumed them, every one, at the height of her pleasure, and theirs, and used their vigour to strengthen her own, their blood to enhance her power. As for the helmet of eyes, it became part of the crown of the Spider Queen, enabling her to look far beyond the borders of her kingdom. With it, she now reigned supreme—until at last the Lacewing King had robbed her of her supremacy.

But she never told anyone the truth about the Spider King; and although the stories of his fate were carried far across the Nine Worlds, only the honeybees knew the tale, and whispered it to the passing winds.

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It was through one of these many stories—not quite lies, but distortions—that the Moth Queen, Worlds away, had discovered the Lacewing King. Through the shaman’s power, she had looked into his dreams. And now a dream of her own began to take shape once more in her mind: a dream of returning home again, in triumph, with her people.

There is a story of how, long ago, Moths and Butterflies were part of the same great family. Both were brightly coloured; both were active night and day. Their King and Queen ruled together, though their natures were very different. The Moth King was sullen and taciturn; the Butterfly Queen was frivolous. Both led separate lives; he studying in his library, she making merry with her courtiers. But in spite of their differences, they stayed together for the sake of their son, the Clearwing Prince, who was loved by the whole court for his gaiety and sweetness.

One day, the young Prince disappeared. Suspicion fell on the Spider Moth—a powerful shaman, like all his kind—who was tutor to the Prince and a close friend of the Queen. It was known that the Spider Moth had long dreamed of reconciling the pair, and, on his loom of silk and stars, had spun threads into many Worlds in the hope of finding an answer. As it happened, on the day of the young Prince’s disappearance, the Spider Moth had been working on a web of particular complexity; a web that led into a World so different and new in every way that the Clearwing Prince, craving adventure (and against his tutor’s instructions), had followed it into that alien World, unable to find a way to return.

Too late, the Spider Moth had discovered his charge’s escapade. Following the silken thread that linked the Worlds together, he had gone to bring back the Prince. He might even have managed it, but for the anger of the King, who, on hearing of the disappearance of both his son and the shaman, was seized with a violent, terrible rage.

He marched to the shaman’s studio, to find the Queen already there, staring with dismay at the loom upon which the shaman had spun his thread. From the loom, a thousand skeins of finely spun moth spider-silk floated in the dusty air, each one leading to a World. For a moment the Moth King stared at the loom, then angrily addressed the Queen.

“This is your fault!” he told her. “If you had taken care of the boy instead of spending all your days in dancing and frivolity—”

The Queen was angry. “How dare