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

you!” she said. “If only you had paid more attention to him, instead of to your dusty old books—”

“The Spider Moth was your creature!” said the Moth King. “Perhaps you and he concocted this plan to steal my son away from me!”

At this unfair accusation, the Butterfly Queen’s anger grew. “How dare you accuse me?” she said. “That child—our son—is the only good thing that you and I have ever achieved together. The shaman is like a father to him—more of a father than you ever were—”

At these words, the Moth King was seized with a terrible jealousy. The Spider Moth’s studio was filled with rare and precious artefacts. Blindly, in his rage, he lashed out: tumbled furniture; hurled ancient grimoires to the floor; smashed vials of precious spices; scattered papers to the winds. Then, finally, disastrously, he pushed over the loom of silk and stars upon which the shaman had spun his web, so that the skeins that linked the Worlds were broken and lost forever.

Seeing this, the Butterfly Queen gave a cry of grief and despair. The Moth King was instantly sorry for his moment of madness. But, without the Spider Moth, there was no way of mending the loom, or of repairing the broken threads. And so the King and Queen parted ways, bitterly, and forever. Their courtiers were divided: some went with the Moth King; some with the Butterfly Queen. And from that day forth, they never met again, except as enemies. The Butterflies kept to the daytime, and the Moths to the darkness, although they were always drawn to the light, reminding them of what they had lost. And wherever they went, throughout the Worlds, the two tribes sought the vanished Prince, not knowing whether he had grown up to be a Butterfly or a Moth—or indeed, if he had grown up at all.

And until they find him, the story says, Butterflies and Moths will always be enemies, each keeping to their half of the day, forever alone and incomplete.

76

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HE

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ACEWING

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ING AND THE

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OTH

The Moth Queen was a descendant of these rival factions. For many years she had ruled underground, fighting her rivals, the Butterflies, and their leader, the Butterfly King. For many years, the two factions had kept to their own territories, the Butterflies ruling the day, the Moths coming into their own at night. Both factions hated each other with a terrible bitterness. Both blamed the loss of the Clearwing Prince on the other faction; both firmly believed the lost Prince to be one of their own.

But now, with the arrival of the Lacewing King, the Moth Queen thought that maybe she could see a way to end the war. Not that she wanted peace; no. Her hatred of the Butterfly King had consumed her too much for that. What she wanted—with all her heart—was to find the long-lost Prince, and with his help, and under his flag, to bring about the extermination of the Butterflies.

The Lacewing King, she told herself, with his eyes that had looked into those of the Harlequin, must surely know where to find the Prince. And with the Prince to lead them, the Moths would then possess the means to eradicate their rivals for good. Of course, she said none of this to the King. Instead, she summoned her shaman again, the shadowy, treacherous Spider Moth.

“The eyes of the Spider King have seen into all the Worlds,” she said. “Somewhere in his mind, there lies the secret to our lost Prince.”

“His mind is in pieces,” the shaman said. “Only the Harlequin itself can restore his sanity.”

The Moth Queen drew her feathery cloak around her slender shoulders. “But we don’t need his sanity,” she said to the Spider Moth. “All we really need, after all, is to see what the Spider King has seen; to go where the Spider King has been, into the spaces between the Worlds.”

The shaman frowned. Her dark eyes shone. Her face was awash with shadows.

“Majesty,” she said at last. “Dreams are unreliable. Like pieces of light from a crystal, they flit from one thought to another, never settling for long; never focusing long enough to make a connection with this world. But—” Now the shaman frowned again, her gaze moving to that of the Queen. “Perhaps we do not need his dreams. All we need, after all, is to see what the Spider King has seen. And for that, all we really need from him is—”

“What?” said the Moth Queen.

“My Lady. An eye.”

The Moth Queen stood very still. “An eye?”

“The eye remembers,” the shaman said, “more than memory ever could. Every image, every face, is held within its orbit. Give me the eye of the Spider King, and let me build a web of dreams with which to catch his memories.”

Once more, the Moth Queen was silent. She hated the thought of what she must do, and yet, a Queen must sometimes make the cruellest of choices. Who was this man to her, after all, compared with the good of her people? And what use was an eye to a man with no understanding of what he saw?

“Your Majesty,” said the shaman. “We must.”

The Moth Queen sighed and turned to her guards, who were awaiting her command. “Very well,” she said at last. “Bring me the eye of the Spider King.”

77

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And so they seized the Lacewing King, and held him while they cut out his eye. He did not give it up easily, but fought them like the madman that he was, cursing them in a language that he had long forgotten he knew. But the Moth guards were innumerable, and the King was only one man, and finally they took his left eye, and brought it to the shaman.

Meanwhile, on her loom of stars, the Spider Moth began to spin. She spun a marvellous, intricate web of magical