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

and exquisite design. It was made from nine panels of silk, one for each of the Nine Worlds, and embroidered in runes with the secret names of the Silken People. And at the centre, like a gem, she placed the eye of the Lacewing King, which shone like a piece of amber. Then she began to turn the web, like a shadow-lantern, about the eye of the Lacewing King. Round and round went the amber eye, projecting the things the King had seen and the Worlds through which he had passed, onto the woven panels of silk.

Here was the court of the Moon Queen, with its floating lanterns. Here was the court of the Dragonfly Queen, its cliffs all draped with scarlet vines. Here was the court of the Honeycomb Queen, all decked with velvet and gold brocade. And this was the realm of the Harlequin; the rose garden; the mermaids. But as yet, there was no sign of the Clearwing Prince of the Moth Folk.

The shaman became impatient. The Queen was awaiting her findings. The Harlequin’s gaze reflects all Worlds—so surely the eye of the Lacewing King must have seen the Clearwing Prince? Over and over she turned her web, spinning it restlessly this way and that. Still the web did not reveal any sign of the lost Prince. With delicate fingers, she pulled at the threads to re-position the eye in the web. Dark as honeycomb it gleamed, but did not deliver the information she sought.

Of course, the Spider Moth did not know how the King had lost his mind. She did not know of the Harlequin’s kiss, or the builder of boats’ intervention. She did not know that, at the very moment at which the Harlequin had prepared to gaze into the eyes of the King, the Night Train had burst unexpectedly through the space between the Worlds, breaking the link between them and projecting them into darkness. In other words, she did not know that the Harlequin had failed to consume the mind of its victim entirely, but had merely stolen his memory and his awareness of who he was.

The Lacewing King, however, was unable to tell the shaman this, and the shaman was too preoccupied to read the signs he had given her. Obsessed by the thought of finding the Prince, and convinced that her theory was right, she continued to search the intricate web, her frustration growing with every hour.

Finally, the Spider Moth came to a galling conclusion. The left eye of the Lacewing King had never seen the Clearwing Prince. Perhaps, in the split-second horror of the Harlequin’s embrace, his field of vision had been obscured, and only the other eye had seen the immensity of the Worlds.

Her hands froze on the silken web. For a moment, she hesitated. But there was too much at stake to hesitate for very long. The Moth Queen was getting impatient. And after all, the prisoner was not one of their people. And so the shaman summoned the guards, and told them to bring her his other eye; and when she had it, she set it in place at the heart of her loom of stars, and looked through its amber-coloured lens into a world of honeycomb.

Meanwhile, the guards, on her orders, carried the Lacewing King from his cell. A blood-spattered bandage covered his face; his body was limp and lifeless. Death would have been a mercy then—and yet, the guards were gentle. They carried him to a secret door, down many flights of narrow stairs. They covered him with a sable cloak and pressed a flask into his hand. For a moment, they lifted their torches, revealing a hall of immeasurable size. And then, they left him lying there, and closed the secret door again, and climbed the stairs as fast as they could, and left him to whatever dreams might come to him in the darkness.

78

T

HE

M

ERMAIDS AND THE

M

IRROR

In a great city under the Sea, there lived a kingdom of mermaids. They lived in a labyrinth of caves, where curtains of phosphorescence lit corridors of crystal. Flickering fish swam in and around; Moon jellyfish floated like lanterns. The mermaids dwelt in this silvery space, singing; surrounded by bubbles; combing out their long pale hair with combs of gilded fishbone.

The mermaids were all very beautiful, with skin like palest mother-of-pearl, and hair of milled gold and spun silver; and tails that shone like the moon and the stars—not that they had ever seen the stars, for they never came to the surface, but stayed in the safety of their caverns, dancing and singing and playing games.

Except for one lonely mermaid, who was different to the rest. No one knew how that could be; but her skin was as brown as buttonweed, and her hair was black as a tiger shark’s eye; and her tail was striped like an angelfish in markings of yellow, orange, and blue.

The other mermaids had no idea how she had come among them. Perhaps she had been left behind by some passing shoal from the islands. Or maybe she was simply a freak—the lonely mermaid did not know. But she did not belong with the others, and yet she had no other place to go: the kingdom of caves was all she knew, and all that she had ever known.

And the other mermaids were not unkind. They tried to include her as much as they could. But everything they did for her served only to highlight how different she was. The jade and silver bangles they liked to wear on their long pale arms only emphasized how brown she was. And the combs they slid through their silken hair only caught in her thick black curls, or broke when she tried to use them. When she swam with the shoal, she felt garish and unnatural, and the colours of her angelfish tail looked strange and dangerous to them. And so the mermaid was lonely,