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

from having given up hope of claiming her—in fact, the card game had only been the first of several schemes whereby he hoped to delay her. If she missed the Night Train, he knew, she would be stranded in Hel for good, and a hundred swarms of bees would not be able to save her. And so he smiled and said to her:

“And now for the story I promised you.”

The Barefoot Princess allowed herself a tiny moment of victory. Time was short—even in Hel—and the Driver of the Night Train would not delay forever. But stories take their own time, even the ones that most need to be told, and the Barefoot Princess had a plan.

The Hallowe’en King, however, was in no great hurry to begin. “Will you take a glass of wine to celebrate your victory?” With his living hand, he poured a goblet of wine for the Barefoot Princess, and handed it to her, still smiling. She knew that the touch of his skeletal hand would bind her eternally to his command, and that even a taste of the wine would make her his slave forever.

And so she shook her head and said, “Your Majesty, wine would cloud my thoughts. I want to give all my attention to the story.”

The Hallowe’en King said, “I expect nothing more. But will you not take refreshment? Here are the finest fruits in Hel. Pomegranates; sugared grapes; purple figs and pineapples: or if your taste runs to sweeter things, there are candied locusts, honeycomb, ants in ginger syrup—”

“Thank you, no,” said the Barefoot Princess. “Your Majesty’s words are sweet enough.”

The Hallowe’en King raised his goblet to her. “Then I shall tell you my story,” he said, and started his tale in the usual way.

“There is a story the bees used to tell…”

81

T

HE

L

ACEWING

K

ING IN

D

ARKNESS

Meanwhile, in darkness, the Lacewing King slept uneasily and dreamed. In this World, his dreams were often the only thing that made sense to him. Now, he dreamed of the Barefoot Princess, playing cards at a table, opposite a one-eyed man with hair the shade of a moth’s wing—

Waking, in pain, he seemed on the verge of remembering something. He knew that man; he knew that girl—and the sudden pain in his heart was infinitely more than that of his blinding. The memory of another place seemed to drift through his consciousness—another place, long ago, far away, where a girl had cut off her own eyelids.

What was her name? He did not know. Perhaps, he thought, he had never known. And yet, he sensed that the story was part of why all this was happening. Passing once more into Dream, he heard a low and somehow familiar song:

“Long ago, and far away,

Far away and long ago—”

Was it a dream? He put out a hand and touched the cloak around him. It was thick and warm, and yet he knew it did not belong to him. And with that, came the memory of another cloak, both soft and warm, that lay across his shoulders and hummed with its own secret melody.

The King sat up. The darkness was dense and full as a beehive with movement. Tiny rustlings from below; sinister creaking from above; the sound of water from far away, and all around, an echo, as of some vast and cavernous space that seemed to go on forever. The bees were in his head, too, buzzing—or were they stinging?

He put out a hand and touched the flask the Moth Queen’s guards had left him. Because he was thirsty, he opened it and tried a mouthful of what was inside. It was a kind of spirit; sweet and flavoured with green ginger. That, too, evoked a memory; of dragonfly candies, ant cracknel, and pastries filled with wild strawberries and caterpillar marshmallow. And then came more of those memories: a golden chamber of velvet and silk; the scent and feel of ancient books; torchlight shadows in a darkness that was murmurous with bees.

The sweetened spirit stung his mouth, but he felt a little better.

“Where am I?” he said. “Who am I?” and, for the first time since the Harlequin’s kiss, the words he spoke made sense to him. He raised his fingers to his eyes, and felt the memory of their loss, and his anger and pain were tempered by a sudden sense of wonderment.

Something new was happening—something both dreadful and marvellous. Whether it came from the spirit, the dream, or the distress of what had occurred, the Lacewing King was unable to tell; but somehow, in the darkness, his memory was returning.

82

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HE

I

NSECTS

’ A

LLIANCE

In a forest, Worlds away, there was discord among the Silken Folk. Woodlice and termites, cockroaches and ants, battled with the bumblebees, the solitary bees, the moths and mayflies and honeybees, who were themselves at war with the spiders, the earwigs and crane flies and bluebottles, so that the woods were a hive of unrest, where no insect or spider felt safe.

One day, badgers moved into the woods. They were fierce and warlike, and they were always hungry. They ate the eggs of songbirds; they raided the nests of termites and wasps; they even broke into beehives to steal the precious honeycomb. The bees knew they must act quickly. And so they convened a meeting of all the insects—centipedes and cockroaches, shield bugs, greenfly, lacewings, even down to the ladybirds—to discuss the new arrivals.

It was a long and earnest debate. Many of the forest creatures had been enemies in the past. And yet, they were united in their fear of the badgers.

“Together, we have a chance,” said the bees. “Let us put aside our differences and form an Insects’ Alliance.”

And so the Insects’ Alliance was formed, and the honeybees led the rest in a plan to drive the enemy from their door. The badgers lived in a sett in the woods. Their young were left there alone, except for one old, half-blind