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

was staring once more into the eye of the Hallowe’en King, seemingly oblivious to the fate that awaited them. And the bees were still humming their little song, louder now, and more urgently.

“Falling, falling,” sang the bees. “Falling into emptiness.

Lost, forgotten, broken, blind,

Dwindling to nothingness.”

The Engine Driver closed her eyes and reached for the hand of the Barefoot Princess. “Know that whatever happens,” she said, “I would not give up a moment of the time I spent in your company.”

The Barefoot Princess smiled at her. “It isn’t over yet,” she said. “At last, I know where we have to go.”

And, gathering all her courage, she began another story.

96

T

HE

R

EAPER OF

C

LOUDS AND THE

S

PINNER OF

S

TARS

In a land above the sky, there lived a simple reaper of clouds. Every morning he would go out and harvest great bundles of clouds from the sky-fields. The spinners would then wash them in snow, and comb them free of tangles and curls, ready for the dyers. Finally, the dyers would dip the spun thread in pink and gold and scarlet light, and hang them out in the evening to dry, ready for the sunset.

But the reaper’s heart was not in his work. Above him lay a field of stars, cold and sharp and luminous.

He loved to watch the spinners of stars, fixing the constellations in place and setting them on their courses.

“If only I could reach them,” he said. “If only I could see their world and live with them among the stars.”

But the world of the Star-Folk lay far away, above an icy mountain range which none of his people had ever reached. All the reaper of clouds could do was to observe them from afar, and dream of a life by starlight.

Meanwhile, above him, a spinner of stars was looking down from her lonely peak. Her world was all snow and ice, frozen into fabulous shapes. Giant mechanisms of ice kept the stars moving through the sky; and the snow that ran from the darkened peaks was used to wash the harvested clouds that she could see from her cold, bright perch.

The spinner’s job was to fix the stars and to keep them spinning on their course. She found this enormously tedious. The stars were placed so far apart that she never met another soul. She never heard the voices of the other Star-Folk, for even sound was frozen there. But she often looked with longing at the sunny cloud-fields below, and in her cold and frozen heart, wished that she could be there.

And so one day she deserted her post and followed the path of the melting snow down from the high peaks and glaciers, and finally onto the plain of clouds, on which the sun was rising.

For a moment she forgot herself in the joy of that sunrise. Sunrise in the star-fields was nothing much to exclaim about: another star in the galaxy, and not even in her sector. But there in the cloud-lands, the sun was huge; and now came the reapers of clouds with their scythes, laughing and singing as they worked.

But one of the reapers was different. He did not sing, or laugh, or smile.

The spinner of stars approached him. “Why do you look so sad?” she said.

The reaper looked up and saw her there. She was unlike any woman that he’d ever seen before. A woman like the far side of the Moon; a woman dark as the midnight sky. The reaper was half in love with her before he could even ask her name.

“Because I dream of stars,” he said. “But who are you, and why are you here?”

The spinner of stars looked back at him. She saw a man like the face of the Moon, with hair as bright as starlight. Her heart—her frozen, icy heart—began to beat like never before. And right there, she, too, fell in love, and took the hand of the reaper of clouds in her frozen fingers.

“I have dreamed of clouds all my life,” she said, and told him of her lifelong dream to see the clouds at sunset. “If we could live here together,” she said, “then my joy would be endless.”

“If I could see the stars with you,” he said, “my joy would be complete.”

But as the sun reached its zenith and the midday clouds began to rise, the spinner of stars began to feel strange. The sun’s warmth was unbearable: its light was suddenly far too bright. Alarmed, she realized the truth. Her frozen heart was melting.

The reaper of clouds saw her collapse and understood what was happening. “You cannot survive in my world,” he said. “I must take you back to the star-lands.”

And so he carried the spinner of stars back towards the snowfields. He passed the skirt of a glacier, he laboured up the glassy slopes. By the time they had reached the mountains, he was close to collapsing, although the spinner’s strength had returned as she went up the mountainside.

After a while, however, the reaper could go no further. The sun was setting, and now the clouds were pink and gold and scarlet. It was the most magical thing that the spinner of stars had ever seen, and her heart melted a little more, as she watched her first ever sunset.

But soon night fell; the stars came out. So close to the star-fields, their light was so bright that the reaper of clouds could scarcely breathe for joy. But the night had grown colder. The reaper’s vision began to fail. His heart beat ever more slowly, and the spinner of stars knew he would die if they went any further.

“Let me take you home,” she said, “to the golden cloud-fields.”

But the reaper of clouds shook his head. “You’ll die if you go back there,” he said. “The sun will melt you into rain.”

And so they sat there, hand-in-hand, under the brilliant, starry sky. All the stars were spinning now—except for a single square of sky,