The Honeydrop Tree

a novelette

Matthew S. Rosin

Distributed by Smashwords.

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Cover by Matthew S. Rosin.

www.matthewsrosin.com

For Devin.

Table of Contents

Begin reading The Honeydrop Tree

Acknowledgments

About Matthew S. Rosin

“They just appear.”

The honey hunter blinked. “What do you mean, ‘appear’?”

The distributor sipped his wine and leaned forward. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said. “Several nights a year, we put palettes stacked with supplies around a tree—fertilizer, metals, tools, you name it. Everything is off the books. In the morning, it’s all gone and the jars of honey are in a hole in the tree.”

The distributor poured more wine into his glass. “I learned the place from my old man,” he said.

The honey hunter sat back in her chair, unsure what to think. She had bought jars of Apistown honey from this man’s secret cache for years, re-selling them to the agents of rich honey connoisseurs. More than any other, this distributor had always seemed like a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy.

“Come on,” the honey hunter said finally. “You know me. Tell me the truth.”

“No, it’s true,” the distributor protested. “It’s always been this way.”

“Well, who takes the fertilizer?”

“No idea,” said the distributor. “We never see them.”

The honey hunter removed her glasses with one hand and rubbed her eyes with the other. “Don’t you watch the spot?” she asked.

“Can’t—the exchange won’t happen.” The distributor slumped back in his chair. “Look, when I took over the business, I wanted to know the truth, too. I sat in the dark all night. I set up cameras. But nothing happened. Everything we piled up around the tree just sat there. No honey.” His face darkened. “I learned to follow the rules and do what my old man taught me.”

The honey hunter pondered the strange story. She muttered, more to herself than to her companion, “Fertilizer?”

“Yeah,” the distributor said. “There’s even an old story about a piano.”

The honey hunter rubbed her eyes again. The unreason of it all carved a furrow in her brow.

The next day, the honey hunter visited her best customer, a longtime agent who bought Apistown honey for a select list of clients.

“Please give your client my compliments on the wine,” the honey hunter said. “A government minister, is he?”

“Something like that,” the agent said curtly. “Did my client’s wine loosen any tongues?”

“You won’t believe this,” the honey hunter said.

She told the strange story to the agent, who told it to his client, who told it to another honey connoisseur, and so on. In some tellings, the distributor with the loose lips never acquired Apistown honey again. In others, he died mysteriously.

No one in the black market for Apistown honey asked about its origin again. The thought of being banished from the cult was unbearable. The honey’s savory overtones and hint of spice justified all discretion, contra-flow of resources, and reverence.

Instead, honey connoisseurs took pleasure in imagining what nectar the bees regurgitated to yield such a flavor. They inspected each jar for clues. The proper angle of light, cast into a jar and swallowed by the amber substance within, revealed the word “Apistown,” etched above a hexagon that surrounded a tree.

The glow drew closer. A sweet smell and buzzing drone filled the air, and the dark tunnel opened to a vast forest clearing.

A great tree towered at the center of the clearing. Its trunk was rippled with contours and crevices, like strands of muscle ready to burst through the bark, streaked with dark sap. Roots radiated outward, arced into the air like bent knees, and plunged deep into the earth.

Thick, sap-stained branches reached for the edges of the clearing, high above the ground. Woody tendrils, covered with leaves, sprang up from the branches. They tangled in search of sunlight and wove a canopy that blocked out the sky.

But the clearing was not dark. Hundreds of giant, swollen fruit hung like ornaments from the branches. The fruit blushed with a rhythmic pulse, like cheeks embarrassed then redeemed, and bathed the clearing in shifting, amber light.

Beads of honey seeped like sweat through the tender skin of the fruit. One bead joined another and crept slowly downward. Grand beads gathered and swelled at the undersides of the fruit, until gravity called them to drop.

Ping!

Bulbous metal vessels waited on the ground below, ready to catch the honey drops. A funnel crowned each one and stretched wide like an unhinged jaw, as if loath to abandon a single drop. There was barely enough room to walk among the many vessels, from the clearing’s outermost reach to the black metal fence that guarded the trunk and roots at its center.

The fence was as tall as a grown man. Each vertical bar bore a frightening point that could slice flesh, and the gate to the other side was chained and locked shut.

On the gate, an old sign read: No children inside the fence. Bless our children.

A truck rattled forward to the edge of the clearing, through a forest tunnel barely large enough to navigate, and stopped. A large metal vat sat atop the truck, holding only the resonant tones of the engine’s idle, ready to rotate when filled.

Amelia found Cassie in front of their school. She grabbed her friend’s wrist.

“I had the most amazing dream last night,” Amelia whispered. “I drove a vat truck like my dad’s down a dark tunnel, and at the end there was a giant tree that dripped honey!”

Cassie twisted around, her mouth agape. Her black hair swung around a fraction of a moment later. “So did I,” she said.

Amelia gasped. “What? Tell me! What happened?”

“I drove down a tunnel and stopped at a clearing,” Cassie whispered. “There was a huge tree, with ugly fruit that dripped honey into big metal things.”

Amelia’s eyes widened. “And then?”

Cassie cocked her head a little to one side. “And what?”

“Did you get out of the truck?” Amelia squeezed Cassie’s wrist.

Cassie wrenched her arm from Amelia’s grasp. “That hurts, Amelia,” she objected, rubbing her wrist.

Amelia winced, surprised at how tightly she had gripped her friend’s arm.

“No,” Cassie said finally. “I sat in the truck and watched. Then I woke up.”

Amelia frowned. “That’s not how it happened,” she said. “I started to open the door. I wanted to catch honey on my tongue. But I woke up before—”

Two hands tickled Amelia’s sides from behind.

Amelia whirled around. “Isaac, you know I hate that!”

Isaac beamed at Amelia’s fury. But his smile quickly fell away. He leaned forward, his eyes darting from Amelia to Cassie and back again. “I had a really weird dream last night,” Isaac whispered.

Amelia forgot her anger. “You, too? The tree that dripped honey?”

Isaac flushed. “No way!” He looked at Cassie. “Both of you?”

Cassie nodded.

Isaac smiled, the right side of his mouth pulled slightly higher than the left, and gazed absently at a spot between his two friends. “The honey tasted—”

Amelia cried, “You tasted it?”

Isaac stepped back and looked at Amelia skeptically. “Yeah, didn’t you?”

Amelia scowled.

“It was . . . hard to describe,” Isaac said. “Not like the honey from school or the hives at my house.”

Amelia whispered, “I think it’s export honey.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cassie said.

“How do you know?” Amelia challenged. “You don’t know where the vat trucks get it. The place is secret until high school.”

Cassie countered, “Do you really think there’s going to be a tree that drips honey when we start high school next week?”

“I think it’s export honey, too,” Isaac confided.

Cassie rolled her eyes as the morning bell sounded above their heads.

“Let’s meet at the magnolia tree after lunch,” Amelia said. “We need to talk about this.”

Isaac nodded, his mop of blond hair bouncing in agreement.

Cassie sighed. “Yeah, OK.”

That morning, the eighth grade was abuzz. In the classrooms, in the gardens, and around the hives, whenever a teacher was out of earshot, the students mulled the strange dream each had dreamed the night before. One story confirmed another—except for Amelia’s and Isaac’s.

Only Amelia and Isaac had tried to get out of the truck. Only Isaac had tasted the honey.

As lunchtime approached, Amelia could not concentrate. The more she thought about the dream, the more irritated she became. Why had Isaac gone further? Why was the tree a secret?

The principal, Jolene, entered the classroom. She wore the long, indigo topcoat that distinguished the town’s three matrons, of whom Jolene was the youngest. The bottom of Jolene’s coat almost grazed the floor, and she appeared to float as she moved.

“I know you’re all excited—tomorrow is the last day of eighth grade, and high school begins on Monday,” Jolene said with a smile. “This is a huge step. Soon you’ll choose your apprenticeships and learn what it takes to trade honey. What questions do you have about the move? Is anyone still unsure what to bring to your dormitory?”

Amelia still had not packed for the move away from home, but she didn’t listen as Jolene spoke. She could barely sit still.

Amelia looked across the room at Isaac. He did not notice. He stared at his desk and tapped it with one finger, over and over.

A honey bee flew from one magnolia flower to another. Specks of pollen clung to her hairy head and thorax. The bee licked her front legs as she flew, brushed the pollen from where it had gathered, and deftly shuttled it to her back legs. She alighted on the edge of a petal. Back and forth, her hind legs packed the pollen in moist little bundles for her flight home.

Cassie crouched by the lowest magnolia branch and watched. She imagined how she might look through the bee’s multifaceted eyes and took slow, shallow breaths to avoid spurring the bee into flight.

But the bee’s wings blurred; she rose and spirited away.

My hair must have moved in the breeze, Cassie thought.

Just then, Amelia entered Cassie’s peripheral vision. Cassie stood up sharply, yanked from one world into another.

Amelia sat on the branch, next to where the bee had been, and brushed a crumb from her blouse. Isaac sat near the trunk and worked a wad of beeswax with his teeth.

“I want to find the honey tree,” Amelia said.

Isaac smiled.

Cassie captured Amelia’s gaze and asked, “What makes you think the tree is real?” Cassie waited for an answer, but none came. She turned to Isaac. “It makes no sense. What kind of bee makes honey for a tree?”

Amelia and Isaac knew the idea sounded ludicrous. But the dream pulled on their imaginations. They knew there was an explanation. There had to be.

“Maybe it’s a different kind of bee,” Isaac said, looking away.

“Oh, come on,” Cassie pressed. “How would the tree get the honey out from under the wax? And that much of it?”

“All of us had the same dream,” Amelia countered. “What else could it mean?”

If not for the well of certainty the dream had tapped in Amelia’s gut, her confidence might have shrunk before Cassie’s skeptical eyes.

“OK, you’re right—we don’t know for sure,” Amelia offered. “So let’s find out.”

Amelia had no intention of finding the truth without Cassie. Like no one else Amelia knew, Cassie could see far ahead of even the best plans, even if she wasn’t always right.

Isaac looked back at Cassie and said, “You need to come, too.”

Cassie sighed, knowing her friends would not be dissuaded. “Fine,” she said. “What do you want to do?”

“We can follow a vat truck and see where it goes,” Isaac suggested.

“Yeah, good,” Amelia said. “We can start down Amber Road and follow the first truck that catches up to us.”

“What if we can’t keep up with the truck?” Cassie asked.

“Then we keep moving and follow the next truck,” Amelia responded. “There’s always another one.”

Cassie shrugged in assent.

“Sounds good,” Isaac said. His voice cracked a little as energy surged through his body. His tongue swept the wad of beeswax from one side of his mouth to the other.

Cassie said, “We’ll need to be home for dinner, or our parents will wonder where we’ve been.”

“Let’s tell them we’re going to each other’s houses after school tomorrow,” Isaac said. “We get out early for the last day. That gives us a few hours.”

Cassie scowled at the thought of lying to her mother.

“Maybe our parents won’t ask where we’re going,” Amelia offered.

Cassie’s brow and mouth relaxed a little.

Isaac lay back and stretched his long frame on the branch. During the past year, he had begun to change from a skinny kid into a wiry young man. Isaac put his hands behind his head and flexed his biceps.

Amelia made a show of rolling her eyes.

Cassie looked away.

Amelia pushed aside a lock of brown hair that tickled her cheek and wondered aloud, “Why keep the tree a secret?” Her other hand explored the magnolia’s bark.

“Maybe there’s a good reason,” Cassie said quietly, resigned to Amelia’s certainty.

An uncomfortable silence settled among the three friends until the school bell called them back to class.

Amelia jumped off the magnolia branch. “We’ll leave from here tomorrow after school,” she said.

The friends made their way back among the flowers, toward row upon row of hives and the school building beyond.

The students had spent much of their lives on these grounds. They planted small plots of flowers and crops, measured their size, and predicted their yield. They prepared the weak soil with fertilizer. They observed the bees at work, harvested honey from the school hives, and wrote stories about the lives of the queens, drones, and workers.

If only the bees could tell us the truth, Amelia thought.

As the three walked, a small burning sensation flared between Cassie’s shoulder blades. During the past several weeks, the spot had begun to irritate her during anxious moments. Cassie scratched it and kept walking, unsure what the feeling could mean.

Amelia crunched her way up the gravel walkway, beneath the branches of the old oak tree in her family’s front yard. The tree offered respite from the sun on hot days like this one. Shadows of leaves danced across the intricate bees and hexagons that Amelia’s mother, Caroline, had etched into the front door of their house.

The edge of a hive stuck out just beyond one corner of the house. The bees buzzed busily, making the most of the remaining daylight. Amelia was fascinated by the hives, especially by the space between one layer of comb and the next. The space had to be just right: wide enough for the bees to move freely, but not so spacious that they would build between the combs, making it difficult to harvest the honey within.

The family spinner sat by the front door. When the time came, Amelia and her father, Terry, would pull combs from the hives and carefully cut the wax from atop the cells. Her father would put a few combs in the arms of the spinner’s reservoir, close the lid, and signal Amelia to turn the crank. Amelia would turn it as quickly and steadily as she could, spinning honey from the combs until, just when her arms began to ache, Terry would hold up his hand for her to stop. Together, they would open the lid and smile at the luxurious pool of honey inside.

Amelia caught a whiff of her mother’s honey flatbread when she reached the front door. She pulled the door open and nearly ran into a surprised young girl. Amelia did not remember the girl’s name. The girl flashed a quick smile, ducked her head, and pushed past Amelia.

Amelia closed the door behind her and called out, “Mom, I’m home!”

“I’m in the living room, sweetie,” Caroline called back. “Just finished giving my last lesson for the day.”

From an early age, there was no doubt that Caroline would one day be the town piano teacher. Every decade or two, the town’s sole piano passed from one living room and one generation to another, to the woman most gifted on the instrument. With her, the instrument was born anew, its keys retuned to the intervals its caretaker judged most expressive, for they must be as the space between combs in a hive: just right for the woman who lives within them. Caroline had received the piano from her own teacher, Jolene. These days, Caroline left the house before sunrise each morning for her job etching jars and, in the afternoon, rushed home to teach piano.

Caroline was sure that Amelia’s friend Cassie would be the next piano teacher.

Amelia envied her mother’s and Cassie’s gifts and the overflow of people into the yard whenever her mother performed. But Amelia distrusted the piano. The town’s older residents held Caroline at arm’s length. Even Amelia’s grandparents regarded Caroline with something more like respect than love. Side conversations buzzed about her everywhere she went. Amelia had once asked her mother why, but Caroline had only sighed in response.

As Amelia entered the living room, Caroline asked, “Anything interesting happen at school today?”

“Not really,” Amelia said.

Caroline suppressed a raised eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“Everyone’s packing for high school,” Amelia said.

“How far along are you?”

“I haven’t started yet,” Amelia confessed.

Caroline frowned. “Start tonight.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Amelia sighed. “I have the weekend to pack.”

“You need to start thinking of yourself as an apprentice,” Caroline said. “Please don’t wait.”

Caroline moved to the kitchen. “Sweetie, will you bring in today’s provisions?” she asked. “The meat and vegetables just arrived. Your father will be home soon, and we’ll prepare dinner.”

“Sure,” Amelia said. When she reached the back door and was out of sight, Amelia added, “By the way, I’ll be busy tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be home for dinner.”

Caroline stopped cold, mid-stride, and steadied herself against the kitchen counter. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Cassie and I are going to Isaac’s house after school,” Amelia called back.

For a moment, Caroline could not speak. She steeled herself against the first stirring of pain between her shoulder blades. “That’s fine,” she said finally, in the calmest voice she could muster. “So long as it doesn’t interfere with your packing.”

Amelia went outside.

Caroline’s fingers pounded unheard chords on the kitchen countertop. This was the only way Caroline had found to discharge the pain. What began just before high school as a small burning sensation had lately become a contraction of muscle that twisted Caroline’s shoulders back in an awkward pinch. Caroline imagined that a dissonant chord rippled from her fingertips and massaged her aching frame. Gradually, her shoulders returned to their normal posture.

Every evening for the past month, Caroline and Terry had mulled over their fear of this very week. Her ear was attuned to any note of untruth in Amelia’s voice. Caroline imagined the awful conversation she and Terry would have after Amelia went to bed that night and brushed a tear from the corner of her left eye.

Isaac kneeled beneath the magnolia tree. He picked up a small, narrow stone and weighed it in each hand.

Just right, he thought.

With a bit of filing to one end, Isaac could wedge the stone into the inner wall of his old honey spinner’s reservoir. There, the stone would wait among the others Isaac had inserted at chosen intervals, until he turned the crank. The spinner’s empty, comb-less arms would whirl and strike each stone in passing, transforming the worn out tool into a percussion instrument.

Isaac’s mother was pregnant. When it came time to summon a soul to the little body in his mother’s belly, Isaac’s neighbors would gather in the living room to sing, and Isaac would accompany them with his instrument.

He would turn the crank slowly at first.

BAP.

Click-et, clack-et, tee.

SNAP. Et-pop-et.

Tee. BOP . . .

Gradually, Isaac would turn the crank faster and faster, and a looping torrent of noise would rush forth.

. . . BAP. ClicketclacketySNAP. Et-poppet-teeBOP-BAP. Clicketclackety . . .

His sibling’s soul, called by the neighbors’ singing, would climb the rhythms Isaac spun like a ladder to his mother’s womb. Once at home, the soul would kick the ladder away, and one stone after another would fly loose inside Isaac’s spinner.

Isaac already had younger twin sisters, Azalea and Iris. Now eight years old, the two girls had never spoken. Isaac’s parents believed the girls’ souls had been wounded in their shared climb from earth to flesh. His parents spent hours each day singing to the girls, desperate to coax words from their tongues. Isaac made sure he was somewhere else—if not with Amelia and Cassie, then collecting stones.

Isaac thought his sisters’ eyes spoke well enough. Surely this is no way to treat another soul, whether it can sing or not, he thought. Still, Isaac did not want the same silence to fall upon his new brother or sister. This baby would bring joy back to his family, Isaac hoped. And his parents would notice his contribution.

Isaac slipped the stone into his hip bag, stood, and—

“Gah!” Isaac jumped and whirled around in the air.

Amelia pulled her hands back from Isaac’s sides. Behind her, Cassie looked away.

“Serves you right,” Amelia bragged.

“Amelia!” Isaac yelled, feigning displeasure.

“Are we doing this or not?” Cassie asked.

Amelia turned to Cassie. “Did you say anything to your mom?”

“Yeah,” Cassie said uneasily. “She asked when I would be home. I said around dinnertime. She asked why, and I said I was going over to your house.”

“I told my parents we were going over to Isaac’s,” Amelia said. “What about you, Isaac?”

“They didn’t ask,” Isaac responded.

Cassie grimaced. Isaac probably had already known his parents wouldn’t ask when he suggested lying, she thought.

Amelia sensed an argument close at hand and started walking toward the school’s back gate. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The three friends set off. Amelia pressed through the gate first, followed by Isaac and Cassie. The gate’s hinges protested each exit with a shrill whine.

The gate opened to a crooked finger of wooded land that separated the school from Amber Road. A short walk to the east, the finger became a vast forest where vat trucks disappeared empty and returned full. The three friends had explored the edges of the forest many times over the years but had never delved deeply into it.

Amelia followed the tree line alongside Amber Road into the forest, careful to stay far enough from the road to remain unseen. Isaac followed close behind.

Cassie brought up the rear, unable to shake the image of Amelia and Isaac flirting back at the magnolia tree. While her thoughts stewed, Cassie’s shoe caught on a fallen branch. She stumbled forward and caught herself, a breath between her and a low tree limb.

Cassie snapped to attention and felt a low vibration rise from the earth into her feet. She called ahead to her friends. “Wait!”

Amelia and Isaac stopped and listened. The ground rumbled slightly beneath them, as if the earth pulled a long, labored breath through the trees. Rattling wheels and the resonant drone of an empty vat sounded from the road. A vat truck came into view.

The three friends ducked behind a bush. When the truck was far enough ahead that the driver would not spot them, Amelia began to jog after it, keeping to the shadow of the forest. Isaac and Cassie jogged behind, hurdling logs and sidestepping low brush.

But after a half-hour of jogging, the truck had pulled too far ahead to follow. The three friends were alone, deeper in the forest than they had ever traveled before, beyond even the side road to the high school.

Amelia stopped and put her hands on her knees, out of breath. She looked apologetically at Cassie, who had predicted this would happen.

“We’ll follow the next one, like you said,” Cassie replied, not missing a beat.

“There’s always another one,” Isaac agreed.

Amelia and Cassie sat together on a log to listen for the next truck. Isaac quietly moved about to examine small stones.

After waiting in silence for what seemed like forever, Cassie asked, “Do you really think the tree is real?”

Amelia and Isaac nodded yes. They looked at Cassie expectantly.

Cassie sighed. “I guess it’s hard to imagine all of us having the same dream unless—”

Cassie sat at attention. A few seconds later, Amelia and Isaac felt the same rumble as before. Another truck rattled into view. Amelia sighed with relief.

The three friends followed the second truck for only about five minutes before it slowed. They each hid behind a tree and watched. The truck turned sharply off the road, directly into the forest on the other side. The truck pushed past low brush and several long branches and disappeared into the shadow behind.

“No way,” whispered Isaac.

“Come on,” Amelia said. She dashed across the road to the place where the truck had vanished. Amelia leaped over a low bush, pushed past a branch, and was gone.

Isaac and Cassie looked at each other.

Isaac smiled and said, “Let’s go.”

Isaac and Cassie nearly bumped into Amelia as they careened into the shadow. Their eyes adjusted to the low light, and the three found themselves at the end of a hidden, narrow road. Trees lined both sides. Branches reached not far overhead, over and across the road, and intersected to form a low tunnel. Only occasional shards of afternoon light reached the ground.

Amelia and Isaac looked around in wonder and smiled: this was the tunnel from the dream.

Cassie pointed ahead and whispered, “The truck!”

The friends could just make out the back of the truck as it squeezed through the tunnel and rounded a corner. They jogged after it down the dark road, careful to sidestep each shard of light and keep the truck dimly in view.

Around another corner, a strange amber glow appeared, not far ahead. The truck stopped at its edge.

A clearing.

Amelia moved back among the trees and led her friends toward the glow, Isaac’s toes nearly on her heels. A low, buzzing hum filled their ears and tickled the hairs on their necks. A sweet smell filled their nostrils.

The three crept to the edge of the clearing, near where the truck had stopped. The driver was still inside. Cassie waved Amelia and Isaac to a bush where they could crouch together, out of sight, and see into the clearing.

The tree stood exactly as they had dreamed it. Its large, blushing fruit illuminated the clearing, the air aquiver with amber light. The ground below was a sea of metal vessels, their funnels agape. The severe lines of the metal fence encircled the tree’s trunk. Its sharp points were like tiny daggers, more frightening than in the dream, and the chain and lock on its gate looked formidable.

The old sign warned: No children inside the fence. Bless our children.

Amelia stared at the nearest fruit. An amber bead swelled at its base. The bead dropped, fell toward a vessel’s waiting maw, and struck its funnel.

Ping!

Amelia imagined her mouth open to the canopy. She smiled. Today she would redeem her dream’s abortive end.

Isaac’s stomach gurgled. Each ping! invited him to taste his dream anew. Energy coursed from his fingertips through his palms, elbows, and armpits.

Cassie stared warily at the tree, caught off balance by the fusion of dream and reality. She looked to her friends to steady herself, but Amelia and Isaac were transfixed, their eyes consumed.

The truck’s door groaned open, and the driver stepped out.

Amelia and Isaac jolted back to attention, and the three friends pulled their heads low for a safer look. They recognized the driver’s blue jumpsuit immediately. Several such suits hung in the closets of Amelia’s and Isaac’s fathers, and Cassie dimly remembered her late father heading to work in the same clothes. But they had never seen a hat like the one the driver pulled low on his forehead. Its brim was comically long, like a grand brow that blocked any view of the canopy overhead.

The driver opened a compartment on the side of his truck and removed a long, thick hose. He attached one end to a valve below the truck’s vat. Then he twisted the other end into the bulbous bottom of a nearby vessel.

Click!

The hose snapped into place, and the truck began to bellow and slurp. Its vat turned the sweet payload as it entered. After a few minutes, the driver released the hose from the vessel and attached it to another.

Click!

The driver focused only on his work. He never looked at the tree.

When his appointed vessels had been emptied, the driver returned the hose to its compartment and got back into the truck. The truck turned and lumbered sluggishly back down the forest tunnel. The sound of its struggling engine decayed slowly.

The three friends looked at each other and stood. Cassie hung back at the edge of the forest, while Amelia and Isaac stepped into the clearing. The two walked among the vessels, their faces turned up to the canopy. The ground sucked at their shoes.

Above, a bead of honey grew too heavy and dropped. It gathered specks of dust as it plummeted.

Splat!

The drop swallowed Amelia’s nose, and sweetness flooded her nostrils. Her tongue ventured forth as a snail from its shell and drew a taste into its hiding place.

Isaac and even Cassie laughed at the sight.

Amelia smiled. This was definitely not her family’s honey, nor was it the honey from the hives at school. Those tasted like flowers. This honey did not: its floral qualities were mere flourish to a strange, savory essence.

Amelia imagined the bees who spent themselves to fashion the unexpected flavor: the harvester who licked nectar from a flower’s center, transformed it inside her, and regurgitated when she returned home; the young house bee who swallowed her sister’s yield, swished it about, and spit the sweet liquid into a hexagonal cell; and the many whose wings buzzed furiously until the honey grew thick.

Amelia imagined an invisible hand moving across the comb. Where the hand pointed, the bees capped the comb with wax for the winter; where the hand gave no direction, the bees left the honey uncovered. The tree pulled the exposed honey into its veins and through its branches, and expressed it like sweat through the skin of its fruit.

Enthralled by the vision, Amelia opened her mouth to the canopy and skipped in long arcs around the tree.

Isaac shouted, “Ha!” He careened about the fence, head thrown back.

A droplet struck his tongue.

The flavor from Isaac’s dream sprang fully to life. He imagined the great tree as a stately, masculine beast, its mouth turned inward, sipping honey from the comb inside itself. Each sip strengthened the tree’s muscled trunk and broad arms.

Isaac spread his arms as far as they could reach and imagined a fence around himself.

Cassie stood at the edge of the clearing and watched her friends buzz about. The spot between her shoulder blades burned, as if aflame with venom. Cassie rubbed the spot with one hand. As she did, her eyes settled on the old sign.

No children inside the fence. Bless our children.

Cassie read the words over and over. What does that mean? she wondered. The more she mulled the message, the stranger it became.

Cassie looked back at her friends. Amelia’s hair was matted with honey, and her blouse and skirt were ruined. Isaac was drenched. His smile was radiant, but a fury Cassie had never seen before consumed Isaac’s eyes, as if a foreign soul animated his body.

Cassie shuddered. At the same moment, a tremor rumbled beneath her feet.

“Another truck!” Cassie shouted. “Hide!”

Amelia wiped her mouth, pushed a clump of sticky hair from her eyes, and ran to Cassie. Isaac stood for a moment, confused. Then he followed. The three friends hid behind a bush, only moments before a new truck entered the clearing.

How long had it been? Amelia wondered. If we leave now—and hurry—I can wash my hair and put on clean clothes before dinner.

Amelia led her friends carefully away from the truck and headed back toward home, alongside the forest tunnel. With each twig she pushed aside, Amelia’s thoughts turned back to the dripping fruit, as if she pulled against an invisible tether. The fruit colonized her attention—until something surprised her.

Isaac pulled ahead.

Isaac never runs ahead, Amelia thought.

Amelia and Cassie watched as Isaac barreled forward. Leaves and small branches struck him in the face, but he did not notice or care. His pace did not waver, and the distance between him and his friends grew.

When he reached the end of the tunnel, Isaac stopped, suddenly awake to his surroundings. He walked to the edge of Amber Road, removed his hip bag, and dumped his day’s collection of stones on the ground. Amelia and Cassie caught up as Isaac kneeled. He arranged the scattered stones to form an X.

Cassie asked, “Isaac, what are you doing? Those are for your spinner.”

Isaac did not speak. He stood and considered the X. Then he ran toward town alongside Amber Road.

Amelia lingered for a moment, her eyes fixed on the X. Then she ran behind Isaac without a word.

Cassie watched her friends disappear ahead. She looked down at the mark on the ground. She wanted to kick the X to pieces, but her feet refused to do so.

Cassie ran back to town, confused and far behind.

Amelia’s fresh blouse and skirt caught the light of her mother’s beeswax candles. She sat down to dinner inside the glow, refreshed from her shower, her mother and father seated at either side.

Her stomach gnawed.

The family held hands and bowed their heads for the prayer of thanksgiving. On any other evening, Terry’s voice would have swayed melodiously with the prayer’s cadence, a bridge from work to rest.

But not tonight.

Terry’s voice was sharp. “We give thanks—” He stopped and rolled his neck from left to right. “We give thanks for our neighbors who walked before us, whose souls resound in today’s bounty.”

Terry looked up and shared a glance with Caroline. He lowered his head back down to continue. Caroline kept her eyes fixed on him.

“May we keep faith with one another, as do the bees, that tomorrow may be sweeter than today,” Terry said. “Amen.”

“Amen,” Caroline and Amelia whispered.

Caroline picked up her knife and fork and held them still over her plate, their purpose forgotten. Terry clenched his bristled jaw and stared beyond the meal before him.

As Amelia cut her first bit of meat, Caroline said, “Isaac’s parents called a short while ago.”

Amelia caught her breath.

“Isaac was less discreet than you when he got home,” Terry added unnecessarily.

Amelia recalled Isaac’s strange demeanor during their run home. He probably charged right into his house, she thought.

Not sure what to say, Amelia finished cutting her meat, dipped the morsel in honey, and ate it. The nibble inflamed the bite of her gut.

Amelia’s thoughts lurched back to the tree. She realized she had nothing to lose by asking questions. She had already been caught.

Amelia curled her toes and asked, “Mother, why is the tree a secret?” She cut another bite of meat, as if her words were a normal opening to dinner conversation.

Amelia thought she saw a wince flutter about her mother’s eyes but was not sure. Caroline was inscrutable otherwise. Amelia curled her toes more tightly as her mother sized her up. The silence thickened on the table.

Uncertain but undeterred, Amelia swallowed the bite and looked at her father. “Father, why is the tree a secret? Have you tried the honey while you work?”

Amelia heard her father’s teeth grind as she cut another chunk of meat. She felt silly pretending to dine, but the hot flush of her cheeks and chest spurred her on.

Her parents’ silence infuriated Amelia. They should have known their secret would come out, she thought. If her parents already knew where she’d been, why were they unprepared for her questions? Either they did not know the answers or were withholding them, Amelia reasoned.

The tree sprang up in Amelia’s mind as her thoughts rebelled against the secret. The tree’s fruit blushed, and Amelia’s body flushed anew. She imagined herself astride one of the branches, far above her parents’ silence.

Then a thought consumed her.

Amelia exclaimed, “Mother! Can we eat the tree’s fruit? Imagine how sweet—”

“Amelia!” Caroline cried, her eyes aflame. “That fruit deserves better than to be eaten alive!”

Amelia sat up with a jolt.

Caroline lowered her head. When she raised it again, her eyes glistened and implored. “That tree is sacred,” Caroline said softly. “Enjoy what we are blessed to have on our table. Do not demand more.”

“But Mother—”

“Amelia!” Terry roared.

Amelia dropped her fork.

Terry looked at Caroline, unclenched his jaw, and exhaled. “I’m sorry, Amelia,” he said in a calmer voice. “Listen to your mother. Please. Plant her words in your heart. They will grow and protect you from dangerous dreams.”

Amelia was touched but startled. Did they know about the dream, too?

“Finish your dinner,” Caroline said.

Amelia retreated. She picked up her fork and speared a piece of apple. The family ate in silence.

When Amelia finished her meal, she whispered, “May I be excused?”

“Yes,” Caroline said.

When Amelia reached the stairs, Terry called after her.

“Amelia, please wash that bit of honey from your hair before you go to bed tonight,” he said.

Amelia touched the back of her head and felt a sticky clump she had missed.

Caroline hung up the phone.

“Caroline, what did she say?” Terry shifted his weight at the foot of their bed.

Caroline did not hear. She thought of Amelia as a toddler, when her newly mobile legs had marched out the front door to the oak tree. Amelia had plopped down at its roots and had felt the bark with her tiny hands. Before long, Amelia could climb to a low branch, where she disassembled her toys to reveal their secrets.

“What did Cheryl say?” Terry asked, his voice shaking.

Caroline lifted her heavy eyelids as best she could. “She said she knows we’re frightened—that she and the other matrons each went through this, and many other parents, too. She said we’re not alone, and we mustn’t interfere.”

“‘Keep faith with one another, as do the bees,’” Terry whispered, holding fast to the prayer. He thought of Cassie’s mother, already widowed. “Kara must be beside herself,” Terry said. “First Marcus, now this.”

Both parents fell silent at the mention of Marcus. Neither dared to infringe the memory of Terry’s best friend, Cassie’s father, until Marcus’s weight became unbearable.

“I can’t imagine what Amelia must be thinking right now,” Caroline said. “When the dream came to us, I didn’t trust it. Had I been called, I don’t know how I would have answered.”

Privately, Terry thanked the earth for Caroline’s suspicion, for it had saved him, too. On their last day of eighth grade, Marcus and several classmates had invited Terry to help find the tree. Terry had turned them down. He and Caroline had planned a walk together, their first date, which had filled Terry with more anxiety and excitement than any expedition could have promised. Marcus had flashed Terry a broad smile. “Go get her!” Then Marcus had run off to find the honey he’d tasted in his dream, while Caroline and Terry had lost themselves in conversation and kissed.

Terry stared at the floor. “Cheryl forbade all the eighth-grade fathers from driving this week,” he said. “If I’d been the lure—”

Nausea gripped Terry, and he doubled over. He knew his turn would come.

Caroline sat next to Terry and caressed his back with her hand.

“I feel like we’re betraying Amelia,” Caroline whispered. “She needs us, and we’re doing nothing.”

“But Marcus—” Terry said, his voice giving out.

“I know,” Caroline said.

Terry’s nausea eased, and he sat up. “What do we do?” he asked.

“Keep faith and trust our daughter,” Caroline said bitterly. Amelia’s lie about her whereabouts that afternoon was thick on Caroline’s tongue.

Terry asked, “What about Cassie and Isaac?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline answered. “Cheryl said the other matrons are reaching out to their parents, and we shouldn’t interfere.” She paused. Her fingers tapped anxiously on the bed. “Simon and Beverly are refusing to talk about Isaac.”

“They’ll do the right thing,” Terry said. “They have to.”

Caroline tucked into Terry’s chest, and they held each other. After a few minutes, they pushed back onto the bed, not bothering to change their clothes or get under the covers. Terry drew Caroline into his arms and tried to forget all but the smell of her hair. Caroline’s fingers searched for calming melodies, but they summoned an image of Cassie at the piano instead.

Whatever happens tonight, Caroline thought, may it happen to Isaac, not to Amelia or Cassie.

Caroline recoiled from her wish, horrified, and told herself she did not really mean harm to her daughter’s friend.

When sleep finally took mercy on Terry and Caroline, the darkness hung over them as a question.

Amelia stripped the sheet from her head. Her stomach nibbled.

“Enjoy what we are blessed to have on our table. Do not demand more.”

Her mother’s words sprang forth as a rosebush. Its roots gathered Amelia’s conscience. She felt the prick of thorns on her heart as branches encircled it and stood guard. But against what?

Amelia did not know.

“That fruit deserves better than to be eaten alive!”

The great tree’s canopy stretched over Amelia’s brow. Its roots plunged into her gut, threaded about her stomach and intestines, and squeezed. With each pang, Amelia saw the fruit more clearly. Their pulsing glow promised relief.

Amelia tossed to her left. Two small arms pointed to 1:13 a.m. in the moonlight. Beyond, the window and the oak branch beckoned.

Amelia threw the sheet from her body and stood. She crossed the floor on bare tiptoes, forgetting the honey- and dirt-encrusted shoes she’d hidden at the back of her closet. The floor neither creaked nor groaned.

Amelia raised the window gently. The white drapes awoke and danced at her sides, and goosebumps sprang up on her arms. She took a deep breath.

Amelia pulled herself through the window and stepped onto the oak branch. The oak had seen generations come and go, but Amelia knew it better than anyone living or dead. For her, the branch was a place to reflect and listen to crickets in the night. A discreet route into the house. An exit.

Amelia darted across the branch and climbed down the trunk. Her hands and feet found each nook instinctively.

Once on the ground, Amelia looked back at the house.

“Do not demand more.”

Amelia’s intestines turned, unsure which direction gravity pulled. Her gaze broke from the front door, swung in an arc across the branches overhead, and settled on her bare feet, which throbbed with energy.

Amelia ran to wake Isaac and Cassie.

Isaac’s house stood three blocks from Amelia’s. When Amelia arrived, candles illuminated Isaac’s second-floor window.

It’s too late for candles, Amelia thought. What is he doing up there?

Amelia snuck across the lawn, avoiding the gravel walkway. She stooped down at the garden below Isaac’s window and picked up a few pebbles. Then she stood and lobbed a pebble at the glowing windowpane.

Click!

Isaac did not respond.

Click!

A silhouette, too tall to be Isaac’s, appeared in the window. Amelia crouched as low as she could behind a garden bush and watched through the leaves.

Isaac’s father parted the curtains, lifted the windowpane, and stuck his head out.

“Let me go!” Isaac screamed from inside the room.

Isaac’s father pulled back into the house and turned around. “You’re not leaving this house tonight,” he ordered. His voice was determined but weary, like a spinner gear grinding through rust.

“Please!” Isaac shrieked.

“You’re not leaving,” Isaac’s mother insisted, her sweet lilt worn to a rasp.

Amelia turned to go.

“Untie me!”

Amelia spun back around. Heat flushed through her. She imagined storming into Isaac’s house to untie him.

“Isaac, you can hate me all you want,” his father said. “But I love you too much to let you leave this house tonight.”

Amelia suppressed a scream, helpless. She moved to go but stopped short.

Four eyes watched her in the moonlight.

Azalea and Iris sat silently on the front stoop. Their eyes were red from crying and brimmed with questions.

Amelia looked at Isaac’s sisters, and they at her. Amelia felt the prick of thorns around her heart and, for a moment, forgot why she had come. Azalea and Iris said nothing, but their gazes rooted Amelia in place. Amelia wanted to explain to them what was happening, but she did not understand it herself.

Amelia’s intestines twisted.

“Please,” Amelia begged, “I have to go. There’s nothing I can do.” She looked down. “I’m sorry.”

Azalea and Iris watched Amelia run from the yard.

Amelia ran the four blocks to Cassie’s house as fast as she could. With each footfall, the tree’s roots churned Amelia’s organs, as if digesting a meal. The eyes of Azalea and Iris faded from her mind.

When Amelia reached Cassie’s house, all the windows were dark. The picket fence around the yard caught the moonlight in downward strokes of blue-grey.

Amelia paused at the gate. Its hinges would cry out if triggered.

Amelia took a quick step forward and pressed her hands to the top of the fence. Her bare feet traced an arc over the gate and landed quietly on the front walkway.

Amelia cut a path across the grass, to the tangled rosebush that half-obscured Cassie’s window. Amelia kneeled, picked a few pebbles from the flowerbed, and lobbed one between the branches.

Click!

The curtains parted almost immediately. A shadow lifted the windowpane.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Cassie whispered. “I knew you’d come. Where’s Isaac?”

“Come with me,” Amelia whispered back.

Cassie frowned. “No,” she said. “You shouldn’t go either.”

Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “What did your mother say to you?”

“She begged me not to go,” Cassie said, “no matter how much I want to protect you and Isaac. She said she can’t explain why.”

“What are they hiding from us?” Amelia seethed, her voice rising.

“Shh, not so loud,” Cassie whispered. “I don’t know what they’re hiding. But my mom said I had to decide.” Cassie’s eyes shifted focus to the branches that crossed Amelia’s face. “You didn’t see my mom when she found out I’d lied to her. With dad gone, there’s no one else but me.”

Cassie remembered little of her father, Marcus. He was a shadow that vanished in the light of her inner gaze. Cassie recalled primarily how he had thrown her too high or tickled her too long, until her laughter had turned to tears.

And Cassie remembered that terrible night when she was five years old. Her father had come home late from work and had gone straight to bed, without a word or a look. The next morning, he had vanished.

Cassie had demanded to know where her father was and why no one was searching for him. But her mother had just cried. Neighbors had gathered outside the house to sing, accompanied all day long by the moaning, rusty gears of old spinners.

“Please,” Amelia whispered. “I don’t want to go without you.”

Cassie met Amelia’s eyes through the thorns. For a moment, neither breathed.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said.

Amelia’s face twisted into a grimace. She touched her abdomen.

Cassie could no longer hide her fear. “Don’t go,” she pleaded.

Amelia’s organs seized. “I want to know the truth,” she whispered.

“No, that tree did something to you and Isaac,” Cassie said in a low voice.

Amelia turned to leave.

“Amelia, please don’t go. What if the truth is terrible?”

Amelia straightened her spine. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow,” she said, not looking back.

Cassie cried, “Amelia, look at me! Please!”

Amelia marched across the yard.

“Amelia!”

Amelia’s feet drew another arc over the gate.

No children inside the fence. Bless our children.

Amelia stood at the edge of the clearing, her eyes fixed on a cluster of fruit overhead.

Ping!

Amelia felt as if the clearing were a giant funnel and her body were a drop of honey, soon to plummet past the sea of vessels, slip through the bars of the fence, and dive into a bark crevice, how deep she could not fathom.

“Enjoy what we are blessed to have on our table. Do not demand more.”

Amelia felt the prick of thorns as her mother’s warning embraced her heart. She looked down, suddenly uncertain.

A drop of honey struck Amelia’s freshly washed hair. Her intestines knotted. Amelia’s feet pulled her forward and sucked a path between vessels to the fence, one slurping step following another.

The gate was shut tight with chain and lock. There was no point trying to open it. Amelia grabbed the bars before her. The chill of metal cut into her palms and shuddered through her. Amelia swung her legs up and hooked a foot on one of the bars, just below its dagger point. She pulled herself carefully to the top of the fence and cast herself over, her torso barely overtaking the blades.

Back on the ground, Amelia stepped up onto a giant root. She walked up and over its bent knee, her arms outstretched for balance, and stopped before the tree’s trunk.

Sap welled up in seemingly every crevice of the bark before her, speckled with bits of dirt and dead flies and mites. Amelia looked down at her own body. Her feet were covered in honey, sap, and mud, like the paws of an unknown, honey-craving beast.

No wonder the truck drivers wear jumpsuits, Amelia thought. She imagined her father heading out to work in the morning.

“Listen to your mother. Plant her words in your heart. They will grow and keep you safe.”

Her father’s words pressed firmly against Amelia’s heart, the muscle taut beneath the urge of thorns. Her pulse slowed from rushing to rest. Amelia took a breath. For a moment, the glow of the air around her felt nauseating and unnatural. She looked back toward the forest tunnel, now hidden in darkness beyond the clearing’s amber haze.

A large drop of honey swallowed Amelia’s right ear and muffled her father’s voice. Her stomach screamed.

Amelia turned to the trunk. Holds, nooks, and edges invited her to climb. She dug her hands and feet into the sticky sap and began her ascent.

She had climbed halfway to the branches above when she stopped, unsettled. Had the trunk shuddered? Amelia could not tell if the feeling was real or imagined, so strong was the beating of her own heart. The only rumble she could discern for sure was the seethe of her abdomen.

Amelia looked up at the nearest branch, still several lengths of her body away, and kept climbing. Her ascent was slower than before: the sap had become stickier and stung a little. When Amelia finally reached the branch, she threw one hand on top of it. She brought her other hand up around the opposite side of the branch, swung a leg up, and pulled herself up to sit.

Amelia looked down the branch’s reach. Woody tendrils shot up at various points along the tree’s thick arm and held a dense layer of leaves aloft overhead. Amber light throbbed at points beneath.

Not far now, Amelia thought.

Amelia shimmied across the branch and carefully around the tendrils that blocked her path. The gluey sap made these delicate maneuvers less precarious than Amelia had expected, but it ripped holes in her pajamas and inflamed her skin. Amelia grimly detached herself from the places she touched.

Amelia pulled her sore body above the nearest source of amber glow. She leaned out and craned her neck to one side.

A cluster of five giant fruit pulsed beneath her. Honey beaded luxuriously upon their skins.

Suddenly, the fruit began to dance in the air. Tremors rippled through the branch.

“What if the truth is terrible?”

The words were Cassie’s, but Amelia heard only her mother’s voice whisper from below. Amelia stared as the mute mouths of Azalea and Iris bloomed in the amber haze beneath the branch, two breaths against the sweet air.

Amelia caught their breath, and thorns pierced deep into the muscle of her heart.

They’re right, Amelia thought.

The apparition vanished.

When Amelia looked again at the massive fruit beneath her, she recoiled. The fruit were grotesque and misshapen. The thought of tasting their flesh turned her stomach.

Amelia rushed to draw up her feet and turn back, but a violent shudder shook her from the branch, and she fell. Her desperate hands reached out and snagged a nook in the branch’s bark.

Amelia hung in the air, face to face with the giant fruit. Their pulse accelerated.

Amelia tried to ready her hands, so she could swing back up onto the branch, but she could not move them. The sap had sealed her hands to the bark.

The air began to buzz.

That night, Terry dreamed of his best friend, Marcus.

Marcus’s vat truck was late in returning with the last load of the day. One hour passed. Another hour passed. Terry volunteered for an extra drive, to check on his friend.

Terry pulled into the clearing and saw Marcus standing beside his truck. Marcus stared at the tree’s canopy, his long-brimmed hat in one hand at his side. His truck rumbled futilely, its hose still attached to an empty vessel, long-drained.

Terry pulled his hat low and walked to his friend. As he moved closer, Terry saw a drop of honey on Marcus’s right cheek. Another clung to the hairs of his chin.

“I had an itch on top of my head,” Marcus whispered. “It was so fast. I didn’t even think.”

Terry took Marcus’s hat and pulled it back down over his friend’s brow.

“After all this time,” Marcus said, “just like that.”

“Let’s go,” Terry said. He put his hand on Marcus’s shoulder to guide him away.

“No,” Marcus protested. “I need to finish my rounds.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Terry said, squeezing Marcus’s shoulder.

“I do need to,” Marcus insisted, his voice gaining intensity.

Terry held Marcus back and said, “Think about Kara and Cassie.”

“Let me go,” Marcus said firmly.

Marcus broke free and set to work. He unhooked the hose from the empty vessel and twisted its end into another, laden with honey.

Click!

Marcus sat down on the sticky ground as his truck bellowed. He took off his hat and gloves and set them down in the muck.

Terry could only stand and watch.

In her dream, Caroline awoke to a vibration through her body. A scent called her to alarm.

Caroline climbed across the comb to the hole at the top of the tree. She unveiled her sting. Her delicate wings became a blur, and she rose to join the black cloud of sisters above.

Together, they dove through the leaves and engulfed the dangling intruder.

Caroline caught a strand of hair. She pulled herself to its root, at which the flesh already swelled.

The intruder’s head jerked to one side, and Caroline plunged her sting into it. The barb held fast. Venom surged as Caroline tried to pull free. She ripped herself from the barb.

A chain of viscera stretched from Caroline’s gaping wound as she tried to fly away. Just before the chain snapped and Caroline fell, the intruder’s scent stirred an image.

An infant girl sucked at her mother’s breast.

Caroline inhaled gently from her daughter’s temple and wondered who her sweet treasure would one day become.

Amelia swung below the quaking branch. A buzzing, black shadow poured through the canopy and swallowed her.

Pain exploded from above and below, ahead and behind, left and right. Amelia’s scream gargled as bees filled her mouth. Stings plunged into her arms, legs, torso, cheeks, eyes, tongue, and throat. The bees pulled at their barbs convulsively and emptied their venom into Amelia’s flesh. One by one, the bees ripped themselves away. Viscera stretched from weapon to wielder, snapped, and drooped in midair.

The dangling body no longer knew its name; no longer thought or felt. The body swelled, engorged with venom. Its belly distended; arms and legs puffed; skin ripped.

Tiny tendrils sprang from crevices in the bark and punctured the body’s fingers and palms. Once inside, the tendrils wove themselves around the body’s veins and opened them.

Honey advanced through the tendrils and into the veins. Blood beaded from the body’s skin, driven by sweet pressure. Soon, only honey seeped from the rips and pores. The bloodless heart slowed until it matched the pulse of the nearby fruit.

A torrent of enzymes assaulted the organs between the honey-infused heart, vessels, and skin. Muscles broke from their tendons and unravelled like old ropes. Bones bent and dissolved.

The tree drank what it needed from the stew, and the dangling body shrank. Its skin wrinkled and slackened.

The next morning, one more fruit hung above the clearing than the day before, at the edge of a cluster. A bead of honey grew too large and dropped from the young fruit’s underside. Below, a funnel stretched wide. The honey struck its outermost reach.

Ping!

But no one heard. The honey drop slid down the inside of the funnel and disappeared into the waiting vessel.

Caroline awoke with a start, two minutes before the alarm. Dread burned her heart.

She lay on top of the bed in yesterday’s clothes. Terry still curled behind her.

Caroline pulled herself from his arms and ran from the bedroom, up the stairs, and through Amelia’s door.

Amelia’s bed was rumpled but empty. Her drapes danced at either side of the window.

Caroline screamed. The scream choked as she crumpled.

Terry sprang from bed. He was halfway up the stairs before his eyes opened. He was stooped with his arms around Caroline before he grasped her collapse.

The morning alarm sounded below.

A chorus of voices and rusty spinners moaned softly outside the house.

Cheryl leaned forward at the edge of the couch, across from Caroline and Terry. She inhaled the steam from her cup of honey tea and adjusted the collar of her indigo topcoat. Her angular nose and cheeks slashed the air before her.

“The town mourns and honors your sacrifice,” Cheryl said. “The other matrons and I will make sure you have everything you need.”

Caroline looked the old matron hard in the face.

Caroline loved Cheryl. Cheryl had taken an interest in Caroline when the younger woman was only in elementary school. In those days, Cheryl had been the high school principal. She had not yet become the eldest matron in charge of honey production—the most important woman in town—as she was now.

Caroline had thrilled to Cheryl’s weekly visits, and the matron had delighted in Caroline’s growing gift as a pianist. No matter how her stature and responsibilities had grown, the matron had always visited her protégé. Even now, nearly two decades later, the two women ate lunch together once a month.

But today, Caroline saw only her daughter’s absence in Cheryl’s face.

Cheryl’s practiced gaze betrayed no hint of the pain she felt at Caroline’s resentment. Every year for decades, on this same weekend, Cheryl had sat in a living room like this one, across from parents like these, to help them weather the loss of a child. Caroline and Terry were no different. Cheryl knew the greatest kindnesses she could offer were unwavering authority and ears to hear the neighbors singing outside.

“We did as you asked,” Terry whispered, looking down. “We did not interfere.”

Caroline winced but did not avert her eyes.

Terry asked, desperate, “Why are we being punished for keeping faith?”

“What happened to Amelia is not your fault, and you are not alone,” Cheryl said, holding Caroline’s gaze. “This town was built by women and men who shouldered the sacred burden you now carry.” Cheryl gestured to the window. “Listen. They are here to keep faith with you.”

Outside, the drone of voices and gears swelled. It shimmered and rippled through the walls of the house.

“Scores of parents know your pain, and they are here,” Cheryl said. “The parents of Amelia’s classmates are here, too. Like you, they’ve dreaded this day—and they shudder at their luck.” She paused. “And as you know, every town matron has also lost a child in this way. Including me.”

Caroline willed herself to be unmoved.

“I hated that other children lived while my son did not, and I hated the parents who did not know my pain,” Cheryl said. “And I hated myself. I was sure I could have done something to twist fate in my son’s favor.”

Cheryl stopped and waited for Terry to look up. She held his gaze. “One who does not hear the tree’s call can neither understand its pull nor fathom the confusion of a child whose loyalties become so sharply divided.”

Terry’s breath escaped him with a shudder. Caroline’s eyes softened at the sound.

Cheryl took another sip of tea. “Our obligation to the earth each year is terrible but necessary,” she said. “With time, you will cleave all the more to this place, to your neighbors. This is who we are.”

Terry searched Cheryl’s face and took comfort in her inscrutable strength. He took a deep breath. Then he asked, “What will happen to Cassie and Isaac?”

“Do you remember your first day of high school?”

Terry nodded.

“So it will be on Monday,” Cheryl continued. “Cassie and Isaac will be among the incoming freshmen.”

“How is Kara?” Terry asked.

“Cassie’s mother is outside, singing,” Cheryl said. “Kara still has her daughter, but she knows your pain all the same. She remembers how you stood outside her house and sang for her husband.”

A tear fell from Caroline’s left eye.

“And Isaac’s parents?” Terry asked. He refused to say their names. He knew what they had done. That morning, Terry had screamed at Isaac’s father over the phone, “Amelia would be alive if not for you!”

Cheryl weighed her words carefully. “For now, I expect that Simon and Beverly are relieved for their son and racked with guilt for your daughter,” she said. “But the call does not go silent in a child because another stifles it. You know well that Isaac will be a haunted soul in this world.”

Terry thought of Marcus, and his resentment tangled with sympathy.

Cheryl finished her honey tea. Its sweetness lingered on her lips as she stood and walked to the front door.

“Listen to the song outside,” Cheryl said. “I pray it anchors you, together, in the loving arms of community.”

Cheryl opened the door and let herself out. She left the door cracked open behind her. The drone of voices and spinners seeped through the crack like a breath and held the walls and ceiling aloft around the grieving couple inside.

Cheryl moved slowly through the crowd. She decided to wait a few weeks before visiting Caroline again. Caroline needed time.

But Cheryl could wait no longer than that. She could feel her body beginning to fail.

Cassie stepped into her assigned room, one of six hexagonal cells that radiated from her dormitory’s common chamber. The cell was sparse: two beds, two small desks, a dresser, and a supply of beeswax candles. The dark wood of the walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture exhaled shadow. Thin shafts of light from slits in the three exterior walls fell on a large hexagon etched into the floor. Within it, the outline of a tree caught the light.

Cassie dropped two bags of clothing and keepsakes on one of the beds. She turned and dashed across the common chamber, down the narrow hallway to the outside, and into the daylight. Cassie fell in with her fellow freshmen as they marched across the wooded high school grounds, toward the assembly hall at its center.

Cassie found Isaac staring blankly outside the assembly hall. She put her hand on his shoulder, but he did not stir.

Cassie reached into her pocket and pulled out three smooth stones she had gathered during the weekend. She opened Isaac’s right hand and pressed the stones to his palm. He closed his fingers around the stones and turned them over in his hand. The stones clicked and scuffed as they moved about one another.

Isaac looked up at Cassie. The eyes of each anchored the other, and neither felt alone. Isaac’s mouth opened slightly as if to form a word, but no sound came out.

“Come on,” Cassie whispered. She took Isaac’s other hand and led him into the assembly hall.

The two friends entered a long, wide hallway fashioned from the same dark wood as Cassie’s dormitory. Columns of light fell from two rows of hexagonal skylights that ran the length of the passage. The mummified remains of generations of town matrons stood in the lightfalls on stone blocks. The matrons were wrapped tightly in indigo fabric. Shadows stretched from every contour of their bodies.

Each matron’s name was etched into the stone below her. The lettering was competent but inexpert. The curves were not always smooth. The corners were not always sharp.

Why do the matrons stand on imperfect stones? Cassie wondered.

The two friends finally passed through an archway and into the auditorium. Cassie led Isaac to two adjacent empty seats.

Shadows hung like tapestries from the chamber’s six walls. Rows of chairs descended, one lower than the previous, to a sunken stage in the center of the room. There, three women in long, indigo topcoats sat on stools, illuminated by a column of sunlight.

Jolene, the beloved elementary school principal, was one of the three. Her exuberant burst of red hair gathered sunlight from above. Though shadows curled across her face, Jolene’s eyes expressed welcome like nectar and beckoned the students to their seats.

Cassie also recognized her mentor, Norma, perched on the next stool, her delicate hands folded in her lap. Norma visited Cassie every Monday evening, after her day’s work as the high school principal—a ritual she had begun shortly after Cassie’s father disappeared. Thanks to Norma’s steady presence, Cassie had learned to take joy again in her mother, her friends, and the piano, never mind that a grown man could vanish without warning.

The oldest of the three women—the one Cassie did not know—stood.

“Take your seats, apprentices,” the old woman commanded. Her voice filled the auditorium.

The old woman walked slowly about the six-sided stage and cast long looks over the students assembled in each direction. The creak of her joints echoed about the ceiling, loud enough for the first few rows of students to hear. Her face was a landscape of wrinkles and shadows.

When all the students were seated, the old woman said, “My name is Cheryl. I work with your parents and have long overseen the life of our town.”

Nervous chatter buzzed about the room. Every student knew the serious tone their parents adopted when speaking of Cheryl, but few had met her in person.

“You are here to take up a place in our cherished community,” Cheryl continued. “Today, you are adults. The three of us, the town matrons, invite you to learn the crafts and truth of our survival. Four years from now, you will be ready to care for yourselves, care for your neighbors, and share with another the joy and fear of parenthood.”

A few students giggled at the idea of becoming parents but stifled it promptly, worried they might appear unfit.

Cheryl gestured toward Norma. “This is Norma. For many years, she has been principal of this high school. No longer. Norma will now oversee the town’s operations. She will visit from time to time.”

Cassie could not believe it: her mentor was now the most important woman in town.

Then Cheryl pointed to Jolene. “You all know Jolene.”

A few students cheered. The matrons smiled.

“Jolene has worked with you since you were small,” Cheryl said, “and she’ll continue to guide your education. Jolene is now the principal of this high school and will oversee your apprenticeships.”

Cheryl stepped back and offered the floor to Jolene expectantly. Jolene stepped forward and took a deep breath.

“I know you’ve all been wondering about the dream that came upon you last week,” Jolene began. “It was no accident. The dream visits all apprentices in the days before they arrive here.”

Jolene began to circle the stage. The students shifted in their seats.

“The tree that dripped honey in your dream is real,” Jolene said.

A murmur moved through the auditorium.

“The tree and the bees that live within it act in concert, like one great organism,” Jolene said. “Together, they express the export honey that sustains our town.”

The whispered refrain, “I told you so,” moved among the new apprentices.

“But this great organism demands something terrible from us in return,” Jolene continued, “a sadness that we honor daily through our crafts and prayers. Your parents carry the burden of this secret. Now you will, too.”

Jolene paused. She tilted her head slightly forward, and shadow swallowed her face. Her red curls glowed like flame.

“One student does not sit among you today,” Jolene said, hushed and grave.

Cassie grabbed Isaac’s hand. He did not move.

“Each year, one student provides what the soil cannot,” Jolene said. “That student is transformed into a fruit on the tree.”

The auditorium convulsed. Gasps and cries filled the air. Students twisted their bodies and craned their necks, desperate to find their friends’ faces in the crowd.

An image of honey pouring from Amelia’s mouth sprang up in Cassie’s mind. Cassie looked to Isaac for support, but his eyes were a dilated abyss. Cassie clung to his hand as her body slumped low. She pulled her shoulders forward, pushed back with her feet, and pressed the burning spot between her shoulder blades hard into the back of her chair.

Jolene raised one hand. The sobs dissolved into her palm, and she uttered the words that Cassie and Isaac already knew to be true.

“This year, Amelia made this most sacred offering.”

No one gasped. No one moved. Amelia’s absence settled over the hall.

“We live because of Amelia’s sacrifice and the sacrifices of those who came before her,” Jolene said. “During the next four years, we will prepare you for your most solemn duty: to give up your own child if called to do so. We begin now. Let us remember Amelia in our prayer of thanksgiving.”

From her stool, Norma began.

“We give thanks—”

Norma’s sonorous voice, so incongruous with her wisp of a body, was like a rope that could pull the students from darkness.

“We give thanks,” repeated all the students but Cassie and Isaac.

“—to our neighbors who walked before us—”

“—whose souls resound in today’s bounty.”

“May we keep faith with one another—”

“—as do the bees—”

“—and our sister, Amelia, who provides—”

“—that tomorrow may be sweeter than today.”

“Amen.”

Cassie and Isaac sat in the high school office, across from the three matrons.

Cassie watched Cheryl closely, wary of the eldest matron’s intentions, especially toward Isaac.

Isaac stared at the floor.

Cheryl stirred a cup of honey tea. The matron looked even older than she had during the assembly. Her shoulders now hunched. But Cheryl had already transfigured her new posture into an expression of authority. The curl of her body was a storm that twisted about smoldering eyes.

“We know you were close with Amelia and have many questions,” Cheryl said. “We will answer as best we can, with the truths you are prepared to know.”

The five sat in silence, while Cassie tried to pin the thoughts that buzzed about her mind.

Finally, Cassie asked, “Was Amelia in pain?”

“Yes, at first,” Cheryl said. “But not for long. Then she was not Amelia any more.”

“Amelia is now part of us all,” Norma added.

Cassie glared at her mentor. “And my father? Is he ‘part of us,’ too?”

“Yes, child,” Norma said, relieved to speak the secret. “Your father is part of us, too.”

“Why?” Cassie demanded. “Why did he go?”

Jolene leaned forward and said, “Everyone who hears the tree’s call must decide how to answer.” She looked at Isaac. “But sometimes, other people block the way. They do it out of love. Out of fear. When that happens, the call lingers. It feeds on guilt, the feeling that every achievement and blessing is stolen from another.”

Isaac did not move.

Jolene turned to Cassie. “Eventually, the call drowns out even a daughter’s voice,” she said.

Cassie’s eyes filled with tears. Norma leaned forward and briefly put her hand on Cassie’s knee.

Cheryl waited as Cassie wiped her eyes. Then the matron asked, “Do you have any other questions?”

“Yes,” Cassie said. “Why do we stay?”

Isaac looked up.

Jolene asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don’t we just leave?” Cassie leaned in, encouraged by Isaac’s attention. “Why don’t we go somewhere else and leave the tree behind?”

“Because there is no place else,” Cheryl said.

A nervous glance passed between Jolene and Norma.

“There has to be some place else,” Cassie said. “Where does the stuff we trade for come from?”

The matrons said nothing.

“Well?” Cassie prodded, her voice rising.

“There’s no need to be rude or cruel,” Cheryl said irritably. She looked at the other matrons and said, “But we will tell you, Cassie, because you are the one asking.”

Norma sighed. “It just appears,” she said.

Cassie frowned. “What do you mean, ‘appears’?”

“Several evenings each harvest,” Jolene said, “the three of us put jars of honey in thirty-six trees around the forest. We learned the places from the matrons who came before us. In the morning, the honey is gone, and fertilizer, metals, and other goods sit at the feet of the trees.”

Cassie asked, “Who takes the honey?”

“We never see them,” Cheryl said. “A new matron can be driven so mad by this that she stays up all night at an offering spot, hoping to see someone. But if a gaze falls upon an offering, no transaction takes place.”

“No matron has ever seen an outsider,” Jolene added.

Cassie’s face knotted as if a foul stench had assaulted her.

Cheryl’s eyes hardened, her irises girded with white. “We are not fools,” she said. “We know there is someone on the other side—people who observe parallel rituals, whose thoughts turn to us when ours turn to them.”

“Whoever they are, they have forgotten us, and we have forgotten them,” Norma said. “The transaction is all that binds us now.”

Cheryl shifted her weight uncomfortably. Her shoulders creaked. “Anything more?”

Suddenly, Isaac spoke. “Why can’t we give the tree something else? Why does it have to be us?” His voice rose to a near-yell.

Cassie shuddered.

“Isaac, we have tried,” Jolene said softly. “We’ve bound our children as your parents bound you. We’ve slaughtered cattle beneath the tree and soaked its roots with blood. Pets—”

Jolene’s voice cracked.

“The honey we harvested during those years was useless,” Norma continued. “No exchanges took place. Without the means to enrich our soil, our crops and flowers failed. The town began to starve, and so did the bees. And still, our children heard the call. It fed on their guilt at what befell the town.”

“When your community begins to die,” Jolene whispered, “you do what your elders taught you.”

Cheryl sighed. “There is something in us, and only in us, that the tree demands,” she said.

The matrons fell silent.

Isaac slumped back in his chair. “There’s no escape,” he whispered.

Cassie and Jolene both reached to Isaac, but he stood before either could comfort him. He walked out of the room without another glance.

Norma said gravely, “You have every right to distrust me, Cassie, but listen carefully. Care for Isaac, but you cannot protect him from himself.”

The three matrons stood. Cheryl’s joints groaned angrily.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Cassie,” Jolene said.

The matrons left.

Cassie sat, awed and confused, unable to square what she’d heard with what she’d once thought to be true. But she knew this much: the matrons’ words withheld as much as they disclosed. Her years of not knowing the truth about her father proved that much.

There must be a way to help Isaac, Cassie decided.

An inner light sparked. In its flash, Cassie saw her father’s face. A tender place opened in her heart and called to her: run after Isaac.

She did.

Cheryl, Norma, and Jolene stood in a dark corner just outside the office. They watched as Cassie sprinted down the hall and out the front door. A long look of concern passed among the three.

The matrons removed their topcoats, revealing light blouses with low-cut backs. They inhaled and exhaled in concert. Paper-thin wings, left and right, fore and hind, pushed through slits between the matrons’ shoulder blades and unfolded. The women leaned forward, and their wings became a blur. The air above them swirled in a buzzing vortex.

Their feet left the ground.

A few shards of morning light cut through the canopy and disappeared in the amber glow below.

Terry twisted a hose into the nearest vessel.

Click!

Terry’s truck bellowed and sucked through the hose.

Terry kept his back to the truck. Isaac’s father, Simon, sat silently in the passenger seat.

Today was Terry’s first day back at work. Town policy required that any harvester who had lost a child must be accompanied by a partner during his first month back. Simon had insisted on the job. Terry had protested, but word came down that he had no choice in the matter.

Terry had risen early with Caroline that morning. He had poured himself a tall cup of honey tea. Then, seated next to the sleeping hives outside the house, he had rehearsed in his mind how he would pull his hat’s long, protective brim low; how each rumble, roar, twist, and click would fill his ears and block out every urge.

At all costs, he would not look up.

Terry waited for the vessel to empty. Each twist of the hose is simple, he thought. I’ll just do it over and over, one turn at a time.

But Terry’s right hand wanted desperately to remove his hat. It assured him that Amelia would be there, smiling and swinging from a branch, just like she had done from the oak tree in the front yard. Her cheeks would be rosy with excitement. She would call down and laugh.

Terry tried to seize focus.

Thump!

Honey struck the brim of Terry’s hat. The thump drowned out the truck’s clamor. Gravity twisted and pulled inexorably upward, and Terry strained to keep his face downturned.

A hand pressed Terry’s shoulder. His vertigo vanished.

“I hate you,” Terry said without looking, without malice.

“I know,” Simon whispered.

“The matrons say Isaac will be haunted, like Marcus,” Terry said.

Simon sighed. “Isaac didn’t even look at us when he left for high school. We haven’t heard a word from him.”

Terry remembered how he had found Marcus outside the assembly hall on their first day of high school, disoriented and slumped against a tree.

“Marcus didn’t speak to me for weeks,” he said.

“That night—Beverly and I were terrified,” Simon said. “We hadn’t realized how we’d lost sight of Isaac. Always his sisters and never him. When he came home soaked with honey and crawling the walls, I knew he would—”

Simon caught himself. Terry winced.

“Terry, we—I tied my own son to his bed,” Simon said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Just like Marcus, Terry thought. He exhaled. “If you need help . . .”

Simon squeezed Terry’s shoulder.

“Marcus lived a good life, though, right?” Simon asked. “For a while? He had a wife and daughter.”

Terry remembered how Kara had insisted she could anchor Marcus against his own turbulent moods. One moment, Marcus had clung to her as a drowning man clings to a branch stretched across the river. The next moment, he had hurtled downstream, limp, not looking at the woman who reached for him from the bank.

“A wife and daughter,” Terry repeated.

The empty vessel rang with the truck’s rumble.

Simon reached for the hose and said, “Why don’t you take a break?”

“No, I’m OK,” Terry said. “It’ll just be a long day.”

Simon nodded and started back to the truck. He stopped halfway. “You know, if someone had cut this tree down in the beginning, before—”

Simon let the thought hang in amber.

Terry released the hose. As he did, Amelia’s hands flickered to mind in place of his own. Her fingers grasped the gnarls and knots of a spectral trunk. She pulled herself from the earth’s viscera, where souls spring into being, toward the canopy above.

Terry shook his head to dislodge the thought. From beneath his hat’s brim, he caught sight of the old sign near the center of the clearing.

No children inside the fence. Bless our children.

No children, Terry thought. Not anymore.

“Hello, Caroline.”

Caroline did not look up from her etching. She knew Cheryl stood in the doorway.

“Yes?” Caroline asked. She kept working, as if Cheryl were just another pre-dawn colleague.

Cheryl waited.

Finally, Caroline dropped her industrious pose and looked up. Her eyes widened in shock.

Age had seized Cheryl. Her shoulders hunched sharply. Cheryl’s eyes were incisive as ever, but her eyelids sagged at their corners, as if pulled by unseen weights.

“Let’s go,” Cheryl said simply.

Caroline nodded.

Cheryl shuffled slowly down the hall and out the front door of the processing plant. A vat truck waited in the darkness. Cheryl opened the driver’s-side door and grimaced as she pulled her body into the seat.

Caroline climbed into the passenger side of the truck’s cabin, her confusion unspoken.

Cheryl drove down Amber Road without a word—through town, into the forest, and beyond the side road to the high school. Finally, Cheryl slowed at an unmarked spot she knew by heart. She turned off the road, through branches and underbrush. The truck’s headlights cast ethereal beams into the forest tunnel. Cheryl rounded two corners, and an amber glow appeared ahead.

Cheryl stopped the truck at the edge of the clearing.

“What are we doing here?” Caroline asked.

“Follow me,” Cheryl said. Her joints groaned as she opened the cabin door and dropped to the ground. Cheryl shambled into the clearing, leaving the door ajar behind her.

Caroline asked, “What about headgear?”

“You’ll be safe,” Cheryl called back.

Caroline got out of the truck and followed Cheryl through the sea of vessels, toward the fence. The earth sucked at Caroline’s soles. She kept her head down, sure that every fruit overhead bore a mangled trace of Amelia’s face, and shuddered at her husband’s burden in coming back here, day after day.

When they arrived at the gate, Cheryl fished around in her overcoat pocket. Her swollen fingers found a small key. Cheryl tried several times to thread the key into the lock that fastened the chain, but the tremor in her hand scorned her efforts. She scowled and handed the key to Caroline.

“Here,” Cheryl said. “It’s yours. Get the lock, please.”

Caroline asked, “Mine? What are you talking about?”

“The lock, please,” Cheryl said. She closed her eyes and waited.

Caroline slipped the key into place and twisted through the old lock’s resistance. The lock fell open. Caroline unwrapped the chain, and the gate swung free.

Cheryl doddered through the open gate. She stopped before a large root and pointed to where it arched above the ground.

“Here, sit,” Cheryl said.

Caroline sat on the root’s knee. “Please, why did you bring me here?” she asked. “To torment me?”

Cheryl sighed. “I know you have hated me these past few weeks.”

Caroline looked down at the sweet muck that clung to her shoes.

“I felt the same way when my son died,” Cheryl said. “If you were a different woman, you could dwell in your anger as long as you like. You could wait and defer the day you return to living.”

Caroline closed her eyes.

“But matrons like you and me do not have the luxury of time,” Cheryl said.

Caroline startled to attention. “Excuse me?”

“Come, now,” Cheryl said. “You know we don’t share the piano with just anyone. It was your first step in learning to teach and to bear the isolation that comes with distinction.”

Caroline whispered, “Cassie, too?”

“Yes, one day,” Cheryl said.

The blood drained from Caroline’s face. “Amelia,” she whispered hollowly. “You knew. All this time. Even when I was little.” Caroline’s gut flared with anger, and she raged at Cheryl. “You knew! Every matron loses a child! You knew I would lose her!”

Cheryl looked away.

“You knew!”

Cheryl hunched more deeply, her head nearer to the earth. “Norma and Jolene will teach you how to live with yourself,” she said softly. She paused. “I must introduce you.”

“Introduce me?” Caroline scoffed. “To whom?”

Cheryl did not answer. She turned and tottered to the trunk of the tree. Cheryl put her hands and nose to the bark, closed her eyes, and whispered just loudly enough for Caroline to hear.

“My time is through,” Cheryl intoned. “The one who sits beside me takes my place. Awaken Caroline to you.”

Cheryl leaned her body fully against the great trunk. The tree accepted her weight.

At first, Caroline felt no difference between one moment and the next. Then a vibration moved through the root beneath her. A moment later, the air buzzed with awakening.

“Don’t be afraid,” Cheryl whispered.

The place between Caroline’s shoulder blades began to crawl with energy. Caroline looked up and saw a mass of black and yellow seep through the canopy overhead. She ducked her head instinctively between her knees, into the folds of her summer dress, exposing her upper back to the air.

A funnel of bees fell from the leaves in a spiral swirl. Caroline felt a scratch between her shoulder blades that became searing pain as tiny jaws dug in. The bees bit away flesh and lapped up blood. Each left behind a trace of honey that soothed and sealed the deepening edges of Caroline’s wound.

The vortex spun until two deep slits glistened in Caroline’s upper back. The bees receded into the canopy and disappeared as quickly as they had come.

For a moment, the clearing was silent except for Caroline’s sobs. The fold of her dress was soaked with tears.

Then Caroline screamed. Her torso convulsed sharply upright, and her shoulders pulled back. Something forced its way out of her, through the raw wounds in her back, and shuddered in the morning air.

Before her, Caroline saw Cheryl slump to her knees beside the tree, her topcoat at her feet. Four wings of thin bone stretched behind her bent body.

Caroline craned her neck and saw a delicate expanse of bone unfold behind her, streaked with her blood.

Caroline cried, “What have you done to me?”

But Cheryl was a broken pile at the base of the tree, her wings gone.

“Cheryl!”

“She can’t hear you,” a voice said.

Caroline turned to the voice as best she could. Even moving her feet took concentration, a lifetime of know-how suddenly mute.

Norma stood with bone wings spread wide. “The tree allows only three of us,” she said.

Caroline winced. Her wings buzzed in brief, sporadic surges, unsure of themselves. Each flutter sent a shock of pain through Caroline’s back.

“The pain will go away as your wound heals,” Norma said. She put her hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Jolene and I will teach you how to use them. For now, imagine how you looked before you came to the clearing. Take a deep breath.”

Caroline closed her eyes. She pulled the sweet air deep into her lungs and held it. The memory of flatbread at breakfast settled on her tongue. She blushed, as when Terry had hugged her that morning, the sharp bristles of his jaw delighting her cheek.

Caroline’s wings folded upon themselves like fine paper. Her shoulders relaxed to their normal posture. Only the two raw slits in Caroline’s back hinted at her transformation.

A cacophony of voices flooded Caroline’s mind. Thousands upon thousands of souls—at rest in their beds, at work in town, walking to school, alighting on petals, tending comb within a great tree trunk—buzzed about Caroline’s memory of breakfast. She clung to home and husband like melodies in the din, cherished moments in a vast knot of song.

“You’ll find your way through the noise,” Norma said. “This will help.”

Caroline opened her eyes. Norma, wings retracted, kneeled at Cheryl’s body and picked up the old woman’s topcoat. She held it out to Caroline.

“Cheryl received this from her mentor, many years ago,” Norma said. “It’s yours.”

Caroline took the garment and put it on, hiding her wound. Cheryl’s lingering scent straightened her spine. The coat’s weight steadied Caroline against the push and pull of her thoughts. Her body relaxed.

“Help me lift her,” Norma said.

The two women stooped down. Norma lifted Cheryl’s shoulders, and Caroline lifted the old woman’s legs. They carried Cheryl through the gate and across the clearing, to the vat truck’s open door, and carefully sat her body in the middle seat.

“On our way back to town, we’ll take Cheryl to the high school,” Norma said. “Jolene will oversee the students in preparing her body for commemoration.”

Caroline remembered her first year as an etching apprentice, when Cheryl’s predecessor died. Caroline had watched her older peers spend weeks inscribing the dead matron’s name into practice stones, while she had learned how to hold the tools and chip away at the rock. Several letters in the final inscription had begun with Caroline’s uncertain hands. Her work had been rudimentary—the older apprentices had refined the letters she began—but Caroline’s pride and feeling of responsibility as part of the town community had been total.

Caroline imagined Cheryl standing upright, wrapped in indigo, among the other matrons in the assembly hall. She wondered who would etch Cheryl’s name in stone.

Then Caroline gasped. One day I’ll stand in that hallway, too, she thought.

Norma climbed into the driver’s seat, and Caroline sat on the passenger side, with Cheryl’s body between them. As Norma started the engine, Caroline looked at Cheryl’s face. Even death could not drain its intensity.

Caroline slumped back in her seat, careful not to disturb the balance of Cheryl’s body, and asked, “I suppose I’ll be the elementary school principal?” Part of her rebelled at the thought of giving up etching.

Norma drove back down the forest tunnel. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been filling in for the past few weeks. Jolene and I will help you.”

A cloud of anxiety moved across Caroline’s face.

Norma smiled. “Don’t worry,” she encouraged. “This is why you’ve been teaching piano all these years.”

Caroline frowned. “I’ll have to give up the piano, too?”

“Not yet,” Norma said. “Cassie’s not nearly ready.” Norma rounded a corner. Then she added, “I fear Cassie is taking a painful road, like her mother. Isaac is—”

“Why Isaac?” Caroline interrupted, her patience spent. “If my daughter was always meant to—” Her voice caught in her throat. “Why destroy Isaac, too? And his parents—they’ll bear the guilt of what they did as long as they live.”

“I don’t know,” Norma said. “But I trust that there’s a reason.”

Caroline closed her eyes. Losses were piled about her heart. She tried to revive the spark of Terry’s stubble on her cheek.

Terry.

Caroline put her head in her hands. “What will I tell Terry?”

Norma sighed. She stopped the truck at the hidden entrance to Amber Road.

“Terry needs me,” Caroline whispered. “But I don’t even recognize myself. What if he hates me? Imagine—one day he’ll hear me tell another family, ‘don’t interfere.’ How could he not hate me?”

Norma looked down and blinked away a tear. “My marriage died,” she said quietly. “Jolene’s and Cheryl’s, too.”

Caroline and Norma sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in her own thoughts. Finally, Norma released the brake and eased the truck through branches and brush, onto Amber Road.

Caroline watched the trees pass by her window. The landscape pulsed with voices. Behind, Caroline could feel the colony of bees move inside the great tree. Ahead, new apprentices darted about the high school campus, disoriented and trying to find one another, like bees who return from harvest to find only an empty space where their hive had been. Beyond, the town hummed.

When the truck arrived at the high school, Caroline decided: she and Terry would stay together. No matter what.

No matter how she might struggle to hear his melody in the buzz.

Dear reader,

Thank you for reading The Honeydrop Tree. I hope you loved it. If you did, please consider posting a review of the book at your favorite ebook retailer.

Thanks,

Matthew S. Rosin

Acknowledgments

This story opened a door to a new, more creative life. I’m thankful for the family and friends who have helped me hold that door open.

For Maricia, Devin, and Luna. I love you.

For my parents, Gary and Jan Rosin, and their steadfast belief and solidarity, no matter the twists and turns in my path.

For the Rosin, Swellander, Scott, and Barbacki families, near and extended.

For Smita Patel and her careful eye.

For the dear friends and colleagues who read the story and offered encouragement and feedback during its long journey from poem to novelette: Rose Asera, Molly Breen, Charles Burk, Emily Cruze, Betsy Donaldson-Dante, Raquel Gonzales, Ed Haertel, Piotrek Klima, Amber Marince, Amy Zucker Morgenstern, Erin Pattison, Todd Paulson, Leona Pearce, Mary Perry, Angela Pokladnik, Bob Ryskamp, Carolyn Barbacki Scott, Suzy Sim, Stephen Tritto, and Audrey Wang.

About Matthew S. Rosin

Matthew S. Rosin is a dad, husband, and author based in California. You can keep up with news, read other stories, and read/hear his reflections on fatherhood at www.matthewsrosin.com.

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The Honeydrop Tree

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.