THE BEES WERE ANGRY. RAJ WAS AFRAID OF THEM.
He hid in the ferns near the ring of live oaks, binoculars around his neck, hand sweating around the corroded rubber grip of an ancient golf club. The old man had given Raj the rusted nine iron when he’d issued Raj’s latest assignment.
A weapon.
Raj adjusted his grip on the club and, with his free hand, lifted his binoculars through the fern fronds to focus on the massive hive lodged between the largest tree’s trunk and its lowest branch. A giant, lumpen pod affixed to the crook in the bark. The hive trembled with the bees’ rage. Its surface a pulsing, shifting mass of tiny gold-brown bodies.
At the base of the tree was an open ladder tipped on its side. Which meant, Raj knew, that the old man had been right here, not long ago, visiting the hive.
For a moment, Raj doubted he had the courage to complete the mission.
Then he thought of Candace, curled beneath her frayed blanket in the cave, her once-strong swimmer’s shoulders thin and trembling, and his will returned.
If he did not do as the old man, Sheshnaag the Great Protector, asked, then bad things would happen to Raj—worse, to Candace.
He lowered the binoculars and closed his eyes.
He reminded himself these were special bees. Like many things he had encountered at Celestial Ranch—the cave, the trees, the hummingbirds, even the wolf dog and the old man himself—the bees were sacred. Touched by the gods. In his Nani’s fat book of the Vedas scriptures, the richly colored drawings showed Lord Vishnu and Krishna, and Indra, the king of heaven himself, as golden bees. The nectar-born ones. Raj was but eight or nine when his grandmother showed him the image of Vishnu as a blue bee lit upon a lotus flower, explaining to little Raj that bees were no enemy but the symbol of life. Of resurrection.
Perhaps the bees would not hurt him, but save him?
He lifted his binoculars again just as the old woman, Sheshnaag’s wife, with her long gray braid, marched into the ring of trees and stopped a dozen feet short of the hive.
Raj held his breath and watched. The old woman was part of the assignment. Raj tightened his grip on the golf club.
“Arnie!” the woman shouted. A startled sparrow darted up through the branches.
Raj was grateful Candace was in the cave. The old woman’s anguish would surely sadden Candace, whose heart was too big, and what if she wanted to help, to pull the old woman into a hug and rub her back? He warned Candace again and again to be careful. To remain invisible. He reminded her, every chance he found, of the paparazzi parasites who had infested their happy life, fed on their misery, forced them to flee their home with Candace in Raj’s arms begging him to Stop! Please, Raj, no!
“Arnie, please!” the woman called. “Sweetie, where are you?”
Raj watched her stand still, listening, until a low sound, a creaking groan, came from overhead.
From the trees.
The woman tipped her face to the sky and swiveled her neck, tracking the source of the noise. Raj wanted to look too, to push away the fern frond covering his head and stand up, but he dared not move a muscle.
Then he heard her gasp: “Oh my god!”
She darted over to the oak and stood on the side opposite the hive, looking up, hands cupped over her mouth.
Raj could no longer restrain himself. He dropped onto his stomach and rolled onto his back, scooting toward the edge of the ferns, so if he angled his head just so, he could see to the top of the oak.
The old man was in the tree. High up, a good half-dozen feet above the hive. He stared down at his wife, a look of fear-tinged shame on his weathered, white-stubbled face.
“Twy,” the old man croaked. “Help me.”
Raj maneuvered the binoculars to his eyes and, as best he could from his awkward position, brought the old man’s face into focus.
Sheshnaag the Great, Raj and Candace’s only defender, appeared frightened. Nothing like the courageous protector who had brought them food and water and supplies. Now he hugged the branch like a frightened cat. Where was the man Raj had depended on those past seven months? An inferior spirit had possessed the old man’s body. The distant look, the dead eyes, were the very opposite of the fever-bright focus Raj had seen during the old man’s visits to the cave.
The thought of their protector weakening, going soft in the head to the point that he could not see the great danger in getting stuck at the top of a tall tree, was too much for Raj. Without the old man, Raj and Candace would be forced to return to the corrupted world far below the canyon.
He twisted back onto his stomach, moved by a powerful urge to spring from the cover of the ferns and help the old man down from the tree.
Even if it meant being spotted by the old woman.
Even if it meant outing himself to others lurking on the property: the trespassers who came on the weekends to Instagram themselves, or the media roaches on the hunt for another viral photo to sell to TMZ with a trending hashtag:
#MurdererRajPatel
The old man knew nothing of Raj’s past. Raj had only identified himself as Rāha, an approximate translation of traveler in Hindi, and the man had simply nodded his big, furred head and repeated Rāha, in his deep, scratched voice. He was incurious and accepting. He asked no questions. He simply helped Raj and Candace survive.
Sheshnaag: their miraculous ally.
In turn, Raj did whatever he could to help the old man.
He was about to jump from the ferns when the woman spoke.
“Good god, Arnie, you brought the ladder all the way out here? How on earth did you manage to carry it?”
Raj saw her ropy arms reach for the ladder and maneuver it upright, propping it against the base of the tree, moaning with the effort.
She loved the old man, Raj understood. He knew this because she was taking care of him the way Candace had taken care of Raj. Supporting him, even when he’d done something stupid. Hurtful, even.
Memories flashed: Candace, adding cream to the crabmeat and asparagus soup she’d made for him, after he had complained that it was too salty. (How ungrateful he had been, in his old life!) Candace, begging Don’t hurt yourself, baby, please, when he had forced her out of the Malibu house in the middle of the night, lifting her over his shoulder so she could not stay behind. Giving her no choice but to follow him up into the wilds of the canyon.
Now he watched the old woman coax the old man from the high tree branch with the same loving tone Candace had used, even when Raj deserved it the least.
He listened, his eyes brimming with tears.
“Okay, Arnie. You’re going to keep both hands on the branch and scoot yourself toward the trunk. Very slowly, love.”
The old man inched forward along the branch until his big stomach pressed against the trunk.
“Now you’ll wrap both arms around the trunk, like you’re giving the tree a big hug, and swing your leg . . .”
Raj watched as the old man followed his wife’s every instruction, until finally, his big, booted feet reached the top rung of the ladder.
At the bottom, his wife reached out her arms until she could hold his ankles and help him to the ground.
Then Sheshnaag was in the old woman’s arms shaking like a terrified child, nothing like the Great Protector deigned to hold the world steady, and the two of them crumpled to the ground, holding each other.
Raj’s face heated with shame. He was spying on a moment of devotion.
And yet, he could not lower his binoculars.
“What were you thinking, Arnold?” the woman said.
“I was,” the man stammered, “I was . . . just trying to . . . help.”
“Help how, Arnie?”
“I wanted to surprise you, Twy. Make the bees go away. Fix the problem.”
Raj was confused. Had he waited too long to carry out the old man’s assignment? It was impossible now. Mission not accomplished. Perhaps, in his stupid, childish fear of the bees, he’d shaken the old man’s confidence in him.
He groped at his side for the golf club he’d dropped, locating the coarse rubber grip. He closed his hand around it.
If only he could have another chance, he would not fail Sheshnaag again.
“Fix the problem?” said the woman, with scorn, as she detangled from her husband’s embrace and stood, brushing off her overalls. The tenderness in her voice had vanished, Raj heard, replaced by fresh irritation. “Actually, you create all kinds of new problems, Arnie.”
“That cockamamie exterminator,” the old man said, “he wanted a fortune to get rid of the hive. What a crook! I wanted to help.”
I’ll help! Raj wanted to shout. I will, really!
But he did not utter a word, remembering how the old man had instructed him to “stay invisible.” How, in return for hiding, Sheshnaag had guaranteed Candace’s safety.
So, Raj would stay hidden and silent.
As absent from the world as a dead man.
The world wanted him dead, anyway.
#GoodRiddanceRajPatel the media leeches would say. Never mind that he had been a luminary of the tech world. Number three on the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. His bank account so bloated he could not have spent the money in many lifetimes.
None of that mattered now. Nothing mattered but pleasing Sheshnaag, so that Candace could survive.
Beside the tree, the woman reached for her husband’s hand and helped him to his feet, wobbling against his heft. The bees hummed behind them.
“If you really, truly want to help, Arnold, you can stop getting yourself in situations like this.” She flung a hand toward the hive.
“I’m sorry, Twy.” The old man hung his head and curled his fists like a child bracing for punishment.
Raj felt again that he might cry.
Twyla swatted her neck. “Ow! Now look what I’ve done! Killed a bee—an endangered species.”
“I’ve been trying to save them,” the old man muttered. “That’s why I let the hive go so long in the first place.”
Raj heard dejection in his voice. He was no longer the righteously angry man who had, on so many nights in the cave, sounded off about the political correctness devouring the country like a second plague, his deep voice a roar. He had given Raj the language to make sense of why he and Candace had lost everything. The cancel culture woke mob! The self-righteous snowflake know-it-alls!
“You know what, Arnold?” Twyla placed her hands on her narrow hips. “Sometimes, I need to be saved too.”
“I’m sorry, Twy.”
“I forgive you. Again. But only if you promise me you’ll stay close to the house this weekend. Stay out of the guests’ way. This group is paying a premium.”
“I promise.”
“And no more fooling around with that hive. We’ll deal with it when we have the—resources—to do it properly.”
Raj heard the old man grunt in agreement.
“Now let’s go. I’m late to meet Sibyl at the house, and you know she hates when I’m late.”
Sibyl.
The name the old woman used for the Witch.
Raj’s pulse quickened.
The Witch had returned.
He waited until he was certain the old couple was gone. Then he stood from the ferns, golf club swinging from his hand, and stomped his legs to wake them. He would complete his assignment soon—very soon—but first, he must visit the Witch. He had witnessed the power she cast over Twyla, how the old woman emerged from their meetings transformed. Renewed. Her eyes sparkling with new clarity.
As if, Raj thought, she had drunk a magic elixir.
He must convince the Witch to do the same for him. To show him the clear path forward, to infuse him with her power. The old man alone was not enough. Until today, Raj had believed him all-powerful, but the sight he’d just beheld—Sheshnaag hanging in the tree branches, quaking like a terrified animal—had revealed weakness.
Raj needed more help. He could not risk the media roaches finding Candace. Or risk Candace delivering on her threats to leave the cave, leave the canyon, and return to the wicked world down below.
Perhaps the flame-haired Witch could guide him.
He tossed the golf club into the ferns, memorizing the spot where it landed, and ran in the direction of the old farmhouse.