FREEZING FOG CRAWLED DOWN ON THE HIVE, ITS clammy touch probing every unsealed gap. In the dense, chilled clump of life within, there was no more energy for dreaming, and the only message pulsing slowly through the Cluster was that every sister’s warmth was vital, and none might leave. In the rare few hours of runted sun, Flora and other foragers raised their antennae in hope, but it was still too cold to fly.
Three quarters of the Treasury walls were empty when the first signs came. The sisters did not stir, for even to think of spring would cost them psychic energy—but secretly each of them began to register a change.
The wooden walls creaked as they dried. The air thinned, and new scents stirred. Was that the soil they smelled?
Sisters began to shift their grip but kept their antennae connected to the trance, fearful of the agonizing disappointment if they were wrong. Flora unsealed both of hers—then raised her head in excitement. The air pressure was definitely changing—high above the Treasury ceiling the skies were opening. Since her desperate frozen flight back from the cage of glass, she had not been out or smelled any green and living thing—but now as the first seeds split deep within the earth, a primal scent began to rise.
One day the sun shone stronger and in the orchard the first bird sang. Deep in the Cluster the Queen stirred. Her fragrance pulsed stronger and stronger through her daughters’ dreams, rocking their senses back to life—until with a shimmering burst the bees awoke to the great change in the air and joy at the coming of spring.
Euphoric with relief, Flora untangled herself and stretched her cramped limbs. She looked immediately for Sir Linden to acknowledge his survival, but he had already disappeared into the great shifting landscape of the Cluster’s disintegration.
A brown-and-gold tide of bees streamed down the Treasury walls and a thousand scent instructions and affirmations wove the air. Comb tingled underfoot as thousands of feet reactivated the dormant scent codes.
“Make all ready! Make all ready!” the sisters called ahead, and everyone pressed back in thrilled excitement as the Queen herself came rushing through on a great cloud of fragrance.
“Attend, attend!” she called, and the smell of her rising fertility trailed behind her sweeter than nectar. Then came her ladies-in-waiting running to follow, all their pretty fur in disarray, antennae waving disheveled at their sudden return to duty.
“Attend, attend!” they cried as they ran, and all the bees cheered in joyous relief and sang the Queen’s Prayer to spread the good news: Holy Mother was preparing to lay again, and winter was finally over.
IT WAS WONDERFUL AND STRANGE to be at liberty in the hive again. Sisters from Propolis immediately got to work repairing the damage the great mouse had wreaked with its gnawing and crashing around, and sanitation workers set about cleaning the dirt it had brought with it. Foragers rushed past Flora toward the landing board, but a phalanx of priestesses stood in the midlevel lobby surveying the damage and repairs. Flora could not help herself. She sealed her antennae and went up to one.
“Sister, may I be permitted to ask a question?”
“Speak.”
“Did the spiders in the orchard speak truly?”
The priestess’s antennae pulsed hard and high for a second, then she drew them down.
“Why do you ask? ”
“They spoke of two winters. But now it is spring.”
“A strange memory, to hold all through the Cluster. Would you rather the spiders spoke true, or false?”
Flora was silent. Twice comes winter; one more egg.
“False, Sister, for they wish us no good.”
“Then why bring their malice to mind?”
“So many lives were sold in payment for what they said, that if they lied—”
The priestess groomed her antennae, and when they rose again, Flora knew she had sealed them, as if she too had something to hide.
“The Cluster survived, did it not?” The priestess let her kin-scent flow. “Fly while you can, old forager. Bring us food!”
“Accept, Obey, and Serve.” Flora bowed, and ran for the board. The priestess had not answered her question. There was still hope.
IT WAS A JOY TO SEE the Thistle guards standing at arms on the board again, and when Flora laid her own kin-scent along with all the other homecoming markers, they saluted her like any other forager. She shivered her engine back to life and stretched her long cramped wings. They hurt as the sun roused blood through the silver membranes, and her joints felt stiff. She was aging, there was no doubt—and so were other foragers who showed yet greater wear and tear. But as they streamed high into the sparkling air, the sounds of their engines were joyous and strong.
Flora leaped to join them. If anything, the long confinement had made her faster and more agile than before, and the very thought of a cold sister clinging on to her body sent her faster in pursuit of the wonderful smell of pollen.
It came from a straggly line of willows edging a field, their leaves still furled in sleep but their acid-yellow catkins just opening with their first wave of pollen. There was no nectar, for all the trees were male, but after her long fast, Flora craved the thick carbohydrate of pollen. She ran up and down the golden pendants, triggering the precious dust to shower all over her body, then she combed it off and packed it hard and tight into expert bundles. She ate until her strength was restored, and the taste and the freedom made her hum for joy. When bees from other hives joined her in the branches, they greeted each other in the most beautiful word of their tongue: Spring!
Each returning forager was met with a storm of applause as she touched down with her load, but none had such a haul as Flora. She danced her directions to a packed and enthusiastic crowd in the Dance Hall, and many did not even wait for her to finish before they rushed off to find the catkins themselves.
All the foragers did well that day, only stopping as the sun sank early in the afternoon and the chill evening forced them back. Some had found bright orange pollen from crocuses, some early daffodils with their rough vivid taste, and the mood in the canteens was buoyant.
More good news came as they finished their meals. Two young Teasel nurses burst in, their faces bright with excitement.
“Sisters! Holy Mother’s eggs flow strong again,” cried one. “Worker after worker.”
“And for every hundred of us, a male! Their Malenesses are coming, sisters! Truly it is spring, tell everyone!”
Like the memory of summer, the massacre of the males had vanished with the Cluster, and so their joy and excitement was fresh and pure. All the bees remembered was the thrill of Devotion, once again traveling through the wax comb to reassure the colony of Holy Mother’s health, and her ongoing love for them. Spring was here, and all fear was gone.
But Flora remembered everything, and that night as she lay in her berth, listening to the happy gossip and chatter of her sisters, she carefully scanned her body. There were nicks and tears along the edges of her wings, and their joints ached from her first long flight since the Cluster—but there was nothing else of note. Though she knew she aged, she was healthy and strong—except for the emptiness in her heart and the void in her belly. There was nothing to hide, and nothing to fear. The spiders feigned power with cruel, empty taunts, and there would be no third egg.
The next day a Calluna forager rushed back to the hive dancing wildly of a great blazing forsythia bush on the edge of the town, and all the foragers sped to find it. It was better than they hoped, wild and untrimmed so that its thousands of golden florets yielded nectar at the slightest touch, and so many bees visited it that it hummed with the Holy Chord.
All the foragers from the orchard hive visited it for hours, enraptured at the constantly twining threads of scent and the sudden bursts of glittery pollen showering onto their backs. At last even the most vigorous foragers were finally ready to stop, and with loaded panniers and well-filled crops they flew home together. This was a comforting strategy they permitted themselves only when the sky was clear of the scent of the Myriad; otherwise the scent and sound of so many richly laden bees would be irresistible to their enemies.
The cold spring breeze was in their favor, and as the sisters sped back toward the hive, they hummed in bright anticipation of the praise that would meet them as they thumped down onto the landing board.
It was not to be. Approaching the orchard, Flora saw that the foragers who had left the forsythia bush before them were still hovering fully loaded in the air, held back by a cordon of Thistle guards. They were demanding to land, and complaining of the extra fuel it was costing to keep them waiting.
“Forgive us, Madam; forgive us, madam foragers,” shouted back the Thistles. “But the Sage decree you wait, for special purpose.”
“What special purpose? What could possibly be more important than bringing in forage?” It was an Ivy, a late-born forager with plenty of strength. “I cannot believe you turn us away—shame on your kin!”
“Please, Madam!” The Thistle closest to the Ivy buzzed in distress. “We cannot, we are instructed by the priestesses. Accept, Obey, and Serve!”
Little black dots of sisters appeared on the landing board, and Flora smelled her kin-sisters, the sanitation workers. All the elimination flights had been performed, so it was unusual for them to appear on the board. They wept, and each carried a little burden. One by one, they lurched off the board and flew away, far past the place of elimination. When the last had disappeared, the Thistles moved back for the incoming foragers.
“Forgive us, sisters,” they said.
ON THE LANDING BOARD, Flora smelled the traces of her kin-sisters’ feet, and the peculiar and unpleasant load they had carried. She stood waiting to see if the floras came back, but there was no sound or scent of them.
“What did they take?” she asked the little Clover receiving her forsythia nectar. “What were the floras carrying?”
The Clover shook her head and hurried back into the hive. Flora followed and grabbed her. “Tell me what happened to my kin!”
The Clover started to cry. “I am forbidden. Accept, Obey—”
Before she could finish Flora pressed her own antennae around the Clover’s and held her firmly so that she could not run. The Clover did not know how to seal them, and her panic spilled into Flora’s mind, tumbled with images of the Nursery.
“They say the brood is plagued.” She leaned against Flora and wept. Flora pulled some pollen from her pannier and stuffed it in her hands.
“Hush. Tidy that and stop weeping, or the police will smell your distress—”
The Clover looked around in terror. “Are they here?”
“Not yet, so tell me quickly—what do you mean, plagued?”
“The babies turn to slime in their cribs, still begging for food even as their flesh falls apart. No one may speak of it on pain of the Kindness and now I have disobeyed—”
Flora pushed more pollen into her hands. “You have done nothing wrong. Who forbids it?”
The Clover looked at her in terror. “The priestesses. They are angry.” She fled.
FLORA WENT ON to the Dance Hall, looking for any sanitation worker on the way. There were none to be seen and the hive was immaculate. The scent of the Queen’s Love hung fresh and plentiful in the lobby, and the atmosphere was so calm that Flora wondered for a moment if the little Clover had been in her right mind.
Watching her forager comrades dancing their spring day’s adventures pushed the strange incident to the back of her mind. Despite the peculiar cordon of Thistle guards outside the hive and the sight of her sanitation kin-sisters with their little bundles, a strange calm settled in Flora’s brain, not at all unpleasant, but quite alien to the vivid alertness of the foraging state.
She looked around her. Her fellow foragers also seemed unusually calm, with none of their characteristic acerbity of expression. The smell of Sage was strong and constant, as if markers had been laid around the chamber, but even as Flora noticed it, she felt too tired to think of such trivia.
When it was her turn to dance, she added her steps to the vast choreography laid down in the floor, of alder catkins and daffodils, crocuses and aconites. Dancing sharpened her mind, and she focused on conveying very precise information—the exact azimuth of the sun to catch a warm air current, the roundabout to avoid where all the flowers were now smog-tainted, and last, the route to the great blazing forsythia bush. At this, the bees finally roused themselves to applause.
“Bravo,” called some male voices from the back.
The sisters spun round and gasped in excitement, for a party of newly emerged drones had come to watch. Their smell was pungent and thrilling, and even those older foragers who had seen males before were unprepared for the virile magnificence of these new specimens. Every sister in the Dance Hall gazed at the males, each with his massive, powerful thorax, bobbing plume, and dazzling armor—then in a great rush of excitement they ran to greet them.
Flora stood alone, her dance now forgotten.
“Honor to Your Malenesses. Oh, Your glorious Malenesses,” came the infatuated cries of the young sisters, and the drones laughed and let them stroke and polish them. One of them swaggered over to Flora.
“I’ll take a bit of that stuff you’re giving out,” he said, and held out his hand. He was a brightly striped fellow, broad of thorax and blunt of face, with a high, proud plume. Pastry crumbs were in his fur and Flora knew his kin was Poplar.
“Don’t take all day,” he drawled. “We’ve the honor of the hive to perform; we need all the sustenance we can get.”
“It is late. You will not be flying today.”
He stared at her in amazement, then turned to his fellows. “Why, this old crone keeps our schedule of love, brothers!” He stuck his hand into one of Flora’s panniers and groped for pollen. “And tidbits for herself!” Flora gripped his arm and removed it from her pannier. The young drone shook her off.
“Insolence! Send her for the Kindness!” He looked for support.
“Oh, leave the old husk alone.”
The drone that spoke was small, his fur twisted with propolis wax into outlandish dandified patterns. Flora smiled.
“Linden. I looked for you—”
Sir Linden straightened his ruff.
“That is my kin, but I have never seen you before.”
“How can you say that?”
Sir Linden turned to the young Sir Poplar. “I warned you we should not come here—it is full of addled females.” He gestured at Flora. “And by the state of that one, she’s not long for this world—so we shall pardon her.”
The young drone glared at Flora. “She shall kneel and beg forgiveness, or I will strike her down myself.”
Linden shoved him so hard he fell over, then stood above him.
“Ha! Brother, you must work on your balance to seize a princess.” He gave the fallen drone his hand and hauled him up. “A goblet of nectar will fix it, and I know where the best is to be had.” Avoiding Flora’s eyes, Sir Linden led the younger drone away. She watched them go, then felt all her sisters’ eyes on her.
“Who else has heard of sickness in the Nursery?” The words came from Flora’s mouth without warning, but as she spoke them she felt her anger rising. News of the smallest incident traveled rapidly in the hive, so it was unthinkable that the bees had not heard of the plagued brood. “Is that why my kin-sisters have been sacrificed yet again? There is sickness, but we may not speak of it? We must let it spread unchecked, until there is not one sanitation worker left to carry out the bodies?”
She looked to the foragers for support, but none of them would meet her eyes. Instead, all the sisters began hurrying out of the Dance Hall.
“Sisters!” Flora cried. “Why do you go? Hear me!”
Alone in the great chamber, Flora felt their abandonment as keenly as a physical wound. To fly alone was one thing—but to be isolated within the hive, to be shunned and denied—
The terrible taunts of the Minerva spider ran through Flora’s mind. Madness. Sister against sister. Disaster. Her antennae throbbed as if they would burst and to comfort them she pressed her head into the old wax floor to breathe the smell of home. As she drew in the thousand strands of its bouquet, a new scent fled between them. Any other kin would have missed it, but Flora was a forager from Sanitation. Fast as thought she read its molecules—and knew it for what it was.
A fatal sickness lurked in the hive, sheltered in the body of a single sister.