Extra Royal Jelly
After the distillery incident, the citadel had been emptied. Only two envoys remained: Lenita and Vinícius. He and she, tall and short, stood abreast in the Hall of Foxgloves, their smoke cloaks glimmering from the sconces studding the relief of flowers behind them. It was the day of the finale, and the night would welcome the new moon. The other assays were nixed due to the lack of envoys. They faced a domineering wall that wriggled and hummed with hundreds of colonies and millions of bees.
I’d melted into a carved foxglove, adjacent to where they would compete. Both envoys seemed calm, eager, but I was nowhere near restful. I’d failed to prove my worth to the Keeper and earn her trust. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Lenita, were I ever to grab the gumption to ask, was coupled to my past. But I ached with hollowness, with desperation for closure. I still needed the Keeper’s approval.
Samara stood before the two envoys with an open book and a silver pocket watch. If a stranger were to stumble upon this scene, they’d likely infer the savvy was an officiant marrying bee enthusiasts in their smoke cloaks.
“The Keeper passes on her sincerest apologies for not being able to attend the finale,” Samara said, their gaze wavering like the air in my chest. The most momentous examination of the Praxis, naming a new Keeper, and she wasn’t here? “She’s a little under the weather this evening but has confirmed she’ll see you at breakfast to congratulate her successor. Now, as you both know, placing a new queen with a colony can be tricky. If the worker bees don’t accept her, they’ll ball up around her, stinging her to death.”
Lenita passed Vinícius a grin. “That a warning?”
“No. But perhaps it should be. Whoever is named Keeper tonight, if you end up being an obnoxious little twit, I wouldn’t put it past the staff to dispose of you.” Samara waggled an elegant brow. “Unlike our new queens, who are introduced to their hives via a protective clip, you won’t have any armor.” They were teasing, obviously, but the threat hung as thickly in the air as the citadel’s stench: Keepers were disposable. Bees didn’t operate under a monarchy but a matriarchy, and the Keepership wasn’t much different.
“Vinícius, I’ll have Marguerite walk you to the end of the corridor. Lenita will stay here with me. On my count, you’ll have five minutes to locate as many queens as possible. A test of your ability to read the colonies, homing in on their behavior. To see if you can truly handle the privilege and burden of safekeeping the world’s most important life-bringers, our future. Any questions?”
Both envoys shook their heads.
“All right, Vinícius follow Marguerite,” Samara said, nodding at the approaching healer in her ivory tunic.
“Best of luck, mate.” Lenita offered her hand, and Vinícius accepted it with a firm shake.
“May the best Mid win.” He winked, then followed Marguerite to the end of the hall, hazy green from the afternoon sun pouring through the turrets.
I hoped Lenita would prove victorious. My initial dislike towards her had long faded. I now only harbored respect. Trying to take out the envoys had been a foolish whim, a mistake. If the Keeper really wished to leave twenty years premature, I had to honor her decision, hasty as it seemed. Still, that didn’t prevent me from wanting to know why. I bore incredible guilt on my weary shoulders, fearing my past, reckless self was responsible for her short tenure. If I’d been wrong enough to release a scrim, to allow my daughter to die, what else was I capable of?
“Time!” Samara barked, and Lenita sprang for the ladder.
The savvy had barely climbed to the top of theirs when Lenita held up a hand to signal she’d found her first queen. They leaned in, nodded, making a mark in their book. Lenita dropped a few rungs to the hive beneath, and her hand went up. Another mark. She moved in quick precision, one hive after another, one queen after another. After identifying the bottom hive’s queen, she gently slid the ladder a few yards over and repeated the same sequence.
Her process was hypnotizing. Like a future queen bee fed extra royal jelly to ensure her fate, so was Lenita. She was born to be Keeper. I should have never tried to erase her existence. My throat tightened in awe, in weepy pride for this woman who’d overcome all odds to get here.
I blinked back phantom tears, glimpsing in Vinícius’s direction. Poor fellow never had a chance. When Samara called time, Lenita was on her seventy-seventh queen. Vinícius had just found his third.