Keeper of the Bees

  “What happened?” Essie asks softly. “Who took you?”

  I lean back, focus on the ceiling rather than Essie’s rapt face. “Many hundreds of years ago, the place I lived was ruled by a monarchy—a queen and, to a lesser extent, her king. She was great and powerful during her rule. There was peace, but she was also power obsessed, as many great leaders are.

  “She…collected boys, men. Anyone who appealed to her, and apparently, I did. If she wanted you, her soldiers would seize you. It didn’t matter if you were a father of ten, or a boy clutching his mother’s skirts. She didn’t care. We’d heard stories of mothers in the capital city disfiguring their handsome boys’ faces, to keep them safe from the Queen’s eye, but my family lived far from the capital. No one did this where I lived, as only a fraction of the rumors that came from the capital turned out to be true.”

  It’s embarrassing, how badly I want to tell Essie this—how much I want her to imagine me as a man, rather than this creature I am now. “The Queen had never visited our village, it was so remote, until the one day she did, while on a grand tour of her lands. Her ship came into harbor the same time as ours was returning from a fishing expedition, and…” I pause for a moment with a shake of the head. This is the part I take pains to not think about. Not because it hurts, but because I remember how badly it used to. I can no longer summon any of the searing pain associated with those memories. The memories themselves are thin, as incomplete as my name. Like grainy snapshots from someone else’s life. The emotions are fires that have long since cooled to ash.

  “The next thing I knew, I was a prisoner in the Queen’s private court. That was the end of my life as a free man.” I shrug. “I never saw my wife or brothers again.”

  Essie lightly touches the back of my hand. I stifle the urge to turn mine over and feel her palm against mine.

  “Did you fight? Did your family argue for your release?” she asks.

  “Oh no,” I say with a hard chuckle. “Those rulers were not challenged. Executions were swift and frequent. It was a different time. A far more dangerous time.”

  “So that was it?” Essie asked, astounded. “You could never go home?”

  “Yes. She never released her prisoners.”

  “What did she want with you?”

  I pause again, mulling over what to omit from this next part. It requires some delicacy. The Queen didn’t take young men for decoration. She used us for her pleasure, which spanned quite a range of taste. Until that point in my life, I’d only known the enthusiastic, sometimes fumbling, but always joy-filled lovemaking of my wife. The world I was thrust into as part of the Queen’s court was traumatizing, humiliating, degrading. There is no universe in which Essie needs to know what was done to me there.

  “We served a variety of duties,” I say carefully. “We were her personal servants.”

  “That’s horrible,” she whispers, thankfully not asking for more details. “Didn’t the King object to his wife having a harem of boys at her disposal?”

  My cheeks warm. Perhaps Essie is better at reading between the lines than I thought. “Yes, he did. He hated her, and vice versa, but the King wasn’t the one wielding power.”

  She stares at me, puzzled for a moment. “Oh,” she says. “He couldn’t stand up to her.”

  “I suppose that’s it, yes.” I could almost laugh at the absurdity of discussing the personal habits of individuals who are so long dead, not even dust remains.

  “Did you try to escape?”

  I laugh. “No.” I cock my head. It will be interesting to see how she digests this next thing I tell her. “There was magic, at that time. Sorcery, alchemy—whatever you want to call it. It was at the center of everything. People dedicated their lives to learning the secrets of the energy currents of the world. By the time the Queen took me, magic was reaching a tipping point. It had become a thing of hate, control, and oppression.

  “There were new experiments starting, merging people with animals to create better soldiers, spies, messengers. Humans who turned into birds and who could scent impending death on the wind. Women with fish tails instead of legs to scout ahead of warships on the sea. Boys merged with bees whose sting could turn a whole army raging against itself, making it easy to defeat.”

  I roll my shoulders and cast a quick glance her way. “Is this too much?”

  “No.” She shifts closer. “It’s…amazing to know that you lived in this world. That you lived in a place that sounds like something I’d see in a vision.”

  “Most people wouldn’t believe me.”

  She raises one brow. “I am definitely not most people.”

  “No, you are not.” She is a brilliant lily in a sea of grass. I clasp my hands together to keep them from reaching for her.

  “Go on!” She bounces a little on the bed. “I want to hear how this ends.”

  “You can see how it ends,” I say quietly, gesturing to my face.

  Her brows knit. “How can you say that? This story is far from over.”

  I know she’s not talking about the one I’m telling, but this one, here. Between us.

  “The empire was crumbling,” I continue, ignoring the other story for now. “The sorcerers needed ‘volunteers’ for their experiments, and when the Queen was off, the King had us rounded up and marched us off to the cellars. We were strapped down, sedated. What they did to us in that state, I don’t recall, but I didn’t leave the sorcerers’ quarters a human being. The beekeepers had been created. I left with a belly full of bees and hungers so terrifying, I wanted to die. But I couldn’t, of course. They made sure of that.”

  Essie closes her mouth, which had fallen open. I worry for a moment that I spoke too much. Frustratingly, her expression isn’t revealing one bit of her thoughts.

  “So all those men and boys—they were all turned into beekeepers? How many of you were there?”

  “Thirty-five. We still walk this earth, centuries later, cursed forever.”

  “But what happened to all that magic?” she asks. “Some of it must still be here, right?”

  “Well, shortly after we were created, the sorcerers and alchemists revolted. They went about destroying everything touched by magic. They aimed to purge the world of it for good. Mostly, they succeeded. All records of it were burned, so no one would find the secrets and could repeat the same mistakes they had. Millions died in this mass cleansing.

  “They created several diseases over the years—the Great Plague being one of them—that targeted and killed those with magic flowing through their veins, and there were a lot of people affected by magic. When it was over, the world was thrown into the dark ages. People used primitive means to survive. Whole civilizations were reduced to rubble. Myself and those like me, as well as a few other types of creatures, could take other forms and escape. It was the biggest mistake we made. We should have died when we had the chance, because now there is no escape from this life.”

  I’ve gotten terribly morbid. I force out a chuckle. “So that’s the story of how I was married once. Aren’t you sorry you asked?”

  “No.” Essie’s lips are white and the bottom one quivers a little. “What became of her? Of your wife?”

  It shouldn’t surprise me that Essie asks this, but it does. “I don’t know. I never returned to my village after I became a beekeeper.” I raise a hand, let it drop to the mattress between us. “I hope she led a good life and died peacefully.”

  “It’s sad that you never got to talk to her again, to explain what happened to you.”

  “That would have been cruel.” I gesture again to my face. “Can you imagine being married to this?”

  She points at her temple without breaking eye contact with me. “Can you imagine being married to this?”

  I gently pull away. “There’s no comparison. I’m a monster.”

  “So am I,” she says in a silky voice. “My monster lives inside my head. People are afraid of monsters, wherever they reside.”

  “People are
fools.”

  She tilts her head. “Do you really think so? I look at what Aunt Bel goes through to take care of Grandma Edie and me and I think there’s good reason to steer clear of people like us. I’m a lot of work.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I am,” she says. “I can’t drive. I can’t go to school or get a job. I’m on a lot of medicine, which is expensive and always changing because it never really works. And my condition is getting worse over time.”

  My hands clench at hearing her talk so matter-of-factly about herself like that, like she’s someone’s albatross. Nothing more than a burden. I look at her, and I see magic.

  “Okay, my turn,” she says, waving her hands. “I bet you didn’t know that I’m famous.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, I am. In the psychiatric world, everyone knows my family’s name, and mine, specifically.” She twirls a lock of hair around her finger. “They don’t really know what’s wrong with any of us. Nothing fits a diagnosis.” She shrugs one shoulder, suddenly not so buoyant. “But my claim to fame is that the Wickerton curse struck me at the youngest age of anyone in my family, which is usually late teens to mid-twenties. I’ve had research papers written about me.”

  I scramble for a reply—something appropriate, whatever that is to her. Sympathy? Should I make a joke? “I’m sorry.”

  She looks at me, confused, and I want to kick myself for choosing the wrong response. I am out of practice with conversation.

  “For what?” she asks. “You didn’t make me this way.” Her eyes widen, and she leans forward. “Did you? You didn’t sting me as a baby, did you?”

  “No, I did not,” I say, and it’s the truth, but her question clangs around in my head like loose silverware, refusing to settle. The words taste like acid on the back of my tongue. I back farther from her, sliding off the bed.

  If I stay there much longer, with only a few inches separating us, I’m going to touch her again. It’s best if I don’t. She gets up, too, but with an inquisitive frown, closes the distance again. My hands start to shake. Suddenly, it’s imperative for me to get out of here. Now. Before I do something stupid and declare my feelings for her. Her inevitable rejection would be far more painful than her innocent touch.

  I step away, toward the window. “I’m glad you’re doing well, after what happened this morning.”

  Her face pinches. “That was horrible.”

  It was nothing compared to the disaster headed for this town. The harbingers and I are here for one reason—to feed off death, fear, and pain. I hope I can save her then, when those things devour this community. We have a few rules, though no one’s sure where they came from, but one of them is: no interference. Let the dying die. Let the suffering suffer. Feed off it, then leave. But there is no way I’m doing that with Essie. If it’s within my power, she’ll survive the coming event. To hell with the rules. The Strawman can come for me. I don’t care.

  “Stay back when I change, okay?” I say gruffly. “You shouldn’t be too close to the bees.”

  “Wait.” She reaches out, grabs my hand. I go still. Her hand is soft, her fingers long. Her palm presses to mine. The sensation is so intense it aches. It’s hard to do this. I’ve gone without skin-to-skin contact for so long, I’d forgotten how amazing it feels.

  After so long of feeling nothing, I’m feeling everything. A bottle uncapped. I’ll never cram everything back inside and get it sealed up again.

  Her thumb brushes mine, and my hand closes around hers. I want to shake her off, just so I can breathe again. But I go on standing there, letting her hold my hand. Letting a hurricane roar through my head, blood, heart.

  “Will you come back?” she asks.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Of course, I do,” she replies.

  “Why?” I ask, because it makes no sense that she would.

  She smiles, looking perplexed. “I like you, Dresden.”

  It’s a simple statement until you consider the many shades of the word “like.” I don’t know Essie’s meaning of it in regards to me, but it almost certainly doesn’t mirror my version of feelings for her.

  My “like” is a beastly thing floating atop a millennium of deep and long and unbroken suffering. In all likelihood, Essie “likes” me in the most basic version of the word, the way she’d like a Labrador Retriever—uncomplicated and sweet. At least, I hope that’s how she means it, because if her feelings are even a little more than that, it’s a thing so unnatural the Earth may crack open and swallow us both.

  “I like you, too,” I say.

  Her lips spread wide, and her mouth opens, giving me a view of her molars. Her smile is feral and desolate. To anyone else, this smile would be disturbing, but anyone else is anyone else.

  “So, you’ll come back?” she asks again.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She stares up at me, eyes blue as the sea, dark as an abyss. “One day, I’ll see your real face.”

  This is too much. I close my eyes and lean away with a shudder. I can’t do this, not with bees roiling in my chest and God-knows-what-horror sliding over my face.

  “That face is gone.” My voice is growly, and I don’t think my expression is nice. Without another word, I turn and dive out of her bedroom window, giving over to the swarm the instant I’ve cleared the sill. I fly, tumbling over fields of soybeans and miles of roads, a chaotic mess of man and beast.

  No matter how far I go, she’s there: paper-thin glass spun into the shape of this girl.

  A gleaming curve in the corner of my mind’s eye.

  Always. And, I fear, always forever.

  12

  Essie

  the white pills

  I am a dull thing. The back of a spoon. A worn knob of a cane. All my edges sanded smooth by a rainbow of pills: Blue. Yellow. Green. White.

  Okay, not exactly a rainbow.

  The white one is new.

  “Essie, tell me about how you felt, finding that girl in the woods.”

  I blink slowly at Dr. Roberts. The edges of him are a little fuzzy, but he’s mostly normal looking today, except for the tongue which is still long and pink and forked at the end.

  Something new: the smoldering carcass of a raccoon drapes over the top of his head. Smoke curls from it. The smell is like burned hair. Crispy paws and snout hang over his forehead, almost to his eyebrows. Bones protrude from the blackened flesh. The only way I know it’s a raccoon is by the puffed, striped tail, which is untouched. Judging by how Dr. Roberts reacted to my comment about his tongue last time, I’m not going to mention the raccoon. He’s still sitting closer than I’d like.

  My gaze slides to the window, where some bees are lazily exploring the flowered window boxes outside. I notice bees everywhere now. They make me think of Dresden. I think about Dresden a lot, when my mind is clear enough for it. I started taking the white pill four days ago, and all it’s done is strip away most of me. I haven’t drawn in my sketchbook. Hours slide together in quiet waves. I’ve stared at the TV and slept.

  Now I’m here in Dr. Roberts’s office trying to answer his questions. What did he just ask me? Oh. He wants to hear about the dead lady.

  “I was scared,” I reply.

  He leans in. His knee bumps mine. “Talk to me about that.”

  “About what?” I move my leg away as my stomach churns. The white pill makes me nauseous and keeps me that way, causing me to lack the energy or will to do anything. Today, my stomach is acutely unsettled. Alarmingly so. I glance to the door, where the bathroom is down the hall. There is a decent chance I won’t make it through this session without throwing up.

  Almost a week has passed since the night Dresden came to my room. Maybe a few days. Maybe a week. It’s a memory that shines through the fog like a beacon. I think I did okay that night. I’m not sure why he hasn’t come back.

  “Tell me what you saw, how you felt about what you saw.” Dr. Roberts positions his pen ove
r his pad. He looks so eager. “Please be as detailed as you can.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I wave a hand, and screw good manners, I need some space. That raccoon carcass stinks. “Would you please lean back? You’re too close.”

  Dr. Roberts has the nerve to look offended, but he leans back a few inches and adjusts his glasses. “I’m not trying to crowd you, Essie. I need to observe your reactions. Your father is very concerned about what you witnessed last week.”

  I snort out a laugh. “No, he isn’t.”

  “Of course he is. He’s your father.”

  Something inside me snaps. I’m the one who leans forward this time. The room swims a little at the quick movement. I wonder if this is what being drunk feels like. “My father is only concerned about where to find his next drink. He was horrible to me when I lived with him. When he visits, he says terrible things, calls me disgusting names. I don’t know what face he shows you, but the one I see is a monster.” I sit back abruptly, slamming my back against the tight leather chair. “So don’t sit there and tell me that he cares about me. He doesn’t.”

  The forked tongue flicks out, retracts.

  My stomach heaves. Goddamn, those white pills. “And I don’t like this new medication. It upsets my stomach.”

  He scribbles furiously on the pad. “Actually, I think they’re working well. This is the most open you’ve been with me. I’d call today a mini breakthrough. We can begin working on this misperception you have about your father.”

  I roll my eyes because it’s wiser than screaming at him. Aunt Bel tells me not to antagonize him. And besides, I used up all my energy speaking, which was apparently pointless.

  My stomach clenches with acute nausea. Forget the bathroom. “Do you have a trash can?”

  He doesn’t look up from his notes. “There’s one next to my—”

  I make a lunge for the can, but don’t quite make it. I vomit the Apple Jacks I ate for breakfast. Some makes it into the trash can, but most sprays on his nice Berber carpet.