The Bees

by Laline Paull

This was the Arrivals Hall, and she was a worker.

flora

Cloaked in a bitter scent that hid their faces and made them identical, dark figures strode down the corridor toward Flora.

“Spare me,” she cried. “I will not fly; I will serve in any other way—” “Deformity is evil. Deformity is not permitted.”

they measured her height. “Excessive variation. Abnormal.” “That will be all, officers.” At the kind voice and fragrant smell, the police released Flora. They bowed to a tall and well-groomed bee with a beautiful face. “Sister Sage. This one is obscenely ugly.” “And excessively large—” “It would appear so. Thank you, officers, you may go.”

Flora followed gladly, all memory of the killing lost in her longing to taste more honey.

Her body calmed and her heart filled with joy, for the fragrance told her with utter certainty that she, Flora 717, was loved.

That which you feel is but a tiny fraction of the Queen’s Love, 717.”

“They say the season is deformed by rain, that the flowers shun us and fall unborn, that foragers are falling from the air and no one knows why!”

“Then kindly recall that variation is not the same as deformity.”

“If I had not seen it for myself. A flora from Sanitation, able to make royal jelly. Flow.”

Now I must find you a place to sleep—though I don’t know what the other girls will say about it. You mustn’t expect them to touch or groom you.”

“Good.” Sister Sage walked on. “In this time of scarce forage, you have been surprisingly useful in the Nursery. Sometimes it is good to spare the deviants, and experiment a little.”

Or rather, you draw your heritage from impure and promiscuous flowers, shunned by this hive.”

Flora entered the sacred refinery of the Fanning Hall and beheld the genius of her people.

racks. For the first time, Flora became conscious of a definite intelligence behind their strange faces. With a jolt of excitement, she understood that these floras were from the top echelon of Sanitation, responsible for taking the cadavers to the landing board to fly them out of the hive.

Not until this moment had Flora known how much she loved it and all who lived there. She could not wait to fold her wings, run into its warm depths, and press wing to wing with her sisters in the sacrament of Devotion.

The air was thick with the foul scent of the wasps and the blood of bees, but the hive was saved.

“That story is called The Visitation.” The voice was sweet and thrilling, and the hand that touched Flora took away her fear. “It tells of robbery and terror, and the survival of our people.”

She had committed a crime, yet she felt no guilt, only love for her egg.

Flora hovered as low as she could and called out in clumsy Hymenopteraese, the old shared tongue, “Speech, Sister?”

Either way, without her warning, more sisters would die in the field of gold. The cawing rose to a higher pitch and Flora knew they saw her.

“The hive comes first,” called out one, “else how could we return?” “You did what any of us would,” called another, and the applause grew. “Silence!” Sister Sage signaled to stop her dancing. Flora stood with her sides heaving and the electrifying choreography still running through her body as the priestess addressed the assembled sisters.

When the foragers smiled, their beauty shone past their cracked and weathered faces. They stood and bowed to her, then unlatched their wings all together with the sound that so long had thrilled her. Flora pressed down her secret and let her wings unlatch too, proud and grateful to be one of their elite and honorable number. Before six days passed she would visit Sister Teasel and find a way to see her child. But first, and with all her strength and passion, she would serve her hive.

Flora wanted to strike Sister Teasel, or scream, or shout that it was her child, that they should tear her apart to save her from her grief. Instead she bowed very gracefully. “Yes,” she said. “We must.”

A rising front from the south wiped the last shred of gray from the sky and below her spread the great plain of different greens, pushed together in crude four-sided shapes as if by some primitive insect ignorant of the beauty of the hexagon.

Completely immune to the pulse of the cell phone tower, the wasp wove about in the air in front of Flora, demonstrating different wingbeats.

Stars burned tiny holes in the twilight and then a pale moon traced a slow silver arc through the sky.

Love filled her heart and Flora wept with joy, for she found she could pray again.

“You try to trick a spider?” She spat Madam Dogwood’s blood at Flora. “Winter comes twice. That is all I will tell you, and may your hive suffer!”

She ripped his abdomen open down to his genitals, then tore out his penis and ate it. Sisters screamed in excitement as his blood splashed on their faces.

Filled with consecrated anger at every insult and humiliation, every wasted forage and sullied passageway, they avenged themselves on the wastrel favorites, the sacred sons who did nothing for their keep but brag and eat and show their sex to those who must only labor for them and never be loved.

A fatal sickness lurked in the hive, sheltered in the body of a single sister.

Most frightening of all was the plight of the foragers. Again and again they went to the landing board, but despite the good weather not one could start her engine, for that required joy and courage.

Roaring their engines, the orchard bees launched themselves up behind her, a great soaring army rising into the air, blood and honey on their feet, war on their wings.

Flora could no longer move, but she smelled speedwell, and bluebells, and cyclamen, and felt the cool, smooth leaves of aconite holding her body. She wrapped herself in the rich perfume of the forest floor and watched until the last bee flew into the tree. Then she rested.