“Well? What are you going to tell her? I imagine she won’t be up there for long.”
You glance up at the dark curtains of your parent’s platform. Shafts of sunlight rain on it from the windows, and dust floats in the light like sparse snow.
“Yikki has to stay here. I don’t want her to have to leave.”
“I agree,” Shimare says. She isn’t standing. Her tarsi grip the handles of a perch, her small abdomen resting on a cushion. She doesn’t look relaxed, though, eyes regarding you intensely. “She’s like the rest of your agemates, right? Adores vesperbanes, defers to them?”
You nod. Who doesn’t?
“Good.” Her antennae unfurl, reaching for you. “Still, you didn’t answer my question.”
You run a palp across the dentation of a mandible. “I don’t know. I keep thinking about what Yikki said. It’s a risk.”
“So is keeping it secret.” Shimare is still looking at you with mantid gaze, her Brismati eyes open, but not directed at you.
“It’s…” you start and stop. “Secrets get out eventually,” you say. How could you keep something from Tlista forever? She seems to figure everything out. “We have more time to work things out if she doesn’t know right away.” You glance at her curtain, half expecting unlucky timing, your mother appearing right as you allude to the secret. She doesn’t; you’re safe for moments more.
This is like last night, you realize. You’re still seeing it as a binary. There are more options than asking Tlista or keeping it a secret. “Maybe we could ask other nymphs’ parents, just in case Tlista finds out and doesn’t let her stay?” Maybe Maune herself would be amenable to her staying in the woods with her. Or! You’ve heard legend of the secret treehouse the older nymphs got the bees to build years ago. No one’s been able to find it since, with those nymphs (now imagos) keeping it a grave secret.
“Bad idea,” Shimare’s quick to say. “Can you trust other parents not to just take her back? You should keep her close.” The vesperbane stands up. “But if you’re not going to tell her now, we’re eating our luck by staying here. Let’s go.”
You turn to the door, but stop. “Wait. If Yikki just woke up, she’s probably hungry.”
“I can just give her one of my ration bars. It’s half of what we eat, so we’re packed with them.” You nod, not having better ideas; your father cooks. “Wait for me outside while I go down there? Can get the quilting board too, so we aren’t caught in an obvious lie.”
Outside, the sky is as clear as a vast emptiness. The atmospheric enervate is fainter this deep in the day, and has been driven completely out of the radius of the sun, like a great celestial banishment.
“Want one?”
A vesperbane surprising you should not be a surprise, but you still jump. The white mantis is offering you a paper-wrapped tube. It’s hexagonal, like it was extruded alongside a hundred others from a mold.
You smile and take it, feeling the mid-day pang in your abdomen. The bland, unappealing brown tube is lumpy, studded with what might be nuts. You pause. It smells like meat.
Shimare tsks at your look. “Please don’t tell me you were raised on any of that noble hunter bullshit. Sure, haemofab’d meat is farmed like a crop rather than killed, but it tastes like meat. Calories are calories. If you want to be a vesperbane, by no means can you be picky.”
In the end, your stomach decides.
Shimare hums, then says, “Follow me.” The bane starts walking.
“Uhm, where are we going?”
She doesn’t stop or turn to reveal her expression, but the tone is of answering a stupid question. “Our camp. Have you forgotten my offer already?”
“I do want to learn about being a vesperbane, and you are –”
“I can see the ‘but’ in your words, nymph. Cut to it.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble, showing me something you shouldn’t.”
“And if I tell you I know my teacher and what he wants better than you?”
“I’d have to be around the others, wouldn’t I? I know they’re your teammates, but they don’t seem very nice. Or good vesperbanes. And after last night, they might not trust me.”
“Should I save myself the trouble of eviscerating your new excuses, and assume the ground truth here is you don’t want to, and this game is what? Trying not to hurt my feelings?”
Or revealing what you’d rather do. When you decided you wouldn’t take up Shimare’s offer, you didn’t determine if your intentions should be secret. There was nothing wrong with visiting the apiary, was there?
“It’s worth remarking,” Shimare scrapes, tone light, “how odd that is. A child of the Pantheca, an aspiring vesperbane, and you don’t want to learn from your superiors? I’m sure any other nymph in your village would leap for the chance, and yet you hesitate. And I wonder why that is. Do you trust the Stewartry? Do you believe in the Dream?”
You nod with vigor. Had you made a terrible mistake? Was this going to ruin your chances of becoming a vesperbane?
“Or perhaps… is this your interpretation of caution? Or do you just distrust me, specifically?”
“I think you’re nice!” you say, extending antennae outward to her, wiggling them.
Shimare frowns at that, and you aren’t sure why.
You decide to move the conversation along. “I won’t accompany you today,” you emphasize, “but maybe there is a way you could help me. I’ve read of the sovrans at Greci, and I was wondering –”
“No,” Shimare curls up her antennae. “Not only are you wrong, you’re doing it wrong. First of all, no bane of rank lower than fiend has ever been to Greci – and it’s forbidden for us to be transported there. I have no connections for you to exploit.” She leans toward you, and it’s not a pleasant look on her face. “Was it just flattery, a moment ago? Is this what you really think of me – a big, influential name, a ladder for your little ambitions?”
“No! I just –”
“You should take a lesson from this, nymph. About the implications your words may carry, to those who aren’t blind to them. If you just want to use mantids as stepping stones for your schemes, then you’ll be in good company, becoming a vesperbane. Or perhaps you aren’t even capable of that depth yet, and you really thought your intentions innocent. I don’t care.”
You take a step back, palps quivering inaudibly. You glance around – anywhere but at the bane. Should you just leave? This isn’t what you wanted.
“Don’t run away just yet. There’s something I need to tell you – that I was going to tell you, before your little… infelicity. Walk with me, we won’t have to part ways for a bit.”
You welcome walking beside the bane, where keeping your gaze fixed ahead of you is expected and not impolite. You’re breathing a bit fast, but you have the composure to slow it.
“Here. I’ll present this in the form of three questions. Questions you should have asked, questions a good vesperbane would have thought of. Listening?”
You nod. You meet her Brismati eyes, rather than her compound eyes. The unease her vein-marred, glowing orbs stir is appropriate.
“Why, if speaking at the schoolyard was a test from our teacher, would we skip out on the test by sending ourselves a fake message? Does that make sense? And how, if your friend was able to sneak out of her house, could her windows be barred or door locked from the outside? And why, if I am a vesperbane born of one of the most prestigious clans, taught by the arch-fiend of one of the major cities of the plains, would I find you impressive? Do you think you’re that special?” She shakes her head. “When you leave for the academy, and you have more than one generation of a tiny village to compare yourself against, you’ll discover just how unremarkable you are.”
You stop walking. “Why – why would you… you lied? Why lie about those things?”
“My teacher loves his tests, and I think it’s infectious. When the examiners speak of Shatalek’s stock, the one they talk about is Hervanium Alcha. But you come up second. I wanted to know if that meant anything. And, well.”
You make a wordless scraping noise.
“But, having met you, I had another motive. You’re gullible, Eifre. Listen to me. Vesperbanes are liars! If they tell you something, it only means they wanted you to think that. Always interrogate motives.”
“You– you can’t treat everyone like that. Some are good, some are trustworthy. Some are…” – you reach for a word the vesperbane would like – “allies.”
“Even your allies, bug. Vesperbanes make sacrifices. And what’s truth mean next to lives saved, or concrete results? It’s ephemeral. This is the heartlands. Truth is scarce. Your trust should be, too.”
Brismati Shimare closes her eyes.
“It’s something a lot of new vesperbanes get stung by. And I’m willing to bite, and demonstrate directly, even if it makes you see me as some kind of venomed scorpion, because it will make the Pantheca stronger. I want you to know this, before you have to learn it from some renegade or defect, at cost.”
When you part ways, she walks back, directly opposite the way you had been walking.
Crossing town towards the apiary takes you tangential to the important building at its center, where Tlista talked to the syndic. You see unfamiliar mantids in purple robes outside it now, adorned with eight-pointed stars. They are talking to passersby. Had they arrived recently? Most mantids in town are vaguely familiar, but strangers pass through the tavern, uncommonly. Most weren’t interested in the syndic or the assembly building, though.
Bees grow more numerous as you near their home. You always see them digging around in the flower cups, or tending to the flowers and you wonder if that’s what they all do. Do they ever play?
Locating the apiary’s no mystery. Though your fleeting familiarity with the fringes of town begins to fail you, there is an irregular stream of bees diving in this direction.
The apiary sits as a squat thing, a hexagonal slab of a building, whose colorfully painted façade shows more creativity than its shape. From the look, the hive is built of wood and the bone-like white stone imported from the city. This surprises you.
A landing plaza fans out around it, and some of the returning bees are tinted yellow with pollen-dusting.
Winding the roads in approach of the structure, you find it positioned behind an ordinary-looking mantid house. There’s a big sign reading “Enna’s Apiculture” and a tall fence barring approach to the hive.
You see a mantis robed in white, huffing as their legs turn a large circular lever attached the a big drum-like container.
“Hi,” you say, running up to them. “Are you Enna? What are you doing?”
“Ah, I’ll get right with you behind the counter.” The big mantis continues to work for a moment before glancing at you. “Oh, a nymph. You aren’t a customer? Or are you here for your parents? I don’t give free candy.”
“No. Not today.” You repeat your question.
Enna looks back to the big drum, and slows her turning until she can release. Legs free, she smacks the drum with a tarsus. “I turn this crank to make this baby spin. Pulls all the honey out of the combs so I can collect it. Usually I have some roaches help, but most are sleepin at this hour.”
“You help the bees make honey?”
Enna crooks her head. “You could say that. It’s ‘cause of me they have land and a home here in Shatalek. I make sure they have owners’ blessing to go out an collect from their flowers, or tend their gardens. Handle the negotiationing and transactioning, all sort of business in that sphere.” She has the kind of patronizing smile common on imagos teaching nymphs something. “It’s the sort of cooperating the Pantheca was built on.”
She cracks open up the drum and you glimpse the yellow volume. She closes it back up and resumes spinning. “Now, I don’t have the directest tarsus in what alchemy the fuzzies do to make the sweet stuff, but it is my work, in a broad sense.”
You rub the soft weevil ring. “Could I see the bees?”
She quirks an antennae, but you see a smile-curve on one palp. “What’s this? You want to be a bee-handler yourself? I could use an apprentice.”
“Maybe,” you say. You wonder if there are vesperbanes who specialize in helping bees.
“Well I ’ppose I could show you a bit of what goes on in the apiary. Bees are pretty creatures, if not the most accommodating.”
Enna slips into that house or shop, with the implication you should follow. When you step in, she gives you a big veiled hat, and bounces some white robes before you. “They’re sized for my husband, but might be big on you even then. Roll up the sleeves, maybe?”
The sound of bee flight fills the air behind the shop, and many big flowers line the path back to the apiary.
You seem to be the target of a few bees’ gaze, and some point at the ring. There is no repeat of the earlier encounter, though.
“Do you talk to the bees?”
“Can’t. Bees don’t talk.” She draws a dactyl across her file.
“Don’t they talk to themselves? Could you learn their language?”
“Bees don’t have language, not really. Think about it. What’s language? A vessel for expressing ourselves, and contemplating high ideals. But all bees are subservient to their queen, and her will. They have no individuality, and their lives no meaning but to work – build the hive, make honey, rear the young. No love, no abstraction, no conflict. What would they talk about?”
You frown. “That seems… really sad.”
“’twould be sad, if they were mantids. Worms eat the dirt, and minuteslugs don’t live more than a day, but that’s they are. A soul that has never known joy doesn’t mind its absence. Not everything is a mantis, or wants to be.” Her whole speech had sounded practiced, but has now veers towards sounding outright quoted. “Alien kinds – truly alien kinds – can thrive in conditions that if another kind, like a mantis, were to endure them, it would indeed be cruel.”
“But if you can’t talk to them, how do you know they are thriving?” You can’t wash the feeling that it is sad, even if they aren’t mantids. Maybe you could teach them how to talk, like Maune and her crow.
You’ve reached the apiary, and she pauses by it, turning to you.
“You ask questions like a syndic, kid. There’s no undignified keeping happening here, honest.” She points a foreleg behind her. “Here, you can see for yourself. Or well, I can show you. Even though they can’t talk, there are signs that indicate things. You learn to recognize tells of aggression, malnourishment, colony disorders. Have you ever had a pet? A little beetle, or a saltie spider? Keeping vinculated kinds is similar. A responsibility, magnified in scale.” She steps into the entranceway. “C’mon. I picked some stuff up from my mentor, but this is a lot of lecturing on short notice.”
The apiary’s entrance is wide in a way a mantis can walk into, though the bees seem to mostly enter elsewhere, through smaller, closely clusters holes. You start inward. You might compare the smell to a paint splatter, or too many instruments playing at once. There’s flowery scents, dense and jangly pheromonal scents that are like a warped cousin of mantis’s smell, and others you haven’t learned names for. It’s not quite at the point of smelling laurax, but it’s overwhelming.
Inside the hive, things are arranged like in the scriptorium: rows and rows of shelves. Instead of scroll cubbies, it’s hexagonal packings. A lot of the hexes have wax caps, but the ones that don’t are incompletely filled. You see them packed with dusty pollen, or rocks, or woody forms (seeds?), or some where nectar drips forth before a bee comes over to wipe it, and secure the cap.
The shelves are broken into subsections with handles.
Enna’s talking. “Had this place built myself. These pull out like drawers” – Enna grips a handle and demonstrates – “allowing easy collection of the ’combs.”
Several bee heads turn at the sound, antennae working black eyes regarding the giants in their midst.
“In younger hives, you might get them swarming at that. But you can condition them not to, and when one generation learns, the next mimics their elders, and one day you wind up with all of them knowing without any of them being taught. Hiveminded.” Enna points. “You can see further examples if you look closer. See how every one of them is following another? They can’t stand being alone. They say long, long, long ago, even mantids used to be like them. But we were freed from the song of the stars, thank E’yama.”
The bees crawl and cluster over the walls, milling about. Sometimes on the floor too, and you’re careful not to step on them, while Enna pushes them out of the way with a mid-tarsus.
As the two of you walk on, Enna points out other sights of interest, such as where the bees mix together one stage of the honey, or where they press beeswax into molds she gave them. There’s one room where bees are lying down, the air smelling pleasantly of burning incense sticks. Enna collects the sticks, putting them out and clearing away the lazing bees.
But, not long into this tour of the apiary, you hear a shattering sound.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. Things are usually ordered around here. I’ve got to see what’s happened. Wait here. If they get aggressive with you, use this, and call out.” She passes you a spray bottle whose contents do not smell good.
But when Enna is gone, a bee in colorful robes appears before you.
You don’t raise the bottle.
The bees – there’s three of them in similar coverings – are held up on a platform carried by other bees. They hold up a small wood board smoothed with wax, and a kind of ink or pigment on the waxed board neatly says:
Mantis follow us.
(You’re surprised they can write. Did Enna know? How could she not?)
You don’t hesitate, really. You came here to learn about the bees – and if this posed some kind of danger, the trap’s already closed around you. Being uncooperative couldn’t make you safer or more informed.
They lead you around, and the way begins to slope down, into a cramped part of the hive – low, like it was dug into the dirt. Bees are so much smaller than mantids – the apiary was likely only enterable because Enna built it. If the bees built this, it doesn’t accommodate mantids. Luckily (for once) you are young and scrawny. It’s a squeeze, but less of a squeeze. (A part of you is wound very tight, wondering about something collapsing, trapping you.)
Down here, the wax comes from flames burning what might be dried flower stems coated in oil. The flames are clean, without much smoke drifting off them, and you look up to see ventilation that keeps the air clear.
As you enter this new space, other bees are pulling in a bigger wax tablet. It placed at the center and rises vertically, like the board in the schoolhouse. Were the bees going to teach you a lesson?
The board-carrying bees leave the room once it’s in, leaving you with only the robed bees and a four other bees that seem like guards, carrying weapon in their small tarsi, barbed and tapering to thin points. Stingers?
The robed bees flutter toward the board and begin writing. All of them write, different parts for each, they seem to gesture among themselves to coordinate the message.
Advisory Gestalt writes mantids-record.
Nest records rare instruction → Advisory Gestalt hears mantis-mouth-sound-dance.
Mantis speaks? Mantis Gestalt is?
“Um, hi? I… can speak? if that’s what you’re asking? What is ‘gestalt’?”
The bees look between themselves, gesturing quickly. One has sheets of hard wax with side holes so that the sheets spin along rings, binding them together. This bee pages through them, eyes looking over tiny symbols engraved in wax. At the same time, the pigment is being wiped off the board, clearing it for the next words to be written by the three of them.
Gestalt := name, role, rank, purpose, gestalt!
“Um, my name is Eifre. I’m training to be a vesperbane. I’m a nymph? And here to meet you, mostly. Do you have names?
Advisory Gestalt writes.
“I mean like.” You point at one bee in particular, the one with the wax-binder. “Your name?”
There’s some back and forth between the bees at this, with binder-bee making the same gesture series a few times.
Eifre Gestalt points at Advisor Indigo-orange Former Bad-leg-waxer Rose-salt-iron-smelling Season-cold-middle-third-hatched.
“That’s… a lot.”
Mantis record is word-fat → Waggle-dance is lean and cute.
You nod. The name probably rolled off the… body easier in its native language.
A closer look at the at the binder-bee sees a leg-band with colors that differ from the colors of the others – theirs is off-green and a kind of light red, which is close enough. Is indigo-orange a kind of first name?
Mantis question empty
“Huh? I do have more questions, is that what you mean?”
One makes an abdomen bouncing gesturing you can’t interpret, and another begins to write:
No
But they don’t finish. Other bees are slipping into the room, and one carries a cup shaped like a flower, a vessel for liquid that sloshes – but only slightly, for the bee is careful carrying it.
The bee crawls over to you, and proffers the cup. You glance at Advisory Gestalt and their board, for explanation. The ‘no’ has been erased, and replaced:
Eifre Gestalt no honey gift ← There is no honey → Eifre Gestalt sweet water gift?
The cup is shaped like a flower. It seems to be an offering of politeness and you take it. Though the proportion isn’t fit for a mantis – it’s about one sip worth. You drink it, and it indeed tastes like water with some sugar added.
“Thank you, bees. But um, what were you saying earlier? You said ‘no’? Was that not what you mean?”
The arrivals are leaving. The Gestalt writes:
Time is cracked bottle and drips ⭲ Mantis question empty… purpose
(The dots aren’t actually there, but they spend some time gesturing back and forth about the word to put. By now you’re coming to realize something: bees aren’t mute. They occasionally make a kind of piping or trumpet-like noise. It’s not complex the way stridulation or roachspeak is, so doesn’t seem to be linguistic. Maybe beespeak is opposite of normal talking? With mantids sound is important and gestures adds a little, but maybe for bees the gestures are what’s important and the sound adds a little.)
Mantis question empty purpose. Empty of purpose? You frown. They weren’t – but if time is limited, you understand.
The bees had an odd way of using words, and you wonder why. Is it unfamiliarity with the language? Unfamiliarity with language? (Maybe Enna wasn’t entirely wrong?). Or was it all due to an odd way of thinking?
You think about what question the bees would want you to ask. “What do you want, then?”
Nest needs much to become good and not stink ← Gestalts barred from queen, nest lost world-drones. Nest shrinks, does not grow.
Eifre Gestalt helps nest maybe? Mantis has weevil ring → Weevil help nest… maybe. Nest without weevil stinks.
“You miss the weevils? Can you fly to the woods?”
Forbidden ← Mantis stops scouts.
“Oh.” You lift your ring-bearing tarsus and try to slide off the odd ring. “The weevils gave me this. Is it special? How did you know?”
Ring bears black inside ↔︎ Ring bears ambrosia-seed. Advisory Gestalt know ← worker gestalt afternoon north-northwest mid-range hears black.
You think about the Brismati’s talking of seeing the ring was imbued. “Black is… enervate? How do you hear enervate?”
Special worker paints hear-setae black in ritual → Now setae hear black, not sound.
You nod, and suppress more questions to not be purpose-empty. “How can I help?”
Mantis ask weevil help. Mantis knowledge-gifts to the ward of weevils: a black storm is arriving. Tulip agar divination tells.
When you’ve read this, it’s erased and then more comes.
Mantis brings back weevil’s ambrosia flowers. Mantis returns for more help-knowledge. If mantis help-surplus → advisory gestalt shares many secrets and gifts.
Advisory Gestalt gifts first →
The advisors make a whooping sound, and another group of bees enter the space, carting an object big enough even the many of them struggle to carry it. Unveiled, it looks basically like a sharpened rock rod adhered to a wooden handle, fit for a dactyl to wrap around it. But the blade is waxy and dark in a way that suggests enervate. Is this an example of the secrets and gifts the bees offer?
They finish the thought:
Stinger defends mantis from storm.
You regard the gift for a moment. You’ve practiced battle with sticks in training, but this… would be a real weapon.
About now, a large bee is pushing past the weapon-wielding bees, and more come flapping in after this one. But all of them have big wings and large, cute eyes, and small mouths. One lands on your face, slipping past your veiled hat, and starts tapping with its legs, and others are crawling on you, exploring the flappy sleeves of your clothes, antennae whirling. Being this close to a bee, you notice how they aren’t just fuzzy, but warm.
You laugh at the playful new arrivals.
“What’s going on?” you ask, looking past one big bee to see the advisor’s board.
Drone gestalt heard mantis arrived. Drones like strange useless things. Drone is a strange useless thing.
↓
Drone Gestalt wants to hear stories.
The drones are more haphazardly dressed than other bees. One has colorful rocks decorating their clothes, while another has many ribbons trailing him.
“Can they understand me?”
Drones like rare knowledge but drones lack focus → only know a few words. Advisory gestalt will relay story, if mantis tells. Mantis gains nothing if tells → Mantis is not tell?
If the bees would appreciate a story, you think you can – should – offer one.
Bees seem to like weevils. And since it was already on your mind, you decide to tell the story the vesperbanes from earlier told.
The drones shift their attention to the advisers as they translate your chosen story into involved gestures. You speak slowly for their sake.
Though focused on the advisors, the drones do not stay still, and amble and tap their legs around throughout.
When you’re done, one drone bops you on the tip of your face, and they make the trumpet-like sound you’ve heard bees making earlier. They make sweeping gestures and leave, flutter-strutting away.
Drone gestalt says mantis story is lame & weevils do not work that way.
You look down, antennae dropping. They didn’t like it.
Drones are baffling → Disregard.
Advisory gestalt understands mantis story: One dies, but nest lives → Such is good advising.
Mantis is like bee. But bee is not adept at cannibalism like mantis.
Before they can tell you anything else, or you can ask further questions, you hear a sound echoing in the spaces of the apiary. It repeats twice before you discern the words.
“Kid!? You alive? You in here?”
Nest-cleaning gestalt not longer distracts honey-hungry mantis → Eifre gestalt leaves now.
It’s probably best if you don’t let Enna assume the worst.
What do you tell Enna, when you return to her?
Do you take the bees’ offered weapon?
You plan to go meet Maune next. What do you tell her?
Snuggly Serials 