The Bees in the Garden
Yeah, the chapter title did not lie.
Verne instantly lost focus.
Before giving it even a moment’s thought, he lunged down the right-hand path toward the gardens. Of course he did. Information could wait. The Measureless Crown could wait. Personal dignity could wait slightly less, but still, for the moment, it could wait.
Bees could not.
Verne sprint-floated—sproated? flinted?—toward the gardens. The farther he went, the more the noise of the festival faded, replaced by the sounds of crickets and wind. It was the perfect cool evening for a stroll down stone paths lined with hedges and gentle hills overflowing with golden glowing flowers. Far overhead, paper lanterns hung from hooks, casting a soft light across the winding paths.
And lo and behold, there they were.
Bees.
What looked like hundreds of them drifted from flower to flower in the breezy air, heavy with pollen and completely unaware of the festival’s distant noise.
Just Verne’s sort of people.
Or bees, I guess.
“Magnificent,” Verne whispered towards the bees.
His spellbook opened on its own again and flipped to a page full of sketches of bees wearing gold-brimmed top hats. It nearly brought a tear to his eye. Only he could find a way to make something so beautiful even more beautiful.
“Magnifcenter,” he whispered to himself this time.
A voice sounded from behind him. Apparently either his dramatic silhouette or his constant whispering had given him away.
“You’re not from Tallbarrow,” the voice said. “How’d you make it up the steps?”
That comment did not go unheard.
Verne turned to see a woman in a gardener’s apron, holding a lantern in one hand and a hooked pruning knife in the other. She looked to be in her thirties, sharp-eyed and unimpressed, with the air of someone who had seen enough nonsense in life to recognize it the moment it stepped into her garden.
But what drew the most attention was what stood behind her.
Looming just beyond her was a giant bee hive box painted green and black. Very classy, if not coincidental. A few bees drifted lazily around her shoulders without even thinking about stinging.
“You were the one who blew up the gate sign?”
She asked it with so much authority that it did not feel like a question.
Verne stiffened at once.
“In my defense, it was a very offensive sign.”
She considered that.
“Fair.”
Finally. Someone who actually knew what they were talking about.
She set her lantern down.
“Name’s Marra. I keep the festival hives. You are either a magician, a problem, or both.”
“I am Verne,” he answered, floating a little higher, “and I am a wizard above natural arcana.”
Marra looked over his floating hat, his conjured glove hands, his dragging robe, and his carefully disguised tiny frame.
“You’re also lying about how tall you are.”
His blood ran cold.
He pointed a glove hand at her accusingly.
“I am doing no such thing.”
Marra crossed her arms.
“These bees aren’t fooled by your glamour, posture, or pride. They look at things objectively.”
The bees around her buzzed as if in agreement.
Before Verne could counter, a loud metallic ringing echoed from the direction of town.
Then came shouting.
Then screaming.
Then another bell.
Marra’s expression darkened instantly.
“That’s the spire alarm.”
At once she looked up, and Verne followed her gaze. Above the rooftops, near the top of the spire, a green light flashed bright as day.
Marra grabbed her lantern again and switched out her pruning knife for a sharper cutting blade.
“That means one of two things. Either the old wizard is warning the town about a problem he found… or warning them that the problem found him.”
The instant she finished speaking, the nearest hives began to shake.
At least they had the courtesy to let her finish.
This was not the wind.
From inside the hive came a low, wrong buzzing. Not warm and lively like the garden bees. This was deeper. Agitated. Unnatural.
Marra took two steps back.
“There could not possibly be a worse time for this.”
The lid of the hive box burst open with a crack of green energy.
And from it rose a cluster of wild spellbees, larger than normal and glowing green, their wings making the air ripple around them. They spiraled into the garden like angry missiles, and every flower they passed either bloomed violently, wilted on the spot, or turned some completely random color.
One of them zipped over to Verne at full speed just to spin circles around him.
Did that bee just do donuts around Verne?
Okay, that was pretty cool.
Until another one slammed into Marra’s lantern and turned the flame purple.
Marra cursed under her breath.
“The spire’s leaking some kind of magic. It’s driving the bees mad.”
Then she turned to Verne, thoroughly unimpressed.
“Well, wizard who is supposedly above nature, you are either help or the problem.”
Verne perked up. His glove hands rose. His robe fluttered. His heart pounded.
He slowly lifted both floating hands.
“No sudden movements,” he murmured, mostly to himself.
The largest spellbee hovered directly in front of his face. It pulsed with green and gold energy like an angry lantern. Its wings made the air tremble. All around it, the rest of the swarm darted in chaotic spirals, wild with magic that was not their own.
Marra was giving him a look that said she was currently deciding whether he was exactly the person they needed or exactly the person to avoid.
Verne stopped wasting time and opened his spellbook.
A page flipped past a bee in a wizard hat.
“Maybe later.”
Another showed a bee sitting on a throne.
“Tempting.”
A third was an extremely detailed study of a bee leg.
“Perfect.”
He cleared his throat and began the gentlest nonsense he could manage.
“Bumblethora… mellivana… hushlebee… pollen dorum…”
His hands moved in slow circles. His hat lowered slightly, as though bowing to the swarm. A faint green aura gathered around his robes and drifted upward in ribbons.
The large spellbee paused.
“Come on…”
He continued.
“Honeymancer revelorum… waxa beeliora… fuzzlement sanctum…”
One of the smaller spellbees stopped mid-flight and landed on his hat.
Another settled on one of his glove fingers.
Marra blinked.
“It is insane how that worked with you just spouting gibberish.”
Verne shot back immediately.
“Who are you to tell me how my spells work?”
Marra was quicker.
“I might not be a wizard, but I have seen enough to know that is not how spell incantation works.”
Before she even finished, Verne added:
“Remember when I said I was above natural arcana?”
A third spellbee bonked softly into his chest and simply stayed there, vibrating like a fuzzy brooch.
The largest spellbee circled him once.
Twice.
Then it lowered itself onto the brim of his floating hat like a judge returning to session.
The rest of the nearby swarm began to calm, their wild loops softening into a lazy orbit around him. His random words, bee-obsessed focus, and complete lack of formal magical structure had somehow created a strange sympathetic rhythm.
The feeling settled into his chest.
The swarm was upset. Overstimulated. Pulled by something stronger near the top of the spire.
The green flash from the spire had not been random.
The leaking magic was calling to the bees like a painful song.
Marra stepped closer, careful not to startle them.
“Well. I hate that this worked.”
Verne gave a proud little float.
“As expected.”
Then the calm shattered.
A sharp crack split through the air and pierced everyone’s ears. It was followed almost immediately by screaming from the festival road.
Not all of the spellbees had stopped.
A second cluster had broken away and started attacking the festival, and given enough time they would probably turn the whole town into chaos.
Before Verne could even process that fully, more green flashes burst from the spire. Worse, the garden flowers—every color among them—turned toward the spire as if pulled by some unseen force.
The large spellbee on Verne’s hat lifted its wings and buzzed directly into his mind. Not in words, but in feeling:
Queen. Pain. spire.
Marra felt it too.
“There’s a queen hive somewhere near the top of the spire. That’s the source. If the spire magic reached her—”
A blossom beside Verne suddenly expanded to the size of a chair before spitting out a cloud of glowing pollen.
Marra coughed.
“Then this whole town is about to become a magical apiary.”
The tamed spellbees around Verne seemed ready to follow his lead.
He had, somehow, acquired bee backup.