Here, the Bees Sting by Will Caverly

Author:Will Caverly [Caverly, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 3C Services LLC

15

EMERGENCE

The Heiress Apparent grinds her mandibles against the wax capping of her chamber. Outside, she hears the encouragement of her sisters, but instead of helping, her sisters only watch her struggle.

BITE, CHEW, EAT YOUR WAY THROUGH! they chant.

Proceeding with gusto, the Heiress Apparent engages her mandibles again and again, scraping, chewing, kneading, grinding. It is hard going. She cannot find purchase in the webbed morass of her spun cocoon. The hive smells distressed. The Heiress Apparent felt the change only hours previously, as if the city cried out all at once and then descended into an oppressive chemical silence. Only then did she begin to hear the whispers.

Sisters goad her into emerging. They tell her the time is ripe. And they chant.

BITE, CHEW, EAT YOUR WAY THROUGH!

Bracing her legs against the side of the cell, she thrusts the sharp part of her mandible into the surface of the capping, wrenching her head from side to side. Flakes of wax and pollen fall. She trembles. Exertion makes her thorax muscles scream.

BITE, CHEW, EAT YOUR WAY THROUGH! they repeat insistently. Then their voices take on a teasing tone: YOU MUST EMERGE, OR YOU WILL BE SCOURGED.

What do they mean? she wonders. Scourged. Death? Does that mean death? She pipes distress.

BITE, CHEW, EAT YOUR WAY THROUGH, they tell her, refusing to acknowledge her frustration.

She thinks, Why aren’t they helping me? Don’t they see that I need their help?

But her sisters are having none of it.

HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY

HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY HURRY

A piece of the wax cap falls free. The Heiress Apparent slams her head into the hole. Her antennae are mashed against her. Cocoon slime pours out of the hole. The lid of her cell buckles. But not completely.

No!

She is stuck. She pipes again and scrabbles her legs against the smooth sides of the wax cell. One foreleg goes through the breach, then the other, but her head remains stuck. Oh, it is stuck!

YOU MUST EMERGE, OR YOU WILL BE SCOURGED!

The Heiress Apparent wants so badly to return to her cell. But some contest is at hand. Sisters stretch in every direction, some of them scrambling atop one another to get a better whiff of her emergence.

HURRY, they warn.

They say something which scares her to her core:

THERE IS ANOTHER.

HURRY.

Then, with a flash of insight, she knows. She knows what the other is. Another Heiress Apparent!

They’ve whispered to her about it through the porous cap on her cell. She is the Heiress Apparent, but there are others, waiting to inherit the Heiress role too. Her sisters have promised her that, although she is the most deserving, she must fight for her reign.

The chanting around her takes on a beat as her sisters tap each leg in succession. One, two, three, four, five, six.

Her wings still stick to her back. She tries to unfold them, but her muscles are too weak, the wings will not help her advance.

YOU MUST EMERGE, OR YOU WILL BE SCOURGED. THERE IS ANOTHER.

Stop saying that! she wants to scream.

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