Page 13 of Make Me Bee-lieve

My heart thunders in my ears as the blood in my pathetically small body courses through it like liquid nitrogen. I may not be getting eaten by a spider-woman today after all, thank fuck, but I’m not out of the woods yet. The bees cut through the spider web easily with their stinger blades, which is great until I’m suddenly in free-fall, hurtling toward the concrete.

My stomach drops as the ground rises to meet me, but right before I’m turned into goo, I’m caught in a pair of fuzzy arms. The bee, with its oval black eyes and friendly smile, looks down at me.

“You are safe, Caretaker. Fear not. We will take you back to our hive!” My bee savior swoops through the air with me in her arms, and my stomach flies up into my throat. Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke.

Okay, so I’ve never been a big fan of roller coasters; I’m prone to motion sickness, and it turns out honeybee flight is very much the same deal. My stomach once again threatens to upend itself on my new friend, but before things can get truly dire, we land at the entrance to the hive and she places me down on my feet. “We have arrived,” she announces.

I dust off my shirt and readjust my glasses, which have somehow survived the entire ordeal and remained on my face. The wooden box I’ve inherited is now the size of a palace and is just as intimidating. Only instead of it appearing like a beige box, it… No, it can’t be.

I rub my eyes. Maybe the trauma from the spider-woman jostled a few brain cells loose? Because when I gape up at the hive, it now takes on the appearance of a golden castle that gleams in the moonlight. Its sharp spires reach for the stars, and on closer inspection, I notice that the windows are all hexagonal.

“Like honeycombs,” I mutter.

The bee who rescued me arches an eyebrow and moves to my side. “I beg your pardon, Caretaker?”

I have no idea why she’s calling me that, and I shake my head. “It’s … it’s nothing. Wasn’t this a box just a minute ago? Am I going out of my mind?”

I’ve gone temporarily insane. That’s it. Must be.

“Ah,” the honeybee says, following my line of sight up to the golden steeples. “Our hive is an impressive sight, is it not? You are basking in the beauty of the Sugardove City colony.” She flashes a smirk. “And no, you are not losing your mind. We are fae, and the box you saw before was merely a glamour. We have wards in place so as not to draw attention from your people or potential predators.”

I blink. “O-Oh. Okay.” Sure. Glamour magic. Makes perfect sense.

But my face falls when I realize there’s no drawbridge or even a door to go through. “Wait, how do we get inside, then?”

“I will carry you up, Caretaker. Do not fear. This will only take a moment,” she says, and then she launches us both up, up into the air again. Oh, god. Not this again. I let out a cry as she soars high into the air and swoops down on the other side of the golden wall.

On the other side of the wall, we land in the plush mound of grass surrounded by thorny bushes with white flowers. She releases me, and I brush some of the flower petals from my shirt and hair.

“That was unorthodox, but we arrived in one piece, so … could be worse,” I say.

“Why wouldn’t we?” the honeybee says, tilting her head at me. When I look up at her, I notice that she isn’t actually wearing a helmet at all; no, it’s silver a mask, the kind found at a masquerade ball, with flower etchings carved into the corners. And what I thought were fancy decorations jutting from the top of her helmet are actually her antennae clad in silver clasps.

When I turn to look around, the sweet, pungent scent of honey fills my nostrils. The hexagonal windows glow with a pulsating amber hue, and within them, dark shapes stir to life.

“Our young,” she answers. The other bees who aided in my rescue land beside us and sheath their stinger blades at their sides. Their enormous abdomens swing back and forth as they walk toward the large doorway. It, too, is hexagonal, but there is no obvious way of opening it.

When one of the bees approaches the doorway, she knocks on it four times in a strange pattern. Quick, quick, pause. Quick, quick. The door rumbles to life as it shifts and groans open, and a cacophony of buzzing thrums from the other side. The armor-clad bees quickly form two lines on both sides of the cobblestone walkway. A moment later, a much larger honeybee strides through the doorway, flanked by a taciturn-looking guard and a thinner woman in a tight-fitting red dress.

The large honeybee wears a thin, golden tiara atop her head, and her gauzy, golden dress trails across the floor like something out of a fairy tale. Her dark brown curls bounce with every step, along with her prominent breasts. Look at her face, Calvin, look at her face. Her own mask takes up the majority of her face and is covered in tiny, multi-colored jewels that glimmer in the moonlight. This must be … their queen? I swallow thickly and tug at my collar.

They stop a few feet in front of us, and I can’t help but sweep into a low bow. It only seems appropriate in this situation. “U-Um, hello, Your … Your Majesty?” I ask, my voice cracking on the last syllable. I die a little inside. One time, years ago, when Elvis got too curious for his own good and went to a BDSM sex club somewhere in the city, he said he was “scaroused” by the women there.

“Scaroused” is really the only appropriate word, here. This woman is smoking hot in a way I never thought humanly possible, which makes sense considering she’s not human. But she’s also intimidating as hell, too.

“Caretaker! Welcome to our kingdom,” the queen says loudly enough for everyone to hear. “This is the first time a human has entered our realm and?—”

The woman next to the queen coughs into her gloved hand. “Your Highness,” she says. “Forgive the interruption, but perhaps we could escort the Caretaker indoors first?”

Silence descends upon the garden, save for the odd chirp of a cricket. The queen slowly turns to the woman beside her, heat flaring in her eyes. She opens her mouth, then snaps it shut again before turning back to me.

“Yes. Of course. You’ve suffered a terrible ordeal,” she says, her voice velvety smooth. “Please, come inside and have some refreshments. You must be exhausted.”

POLINA

It’s worse than we’ve feared. There is a human inside our hive. A real, live, breathing human. This has never happened before. At least, I don’t think it’s ever happened before. As part of my education, I’ve had to memorize my people’s history going back hundreds of years, and not in a single dusty tome has a human been mentioned.

The humans live in their world, the fae live in theirs. End of story.

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