The Day of the Nuptial Flight Read online

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  I hadn’t questioned why I should be housed with fuzzipillars. They provided a tasty buffet of nectar. Yet as I watched the way the workers came and let them out, I realized they were keeping me in.

  I chittered at the stable hand with the large belly. “Do you dare keep me from the queen, Young Honey-Pot?”

  She patted my side and ignored me. See if she could keep me in! Fuzzipillars were too slow-brained to think of leaving any stable so long as there were enough leaves to keep them busy eating. I was not. I climbed up the wall, but a jolt shocked my body as I reached the top. I fell onto my back, the stubs where my wings had been bursting with pain. I rolled over. I tried a different section of wall and was jolted again. I clicked my mandibles with indignation.

  “Dirty aphid dung! Mothrafly poison breath!” I swore, using phrases I’d picked up from the shepherds. I clicked my mandibles at the queen’s workers. Their fear drifted up into the air, and they left me. I didn’t stop swearing until the queen appeared. I bowed my head and immediately ceased, then spat up the bead of nectar from my cheek.

  “If only you’ll have me, if only you’ll have me, if only you’ll have me,” I sang. “Oh, beautiful queen of queens, black-eyed beauty and the one I most desire.”

  She stared at the glob of nectar, touched it with her foot, and then drew back. When she didn’t take it, I scooped it back into my mouth. Rejected again. Is that why she sealed me up with fuzzipillars? Was I nothing more than a honey-pot as the other queen had said?

  My antennae flinched at these thoughts, my disgrace obvious. The queen didn’t even look at my antennae. She patted my thorax and ran her hands over my wingless back. Was she pleased? I couldn’t tell.

  She beckoned me to follow. She led me from the pen and walked with me, speaking calmly like a lullaby intended for a fuzzipillar. I wanted to tell her what had happened the night before, but it wasn’t my place to inform her of battles, it was for her warriors and workers to tell her. That, and I couldn’t make myself understood.

  The Black-Eyed Queen led me down a trail thick with the scent of many from her hive, passing the smooth hills with the clear sections for seeing inside. She rubbed her hands over her abdomen, a gesture I had seen her make the day before. Others passed, stopping and pointing to me. I listened and smelled, gleaning as much as I could, which wasn’t much.

  She took me to a small hill connected to the others. She circled, tapping on a clear section. Out came two workers. One I recognized from the day before as the handmaiden I’d fetched for her. She moved stiffly, the toxins of mothrafly powder still in her system. If she knew what was good for her she would drink some fuzzipillar nectar. But this hive didn’t have a lot of common sense.

  They sat down on little structures not quite rock and not quite earth. I couldn’t place the scent. The queen gestured to me and spoke to these attendants. In the overwhelming array of perfumes the day before I had failed to notice that these workers were larger than their queen—though her belly was certainly more plump. Her injured worker was paler, the tuft of hairs on her head more brown than black. The other attendant was like the queen: black eyes and hair and similar in scent, though the pheromones on the queen’s skin marked her as fertile. Could they have been larva mates, coming from the same drone? The dark worker’s mouth drew back and stretched over her cheeks. She patted my head in the same way the queen did, an inviting air about her. Her voice was much deeper than the queen’s as she said a word I soon came to recognize as that which they called me: “Rover.”

  The other one, the injured worker, didn’t exude vibrations of goodwill and welcome. Instead, I tasted a pungent dislike mingled with fear. Silly, considering I was the one who had saved her.

  The clear entrance opened again, a new scent assaulting my antennae. Sweet and heady as my queen’s, this one also spoke of fertility and allure. Her voice was high and frail like a larva’s.

  I lost my wits and sang to her and ejected nectar. My armor slid back. This Green-Eyed Queen stepped around the nectar and approached the Black-Eyed Queen. I looked from one to the other. Two queens? Aphid droppings! This would be bad. I expected a sharp explosion of chemical anger and then a battle. Indeed, the two queens came together. Yet they released each other immediately and sat down, patting each other’s abdomens.

  What a curious hive indeed!