Ava & The Honeybees

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley. ..

Ava sniffed the air, her big paws treading softly through a gnarly blue scrub of heather. She was close, very close, to the tree her grandfather had described: a huge old trunk of wild cherry, bursting with the thick golden juice of the bees, dripping with clusters of buttery white comb. She could taste it already—she had been dreaming of tasting it for a whole year, ever since old Grizzle Beard had told her about it one summer night, as they sat beside the fire together and drank blackberry mead. Ava wasn’t supposed to drink mead—she was far too young, her mother said—but she was twelve years old already, and she felt very grown-up. She was more grown-up, she thought, than her brother, Stub Ear, who was sixteen, and prone to fits of sulkiness, and playing moody songs on his lute. And she was far more grown-up than the twins, Tor and Torvald, who were only five years old, and very silly, and also cried a good deal. In fact, it was quite noisy in the big grey cave along the cliffs of Mór-Dune, which her family called home. The twins were almost always whinging about something, and her mother’s grumbling was incessant. She was glad to be out in the woods. She just wished Grizzle Beard could have come with her.

Grizzle Beard, of course, was far too old to go traipsing about in the woods, and lame besides. He said it was an old war wound, and had many fantastic tales of clashing with the Sea Wolves and the Ferocious Otters of Mór-Bang to back up his story. Ava’s mother, however, said that his fat arse had fallen out of a tree in a desperate scramble for clover honey, and that the only fights he’d ever gotten into were drunken brawls at old Miffley’s tavern. Ava, for her part, didn’t care whether Grizzle Beard was making it all up. She loved hearing the stories anyway, and she wished her mother would mind her own business.

Now. About those Dragons. That was something else Grizzle Beard had told her.

‘A long time ago,' he said, 'the Dragons came to the Valley of the Golden Moon—’

‘—no such place,’ Ava’s mother muttered, under her whiskers.

‘The Valley of the Golden Moon, which, as every sensible creature knows,’ Grizzle Beard continued, raising his voice somewhat, as Ava pleaded with the twins to shush, ‘is the old name for the land that lies between the mountains of Mór-Dune, and the River of the Grey Folk. Now, the Grey Folk were not friends of the Dragons. In fact, they hated each other. And the Sea Wolves, who, as you very well know, scour the shores every year for the fat of the corn that grows upon them, and the beauty of the Horse Wives who dwell in the Woods of Amra-Dune—and they are, believe me, extraordinarily beautiful, especially when they braid their tails, and weave flowers down by their—’

Ava’s mother cleared her throat in a reproachful tone, for Stub Ear was growing dreamy-eyed at the mention of tails.

‘Anyway,’ Grizzle Beard said, quickly, ‘the Sea Wolves, and the Horse Wives, and the, uh—what was I saying?’

‘The Dragons,’ Ava reminded him, patiently. ‘You were talking about the Dragons.’

‘Ah, yes. Thank you, little one. Now, the Sea Wolves and the Dragons were also sworn enemies. And throughout the entire land, there wasn’t a single creature, neither Man nor Horse nor Otter—phhff!—’ (he interrupted himself this time, to spit into the fire)—‘there wasn’t a single, solitary creature who liked the Dragons; and, in fact, every creature, from the smallest Vole in its tunnel, to the mewling Man-child in its mother’s arms, hated the scaly black creatures who descended upon the Valley.’

Ava had been transfixed, from that moment onwards, with the story of the Dragons—but Grizzle Beard’s story hadn't ended there. The Dragons, he told her, were outcasts from another world, and persecuted by all the folk in this one. The only creatures who had taken them in, and shown them love and kindness, were those of her own clan, the Black Muzzles of Mór-Dune. For the Muzzles considered themselves to be a great and noble race, and the Dragons brothers in kind.

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley…

Ava felt a buzzing in her ears. She felt it, more than she heard it. Her sensitive black ears quivered with the vibrations of the bees some several yards away. She was close. She was almost there. She was—

‘Hey. Ava.’

She whipped her head around. ‘Stubby, what in the name of the seven heads of Urglok—’

‘Mum told me to come after you.’ Stub Ear yawned. He was bored, Ava could tell, as he tossed his black bangs languidly and raised a great paw to cover his yawning blabber-hole. ‘She said you’d probably get lost—’

‘I’m not lost,’ Ava hissed, ‘and, for Teek’s sake, would you get down? I’m almost there, you pudding head—and you’ll scare the bees if you keep yobbing about like that.’

‘Fine,’ Stub Ear said, with a sigh, and dropped to his paws in the most longsuffering manner. ‘But you should know—we’re not alone.’

‘Of course we’re not alone,’ Ava said, rolling her eyes. She figured Stubby was messing about—he could be quite funny, when he wasn’t crooning about some long-lost girlfriend. ‘Now, come on.’

‘All right,’ Stub Ear muttered. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you...’

‘I did warn you,’ Stub Ear said, when, two minutes later, they found themselves in the midst of a trap.

Ava wasn’t sure who these new creatures were. But they had surrounded the cherry tree—My cherry tree! she thought, fuming with a territorial sense of justice—and sprung their trap as the two siblings lumbered, unsuspecting, towards the lower branches. They were ugly, and short, and had thick orange fur sprouting from every pore of their misshapen bodies. They rather resembled the Men-folk, Ava thought, except that they were a good deal hairier, and their faces were bloated and grey, whereas the faces of Man were pinched and white. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, as two of them pinned her down, and tightened the bonds about her paws. ‘What are you doing here?’

One of them—the Captain, no doubt, by the elegant cut of his jacket, and the glimmering sheen of his boots—viewed her through lazy, half-drooping eyelids. ‘Guillaume,’ he said, preening his mustachios, ‘what do you reckon this little one will fetch us, eh?’

‘Ten silver coins at least, my Lord.’

'Pirates!' Stub Ear squealed.

‘And the big skinny one?’

‘Twelve for him, I say.’

‘Good,’ the Captain said, ‘very good.’ He bent over Ava and peered at her intently. ‘What is your name, little girl?’

For answer, Ava spit in his face. (She had learned how to spit from Grizzle Beard. Her mother considered it a detestable habit. But then, her mother had never been kidnapped by pirates.)

‘A pity,’ the Captain said. He had a cap upon his head of fine silk and polished leather, with a feather stuck in one of its corners, and a shiny golden buckle on the front. ‘I would’ve given you a place in the cook’s cabin, if you’d been nice to me. But, as you have behaved in a most crude and unladylike fashion, I’m afraid you will have to sleep in the slop-pits. Pierre! Hugo! Take them away.’

It was just at that moment that something quite extraordinary happened.

Ava looked up, as the commotion started, but she couldn’t see much, for one of the orange creatures had knotted an oily rag about her eyes. ‘Grrofferrmmme!’ she grunted, as the commotion about her grew louder and more intense. It seemed that something was attacking the pirates, for they were making a great clamour with their weapons, and many of them had already scarpered far into the woods.

‘To me! To me!’ the Captain of the crew cried, slashing out wildly with a sabre. Unfortunately for him, he’d never actually used this sabre before, and didn’t realise that it was little more than a prop, a flimsy trinket that could barely crack the skin of a mango, much less the skull of an enemy. Ava saw him knocked off his feet by one of his own mates, who ran chittering away in fright. The air was full of whoops and cries and orange fur. Only the honeybees in the cherry tree behind Ava droned lazily on, oblivious to the ferocious battle being fought at the root-step of their home.

Finally, it was over—and it was only then that Ava got a proper look at her rescuer. The first thing she saw, as she peeled the rag from off her eyes, was a magnificent black-skinned creature, with a tail as thick as the cherry tree, and a crest of razor-sharp feathers spiking along the long sinewy curve of its spine. The creature swept the Captain up and pinned him, wriggling and squealing, with one golden-nailed claw. ‘Now,' he demanded, 'what foul business are you about, terrorising the good folk of this quiet mountain?’

‘Let go of me!’ the Captain cried. ‘I s-s-shan’t be intimidated!’

‘What shall I do with you, then?’ the creature said, in the same teasing manner that you or I might speak to a boiled egg at breakfast, before breaking open the shell.

‘Oh, sir, please spare me!’ The Captain finally broke down, and blubbed so pathetically that Ava, who had shuffled off her bonds by this point, was moved to pity for the furry little pirate.

‘Sir,’ she said, breathlessly addressing the Dragon, ‘I do hope you’ll spare him—he’s not a bad creature, just a very silly one.’

The Dragon looked first at Ava, then at the Captain, and finally at Ava again. ‘Mercy,’ he said, in a voice that shimmered like fire, ‘is, indeed, a fine virtue, and well-suited to a maiden of the Muzzle-kind. I salute you, young honey-hunter, and for the sake of your forbears and mine, I offer you the life of this miserable Monkey-kind.’

He plopped the Captain down unceremoniously, and the Captain, trembling, knelt before Ava, and swept off his cap. ‘Kind-hearted maiden,’ he cried, ‘I, Aurelian Gaspard Flavier Krumm, from this hour henceforward, hereby pledge my fealty to you.’ He thrust his sabre into Ava’s paws, and continued, with a sob: ‘My life is now yours for the taking or the keeping—I swear it on the sacred bones of the Great Po-Po. You may do with me as you please—aye, you may even thrust that sword into my heart, and I shall smile, and bless you with my dying breath. But please don’t do that,’ he added, hastily, as Ava gingerly gripped the sabre.

'Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to. But tell me—how good are you at climbing trees?’

‘Bloody hell,’ Stub Ear muttered, ‘she’s still after that blasted bee-juice.’

‘And hers may it be for the taking,’ the black-skinned Dragon declared; and with a mighty whoosh of smoke from its nostrils, sent the honeybees into a deep and peaceful slumber, down to the very last drone.

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley…

But Ava was glad, as she dipped her paws into a vat of the creamy golden honey, and felt the first crunch of the comb upon her tongue, that they were finally coming home.