The Colours of Bees

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. Neither came as a surprise to Moira.

It had been a strong moon that month, and the powerful tidal surge that had backwashed the mighty Liriope River had swept over the valley like a hungry serpent, consuming without conscience the totality of lives in its path.

As for the Queen, it was the fifth dethroning that year. The apiary had been high enough to escape the ravages of the river, but sadly the stormy seawinds had blown the swarm apart as they had tried to escape whilst moon-bewitched.

The Queen could still be nearby, she thought.

The statuesque young woman tightened her blindfold and took a meditative stance, palms upward, raven black hair flowing in the breeze. She concentrated as her mind's-eye searched the area.

Black and white sketched images returned to her in pulses like the echolocation of a bat.

Further and further they travelled, like ripples in the clearest of ponds.

There. Laying dead under a rosebush with a few loyal acolytes surrounding her, was the Queen bee.

Still blindfolded, Moira walked over to the group and knelt beside them.

She whispered to the bees in their language, softly buzzing small coos of encouragement and comfort. But it was no use, for as with many other creatures, the bees had deafened their ears to humans, too weary to believe any more of their broken promises.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Moira scooped up the bees and reunited them with the hive. It was all she could do. If they could at least make sense of her death they might hatch a new Queen and restart.

If only it were that simple for people.

Blinking back tears, she pushed thoughts of her mother, Queen Beatrix, out of her mind lest she accidentally manifest a nightmare like she had done a month ago.

Beatrix had vanished on a similarly stormy night, leaving her then four year old daughter Moira in the care of her seven aging aunts who happened to be cloistered witches.

For a precious moment, Moira lifted the blindfold and glanced around the Abbey's flower garden. What lay before her was a stark reminder of what else had been lost.

Gone were the bright fuchsias, crimsons and corals. The plethora of dislodged petals were sickly dull and grey, strewn about like sloughed off skin, the vibrant hues she remembered from her youth but a dream-distant memory.

One by one, the entire color palette of the world was being slowly leached away, the side effect of a snowballing curse that had started many decades ago between two feuding houses, one of which would have been her own inheritance should she have been born a male.

As of now, unless she married and had a son, it would pass to her uncle Alec, a man whom she barely knew, but was a better option than being forced to marry and bear children against her will.

In the early days of the curse, many folks denied it existed, as the changes taking place had been so gradual.

Shades of red had been the first to vanish, and in their place came a wave of panic as reality took its icy grip. Then the oranges seeped out and now her favourite — yellow — was disappearing, too.

The speed at which they were disappearing had grown much faster as well.

Unfortunately, neither house had a proper record of the cause of said feud or who started the curse — never mind how to end it.

Thus both sides refused to be the ones to take on the responsibility of rectifying the situation and both blamed the amplifying fallout on the other, inspiring their tenants with outrage and fanning the flames of division.

Compounding the issue, many of the voices in power were old enough to realize their mistake, but understood that the catastrophic ending would not happen within their lifetime and were therefore eager to pander to tax payers who wished to avoid spending money on a solution.

Moira lifted a folded over sunflower which could now be called a "sunny beige" at best. She sighed heavily. Soon they would be nothing but dusty shades of charcoal with fading green leaves under a dying blue sky.

She tried to remind herself that in two days she wouldn't even be able to enjoy the greenery while it lasted.

Once she turned eighteen, she would be voluntarily blinded on the same day she joined her aunts' coven, renounced her crown and took her librarian vows.

Keepers of the Living Library, the Blinded Sisters managed a vast underground sanctum below the Abbey that spiraled into infinite loops of levels — not all of which could be returned from alive if a librarian did not take care to carry her gear with her and hone her minds-eye, for a minds-eye was often the only way to tell reality from illusion.

It was said certain floors took on their own wilderness, whether that be an idyllic pasture or a hellish cave and you never knew what creatures may have escaped their pages.

Becoming a librarian of this particular library was the one and only reason artistically inclined Moira was willing to starve herself of sight for the rest of her life.

From the moment she had walked through its grand entranceway, with the carved marble arch depicting in detail all the creatures of the universe, she had felt the literature calling to the very depths of her soul.

She couldn't wait to start exploring it.

If she took her vows.

She wasn't so sure anymore.

It had shocked her deeply to learn that her family and their coven had refused to lift a finger to try and stop the curse, even though they were the only remaining practitioners of magic in the country.

Not to mention that if the answer to the curse was to be found anywhere, it was probably somewhere within the library at their feet.

"What will be will be! They made their beds! And put that blindfold back on! You'll never master your mind's-eye by lifting it up every day!"

Such were the responses whenever Moira voiced her growing dismay over the changes in her gardens' colourscape.

But it was no use arguing.

Since the Sisters' mind's-eye vision was colourless, it made no sense to them as to why other creatures might need or even want colours when they did just fine without it themselves.

The women were collectively apathetic about the Decay in a way only true scholars can manage, their superiority complexes leaving them certain that anything untoward that would result from a "silly, trifling lack of colour" could be handled easily enough with a simple magic spell.

But unlike her aunts, Moira did not consider colours frivolous art.

There was something to be said for beauty, and it was no small gift to bring grace into a world that is often callous and unforgiving.

She had also witnessed how, in the years before she had begun her blindfold training, colours were important tell tale signs for mating, safety and navigation in nature.

For example, without colours, bees like Moira's could not easily identify the flowers they preferred.

Moira gathered a few sunflower petals for her collection and pressed them into her journal. Then she paused her tidying to savour the moment.

The wind ruffled her hair like an old friend; the soft tang of sea salt played on her lips, and the cooing hum of the bees hard at work surrounded her like a private symphony.

But the intrusive thoughts wouldn't leave her alone.

The whole situation sickened her, for it seemed like the only thing the two houses and the witches could agree on was that there was nothing to be done that wouldn't require a great deal of coordinated time, money and effort, none of which was worth the undertaking, and that collateral damage happens in any natural course of events.

— Collateral damage like Moira's bees and her garden of rainbow hued flowers.

The bees need for colour meant more than they realized.

A few times already she had lost a hive to depopulation when the bees had gotten confused whilst out scouting for pollen.

Unable to navigate to and from the hive within the window of their maximum length of absence, they had perished, and without them her fruit trees did not bear much fruit, even with timely magical intervention.

Fortunately, adjusting a single hive's weaknesses wasn't difficult. Usually it was only a matter of retraining the bees and planting more flowers nearby.

Bees are fast learners and flowers grew easily under Moira's skilled green thumb.

Moira dropped her flower journal and her thoughts evaporated.

The sudden silence was deafening. From every hive, all at once, the chorus of humming had dimmed and extinguished.

Her hands shook as she rushed to the nearest box and lifted the lid. Inside were scores of lifeless bees, and the living ones were shivering out their last gasps of breath.

"No!" she screamed as again and again she lifted the lids and again and again found only death inside.

Moira rushed back into the Abbey and up to the Master Librarian's chamber, taking the steps two at a time, her long legs acting as wings.

She relayed the information like a reporting military commander.

"The bees have been lost, Your Honour. Poisoned, I believe. Their honey has turned blue. They must have been gathering it from the Sorh trees without being observed."

Moira ripped off the blindfold and threw it on the ground. She knew it wasn't her fault, that the problem was bigger than her personal oversight — but still she felt the weight of it on her shoulders.

How could she have not noticed?!

"Moira!" admonished Sister Olwen, "As you've been told before, a handful of dead bees is nothing to worry about. We can pollinate a few extra trees and crops with magic if needed until they adjust. And the colours of the garden flowers themselves are entirely irrelev —"

The old master's speech was cut short by a flurry of ringing telephones. It seemed as though every line in the place was clamouring for attention.

Sister Olwen answered her private line and listened intently to the other party for what seemed an eternity to Moira, punctuating the conversation with only a "yes", or "I see", or "mmhmm."

When she hung up the phone, the old witch's demeanor had sobered.

"It seems I owe you an apology, Moira. We are not the only apiary affected. The sickness appears to be widespread, possibly even a late stage event in the curse or ..." she paused to swallow, " a new curse entirely from an enemy we do not know is our enemy."

With those last words she sank into her chair defeated.

Sister Elenora, a particularly loud mouthed aunt Moira disliked, shuffled.

"Don't give in to hysteria, Olwen! How bad can it be? So we put in a few extra shifts pollinating this spring."

Moira shook her head.

"No, I'm afraid that's not how it works. As it stands, the only magic available is to enchant the bees into doing our bidding or nurturing eggs at a faster growth rate. There is no known substitute for the bees themselves."

Elenora's mouth clamped shut, and if it weren't for the seriousness of the situation, Moira would have savored winning the argument.

Sister Olwen took a deep breath.

"Moira is correct. A mass event like this will require months of development to reverse, and new bees will need to be designed by hand from blueprints we have long since misplaced. All of which will take time we don't have with winter approaching."

Moira took over.

"— There will be no crops, no legumes on the pastures. This could last into next year if we don't hurry. At which point starvation may be unstoppable."

Elenora nodded as the gravity of the situation finally registered.

"I'll summon the coven. We will need to merge our minds'-eyes to search into the deepest levels for the bee blueprints. It's the only place the old knowledge may be located."

Together the two sisters exited the chamber, unaware that Moira did not follow.

Once she was certain they were out of hearing range, Moira grabbed a librarian's belt and saber from the wall.

Blueprints wouldn't be enough! The curse had to be laid to rest for good.

"Just where do you think you are going, Little Tiger," strained a voice from behind her.

Moira spun around to an empty room, minus the bird cage in the corner which housed a solitary raven.

"Release me and I will guide you," it cawed as softly as a hiss, "I know what floor you seek."

Moira hesitated. Pets as a general rule were never caged in the Abbey.

Should she trust it?

What choice did she have?

Beatrix's daughter was smarter than she was credited, and after a moment she lifted her chin and responded coolly,

"Only if you agree to give me your best feather," knowing that so long as she had it, the creature would not be able to change into another form.

It felt very doubtful that a bird was this being's only shape.

"Agreed," it whispered, and passed her the largest of its tail feathers through the cage bars, "My name is Ryker."

Moira adjusted the saber.

"Moira. Nice to meet you."

She opened the cage and the raven shot across the room, its wings magnifying in length until it was almost the width of the chamber. Then with a great stretch and a yawn, it shrank back to a normal size, and hovered in front of her.

"Pleasure is mine, I assure you. Now follow me..."

*

First published by Call Me Les on Vocal Media November 2024. All rights reserved.

Entered into the Fantasy Prologue II challenge.

Anyone who takes the time to read this lengthy entry may be assured of a returned read (or two if short!) Thank you as ever for your kindness in supporting my passion.

xx Les

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