I approach the first hive and immediately note the signs:
– guard bees pacing the entrance board, fanning their wings too fast
– workers climbing across each other instead of landing smoothly
– the sharp, high-pitched hum
– the faint odor of overheated wax drifting out of the hive cracks
And then something soft lands on the back of my glove. A dark, feather-light speck.
I tilt my hand.
Ash.
My stomach drops. Bees don’t panic over nothing.
I straighten slowly, scanning above the hives. Another tiny gray fleck drifts down. Then another.
I lift my head and listen.
Under the rising hum of my bees, I hear it. A faint, distant sound that sends cold through my veins.
Sirens.
Not one. Several.
I straighten slowly, eyes drawn to the horizon beyond the pastures, past the tree line.
Smoke rises there. Not the gentle, white kind of a burn pile or someone’s chimney. Thick, roiling, gray-brown plumes curling up into the sky.
A wildfire.
The storm last night.
Lightning without enough rain.
My heart thuds painfully against my ribs.
For a long moment, I just stand there, feeling very small in the middle of my little yard while something huge and terrifying burns in the distance.
The wind shifts, blowing smoke smell directly into my face. It’s sharp and bitter, threaded with a tension that reminds me too much of another fire, another night, another loss.
Mom.
My throat tightens.
I reach for the nearest hive, needing something to ground me. The bees swirl around my hands, jittery but not aggressive.
I rest my palm against the wooden box, feeling the faint vibration of thousands of wings working nonstop.
“We’re okay,” I tell them quietly. “We’re far enough. They’ll put it out.”
The sirens scream again, louder this time, then start to fade as they move past, toward the flames. The fire must be closer totown than to us, thank goodness, but that doesn’t make my pulse slow.
Fires don’t respect boundaries. Or fences.
Or prayers.
