Althea turns over her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid! These bees are your kin now.”
“Am I their queen?” she calls back, half-joking.
“No,” Althea says without humor. “The queen is a bee that has been fed only royal jelly since birth. She’s easy to spot because she’s about twice the size of the others. She is the mother of every bee in the colony, while you,” she says, taking the arched lid off the top of a hive and pulling out a frame of honey that looks like a stained-glass window, “are simply their keeper. Now, come closer.”
Okay. Deep breath. She takes a step forward, tiptoes through the gate, and stands inside the apiary for the first time. The air smells sweet and flowery. A small vibration that tickles her feet with every step. A little hum masks all other chirps and whistles in the air. Some of the bees are gently hovering around their hives, while others are exploring the fruits and flowers nearby. One bee takes a particular interest in her and flies to her hand. At first, she jerks away, but her grandmother’s glare scares her intostillness. Lifting her palm, she cautiously allows the bee to rest there as she examines it.
“Will it sting me?” she asks, attempting to hide her nerves as the insect crawls over her skin. It’s tickly. She looks closer, noting that the bee is much fuzzier than expected.
“The bees will never harm you. They know what you are by scent, and soon, they will learn to recognize your face the more time that you work with them. Remarkable creatures, really,” Althea says as she walks from hive to hive, examining the frames inside. Marigold follows and begins to peer inside them while crouched behind her grandmother. She notices two of them that look completely different from each other on the inside; one is overflowing with thin orange-tinted honey, while the other is heavy with honey so dark that it almost looks black.
“Grandmother, why is this one so dark and different from the others? Is it burnt?”
“You have a sharp eye, Mari. It is made with nectar from blackwell bulbs. And the other one next to it is peach blossom. There are many different honeys in these hives,” Althea says.
Her eyes widen. “I didn’t even know there were different types.” Is that meant to be common knowledge? If so, this is embarrassing.
“Oh yes, there are as many types of honey as there are flowers, and for it to work with our magic, the bees can only retrieve nectar from one type of flower per colony. That is why our relationship with the bees is so important; they make the essential ingredient for every single one of our spells. We tend to them in the winter when the flowers are waiting to bloom. We maintain their homes, their food, and their brood. We grow their favorite plants all over Innisfree, and if they cannot find the flowers they want here, we instruct them on where to go.”
“How do we do that? Can I speak with them somehow?”
“Try it,” Althea says encouragingly as she scoops up a handful of bees and plops them into Marigold’s palm without giving her a chance to object.
Oh God. Okay, no sudden movements. No loud noises. Nothing to disturb the hundreds of venomous insects that are now covering her hand like a glove. Just keep breathing. She raises her hand to eye level and concentrates, hoping to feel something. Strange enough, she does, when she makes eye contact with one bee who stills beneath her gaze. In her own way, through her mind, she tells the bee of the lush harvest of bellflowers that were left in a basket by the front of the cottage. The bee begins to waggle, moving its body in circular motions.
“Is he… dancing?”
“She,” Althea corrects, “is giving instructions to the others on where to find the flowers. And all the other worker bees—all female, by the way—will follow her directions. Male bees do absolutely nothing but mate and die.”
Sure enough, the bees fly off her hand and disappear around the cottage. Her jaw drops in amazement as she moves back to her grandmother’s side.
“Excellent job!” Althea pops the lid off of another hive and peeks inside. “Damn,” she spits under her breath. “This one is honey bound.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I waited too long to harvest and the hive is overflowing. They do not have room for their brood. If we don’t fix this fast,” she says, dropping the lid to the ground and reaching for a frame, “they’ll swarm and leave us.” Her grandmother’s arms tremble under the weight of the full frame.
“Let me take that,” she says, expecting Althea to shoo her away like she normally does whenever Marigold offers to help. This time, though, her grandmother nods and hands her the frame.
Althea sighs. “I suppose I must admit now that I am too old for this.”
“Don’t say that.” She summons the bravery to reach inside. The bees respect her entrance into their home and do not fight her as she retrieves another frame.
“It’s true. I cannot maintain the hives, or the veil of protection. Honestly, I cannot even properly dust inside the cottage anymore. I tried to ignore my body for a long time, but now that you are here, I am reminded of what a witch is supposed to do.” She wipes the sweat from her face. “It’s simply too much for an old crone like me.”
Marigold props the frames against the lavender box on the bottom of the stack and wraps her arms around her grandmother. “Do not speak of yourself this way. You are the strongest person I know, and you do not have to do this alone. Not anymore.”
The harvest will begin tomorrow, but for now, Marigold has pulled the heavy frames and replaced them with empty ones. Her priority is to ready the necessary ingredients to renew the veil of protection tonight. While Althea rests on the green couch, Marigold hovers over the ancient grimoire in the kitchen. Her eye catches on a spell for hay fever that requires aster petals. Merely seeing her sister’s name causes a slight twinge of pain in her heart. She left so much behind in Bardshire, and so much tension unresolved. If there is a way to make it right, she cannot find it. Perhaps it’s better for everyone if she stays far away, at least for now. She brings her mind away from those thoughts and regains her focus in the kitchen. Each page of the book is decorated with splashes and spills from different ingredients and centuries of use. It contains a spell for everything that she could imagine: finding your soulmate, headache cures, fertility control, ensuring a bountiful harvest, and even finding a lost cat. With this book, there is nothing she cannot do.
Except find someone to love her, of course. All of this comes with a price that she has yet to realize how difficult it could be to pay. She continues to flip through the book, noting the wild ingredients she has never heard of, and some that she cannot imagine touching.
“This spell requires frog eyes and the wings of a dragonfly?” she yells out to Althea, her mouth twisting in disgust.
“Some spellwork is less glamorous than others, I’ll admit. But look at the soulmate spell. That one is lovely,” Althea says.
She flips through the pages and lands on 117—the spell to find your soulmate: lavender honey, lemon seeds, rose petals, and moon water.
“So what happens if we perform this spell on one of us?”
