“Warrick told me all about you, little honey witch, when we were drinking together. He said that you’re a strange woman who cares more about plants and animals than you do about him. He seemed quite bitter about it, to be honest,” Stuart tsks. “I know more about you than he does. I can see the magic in your aura. I hear your beesoutside. I can see the enchantments you have on those barrels so they refill when your stores are low. I know exactly what you’re capable of. So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You will work your enchantments to fill a barrel of this mead, and it better be the same recipe, no tricks, and I won’t hurt your cat. Or, you refuse, and I hurt your cat, and then I go next door and hurt the rather fetching baker, and so on and so on, until you give me the mead.”
Don’t listen to him.Rafe’s voice breaks through the spell holding him. His body drops a foot before being caught again by invisible hands. Outside, more bees hit the windows, their worried drone growing louder.You have to run, Autumn. I know this man, and he’s dangerous. He’s doing some kind of magic on me. I can’t shift. I think the spell is fading, because I can reach your thoughts again, but he could cast it again at any moment and I won’t be able to reach you. He’s got the Widow’s book?—
Stuart snaps his fingers. Rafe’s voice cuts off, like the dial on the radio.
My phone tears from my hand and slides across the counter, where Stuart picks it up and slips it into his pocket. He grins at me. “Well, honey witch, what’s it going to be?”
XX
The Bees
Too late, we realise our mistake. We protected the garden. We strengthened our ramparts, but the Dark Presence has got Mamma in the Outside Hive. We thought she’d be safe there because of the last witch’s protections, but the Dark Presence knows more than we thought. We press against the glass, we kick with our legs and bash with our heads and beat our wings as fast as they beat, but we can’t break it. We can’t get in. All our usual ways and places are blocked by magic, and not the kind of magic we like. This magic tastes foul, and we fly away from it. We fly fly fly home to get the others.
We need to save Mamma!
But we couldn’t all leave. Some stayed behind to guard the flowers and Mamma’s house. We do our duty, we make our patrols around the edges of the Garden Wall ramparts, dancing from gerbera to buttercup, making sure that all is well.
On our patrol, we notice a dark figure emerge onto the lane, creeping like the weeds that choke out the delicious anemones. It’s Over The Fence Gerbera Daddy. He’s not normally out at night, in the dark. Mamma doesn’t like him, but we don’t mind him because his Gerberas are delicious today.
Hello Over the Fence Gerbera Daddy. We dance around him, and he greets us with a grunt.
He’s not dressed in his usual bright petals. He’s wearing black like the Black Magic roses Mamma grows down the side of her Hive, black like the brackish water at the bottom of the drain. He creepily creeps into his hive shed and wheels out his wheelbarrow and shovel.
We watch as Over The Fence Gerbera Daddy wanders up the lane, stops outside the perfect little gate, his face a scowl like a bramblebush. He mutters under his breath as he pushes up the latch and comes inside.
What are you doing?we ask him.Why are you in our garden?
He doesn’t answer us. He swats angrily at us. No no no we don’t like that.
He passes by the lavender bush, turns at the witchroot, scoffs at the buttercups where we hubbub about. He drops the wheelbarrow he’s been carrying next to the compost pile and starts shovelling.
That’s Mamma’s compost! That’s not yours!
We rise up in anger, beating our wings, flying at his face to try and get him to stop. We don’t want to use our stingers unless we have to. We need to save them for the Dark Presence. But there are too few of us to stop him. The rest have gone to the Outside Hive to fight off the Dark Presence.
“If she thinks she’s going to cheat again with her magically-infused compost, then I’m going to feed my garden with the same stuff, and we’ll see who’s crowned best garden then!”
That’s not yours!We slam into his head.Put that back! That’s food for our garden!
Over the Fence Gerbera Daddy swipes at us angrily. He doesn’t care that he hurts us, that he’s in our garden and he hurts us. He’s not very nice after all and Queen Mamma was very clear, she says we had to guard that compost, that we had to make sure no one touched it until it had done its job. We’re going to have to use our stingers. We?—
He grunts as his shovel hits something hard.
He pulls out his shovel, and the something rolls onto the path, stopping at his feet.Oh no, oh no,we think.That’s supposed to stay in the compost pile. Mamma said no one can ever see it.
It’s a long, lumpy thing, and it’s been in there for a couple of weeks. It smells delicious. We fly in closer, circling circling. Can we eat it? We tried to eat it before, but Mamma said no.
Over The Fence Gerbera Daddy turns the object over with his shovel, and we see that it’s a hand, like Mamma’s hands, but this one isn’t attached to a body, and it doesn’t move and wiggle and do things in the garden. It’s a hand that’s still.
He picks up the hand, and he screams and screams, and he runs from our garden and we chase him.Don’t come back,we tell him.Don’t dig in other people’s compost piles if you don’t like what you may find.
It’s a good thing he’s gone now, out of our garden, before he found the rest of what Mamma buried in there…
TO BE CONTINUED
Find out what happens next in book 2 of the Mead Witch,Buzzed and Bewitched.
https://books2read.com/buzzedandbewitched
