Bee Song

by Cecilia Maddison

The stone struck the back of Milda’s head. A flash of light seared her thoughts before pain kicked in, throbbing through her skull and squeezing hot tears from her eyes. She dropped her pail of grain, ignoring the throng of chickens that rushed in to peck, squawking, at her feet. Rubbing the tender swelling emerging through her hair, she spun around.

“Bullseye!” Avery pumped the air with her fist, a sneer wrinkling her freckled nose. “Although, to be fair, it would be hard to miss a target your size.”

A cluster of children, grasping their own pails of chicken feed, looked from Avery to Milda and back again, choosing their allegiances. It wasn’t hard. At mealtimes, Avery crowed Milda’s name across the refectory with an exaggerated inventory of the food on Milda’s tray. She ridiculed Milda’s every awkward stumble, found fault with every eavesdropped word.

Uneasy snickers rippled through the onlookers, flushing Milda’s cheeks. “It’s not funny,” she said, eying the feather-strewn steps between her and the chicken enclosure’s exit. She pushed her hand into her pocket, feeling for her mother’s amber pendant, pressing her thumb to its polished surface.

“You’re right.” Avery put her hands on her hips, swishing her ponytail from side to side as she scanned her devotees’ faces for approval. “It’s hilarious.” Her grin faltered as a honey bee bobbed towards her face. She batted it with her hand, side-stepping, before the bee resumed its path towards the orchard, where white-washed wooden beehives stood in the dappled shade of apple trees.

Milda took her chance and barged past Avery, her thighs rubbing together and the hems of her too-tight shorts riding up as she fled. Outside the chicken enclosure, she pushed past Judith, the farm session’s leader, arriving with a basket for gathering eggs. Milda ignored her bemused call to come back.

A wonderful opportunity, the social worker had said of the summer camp placement. Lots of fresh air and children your age. You deserve to have some fun.

But the real reason was that her father sat for hours in front of the blaring TV with crushed beer cans littered at his feet and his eyes glazed with grief. Sometimes, when Milda addressed him, he would offer an absentminded “hmm?” as if he was listening out for someone else’s voice from across an immense distance, and she would help herself to more of that night’s takeaway meal to fill the emptiness.

#

We are many and we are one. We see a thousand fragments of colour and create a single world. Ours is a life of rich vibrations, of humming violet, of air laden with sap, pollen, and the sweet scent of nectar-drenched stamens. We forage in the dusty hearts of flowers, and dance our tales of life and death, and fight until our bodies tear apart. 

#

Milda hurried along the aspen-lined drive that led to the field of log cabins, one of which she shared with five other girls. After a blistering July, an August heatwave was in full blaze, exhausting the trees until their dry canopies whispered in protest, shedding fistfuls of golden leaves and longing for autumn. Fissures fractured the earthen track, lending it a wizened, desert-like quality, and the summer camp’s once green fields lay bronzed and barren. 

Inside the cabin, Milda sat on her bunk bed, with her knees drawn up to her chin. A warm breeze fluttered the open window’s gingham curtains, carrying on it the screams and whoops of children swimming in the lake.

The thought of swimming filled Milda with dread, and she planned on feigning a headache to be excused from the afternoon’s water sport session. The truth was she’d grown these last few months, her chest stretching her T-shirts taut and her hips jutting into her waistbands. Her swimsuit, already a faded hand-me-down from one of Aunt Alice’s girls, was two sizes too small. Her dad had shrugged when he helped her find it from an overstuffed drawer, holding the straps to her shoulders, insisting it would do for one more summer. It would not. Her mother would have understood.

Her mother. A familiar pang rang through her chest. Retrieving the amber pendant from her pocket, she held it up to the light, examining its marmalade hues and the insect poised inside: an ancient bee with filigree antennae, veined wings segmented like tiny stained-glass windows, and a tapered, striped abdomen. 

“Listen to me, mielutė,” her mother had whispered, when Milda lay curled up next to her in bed one afternoon after school. “You come from a long line of moterys su galia. Women with power. Can you feel it yet?  Do you understand how strong you are?”

Milda had remained silent. As her mother’s skin had slowly flushed the colour of marigolds, she made less and less sense, talking in riddles, offering scattered fragments of thoughts. Sometimes her mother held nonsensical, one-sided conversations with people long gone, like Milda’s grandmother, who died in Šventoji before she was born.

Her mother had reached into the drawer of her bedside table and retrieved the amber pendant, its silver chain looping through her dry fingers. When Milda was little, she’d believed it was magic, watching open-mouthed as her mother rubbed it with silk to pick up wisps of shredded tissue paper scattered across the table. Now, her mother pressed the pendant into Milda’s palm, folding her fingers around her daughter’s to make a solid fist.

“This gintaras washed up from the Baltic Sea,” her mother said. “My mother passed it down to me, as her mother did to her. We are a force of female energy, like the bees. Just like this one, from millions of years ago. This pendant stores our energy, protects us. Keep it close, and it will keep you safe.” 

Her mother had promised the pendant would offer protection. But it had failed to stop her mother from being devoured by illness, and once again, it had done nothing to spare Milda from humiliation. She let the amber’s weight pull the chain from her grasp, and the pendant fell into the crumpled folds of her bed covers.

A soft knock at the door set Milda’s heart racing. She sat up straight, tensing, before her shoulders sank with relief.

“It’s me,” said Judith, her sneakers silent as she crossed the wooden floor to Milda’s bed. Judith’s grey hair swung in a long braid down her back, and her tanned face crinkled as she smiled. She lived onsite all year round, she’d announced on the first day of camp, managing the small farm on which the camp was run, and overseeing the college kids who volunteered as helpers. “I heard what happened. Show me where you got hit.”

Milda bowed her head, letting Judith part her hair and press an ice pack to the lump. It was the first time another person had stroked her hair since her mother’s death. “Can I go home?” she asked. “I hate it here. And now I have a headache, so I can’t go swimming later.”

“If anyone should go home, it’s Avery. She’s already been excluded from this afternoon’s activities. Why don’t you go swimming, just this once? The lake’s the best place to be in weather like this.”

With a shake of her head, Milda folded her arms across her chest.

Judith studied Milda’s despondent face. “Then maybe you can help me with some chores.”

#

Our mother moves through our brood, and she smells good, and we bow before her, humbled and ecstatic. We fill waxen cells with sweet, soft, gold, feasting even as we work. Ever restless, our wings whir, and we fly farther, seeking the sweet open mouths of flowers, driven by the memory of famine. For even in this time of plenty, we remember back. We are tied to those who came before, and we listen out for what is yet to come.

#

The brim of Judith’s spare beekeeping hat flopped over Milda’s eyes, its crown too wide for a snug fit. A fine mesh veil covered her face, misting her vision. She watched Judith drift between the hives with a watering can, her white beekeeping suit dotted with clinging bees as she poured water into shallow basins of smooth flat river stones. A handful of bees darted down, settling on the rocks to drink.

“Come closer, so you can see,” said Judith.

“I can’t. They might sting me.”

“With you all kitted up like that? Besides, they know who to trust.” 

A bee landed on Milda’s veil, and she froze. Raising her gloved hand, she brushed it off and stepped forward, helping to hold steady the sides of the stainless steel smoker. The cavity inside was stuffed with dried pine needles, which Judith lit with a long match. When the kindling smouldered, Judith fastened the lid and worked the bellows, funnelling puffs of smoke around the base of a hive.

“Does the smoke scare them away?” Milda asked, as the traffic of bees in and out of the hive seemed to ease.

“Goodness, no. Bees don’t scare easily. Some say the smoke keeps them calm. They’re less likely to pick up on the queen bee’s alarm signals. But others believe it draws them inside to gorge on honey.”

Pine needle smoke filled Milda’s nose and stung her eyes. The afternoon sun glared down, trickling sweat down Milda’s back. But she felt more at ease than she had for days, with the fullness of her body cocooned in her too-large beekeeping suit, lulled by the constant hum of bees. 

Judith removed the top of the hive, propping it on the ground, and after puffing more smoke, she pulled out a wooden frame covered with a seething mass of bees. She shook the frame once, sharply, and dozens of bees fell back into the hive, revealing golden honeycomb glowing with all the warmth of amber. 

“There she is,” Judith said softly, touching the corner of the frame, where a cluster of bees remained. “See her? That’s the queen.”

At first, all Milda could see was a ripple of sleek, restless bodies. Then she spotted her: a bee whose abdomen extended twice the length of her wings, her back a dark, burnished brown. She moved slowly across the honeycomb, surrounded by attentive bees who stroked her with their antennae, grooming her legs and caressing her wings. 

“She’s not doing much,” Milda said.

Judith chuckled. “Believe me, she earns her keep laying more than enough eggs to keep the colony going.” She returned the frame to the box. “But if this heat keeps up, there’s a risk of swarming. The bees will choose a few new queen eggs, and this one will take half the worker bees with her to start over somewhere else.”

With the bees watered and the hive lids propped ajar for ventilation, Milda and Judith walked back through the afternoon’s lengthening shadows. Crickets thrummed from drifts of yellow grasses and wilting wildflowers, and still the heat billowed down from the sky and shimmered up from the parched, cracked earth. 

When Milda removed her beekeeping suit, shedding her veiled hat and gloves, a stray bee settled on her bare arm.

“She’s tasting you,” said Judith, hanging their suits up on the barn wall. “Bees pick up chemicals through their feet. Don’t be afraid.”

Milda raised her arm, bringing the bee closer to her eyes, examining her onyx eyes and pollen-laden hind legs.

“I’m not,” she said.

#

When sunlight shatters the darkness, we rush to our mother’s side, a hundred bodies pressing close, a hundred more to guard the precious chambers filled with her life, our life. Strange shapes move near, alien particles drift and dampen our fear. We gather: poised, prepared, but calm. We send airborne thoughts that cross the darkness of the hive and are carried on the heady smells of bark and blossom and wavering grass; thoughts that ripple through the boiling air until every sister sings as one.

#

The evening’s campfire left Milda longing for home, or the dream-lit memory place of home-cooked food and bed linen fresh from the washing line, where her mother still drank tea at the table. The stacked logs crackled as the heat of sunlight stored inside from past summers was released. They reminded her of a holiday in Šventoji, perhaps when she was only three or four, when she’d watched a bonfire set alight for Joninės, to mark midsummer. The blaze had roared, lending warmth to the faces of the gathered strangers and burning her marshmallow cheeks. Standing between her parents, with one hand swallowed by each of theirs, she’d watched floating embers race to the sky.

Reaching into her pocket, Milda frowned, missing the cool weight of the amber pendant. She scrabbled to her feet. Slipping away unseen, she made her way along the track to the cabin, and the campfire chants faded into snatches of verse.

When every fold of fabric on her mattress had been shaken out and each inch of floorboards beneath the bed explored by her fingertips, Milda knew that her mother’s amber locket was gone. Crawling under her covers undressed, with woodsmoke in her hair and nostrils, she curled into a ball, her spine an arc of misery, and the fists she pressed to her eyes were as hard as stone.

She slept poorly, greeting the hottest day of the year with damp skin and limbs so heavy it was as if concrete had been poured in her bones. The lake lay like a mirror, reflecting the vast, cloudless sky, and as the morning hours passed, the log cabins sweltered, providing no refuge from the heat. Even the chickens stopped squabbling, resting listlessly in the shade of their enclosure with their wings splayed in surrender to the sun. Milda moped between craft activities and quiet time, avoiding conversations and attention by assuming an invisibility she’d nurtured through necessity. 

At first, she didn’t notice Avery sauntering past with her hand hovering over her collarbone. A small pack of lip-glossed, long-legged girls followed in her wake, drawn to Avery’s brash brightness like moths to the moon. 

“I don’t know.”  Avery’s voice sliced into Milda’s attention. “It’s kind of disgusting. It’s got a bug in it, after all. Maybe I’ll throw it in the lake.”

Milda glanced up. Her mother’s pendant hung from Avery’s neck, and her stomach lurched. “That’s mine.” 

“Yours?” Avery echoed. “I don’t see your name on it.”

“Give it back. It belonged to my mother.”

“Take it then,” Avery dangled the pendant in front of Milda’s face, pivoting as Milda reached out for it. Her feet danced, playing with the distance between them, reeling in her prey. “If you want it so badly, move those fat legs and run.” She spun around, leaning into a sprint, casting a triumphant glance over her shoulder. 

Milda’s sandals slapped against the ground as she followed, and high above the aspens trembled, stirred by brief, hot breaths of wind. She caught up with Avery on the scorched grass of the orchard, where Avery held the pendant high, twirling it by its chain. A stream of breathless children, charged by the oppressive air and the thrill of confrontation, fed a circle that wavered and waxed around them.

Rage surged through Milda, filling her head with pressure and tightening her fists into balls. Her vision tunnelled until all she saw was Avery, and although she appeared to be standing far away, it was her own hands that struck Avery’s shoulders, hard. Avery’s head jolted back. With black dots spinning in her periphery, Milda drew breath, aware of the air vibrating.

She thought at first it was her own fury: a black cloud descending from the trees, hanging like smoke above their heads, until the bees began to cover her with featherlight taps as they settled on her skin. The air thickened, and Avery’s head became obscured by a dark cowl as she, too, was enveloped. Above the thrum of wings, she heard Avery whimper, and farther away, children’s shrill alarm calls. But anger seemed redundant now, under the weight of the bees that she wore like a cloak, and through her feet she drew on the stillness of a tree, her nerve endings tingling from the crawling touch of bees.

“Don’t move,” she murmured to Avery. “They’re tasting you. They’re learning who you are.”

“Get them off me.” Avery’s whisper was barely audible above the immersive drone. She opened her hand and dropped the pendant at Milda’s feet. “Here, take it. I’m sorry. Just make them go away.”

“Then do what I say. Stand still.”

With the amber pendant glowing at her feet, Milda stood tall and unafraid, her bones vibrating with the undulating hum of the colony. This, she understood, was what it meant to be a moterys su galia, to draw on the power of generations. She was strong, her mother’s daughter.

By the time Judith arrived, breathless from racing with a bee box and smoker, the swarm had shifted and simmered in the arms of an apple tree, ripe for creation of a new hive. The murmur of bees lay like a baseline in the summer air, spiked by a blackbird’s contralto jubilations. Milda sat in a pool of shade, head tilted to the sky, and she held the amber locket to her palm like a second chance, remembering back and listening for what was yet to come. Beside her sat Avery, ashen-faced and silent, indifferent to the wide-eyed children scattered across the clumps of dried grass.

“Everything’s fine,” said Milda, as Judith examined their skin, examining every inch for raised blotches. “We haven’t been stung, not once. The bees sang, and I listened.”

#

We are restless, confused, and the hive fizzes with want. Our mother is tired, but we demand more, bringing drop after drop of nectar to her mouth, urging her to fill the hive with her love, but she will not. Barren, she languishes, fanned by our wings as heat builds and scents become distorted. We pour from the hive, a shifting mass, inhaling, exhaling, a force of female energy. For a while, we mourn what we have lost, drawn to a place that mirrors our discontent. We taste grief and anger, which we sing the depth and breadth of. But then we rise. For this is the way to the beginning.