Avalon
The world is gray, the exoskeleton of trees are dark against the sky. There is a thread of warmth weaved into the wind. Spring is waking. Crickets chirp their calculations on their thatched legs. A bird sings out. A gust strikes out from the churn of feathers. I shrink back to the entrance of the hollow, looking, waiting. The shadow of the beast passes over me.
We must be careful, Mother told us as she traced over our cells, telling us that we were chosen to carry out creation. We were drones, Knights of the Round table she had heard recited by her bees as they returned to the hive dusted with pollen. We would be sent to drink from the chalice of tulips, peony, and weeds, spilling pollen onto the fields to help form fruit. We were the best of them all. Made of the air, sun, and earth. But, we must be careful, she insisted, brushing our churning forms thoughtfully. It is all at a cost.
My stinger burns as the mockingbird disappears into the woods, like a sword being drawn at the sight of a dragon. We drones know that there would be a day that we would not return to the hive, but we are stubborn, baring against fate with our blades, to then be found cold in the grass, our swords unsheathed, bolted to the misery of our attacker.
The wind is full of damp leaves, frost, and rain. The thread of warmth has perforations like an old cobweb.
I shudder my body, Where are the flowers?
The vibration rolls down my thorax, peeling off me to roll into the hive like thunder.
No one replies.
It had been a silent pilgrimage out here. I woke into a closed mouth, the hive still and Mother in her chambers.
I turned to my brood, burning white in the dark in a wall of honeycomb. Some of my brothers were still just formless worms churning in their golden rooms, while others now slept as fully formed bees, their black heads bowed as they waited in statis to wake. We were the next generation. I ticked my antennae in farewell to bees I had grown beside, and now, I stood, so small in the world.
You must travel farther, my sons, Mother told us, the flowers are hiding from the feet and fire of men.
I am ready. For Queen, for Creation. The wind ticks at my fresh waxed wings, assuring me that I will fly. Instinct drives me forward, and I leap in the glow of gray, beginning a quest of many.
*
A woman sighs as she marks a tally into her notebook. She shakes her head at the mark, tucks her hair behind a reddened ear, then looks to the oak tree. The throng of a waking hive churns in the hollow. She shakes her head.
“Another one hundred gone,” she bites her lip, turning her head to the forest, the woods still frozen in Winter. A mockingbird flies ahead, drifting on the gust of warm air that interrupts February.
“I am so sorry,” she whispers, her head low as she treks into her home, her beekeeping suit weighing heavy with the demise of bees, a casualty accruing by the changing world.