Skylark (25 page)

Flowers
. Every inch of the meadow was blooming.

I dropped to my knees, spread my arms, and gathered an armful of the blossoms, burying my face in them. They were barely scented, carrying the merest hint of something crisp and wild and heady. The blooms were white, reflecting the purple dome overhead and glowing in the twilight. Their petals brushed my cheeks and lips and eyes, growing damp from the rain dripping off my nose and the tears clinging to my eyelashes.

“How many times am I going to have to stop and wait for you?” Oren’s voice came from just behind me, but I didn’t even lift my head. “I suppose you’ve never seen flowers before either,” he said, more quietly.

I shook my head, and with a great effort, straightened a little. I released my armful so that they sprang back into place, bobbing their pale faces at me as if in enthusiastic welcome.

“Come on,” said Oren, stooping to offer me his hand. The tears still stubbornly clinging to my eyelashes gave everything a fuzzy halo of sparkles, but through it, I thought I saw him smile. “There’s a lot more to see.”

I let him lead me through the meadow. He didn’t speak again, but this time his silence felt reverent rather than rude. His hand still conveyed that strange buzzing sensation where our skin touched. His was rough, callused, strong—so very different from Kris’s hand.

The pixie launched itself from its perch and went flitting crazily around the meadow as we walked, brushing the flowers and looking for all the world like a—

My dreamy, drifting thoughts came to a screeching, electrifying halt. There couldn’t be flowers out here—not without something to pollinate them. Bees, butterflies—or birds.

Oren had reached the edge of the forest, and dropped my hand in order to pull a bit of undergrowth away so I could step inside. And I all but forgot the meadow and its flowers.

The forest was alive with movement and color and smell, animals bounding away from our intrusion. I smelled more flowers and the sharp tang of fruit, mixed with the nutty smell of the damp earth. The branches of the trees were laden with fruits, hanging like teardrops. And covering the bushes were berries of every color. Patches of green covered the floor, tiny red gems of berries nestled in the vegetation.

I heard a buzz swoop past my ear and looked for the pixie, but then caught sight of its telltale copper gleam back out in the meadow, where it was still playing with the flowers. I gazed up and around, and finally saw something swooping away. I followed its movement and saw more and more of them.

Bees.
Bees
, which had been extinct since before the wars. I felt my knees waver and buckle, and kept myself upright only through sheer force of will. They bobbed and danced, sometimes chasing each other, sometimes skittering away in search of nectar. They didn’t fly like Nix or the pixies in the city; there was no purpose or direction to their movements, just a lazy delight in the art of flight that I had never seen.

I trailed along behind Oren as he made his way deeper into the wood, weaving his way in between the strawberry patches toward a small bare space where he had clearly been before. A charred fire pit told of many nights spent in this place. He tossed his bag down and sat, leaning against a fallen tree and spreading his arms to either side along his backrest.

I let my own makeshift pack drop and stood, gazing all around. I wanted to find words, something to express what it meant that he had brought me to this place, but my tongue felt thick in my mouth.

Eventually exhaustion and weakness forced me to sit, and I tore my eyes away from the bees dancing amidst the trees and blossoms. Oren was watching me, and started imperceptibly when I turned to look at him, as though he’d been smiling up until the instant I looked his way.

“This is—” I had no word with which to end the sentence, and gazed at him helplessly.

He nodded. “I come here whenever I can. Plenty to eat, and it’s safe.”

It was more than that, and I started to argue the point until I saw how the tension had drained out of him, saw the easy languor with which he was leaning back against the fallen tree. He knew it was more than that. He didn’t need me to tell him.

Oren stirred himself to build a fire and gather us some dinner, telling me to sit. Though I felt some small stirring of guilt that he was doing all the work, the weakness in my muscles still plagued me, and after a day’s hike I felt as though I could do no more than collapse. I fell into a doze, watching the bees and occasionally the pixie, wheeling overhead in the strange violet light.

I had little sense for the passage of time, but when the tingle of his hand touching my shoulder woke me, the light was nearly gone. Only the faintest violet shadows edged the world beyond the circle of our firelight, making my eyes throb as I peered into it.

“Dinner,” he said, and placed a plate into my hand.

I had only a moment to wonder where on earth he’d managed to find a plate—did he have a stockpile of utensils here, inside this pocket?—before what was on the plate stole my breath away.

Toasted nuts, topped with crushed purple berries, strawberries, blackberries tossed in a salad of brilliant green leaves, whose crisp smell identified them as mint, a pile of something that looked like potato, cubed and cooked golden. I gasped.

Oren was already tucking into the food on his own plate. I half-expected him to have a dismembered rabbit on his plate, and was all set to have my appetite squashed by nausea, but he was eating the exact same thing as I was.

We ate in silence, but only because it was necessary for us to shovel the food into our mouths more quickly.

One of the bees buzzed low and landed on a bobbing blossom not far from where I sat in rapt attention. I set my plate aside and leaned close. I could see its long tongue dipping delicately into the recesses of the flower, its furry body coated in a light dust of pollen. After a few seconds, it stopped its feast and with equal delicacy wiped its legs over its face, looking for all the world like a well-mannered diner wiping her mouth.

Without thinking, I stretched out a hand toward the creature.

“Careful,” said Oren, voice sharp with warning.

As the bee moved I saw the tiny point of its stinger at the end of its abdomen, and drew my hand back.

Oren set his own plate aside and glanced up. “Sunset,” he said. “Watch.”

A realization cut through the haze of happy satisfaction dulling my senses. In the other pockets, sunset had always marked a change. The forest had come alive and monstrous, the ghosts had emerged.

But surely Oren would not be so relaxed if the meadow was about to turn into a nightmare. Still, I leaned forward and peered through the gathering darkness, eyes straining to see what change the sunset would bring.

Chapter 21

All over the meadow, the bees were abandoning their work and vanishing into the shadowy woods, all zooming in the same direction. Nix shifted forms to imitate their bodies, zipping along their path and then flipping back toward us, never quite going out of eyesight. It began to imitate their style of bobbing, dancing flight, though it could not quite capture the same languid playfulness.

Oren got to his feet and reached for one of the branches in the fire. As he straightened, the burning end of the branch left an orange trail against the darkness. Its glow illuminated his face as he watched the bees. His expression was soft in a way I’d never seen before.

In that moment I knew Oren had not been sent by the Institute. If the architects knew of such a place, it would be swarming with machines. They could feed the city for months on the fruit growing here, and the magic thrumming through the air could power the machines needed to harvest it. The idea of the many-fingered harvester rolling across the meadow made my skin crawl.

I watched Oren as he turned away from the bees to look at me, the light playing on his cheeks. The rain had washed some of the dirt away.

“Come on, follow me,” he said, meeting my gaze briefly.

He gestured with a torch toward the darkened wood. “Where?”

“You’ll see.”

He led me into the forest. Though I stumbled at first, my eyes began to adjust to the light, which flickered and bobbed with every step Oren took.

“How many other people know about this place?”

“Just me,” said Oren, stepping over a fallen log. “And now you.”

“You haven’t shown it to anyone else?” My throat tightened.

“There isn’t anyone else.” His voice was quiet, firm, dispassionate.

I followed the rest of the way in silence, until we arrived at a clearing that was positively swarming with the bees. They clustered around an old, half-dead tree pocked with hollows, darting in and out of it.

“Stay there, and hold this close,” Oren ordered as he handed me the torch, but for once his tone didn’t make me want to snap at him. I did as he said, angling the torch closer, the sputtering smoke mingling with the frenetic bees.

He approached the tree, causing a positive flurry of activity among the bees. They swarmed over the tree, forming a moving, shimmering curtain of light between it and Oren. Slowly, very solemnly, Oren bowed. The grace of the movement caught my breath—so at odds with the animal wildness in his expression, and yet, fitting it as well.

He waited until the curtain of bees dispersed, scattering to the sides with a swell of the almost musical drone of a million tiny wing beats. Moving slowly, Oren stepped forward and dipped his hand into the hollow of the tree. I held my breath, imagining the damage those stingers could do to his unprotected skin.

When he withdrew his arm, it was covered in a swarm of bees, but they soon dispersed. He was holding something in his hand, something that glinted and glowed gold in the torchlight. He took a few steps backward, away from the tree, and then glanced over to where I stood staring in tense fascination.

He beckoned to me with a jerk of his chin, and I went to his side. “Try this,” he said, swiping a finger along the thing he was cradling in the palm of his hand, and then sticking the finger in his mouth.

I recognized it now as part of the beehive, something I’d seen in books. It was dripping with viscous honey. I dipped a finger and tentatively brought it to my mouth.

Unimaginable sweetness. Far more tantalizing than the sugar beets in the city. I closed my eyes, barely aware that I was humming with pleasure at the unexpected delight.

“Go ahead, eat all you like,” said Oren. And though I could not be sure in the fading light, I thought I heard a smile in his voice.

We sat there in the clearing with the torch wedged between two rocks, devouring the honeycomb whole while the bees danced and swarmed all around us. The sugar and the light and the delicious fullness of my stomach was all the more satisfying for how hungry, and how tired, and how frightened I’d been. I couldn’t help but think of the last time I was so full, that first night in the Institute, before I’d known to be scared. Before I’d ever had to run.

I closed my eyes, letting myself, for once, just rest.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Oren warned. “I draw the line at carrying you.”

“Hmm,” was my only reply, lips and fingers and face sticky with honey. A day ago the thought of the wild boy carrying me off through the forest would have frightened me beyond imagining. Now, part of me wanted to see what would happen if I tested that threat.

Nevertheless, the torch threatening to burn out and the chill of night settling in the forest drove us to return to the fire. Though I stumbled and tripped along the way, Oren never put a foot wrong. After we found our way back, we lay drowsing and licking the honey from our fingers.

“Tell me about your family,” I found myself saying. “Where did you come from?”

“They’re dead. Killed.” His words hit like a blow to my stomach.

I knew I should stay quiet, respect the flatness of his voice as a request to leave it alone, but I couldn’t. “How old were you?”

“I don’t know exactly. I think about ten.”

“That’s impossible,” I breathed. “You survived out here when you were ten years old?”

“I said I didn’t know exactly,” he said shortly.

“But—”

“I don’t
know
.”