The Fifth Sacred Thing (46 page)

Sweetness. She was immersed in sweetness. Her sense of smell was augmented. The scent of wild lilacs on the air now became the overriding quality of the universe. Each breath filled her with the promise of food and love and abundant life. Sweetness carried her, launched her on wings. She was suspended in the scented air, following her nose to bury herself deep in the heart of blossoms. Her body felt the magnetic pull of the North Pole just as it felt the pull of gravity. Petals brushed her with their moist velvet touch, and she plunged into their depths, filling her nostrils with scent until her whole body quivered, extending her tongue to sip delicate nectar so that she was all sweetness, inside and out.

Some human part of her mind cried out, fighting to contain the aromas that moved through her and around her, to name them, describe them, limit them. Sage. Lilac. Those were names she could hold to, and names kept her anchored to herself. Oak. Madrone.

“Don’t fight the change.” She heard the Melissa’s voice, coming to her not in words but in a rasping vibration, a tone in the air, a scent. “Let go. Let go.”

She was falling; then she was flying. Lilac was not a name but a realm of the air that called her into places where her whole body throbbed with delight. Sage was a universe, pungent, bracing. Hold on! her human mind cried. “Let go,” the Melissa buzzed and hummed and murmured. Madrone’s own fear was a stench she could hardly bear. The meat of her body stank of blood. “Rise,” the Melissa said. Madrone wanted to clutch her human form but she no longer had hands to grip with, only wings that beat incessantly, gossamer propellers to carry her away from something lying dead below her that she did
not want to remember. No, Mama, not now. What are you doing here? You are long ago and far away and I want, and I don’t want, to be pulled down to drown in the warm red milk of your body. The air was filled with a sound that might have been her own voice screaming.

“Let go,” the Melissa whispered. “Let yourself rise. Follow the sweetness.”

“Rise,” mumured the voices of the sisters, whether human or bee Madrone could no longer tell. “Rise and fly. Fly away.”

Yes, and why not? Why not fly, when it was so easy, and her wings were pulling her into the air, pulling her apart the more she tried to hold on. But if she just let go they would lift her. She could let them lift her away from all the horrors locked in her own human memory, and dissolve, transform, take wing.

Madrone was lying in the cave, with no awareness of how she’d gotten there. It was warm and felt safe, like a womb, like a hive. She was covered in honey and there were bees with her constantly, a blanket of them, feeding from her body. The tickling of their thread feet, the almost imperceptible rasp of their tongues brought every nerve alive in her body. Then something stung her in the center of her forehead. It pulsed and throbbed, she couldn’t even call it pain; in this state the word had no meaning.

She was moving in the dark safe hive, where body brushed against scented body, learning from movement and smell what the hive knew, the paths through the air to the nectar flow, the health of the brood, the golden warmth of the sun. And under it all, the queen’s smell, something that crept into her and soothed her with a deep sense of rightness, the way the milky smell of the breast soothes a baby. I remember this, she would have cried out if she had had words; oh, Mama, I have missed you so—but before she could sink into the brood smell, her bee body swelled and elongated. She was the queen, nurtured on royal jelly, emerging with strong wings out of the womb-dark hive to soar for the first and only time up into the light, up and up, her strong wings beating the sweet air, chased by a cloud of drones. Only the strongest could catch her, could plunge himself into her in one ecstatic midair moment and fill her with the brood to come. She longed for that moment; she ached for it, but before it came she shifted again.

Now she was not the queen, but the drone, spiraling higher and higher in the air, quickened to life for the one mad moment of flight that was life’s purpose, wings whipping the air in pursuit of the golden flying body that was the aim of all desire. Drone entered queen, shaft buried itself in bee flesh, and she was both at once, singing in union, letting go and spilling all and receiving all. Until the moment ended. The drone pulled away, ripping out his own guts, relinquishing his honey drop of the hive’s life so that life itself might pass from drone to queen to egg. She felt a tearing in her belly; something gave way. The hive was a vessel, sweetness pouring itself through form, in and out,
so that queen and drone and worker were only flashing, sparkling, momentary configurations of the morphic kaleidoscope, each individual an impermanent convergence of golden liquid and lacy wing, dissolving and forming, dying and being born.

Within her own body flowed rivers of scent and taste, and suddenly she knew them in a way even she, a healer, never had before—knew the scents her sweat could produce and what each signified and how they could be messages and conversations and offerings. The bees rasped at her sweat with probing tongues. Was it human hands or gauze wings that stroked her until honey dripped from her breasts and streams of nectar poured from between her thighs? Something was tasting her, tasting what she offered, and all was sweet.

The Melissa touched the center of Madrone’s forehead, where the stung place still throbbed. With a tiny knife, she opened a flowerlike wound. A drop of blood appeared, and the bees swarmed, curious, to taste.

“We share nectar with the sisters,” the Melissa said. Then she packed the wound with propylis. Madrone would have a small blossomlike scar. The sweat that beaded on that scar would be sweet, her own nectar to feed the sisters.

Slowly Madrone became aware that she was no longer in the cave. Time had passed; she had no idea how long she had been lying in the shade of an arching, pale sycamore. Bees hummed lazily around her; their sound was now like music to her, operas and symphonies and oratorios, and at the same time like a crowd of gossiping friends, telling her everything she needed to know. A piece of acorn bread lay under her hand, and as she ate it she felt her mind beginning to return. She felt a sense of vertigo, almost a double vision. She could see through multifaceted insect eyes more easily than she could look at things straight on in her old human way.

The humming grew louder, and her vision shifted as the energy changed again. The Melissa was sitting beside her.

“How do you feel?” the Melissa asked.

Madrone was surprised to hear the question in words. They seemed awkward, clumsy, unnecessary when a molecule of scent could convey the same thing. She gave her answer as she had learned to do, in a bead of sweat on her eye spot that carried in its chemistry the taste of wonder and confusion.

“No, answer in words,” the Melissa said. “It is time for you to take back your words. You will need them.”

Madrone closed her eyes. She knew there was an answer to the question, but words seemed primitive and inadequate compared to the delicate subtleties of taste and smell.

“You must speak,” the Melissa said.

“Why?”

“Because you must return to the human world and be the healer needed there. The hive is not for you.”

The buried nugget of her human self stirred and shifted. I know that, Madrone thought. It smells right. But the hive is sweetness and rest and peace and soft bodies endlessly brushing and touching and pleasuring one another. Remembering, she let the odor of her body plead to stay.

“You would not want it forever. You would resist and beg for your name back.”

And that also smelled right. Madrone sighed and opened her eyes.

“How do you feel?” the Melissa asked again.

“All right,” Madrone managed to say, and laughed at the imprecision of words. “A little—disoriented.”

“It will pass as you eat more. Rest today, and practice your new powers, and tomorrow perhaps we will take you back to camp.”

“How—what—”

“You must anchor the bee vision, so you can call it back or shut it off at will. Here, touch your forehead, on the bee spot. And remember your old self, and call her back. Say your human name.”

“Madrone.” She shook her head slightly, as her vision cleared and the world resolved itself back into separate objects.

“And now touch the spot again, remember the hive smell, and let the bee sense return.”

Again, vision shifted, letting scent replace sight and knowing replace thinking.

“And now call yourself back again.”

Madrone hesitated, the words not making sense, until the Melissa picked up Madrone’s hand and placed it on her forehead again. “Your name,” she reminded her.

“Madrone.”

“Practice that change, until you can remember it when you’re in your bee mind and do it at will. Can you do that?”

“Yes. I’ve been doing stuff like that since I was a baby. I just need to work at it a bit—and to want to come back.”

“That is always the challenge. The hive is very sweet.”

“But you—you stay in the bee mind, and yet you walk and talk and interact with other humans.”

“As little as possible. But I have many many years behind me of this shapeshifting, and the other Melissas also. You are very new, and we have given you only the small initiation.”

“If that was the small one, Goddess save me from the big one!”

“It may come to you in time, but I think that dance is not yours. The big initiation takes everything, and when you emerge you are yourself no longer
but part of us, as every bee is part of the hive. But we have taken nothing from you—not your name, not your power. All will be as it was before. You are not of the hive, as we are, but you will be able to draw upon the sisters for help and nourishment and protection.”

“How? How do I do that?”

“Through your bee spot. Come into your bee mind now, and I will teach you how to call the sisters when you need them.”

Madrone touched the spot and let her breath and memory take her back into the sweetness. The bees cloaking the Melissa’s face shifted, like the parting of a veil, and from the blossomlike scar in the center of her forehead a crystal bead of sweat emerged. Madrone leaned forward and touched the tip of her tongue to the drop. Her whole body came alive with longing. She was called, she had to come, she wanted to come. The taste changed. She sensed danger; she was filled with rage, it shook her body and she was ready to rip herself apart and die in defense of the source of sweetness. And then the taste changed again, and she knew hunger, an emptiness demanding to be filled, and then again it changed and she knew she was meant to carry a complex scent back to the hive and dance. Then her hand was being slapped against her own forehead again, and once more she returned to her human self.

“Today we will work on just these four things; the call to the bees, the call for protection, the call for food, and the message call. If you can learn these four, you will do well.”

“And the healing that you do with the bees—can I learn that?”

The Melissa shook her head. “That comes after the big initiation, and even then it is tricky and dangerous. It goes against the nature of the little sisters, which is to kill the sick and wounded for the sake of the whole, not to cherish the individual parts.”

“And what you’ve taught me, does that go against their nature?”

“What I have taught you works with their nature. It is how they communicate. Even so, never make the mistake of thinking you control them. They are wild. They will aid you if they wish to, but they will not always understand you, and with all you have learned in these days, you still only barely begin to understand them.”

“How did you learn all this? Who taught you?”

“The old woman taught me, as she taught us all.”

“And who is the old woman?”

“In the time of the great sickness and the hunger, when the Stewards came to power, she fled to these canyons to live quietly and secretly, for she was a Witch. She grew a garden and kept bees, and when her friends and family died in the epidemic, and she was lonely, she spoke to the bees and grew more and more like them, until she shared some of their secrets and learned to brew the nectar that opens the bee mind. She trained us all.”

“Is she still alive? Can I meet her?”

The Melissa was silent. Madrone lay back, suddenly exhausted. Through the dappled shade, spots of sunlight shone red behind her lids.

“Rest a bit,” the Melissa said. “I will bring more bread, and then we will practice again.”

She dozed. In her dream, she saw Lily’s face. The old woman cupped her hands and lifted them to the center of her brow, where there was a waterfall. She held them out to Madrone, offering her a drink. Madrone dipped her face into the cool water, lapped with her tongue like an animal. She tasted urgency, and fear.

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