1.93 [Selene]

Selene

They panicked.

The ivory gates had spat them out into an underground tomb, a beehive tholos with only the central coffin and its ivory shroud to fill the space. Scythas rounded on the gates and wrenched at them again as soon as he realized what he was looking at, and Selene turned to help him. The gates fought and groaned, but they got them open again. Hero and Heroine slipped back through the same way they’d come.

Instead of stepping back into the empty Orphic House, though, they found themselves in another beehive tomb.

“What is this?” Scythas demanded. Not so much talking to her as he was the ivy-covered coffin in the center of the tomb. “What do you want?”

Something stirred in the shadows behind the coffin at the words spoken in the kyrios’ voice. Selene inhaled sharply.

A low buzzing noise rose up from the dark. Selene turned and drove her shoulder into the gates they’d just crossed through, stoking her heart’s flame while it hammered away in rising panic. The gates groaned open. Scythas whistled a terse note and moved to confront the sound behind the shadows-

Selene grabbed him by the faded green scarf around his neck and yanked him through the open gates.

The Hero of the Hurricane Heights hit the ground and rolled, gagging. He held his neck, looking up at her incredulously.

“Why?”

Another underground tomb. Selene cast around, peering through the shadows with every one of her mortal and refined senses.

“How much did you know of the kyrios and his interests?” she asked him, creeping warily into the tomb. She pulled her spear of holly and bronze from the folds in her sunray silks, its carved prophecies catching the light of her eyes and shifting in quasi shadow motion.

Scythas coughed and cleared his throat, pushing himself up with a hand. “More than I wanted to. Less than I could have.”

That sounded about right. Exasperation joined unease in her heart.

“Did you know that he cultivated his own honey?” she asked. The pretty Hero blinked.

“He was a beekeeper?”

“The first of them,” she confirmed. “Or first among them. He was always so drunk when he spoke of it, it was hard to tell exactly what he meant. But yes, he kept his own hives. Dozens of them, wherever he could find a dark and damp enough space to fit one. Do you know why?”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t for the honey,” Scythas muttered, rising to his feet and pulling his sword from its sheathe. He held it firmly, in a proper grip, but somehow the image of it in his hand was wrong. The Hero eased away from the ivy-covered coffin she had nearly tossed him straight into, joining her in casting around for movement in the dark.

“It was for the honey.” She smiled briefly at his confused glance. “It’s just that along with the honey came other… marvels.” The kyrios had called them blessings. When her father had spoken of the kyrios’ buzzing hives to her, he had labeled them curses.

It was no coincidence that the cracks and crevices that riddled the darkened caverns of the earth were so often filled by combs of gold and the buzzing drone of nature’s honey makers. In the same caves and dark places that served as gateways to what lay beneath, it was not uncommon to find bees and their hives. The kyrios had explained to her once, intoxicated as he tended to be, that each bee was the soul of a son or a daughter that was yet to be born. He had explained to her their chthonic nature, and the place they occupied within his domain.

Pacing around the room, Selene idly rubbed her thumb against a faint pinprick of a scar on the tip of her index finger.

“Once, when I was too young to climb onto my scarlet tripod without someone else first lifting me up, the kyrios showed me one of the hives he kept in his estate.” She strained for any distant sound, any flicker of beating wings and little bobbing bodies in the shadows, but found none. The hand that had her heart in a vice slowly began to loosen its grip. “It was in a corner of a room deep within his quarters, bereft of anything else. Cold and damp.”

Above, at the highest point of the faux-vaulting ceiling of the beehive tomb, she heard a faint buzz. Rearing back her spear, she heaved it with everything she had straight up. The moment before it left her hand, the scarlet glow of her eyes rushed up the length of the spear’s shaft and filled every carved groove in the wood. The glowing prophecies lit up the tomb as the spear shot straight up-

And vanished. Gone, to somewhere else. In the brief moment before the spear disappeared from her senses, they saw the coming swarm.

“Out!” she shouted, and they each leapt for the ivory gates.

“A pair of mad men are having an argument-“

“Exchanging discourse, you mean?”

“If you’d like to call it that. Each of them believes they are the greater king and that the other is their lesser. One of them is ruler of a grand marble city, and the other commands the shadows that lurk in every corner that the light won’t touch. Tell me, girl – which of their domains is greater, and which of them is lesser?”

“The first one is greater. He’s king of an entire city and the other one is only king of shadows – that’s the same as being king of nothing at all.”

“Incorrect.”

“What!”

“The first man is king of only one humble city. Within its borders he reigns supreme, but only within its borders. The second man is king of every shadow, in every kingdom and beyond them, too. The domain that can be marked on a map is ever less. The domain that exists in every corner, no matter how small a part, is always more.”

“But they’re only shadows!”

“Shadows, and whatever those shadows contain. The king of a marble city is king of all that resides within his domain. The king of shadows is just the same. All that persists in the shade is his to command – like these bees here.”

“Even the bees?”

“Even the bees. Here – beckon with a finger, and see if one comes.”

“As if a bee would listen.”

“Is that so? Well, look what happens when I beckon one.”

“Wha-!”

“I called him, and so he came. Have you ever seen a honeybee rest like this on the finger of a man?”

“… maybe.”

“Ho? Cheeky girl. In that case, have you ever seen one dance?”

“!”

“From thumb to pinky, then index and ring. To the middle he returns, the center of his fingerling stage. Go on, clap for him. He put on quite a show – just listen to him buzz.”

“How do you know it’s a boy?”

“I’m looking at his soul. He’ll be a handsome thing when he’s born again, someday.”

“Born again? As a person?”

“Of course. That’s what every bee is, after all. An unborn soul. It’s why they buzz around in my shadows, straddling the line between life and death.”

“So that bee will be a baby someday?”

“He would have been, yes.”

“AH! You- what are you doing!? Why are you squishing him!?”

“Because I can. See how he doesn’t sting me, even now? Do you know why that is?”

“I don’t care, just let him go- ow!”

“Ah. You killed him.”

“… why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he sting me?”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it’s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Because he was fearful and in pain, and I wouldn’t allow him to sting me.”

“B-but…”

“None of that. It’s only a bee sting. Nothing worth crying over.”

“What’s going to happen to his soul?”

“The same thing that’s going to happen to yours.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it’s time for you to fetch me another drink. Quickly now. I won’t be here forever.”

“The shadows aren’t safe,” Selene whispered harshly, balling up her fists and punching the sloping walls of yet another beehive tomb as hard as she could. She had seen what a punch was supposed to look like, in the boxing events at the Olympic Games and in the memories of those that came to her for guidance. She knew her form wasn’t what it could have been.

Still, even her sloppy punches should have been enough to shatter these glossy brick walls. It shouldn’t have felt like she was still a girl too young to sleep alone at night, unrefined and lacking strength. It shouldn’t have felt like her hands would break long before the tholos’ smooth masonry, and yet it did. After a few more jabs she gave it up and wedged her fingers into the thin gaps between the finely cut bricks, trying to pry them out one at a time. All she got for her troubles were broken nails and bleeding fingers.

“It’s all shadows,” Scythas whispered, just as harshly, abruptly by her side and pulling her hands away from the bricks. His eyes were wide, the white lit up by golden coals. “It’s all shadows, Selene.“ It was the first time he’d called her by her name. “Why isn’t it safe? Where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know-?” His head suddenly cocked, hearing it a moment before she did. The bees.

Scythas growled in frustration and rushed after her, back to the gates.