“So just…”
“Just catch a few of them in the net, right? Then into the jar, and we’re out of here. Just that easy.”
It looked like it might be, and that was what worried Piri. When he’d heard the words enchanted garden, he had pictured something choked with and spitting thorns, shadows blooming below flowers that dripped poison from plump lips. Crows keeping cackling watch, the works, every way a would-be bee thief could die a grisly and instructive death.
But the hedged splendour laid out before them looked very little different from any garden of nobility. Lush and orderly, arranged clearly for colour, to lead the eye along red, pleasing paths to pools of blue. The scent of herbs in the hot, still air- everyone knew wizards only worked at night, so midday seemed the best time to rob them- was kitchen-cozy and almost familiar.
Only a stray whiff of it, a breeze stirring in warning, made it smell otherwise. Made his hair stand on end, and, of course, the bees.
Fat, slow, gorgeous bees, with bodies all of single jewel-like colours. A ruby specimen lighting on a rose, a sapphire beauty wandering between begonias in only natural shade. Some said they really were jewels, that a wizard whispered over and cast into the air. That they would go back to being cold and dead and priceless if caught.
Others, that they were secret and powerful and stolen first from faraway lands. That their sting wasn’t painful or poisonous at all, but healed, and someone suffering unto death could have no better treatment than to be stung by a swarm of them.
At least six for the jar. That was the job. And one he would tuck into his pocket, to take safely home. In case it was true.
A shove at his shoulder. Jari nodded at him in- maybe he meant it as reassurance, go on, it’ll be easy, but it looked more like rabbity, fearful impatience. Go on, they could be here any moment.
They could. No one knew the habits of wizards for sure. Piri shuffled from the shade of the hedges into the greenhouse heat of the garden, clutching the net in one hand and the glass jar in the other, both tight against his chest.
Seven bees. If they stung him, it might be only for his good.
One like a blown little globe of amber rested on the tongue-like petal of a lily nearby. Tucking the jar under his arm, taking the stout wooden handle of the net in both hands, he swung down at it, trapping it that neatly and easily against the loam.
It lay still and docile. Not dead, still chirring its thin, glassy wings, but making no move to escape. He fumbled the jar open- he hadn’t planned this part as well as he might have, what was he supposed to do, just pluck it up between two fingers and tuck it inside? And-
Chirr. Chirr. The rhythm of its wings, crisp and seeming almost deliberate. A dull hum rose in the heat behind him.
A dozen, a hundred star-points of priceless colour rose in the heat behind him. He had time to turn, wielding only an open, empty jar, and time to think how beautiful they all were before the first shot towards him like an arrow from an emerald bow.
Jari would never speak of what had happened there afterwards, after he returned without bees or jar or net or partner. He would only shudder, white as someone still hearing the screams, and say that, if that was the best cure for anything, he would stay as sick as he might ever be, thank you very much.
