Chapter 38: Changes

The piece of honeycomb Violet cut free turned out to be deceptively large and she stepped back from the greater hive with warm folds of soft yellowy wax overflowing her hands. The cat, staying well clear of anything that could gum up its fur, glanced appreciably over Violet’s haul.

“I’m surprised they let you take that much.” It said, then seemed to come to a sudden realization and laughed to itself.

“What?” Violet asked.

Her companion rose briefly onto its hind legs and extended both front paws out, toes wriggling demonstratively, though in service to what Violet could not say.

“I have no thumbs,” the cat clarified, seeing that she was still too scattered to appreciate its point. “Thus I can’t take more than what I can fit in my mouth.”

“That’s still a lot.” Violet said, which prompted the cat to roll its eyes and smirk.

Violet’s gaze fell elsewhere, landing upon the pews, where there were still clusters of bees working at harvesting pollen from the floral abstractions that blossomed there. Now that she was separated from the hive’s gaze, Violet could see their edges once more, the places where petals and wood and stems all conjoined into curls and masses that seemed to hold reality slightly off kilter.

Of all the honey that dripped over her fingers, warm nearly to the point of discomfort, Violet knew that at least some of it came from those flowers. But though she looked down and stared very hard at the rows and rows of hexagonal cells that formed the intricate architecture of the honeycomb, there was no difference that she could see, no sourness or bitter aroma floating up to signify an inner malignancy.

…And why would there be? The bees clearly didn’t see anything wrong with the pollen and nectar they collected. The flowers did not impact them any more than a regular daisy or rose.

“You coming?” The cat asked from where it had paced a few yards ahead.

“All these flowers have stamens now.” Violet said, making as deliberate a gesture to the pews as she could with both hands full of honeycomb.

“They smell like sap.” Her companion remarked, but seemed unsurprised.

Violet furrowed her brows.

“The further we go, the weirder the plants get. Why is that?” She asked.

The cat leapt onto the nearest pew, moving delicately so as not to disturb the bees.

“They’ve acquired function now, in that they can reproduce. Just like all other things, these flowers have chosen to adapt rather than die.”

Violet had nothing to say to that.

Near the front doors, the beast had acquired a small following of very interested bees. They swirled and spun in disparate orbit around its skull and through the raggedy edges of its fabric, maintaining an easy hold over their new source of interest.

The beast, for its part, regarded the hive’s attentions with good natured confusion, but offered no more than a gentle shake of its bony head each time the drones attempted to venture through its eye sockets.

Violet supposed the bees were attempting communication, just in case the beast were to want anything, but how far they’d gotten was anyone’s guess.

g o o d -- j o b ---- The beast said after a moment, attention pulling away from the bees. Though Violet wasn’t sure how much it knew of what she’d just done, her new companion could clearly see the golden, honey dripping fruits of her labor.

The bees, perhaps realizing that they were not getting anywhere, trailed slowly off in clusters and swirling flocks, though the overall thrum of their presence remained absolute, shimmering at the edges of the air.

Violet elected to set up camp close to the sagging front doors, where she could watch the rain. Though it could hardly have been more than early afternoon, the stormy sky had darkened enough to give her an impression of night.

She awkwardly settled against one of the sturdier pews, unable to take off her rucksack because of the burden of honeycomb she held. Seeing her plight, the cat straightened up.

“I’ll be right back.” It said, then stepped behind a fold of shadowy air and was gone.

The beast settled opposite Violet, a few stray bumblebees still resting upon its nose. After a moment it spoke.

i -- r e m e m b e r -- b e e s

“From…before?” Violet asked.

The beast nodded, motion gentle so as not to disturb its dozing passengers.

w h e r e v e r -- i -- w a s .. .

Violet straightened, struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration.

“Maybe you were a beekeeper.” She blurted, but knew immediately this was not the case, for the beast’s disposition remained unchanged.

Still, her new companion cocked its head just a little, so as not to devalue her hypothesis.

i -- r e m e m b e r -- h o n e y -- t o o ---- It said after a moment.

Violet offered the honeycomb out, and was momentarily unable to suppress a twinge of worry for her fingers, now deeply buried in the middle of a small mound of warm, syrupy wax.

The beast leaned in, motions velvety with care, and clipped a corner of the honeycomb free with its teeth. Though Violet knew that it could not taste anything, the beast sat back and chewed, jaws covered with a sticky amber sheen of honey, fabric rippling in such a way that the marvelousness of the treat seemed indisputable.

When the beast had finished, it grinned quite broadly at her, jaws stuck together. Leaking through the patter of rain, the hum of bees and the distant grumble of thunder, Violet could hear something else. The crackle of her machine was still going, steady and uninterrupted from within the beast’s billowing folds of fabric.

The beast followed Violet’s gaze and made a low, quiet noise.

“Beast.” Violet said. “If I ask you a question, will you answer it?”

a b o u t -- t h e -- m a c h i n e

“Why did you take it?”

The beast’s jaws slowly opened, threads of honey linking its teeth, then it snapped them shut. There was tension sharpening its motions now, riding the edges of its body language like an electric shock.

For a moment Violet was sure that the beast would slip out the door and vanish once again, but her new companion rooted itself to the spot.

s o m e t h i n g -- a b o u t -- i t -- i s -- v e r y -- b a d ---- The beast said at last.

Violet blinked, unsure what she could take away from such a vague statement.

“Is it dangerous?” She asked. “Is it something you had back…back then?”

The beast hunched in place, gaze fixed firmly on the ground.

n o t -- d a n g e r o u s , -- i -- d o n ‘ t -- t h i n k .. ---- A crackly rime of interference clouded the edges of its words.

“Then what?” The throb at the front of Violet’s head had acquired a center, a strange emptiness. Focusing on it made her feel almost as though she were floating.

The beast said nothing and sat silent. The machine continued to crackle for a moment, then the beast turned it off. Violet let out a slow breath and began to chew the inside of one cheek, hard enough that it hurt. Somehow she felt worse for having initiated the conversation. It was clear that even the beast did not know exactly why the machine scared it so badly, or why it felt such a compulsion to understand why.

“Did you take it because you thought it would hurt me?” She asked after a silent moment had passed.

Slowly, the beast’s gaze slid up to meet hers.

i -- w a n t -- y o u -- t o -- b e -- s a f e

A moment later the cat reappeared, half staggered beneath the weight of a slick circular green thing that Violet only slowly recognized as an enormous lily pad.

The cat dropped its burden upon the ground, perfectly centered between Violet and the beast, then took a long step to one side and sat heavily down, panting for breath. Its paws were streaked with mud and Violet could see irregular dapples across the length of her companion’s back where rain had stuck its fur down.

Still, she’d been given an excellent place to set her honeycomb. She did so with care, for the honey was beginning to cool and thicken.

“…Where’d you get this?” Violet asked.

The cat gave her a sly, self satisfied look.

“There are parts of the world where entire meals are served on the backs of these.” It said, thumping the edge of the lily pad with its tail. A tiny spray of water droplets went up like a rainfall in reverse and Violet supposed she wasn’t about to get an answer to her question.

“Thank you.” She said, and set about licking her fingers clean. Even as she did so, blooms of sugary warmth filling her mouth, she could not entirely look away from the beast, nor quell the cold surge of discomfort that had begun to swirl in the bottom of her stomach, like the inky pull of a distant whirlpool.

The beast gazed back, but now its attention had drifted to what she was doing, for it worked its jaws thoughtfully, then drifted over to where a trickle of rainwater was coming in through the roof and began to wash its face.

“You don’t seem to be growing any petals,” the cat noted. “I’ll take that to be a good sign.”

Violet rolled her eyes tiredly and made a vague gesture to the honeycomb, which sat like a proud golden island in the middle of a verdant sea.

“Do you want some?” She asked, and it seemed that the cat did, for her companion wasted no time in taking a mouthful. It sat contentedly back with honey dripping from the tips of its whiskers.

“…Eel ttr?”

“Hmm?”

The cat swallowed and licked its lips.

“Goodness,” it marveled, half to itself. “…I was asking if you feel better.”

Violet considered. Her headache was worse, but she did feel slightly more at ease having successfully spoken to the bees and secured a sort of agreement with them. Her encounter with the influence was beginning to slide into the background, the horrible immediacy of it somewhat dulled.

“I think so.” She said, resisting an urge to glance over to where the beast was still cleaning itself, working curls of wax from between its teeth.

At this the cat nodded and for a time they sat and watched the rain as it fell, each drop illuminated from within by the Glow’s steady azure. From where she sat, with her view to the north obstructed, Violet thought that the Glow looked comfortingly omnipresent, as though it could be coming from any direction at all. Thinking of it like that put warmth into the bottom of her stomach that didn’t dissipate even when forks of lightning flashed out across the sky and sullen rumbles of thunder shivered the air soon after.

“I think we’re really close now.” Violet said, half to herself.

The cat nodded distractedly, then surreptitiously spat a little clot of fur off to the side, still working on cleaning the honey from its muzzle.

“You weren’t too far off with your initial guess,” it remarked. “You said it’d take five days to reach the Glow, right?”

Violet stared, momentarily unsure what the cat was talking about, then managed to recall the guess she’d made much earlier, back when the whole journey had only been an idea. She’d been trying to figure out how much food to bring.

Already the memory felt grainy and indistinct, a relic of the far past.

“If we get to the Glow tomorrow then that’s six days,” the cat said. “Not so far behind schedule.”

Violet tried to wrap her mind around that but couldn’t quite manage. The journey had taken on a strange elasticity in her mind.

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“Which part?” The cat asked.

Violet could only shrug. There were concepts and great feelings swimming free, entirely beyond her ability to describe.

“I feel like if I met the me that started this week, I wouldn’t recognize her…and she wouldn’t recognize me.” Violet returned her gaze to the rain, feeling bleak.

The cat was silent for a long moment, then zipped atop the pew Violet had rested herself against. The tip of its tail descended to muss her hair.

“Consider yourself on a longer timescale. If you ran into the you that existed five or ten years ago, would you recognize her either?” The cat asked.

Violet knew what her companion was getting at but hunched her shoulders, feeling reflexively stubborn.

“That’s different.” She said.

“No it’s not,” the cat cheerfully disregarded her. “Growing is growing and change is change, whether it occurs under circumstances sedate or abnormal.”

Violet brushed the cat’s tail away from her head and huffed.

“You don’t feel envious of the you that existed as an infant, do you?” Her companion pressed.

“My mother said I was a special baby.”

“Because you were born with the right number of joints in your legs?” The cat asked. “Goodness.”

A low, crackly annoyance flared within Violet, but she could not convert it into an even superficially cutting remark. It had been a very long day and now a great dark blanket of exhaustion settled, crushing her every impulse and desire.

“Go away, cat.” She muttered, and the cat dutifully retracted its tail.

“Was that too far?” It asked.

“Maud’s my friend,” Violet said tiredly. “It’s not her fault that….” She trailed off into a sigh.

“I’m sorry I upset you.” The cat said after a moment’s silence.

Violet said nothing, until the top of the pew seemed to lighten somewhat and she knew that the cat had gone. Then, a curious unhappy tightness coiling in the center of her chest, she shut her eyes and let sleep wash everything away.