Lake of Sorrows

At times he was seized with a feeling that he really ought to keep this area in better trim, but the feeling vanished when he was here, amid all this profusion. The grass did not live in order to be cut down, but in spite of cutting. Its nature was to grow and go to seed and grow again. He felt the rebellion in his own soul swell sympathetically whenever he stood on this small patch of earth. The world was meant to be wild, unbridled. The place where he worked, Loughnabrone, was humankind’s attempt to put its own shape on nature, but humankind never really won that fight. Drains filled in, grasses and bog plants encroached; they would soon take over again, once the humans were all gone.

He looked down to find a single worker bee attached to his wrist, apparently attracted to a small smear of honey on his shirt cuff. He watched the insect circle the spot, intoxicated by the scent of it. He watched her tongue looping outward onto the cloth, feeling as small as she was, the air around him buzzing, vibrating with life, the very atmosphere thick with the smell of nectar and flowers, the sheer overwhelming abundance of the universe. This sudden awareness passed quickly, and he was once more in his own apiary, studying the single bee as she worked to get the nectar from his sleeve. When she was satisfied she lifted off, flying unsteadily, he thought, drunk on the taste of her own honey.

There was someone in the apiary. Charlie stopped to peer through the dense and crooked whitethorn branches, half expecting to see his mother. Instead he saw a pale, slight figure in the center of his hive circle, a young woman about his own age. She wore a kind of shift—he knew no other word for the garment—a simple dress in some sheer material that caught the sun, which made her seem illuminated around the edges. A makeshift crown woven of twigs, clover, poppies, and other common roadside weeds adorned her dark head. He stood transfixed, watching as she lifted her arms and stretched luxuriously, like an animal. A single bee alighted on her outstretched hand, and she brought it down to have a closer look. It didn’t sting her, as he had thought it might; she studied its trail across the back of her hand. Far from being frightened, she seemed curious.

She raised her thin arms level with her shoulders and turned slowly, raising her face to the sky. She seemed unaware of his presence; her eyes were closed, and he saw a cloud of bees gathering around her head, perhaps attracted to the flowers. He suppressed the urge to cry out, afraid he would startle the bees into doing her injury. But it was as if she anticipated, even invited the insects’ attention. He remained still as a statue, barely breathing as they landed on her in dozens. Her neck and shoulders were awash in a vibrating mass of busy, winged bee bodies. He imagined their strange strawlike tongues against her skin, perhaps tasting her for the queen substance, the chemical reassurance they needed to carry on. This was swarming behavior, he realized, the main thing all his efforts as a beekeeper went toward preventing, and yet he could not disturb such a wondrous apparition. She was some deity, a force of nature incarnate, and who was he to disturb her communion with her subjects? For it was as if she commanded them, and they sought her out, the irreplaceable touch and taste of her. And she, for her part, seemed transported, rapturous.

He had no idea how long they stood there. It might have been two minutes, it might have been ten; his sense of time was distorted by this unexpected vision. It was almost as if their beating wings were about to lift her from the ground. He felt his center go with them, the girl and the bees, borne upward on a wish. He could have sworn there was a space beneath her feet, a miraculous millimeter, thinner than a bee’s gossamer wing.