It takes an age, but Lisbet is revived from her sleep, and she works as though she had practised for just this moment her whole life, a life that until now had been full of ruin and curses and blood and now is nothing but music and beauty and bees, her mother-in-law processing before her, anointing her path with smoke. She feels some of the power a priest must, giving each animal their place, clearing them of their panic, their confusion. Giving them peace. The unhomed bees gust and plume, making a column above the destroyed hives.

‘What now,’ murmurs Sophey, barely moving her lips. Lisbet knows there is nothing to do for them. They have no spare skeps, no hives readymade, and even if they did the bees would not take to them so soon. Lisbet places the net aside, and lowers herself carefully to her knees beside the first hive. She sorts among the ruins, the honeycomb bleeding over her hands, the perfect halls and chambers shattered, until finally she finds him. The king bee, large nearly as her thumb, his wings broken and stuck to the remains of his cavity. From him, all else grew. Without him, the bees are lost. She crushes him with her fingernails, as quick a mercy as she can bestow.

It is useless to cry, but she feels the sharp prickle of tears as she turns to the other hive. This king is harder to find, and she scans the bees overhead, searching for his mass among his subjects. There is no sign.

‘Lisbet—’ starts Sophey, but Lisbet shakes her head.

She lifts the hive to search its underside, finds the perfect shapes of their combs, rakes through the fine webs of paper, so intricate no man could make it, until, finally, trapped behind a crumpled shell of wax, she finds him.

The king rises from the remains of his hive, buzzing enormously. He sways, bumbles against Lisbet’s cheek. She feels the graze of his wing, light as broken cobwebs, and then he lifts higher and is encased inside his colony. The bees rise with him as though he is an anchor made air, as though their tethers are suddenly cut, and they follow him into the forest.

Thirteen

They sit, the five of them, around the scrubbed table in a stunned silence. Frederich is looking at Lisbet with an expression that is almost reverential, Nethe breathes audibly, and Eren has his slender fingers outstretched on the wood. Sophey has given Lisbet the good chair, the one that stands steady on four even legs, a respect Sophey usually reserves for her son alone.

Lisbet can barely keep silent, let alone still. Her leg jigs, her skin tingles. She feels flooded with blood and breath, triumphant.

‘Astonishing,’ says Frederich at last. ‘Extraordinary. Are you a hexe, Frau Wiler?’

‘Fred,’ hisses Eren. ‘Do not be foolish.’

Lisbet glances at him, seated between Nethe and the drummer. She imagines she feels the same energy glowing off him, the same glory. The lute lies mute on the table, posed between the cups of dark beer Sophey has poured for all of them. She even smiled when she offered Eren his, didn’t flinch when their hands brushed. Only Nethe’s is untouched, her face paling at the smell.