The Journal of BubbleLand Studies
Scented into wax by me, zzzzz'ZOE, the Royal First Cousin, on this day, Thirty-two Oak, in the year 15910.The captured rebel forces are herded together to witness the torture of zz'Tain, Prime Minister of the Rebels. The torture device chosen is an ancient window pane from the glory days of human culture, when Bees were often entrapped in their light madnesses by such windows, and beat themselves to death.
zzz'Zoe, leader of the Archaeological Bees, pleads for zz'Tain's life before the Bee Counter, Vz'Calc, but Vz'Calc has calculated that zz'Tain's life is to be downsized.
As diffused dawn light foreshadows the torture to begin, zz'Tain tells zzz'Zoe of the Hiveless Bees, and how they had taken him to the ButterSnow Mountains, where he had seen a stone carving of Queen Emma, the zz'Omma of ancient Bee writings.
Queen zz'Omma was not a Bee, but a human girl, Emma.
The Sunlight Torture Of zz'Tain
By
zzzzz'ZOE, For Queen Sarah I
And so the torture of zz'Tain the microbee came to pass, on that shadowy morning when the sun rose behind a strange fog, now growing brownish like smoke from a hive fire.
All had been counted and calculated . . . a column of known statistics about child behavior, another of known facts about zz'Tain's contacts with the girl Queen Sarah. The beewax Calculating Comb's micro scents and gigasniffs spat out the wickedness.
Torture zz'Tain, and the girl Sarah would reveal herself. Moments later, a Scorpion Bee would fall upon her neck, ending the rebellion with its lethal venom. The Bee Counter solution was a precise, trusting thoughtlessness, for no mind in Apiculture could hope to keep up with the heady speeds of the Calculating Comb.
Seven sleepy children, all allowed to keep their toybags, sat in a semicircle around the window pane . . . wiping their eyes of sleeplessness and sadness with their chubby fists.
Sarah was among them, hidden, and it is to her credit that only a quivering lower lip anticipated the window torture of her friend and Prime Minister, zz'Tain.
A far off wild cock announced the sun, and we could no longer hide our hopes in anticipation of its delay. The crickety throat-call echoed through the forest with the sharp finality of a stinger. At this signal, zzzzz'Drom herself, with her own Prime Minister, Vz'Calc, at her side, flew down from the top of the window pane to light upon the glazing putty at the base of the window glass.
Vz'Calc, the Bee Counter, held his Calculating Comb like a sceptre, its numerical task finished, but its importance as a symbol of worship for the Bee Counters still prominent. A flight of Scorpion Bees hovered in place overhead, ready to carry out sentence when Sarah revealed herself.
A yellow stinger of dawn light now stabbed through the horizon's strange dawn fog, and impaled zz'Tain upon his own madness, sucking him mercilessly toward the window glass in a Bee's compulsion. His wings had already been hammering his head at the glass, just due to the diffused light of dawn, but now the full blow of zzzzz'Drom's murderous torture fell upon him, and his wings and legs clawed at the sun, like a cat catnipped into drooling, stroking fury.
Bravely there among the other children, Sarah didn't stir, but the weather seemed to notice the morning's seriousness. A distant wind droned, for we all thought it was a wind, and traced an ominous finger of the brown fog across the sun's growing orb, yet too thin to blot its glare.
zz'Tain's struggles began to burn his tiny reserves of energy, and he fell into the sputtering flight of the doomed.
Seeing this, the Bee Counter Vz'Calc flew around to prance along the weave of screen, and to taunt zz'Tain. "Where is your Queen's mercy, zz'Tain? A human Queen cannot love her Bee subjects. Statistics don't lie!
"Tell us which girl is your Queen! Her lack of mercy does not deserve you!"
zz'Tain seemed to rally. "Swift death will be my mercy, and my hope is that it will outrace the mercy in Sarah's heart."
Vz'Calc shook his head. "Rest, fool! The Calculating Comb has counted that her mercy will show itself in a moment, regardless of what you do."
"Then I must fly headlong to my death!" said zz'Tain. He turned his body to the glass, and his wings beat heavily against it, all the while his flight fell dropping again and again to the glazier's putty. As his wings picked up dust, they became heavier, but still the merciless sun commanded his tattering, snapping wings to fly . . . racing the growing sobs coming from the children behind the window glass.
Suddenly, there was a stirring among the children, . . . the heavy footfalls of one of them, and then a silhouette took the sun from zz'Tain's eyes.
"Sarah, my Queen!" he groaned, as his struggling ceased in her shadow.
She reached down to pull the screen from the window, and picked up the exhausted zz'Tain, raising him near her eyes. She began singing to him a song he had taught her, from the songs of the Human children who lived on zzzzz'Drom's transport boats, a song zz'Tain had sung into her ear when her foot was infected.
I'm a little stocking with a hole in the toe.
Whenever I go walking toenails show.
When people's knees are knocking from the cold or snow,
They will want their stocking with the hole in the toe.Vz'Calc the Bee Counter, and Queen zzzzz'Drom, hopped excitedly at the Sarah's revelation of herself. They flew triumphantly up to the top of the window pane to await the falling Scorpion Bees.
Vz'Calc was in ecstacy. "It's an unprecedented Comb Summation! It was exactly as predicted, and not a moment layer!"
zzzzz'Drom, however, turned her eyes to the sky, and to her Scorpion Bees. "I tire quickly of fools, Vz'Calc. When will the Scorpion Bees arrive?"
He raised the Calculating Comb to his face, and whiffed it with his antennae. "Why . . . they are past time . . . can they not be seen?"
"I cannot see them, for the cloud, fool!"
Vz'Calc lowered the Calculating Comb. His eyes and antennae strained to detect the Scorpion Bees.
My own ears heard something, a hum of sorts . . . which became a series of clicks. Suddenly the sky was full of chattering, like a million crickets. The morning fog was falling upon us, in brown and yellow droplets, but not of water or mud. Each droplet was a Bee, and no Scorpion Bee! The din was the chattering of ancient stingers being snapped into ant mandibles, upon the backs of millions upon millions of hiveless Bees, like the spy who had sneaked into camp.
Vz'Calc whiffed his Calculating Comb. "Impossible! So many hiveless Bees are an impossibility! Where do they store the energy to gather from their distances?"
Then we heard a pounding . . . a pounding of hooves! zzzzz'Drom's Queen's Guard scattered in every direction. A white horse appeared at the edge of the clearing. In its forelock, standing tall between its ears, I spied a Hiveless Bee, grabbing and yanking forelock hairs one way and another. He looked for all the world as if he were steering the giant beast.
The horse headed straight for Sarah, and the Bee flashed his wings to me as he approached the window. The great beast reared, dipped its neck, and grabbed Sarah by the collar, its nostrils flared, its lip lifted in a snarl. A second horse, a small gray, streaked in from the side . . . bowing its head to nose its way beneath our startled Queen.
More horses appeared in the clearing, these with their backs blanketed by thousands of hiveless Bees. I saw them coming for the window, and I leapt away. The horses narrowly missed the children, but kicked over and trampled the window, shattering it with a splash of ringing glass, and also running down the two humans who had brought it. Queen zzzzz'Drom's transport hive was thus crushed, along with the skull it had sat upon, and I did not see her, or Vz'Calc anywhere, or any of the Queen's Guard.
I found refuge in an Oak, and strained to see Queen Sarah. In my last glimpse of her, she was still being carried by the white horse, with the small gray alongside, trying to seat her.
They headed toward the ButterSnow Mountains, toward the place I now knew to be BubbleLand.
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31 July, 1996 -- Expedition Report -- 32 Oak, 15910
