Chapter 17 Arthur, Before
Arthur,
Before
The green sepals cupping the rosebud unwound in a slow pirouette, leaving behind a splash of petals in Eva’s palm. I watched the display of slow and gentle magic from nearby, a smoker dangling from my fingertips.
The perceived smell of fire had driven the bees to gorge on their stores, and a swarm of them, now drunk on their own honey, buzzed overhead.
Despite what their hardwired panic would have them believe, the smoke was no disaster.
Honeybees had a tireless work ethic, collecting nectar from dawn to dusk to be converted into honey and sealed in wax back at the hive.
But sometimes they brought too much. An overabundance of nectar-producing flowers in the forest—the honey flow, Jack called it—had overwhelmed this apiary.
It was our job as beekeepers to give them more real estate.
Eva tipped her head up, as though daring the sun to gift her more freckles. Across the yard, Jack set down a stack of supers. The shallow boxes contained the frames on which the bees stored their excess honey. Adding more supers reduced the chances of the hives swarming and splitting in two.
“It’s too hot today,” Eva complained, wiping a bead of sweat off her temple. “Let’s swim.”
“Sure.” I swatted absentmindedly at what I thought was a fly until it stung my jaw, making me yelp.
Both Moreaus looked up. After a quick assessment, Jack nodded to his youngest daughter. “First sting is a rite of passage. Take him inside and show him what to do.”
Eva perked up and flounced my way, tugging my sleeve. “Come on.”
My jaw throbbed as we walked back up the hill to the cottage. “Another angry brood cycle?” I asked.
“What?”
“That’s what you told Lenny after he was stung, right?” Despite my early hesitation, the beekeepers’ sun-soaked world had woken my curiosity over the last few weeks. I was hungry to learn.
Eva’s face turned pink. “I did tell him that,” she said slowly. “I also told him to put vinegar on the sting.”
“Are we not doing that?”
She laughed. “Not unless you want it to burn worse than it does now.” She scooped up Hyssop—a recent rescue from a cat shelter, I’d learned—and brought her inside, filling the kitten’s water bowl before the two of us unzipped our bee suits down to the waist, letting the arms dangle so we could cool down.
I pinched my T-shirt at the sternum and fanned in a bit of air. Heat aside, I liked the bee suit. It felt like armor. For the first time in a long time, I felt content.
Eva nodded to a chair. “Sit.”
More than content.
I sank obediently onto the curved, stained wood, worn soft from decades of use.
Glass rattled as she dug through her cupboard, searching among her jars of herbs. The bee suit swung low over her hips, sleeves flopping against rainbow socks and grass-stained shoes.
This was our game. I watched her, and she watched me.
We’d been playing it for weeks, trading glances like playing cards, the unspoken breathing down our necks like a creature ready to swallow us whole if we didn’t give it voice.
I knew it wasn’t just me. Eva’s freckles connected when she blushed, and she played with her braid when she was nervous.
Best of all, her magic betrayed her, her emotions pulling flora to the soil’s reef.
Once, I had caught her staring at my hands, wildflowers sprouting in the grass at her feet.
“How’s the swelling?”
I felt like someone had taken a match to my skin. “Fine.”
“Liar.” I could hear the smile in her voice as she plucked a jar between her fingertips.
“Aha!” When she turned, my eyes snapped to her face.
“Calendula!” Then she closed the distance between us and stepped between my knees, eyes bright as an afternoon sky.
Eva unscrewed the cap to the little tin and swirled her finger in the yellow mixture. When she reached for me, I leaned away.
“What are you doing?”
Eva paused. “I have to apply this.”
“I can do that.”
“I know.” Eva’s voice colored with sudden embarrassment. “But I… want to.”
The air between us thinned. For weeks, we’d danced around the no-touching rule.
The bee suit’s heavy cotton let me pretend I could be close to her, but it was all a facade.
Eva Moreau couldn’t really touch me, though she walked the line.
Tugging my elbow. Bumping my hip. “Ev,” I strained. “You can’t do that.”
“Maybe I can.” When she stepped closer, the smell of coconut shampoo and fresh-cut grass filtered through my nose.
Her eyes sparked as she gingerly traced her fingertips down the back of my glove.
Even through the waffle knit, goose bumps rose on my arms. “I bring dead things back to life all the time.”
“I’m not dead, bee girl.” But she could be if I let her touch me. I was no flower; I was flesh and bone and, currently, a lot of rushing blood.
I could hurt her.
The chair creaked as I leaned into its ancient back, creating distance. Eva closed it with a single step, so close her knees kissed my inner thighs. One of her hands was tucked safely in its glove, the other unbearably naked. “Do you not want me to?”
“That’s not it, and you know it.”
A flicker of vulnerability passed over her face. “You’re afraid of me.”
“She is monstrous too, in her own way.”
I bristled at the admiration in the monster’s tone. No, she isn’t, I silently snapped back.
The Moreaus straddled an interesting line between friend and foe in the town’s ecosystem, drawing whispers wherever they went.
Eva got the brunt of it. Her sister didn’t have the gift she and her father shared, and for whatever reason, Jack had proven capable of hiding his ability to make things grow when the situation demanded it.
Not like Eva. Wilderness burst from the earth everywhere the bee girl stepped.
“I’m not afraid of you, Ev.”
Eva flipped my hand. “What, then?” A honeybee sat in the hollow of her throat, the sections of its wings putting me in mind of a gothic window’s delicate tracery.
“I’m afraid… you want something you can’t have.”
“Can’t?” Eva’s throat pulsed a slow, hard swallow. “Or shouldn’t?”
“Does it matter?”
Her gaze pinned me like a bug to Styrofoam. “It does to me.”
The sketch of her fingernail made my glove feel like it wasn’t even there. I gripped the arms of the chair. “Ev, I—”
“Just let me try. Please.”
A better person would have pulled away, instead of just sitting there, eyes fixed on the determined set of her mouth as she peeled the cotton free and set it on my knee.
I wasn’t a better person.
I was me.
The monster curled deeper inside me, both of us as terrified as we were desperate to let her touch us. Just once.
Please, I begged. Don’t hurt her.
The monster shook inside me, its ever-awareness tuned to the thrum of her pulse, so near our skin. “I won’t, little death-touch,” it said as Eva rolled down the edge of my glove. “I promise.”
The bee girl’s eyes softened. “You trust me?”
I could still say no. Deny it. But she was full of light, and like a sunflower, I couldn’t help yielding to her. My body spoke for me anyway; I sat with my legs spread, palms open, face upturned. There was no use lying when trust was written all over me.
Still, my heart beat in my skull, and my skin pulled tight everywhere, anticipation like a drug. I wanted to let her want me. To see me. I wanted the crush of another person’s skin reassuring me that I wasn’t alone.
“Yes,” I whispered. I wasn’t usually one for faith, but she made me want to believe in something bigger than my own broken pieces.
Eva took my hand in hers.
Like sparklers, the nerves in my fingers lit up. A current of feeling rushed up my arm to the center of my chest. I shivered with something deeper than cold. Something raw. Something new.
I stared at Eva. She twitched a smile, seemingly content to exist under my magnifying glass. I’d been doing it for weeks, cataloging finite details:
The splash of freckles dusting her nose.
The circular fingernails she never left unbitten.
The rosy shade of her neck when she blushed.
The easy curve of her mouth when she smiled.
I’d pictured this moment, of course I had, playing pretend when I had nothing else. My imagination, however, had failed me dramatically. I tried to memorize the slide of her warm, smooth fingers through mine, feeling clumsy beside her confidence. I didn’t know how to do this.
Eva bit her lip, softly teasing a strand of hair at my nape between her fingers. The skim of her nails sent a frisson down my spine. Was it supposed to feel like this—so good that it almost hurt?
Then her smile dimmed. She dropped a gentle touch to the scar on my inner forearm. “How did you get this?”
I drew back, shame chasing the sunshine away. “What?”
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it.” Her thumb drew a bridge over the long-healed wound, her voice turning rough. “I just want to know you.”
Her touch felt like fire, but the heat was good. Painfully good. I didn’t deserve that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.
The world had every reason to hurt me. I was the poison under its skin, killing and killing with every touch. But it wasn’t the world that had taken a knife to my skin and tried to carve the badness out.
That had been me.
The monster soothed a touch to the center of my chest, easing the ache in my heart. “No more.”
I swallowed hard, hoping it was right. I never wanted to be that Arthur again.
Eva’s gentle touch pleased the monster. She was soft as feathers.
“And so alive,” it breathed. It didn’t reach to touch her, but I searched her eyes anyway, looking for some sign of death, some form of desiccation or decay.
I saw only blue.
And slowly, my disbelief sprouted into wonder.
I wasn’t supposed to be able to do this. I couldn’t touch anyone, but here I was, touching Eva Moreau, with no consequences whatsoever.
Eva set her palm on my chest.