When the Bees Don't Hum

Do you hear that? The wind outside has suddenly died down, and even the cricket behind the stove ledge has broken off mid-chirp. Only our wooden sign is creaking. Come sit closer to the fire, put out the extra lamps. Tonight I'll tell you what I heard from an old wild-hive beekeeper from near Oster. He came to us three years ago looking for a night's lodging, and didn't sleep until dawn itself.

It happened in the autumn of seventeen eighty-eight. The autumn had come out rotten and warm, smelling of damp leaves and rotting apples. The old man went into the deep forest to look for a lost swarm. He came upon a huge oak with a hollow, and what drifted from it was not honey but something sweet and heavy, like incense at a funeral.

The bees there were strange. Not yellow but pale, almost transparent, like winter ice. And they did not hum. From the hollow came only a dry rustling, as if someone were scraping claws over dry bark. The beekeeper lit a branch and peered inside, hoping to see combs full of honey. But there was no honey there. Instead of combs, the hollow was packed with little wax figurines. Hundreds of human figures, each the size of a finger. Every one moulded with uncanny precision.

Here a woman with a jug, here a man with an axe. And here a figurine in a patched homespun coat, with a deep wrinkle on its left cheek. The beekeeper cried out. It was an exact copy of the godfather of his children. The next morning the man was found dead in his own bed - his heart had stopped. The old man understood then that the pale bees do not gather nectar. They mould those whose time has run out. And when the figurine is finished, the person goes to the other world.

He wanted to burn the cursed hollow, but the smoke only enraged the swarm. The pale insects poured down on him in a cloud. They did not sting - they simply settled on his skin and began, quickly, to mould something right there on his arm. The old man dropped everything and ran, beating them off himself with branches until his strength gave out.

The beekeeper said he got away, but the swarm found him. Now, whenever someone in his village falls gravely ill, at night he hears that same dry rustling in the walls. The pale bees have settled in his house. They are waiting. And he was afraid that one day he would see on his table his own wax figurine, with its eyes closed.

The fire in the stove is barely smouldering now, and the inn has gone completely quiet. Listen. Do you hear that faint rustling somewhere behind the clay wall, right by your ear? Only don't turn around sharply, and don't go looking for pale insects. Better just finish your drink and pray that this night passes.