Hive

  About Hive

  All I can tell you is what I remember, in the words that I have.

  Hayley tends to her bees and follows the rules in the only world she has ever known.

  Until she witnesses the impossible: a drip from the ceiling.

  A drip? It doesn’t make sense.

  Yet she hears it, catches it. Tastes it.

  Curiosity is a hook.

  What starts as a drip leads to a lie, a death, a boy, a beast, and too many awful questions.

  Hive is the first in a gripping two-book series by award-winning and international bestselling author A. J. Betts.

  Contents

  About Hive

  Title page

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgements

  About A. J. Betts

  Also by A. J. Betts

  Digital imprint page

  For Jason

  Prologue

  We had no word for ocean. Why would we?

  We knew nothing of the watery mass surrounding us. We didn’t know water could be dark like that, heavy like that. That it was so big we might never touch its sides.

  We had no words for boat or land or sky.

  Why would we?

  To us, our world was everything and it finished at our walls. Nothing was beyond them – there was no ocean. How could we imagine there was?

  Sky. I think I dreamed of it once. Such a small word for a big thing.

  We had other words you haven’t. More words for cool and warm, colours and light. Words for flowers and seeds, flavours and textures. Words for the water of the source. Words for cravings and hungers. Words for pain.

  There was no word for love, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t feel it. Why does everything need a name?

  Our world was this: a commons room surrounded by six hexagonal houses, each connected with a way – a corridor, you might call it; a small, enclosed bridge. Ways linked the houses and us all. Above the commons was a smaller house divided into nursery and sickroom. Above that was the upper house for the council. It was the smallest house and the highest one, closest to God.

  My own house was the garden and I shared it with fifty-five other people. This was our version of family. There were mentors for work, friends for company, aunts to make us tea and offer comfort. In the garden, we each had purpose. We would crouch to turn the farm’s soil with our fingers, planting seedlings that would burrow down to fatten with hard vegetables. We would reach over A-frames or climb ladders to high lattices where we’d loop heavy vines drooping with tomatoes, grapes and beans. Amid the hydrostacks, we would lean in to tend the misted layers of herbs, peppers, beans and berries.

  I knew the garden best: its farm and forest, walls and corners, ceilings and ways. But as beekeeper I came to know the other houses too. I came to know too much, which has led me up here to your land and your sky and you, so eager for stories.

  All I can tell you is what I remember, in the words that I have.

  I’m here because of a drip. A drip I wasn’t supposed to find.

  They thought, back then, I’d gone looking for a rogue bee.

  The truth is, I’m here because of the madness.

  Chapter 1

  My lie was just a small one. The size of a honeybee.

  God wouldn’t bother with a lie as small as this, I told myself. God would surely have his attention fixed on bigger things.

  Clutching the collection box, I stepped from the commons into the way of the engine house. I never liked that way. Bare of vines, its grey walls felt too close and cool, too quick to echo. I didn’t want to be there – I shouldn’t have been there – but I had little choice when my pain got bad.

  It had started at my left temple, as it always did, pulsing and pushing like a tuber. Its gnarly heat swelled until there was room for nothing else. Now, pain throbbed at my vision. It was hard to focus. Harder to appear normal.

  At least it was Geoffrey at the threshold to the engine house. He was kinder than the others. Hunched in the manner of uncles, the old man tilted his chin to look at the collection box, then at me. He clucked his tongue as he often did.

  ‘Your bees must be getting cleverer, Hayley.’

  I made the effort to smile, though it hurt to. ‘Stupider, more like it.’

  Only a stupid bee would choose to come into a house without flowers. A stupid bee or a desperate girl.

  Geoffrey jiggled a little, signalling he had a new riddle to test on me. I liked him, when I felt well. I even enjoyed his riddles. But when the pain was bad, even the kindest uncle was a frustration.

  ‘Once I am shared, I no longer exist.’

  I shook my head stiffly. ‘I don’t know.’

  I wished I could be more patient. It wasn’t his fault – enginer uncles had little to do but stand all day at the threshold dropnets, observing the workings of machines and dreaming up riddles for youngsters.

  ‘Think on it, Hayley – you’re a clever girl. Sharp as a tack.’ He beamed, but the compliment, as always, made little sense to me. A tack? Old people were fond of meaningless phrases and nonsensical words. Quick as lightning. Right as rain. Good as gold. At the drop of a hat. That day, I had no interest in asking what a ‘tack’ was. I had no interest in riddles of any kind.

  Yet Geoffrey tried again: ‘Once I am shared I no longer exist.’

  I shook the collection box, reminding him of the purpose of my visit – the urgency of catching a rogue that would surely be an unwelcome intrusion in a place with such delicate machines. Inside the engine house, bees were deemed trivial and bothersome. Maybe the enginers were right.

  ‘I’ve just come for the bee.’

  I felt guilty for lying, but I needed the relief that could only be found on the other side of the dropnet, through the engine house and behind the door of their unused way. For in all the world, that was the one place that brought me any peace. I didn’t know how that dark way worked its magic on me, but somehow it could unhook the twisting, knuckling pain from behind my eyes and make it shrink and dissolve until there was finally space inside my mind and I could think again, breathe again, feel normal again. The relief it offered was irresistible, and so the unused way drew me back whenever the pain got bad. Private moments there worked better than any medicinals, without the side effects or inevitable suspicions of doctors. It didn’t make sense, but then again it wasn’t the only thing I didn’t understand, so I’d learned not to question it.

  What I’d learned instead was to lie about a rogue. I’d trap a sleepy bee in the collection box then carry it with me in case an enginer should ever ask me of my purpose in this house. There was a rogue, I could say, and open the lid to show them. See? I’ve caught it. It won’t be a problem now. It was unusual for an enginer to question me, though. Most didn’t notice I was there. It was only the uncle at the threshold who slowed me down.

  ‘Are you well, Hayley?’ Geoffrey asked. The standard question.

  I swallowed. Looked at him squarely. ‘I’m well.’

  Another small lie. Did he see the pain behind my eyes? Could he no
tice the throb at my temples?

  Just open the net, I thought. Just let me in. I had to get inside so I could weave my way past smaller engine rooms then track the perimeter walls to reach that rarely opened door, behind which I would sit and breathe in quiet, praying and waiting for the pain to disappear.

  ‘How many visits has it been this season?’ asked Geoffrey.

  ‘Three,’ I said, though in truth it was seven. Soon it would be eight.

  ‘Anyone would think you like me,’ the old man teased.

  ‘How could I not? I’ll think on your riddle. It’s a good one. You’ve stumped me.’

  Only then did Geoffrey unlatch the net for me. I stooped beneath it and wiped my feet, careful not to trail in soil from the garden.

  ‘Go catch him then.’

  ‘It’s a girl,’ I said reflexively. ‘Foragers are always girls.’

  The net fell between us and the old man grinned. ‘That sounds about right, doesn’t it?’

  I granted him a generous smile before turning and stepping into the engine house and walking its main corridor. On either side of me were bamboo walls, behind which were rooms. Some were divided again into smaller rooms in which engines hummed and clicked, emitting noises that meant the world was working as it should. I heard enginers use words like humidity, nitrogen, carbon, dioxide – whatever these meant – discussing quantities in serious voices. Some had doors with pictures I understood – Quiet, Clean Hands, Keep Out, Masks Required – while others had signs I didn’t know or care to. I had no interest in enginer rules or the language of their machines.

  Between gaps in bamboo, I caught glimpses of men and women in clusters. They measured, fixed, recorded and analysed. I recognised a girl I’d grown up with – Helen – and felt glad once again that I’d never been housed here, spending my days doing meaningless chores in this grey and ugly engine house, the only house in the world without plants. There were no shrubs or creepers; no grape or tomato vines for snacking. There weren’t even breathers – no arecas, money plants or mother-in-law’s tongue – because their engines were too important, they said, for erratic bees that might come buzzing where they weren’t wanted, burrowing into instruments and upsetting their numbers.

  It meant the perimeter walls remained bare, as did the ceiling. The shiny crisscrossed pipes were visible overhead, and even at that height I could make out the individual lights and vents. I knew that if I didn’t play this right I’d have to climb up there to replace the filters.

  I had to play this right.

  I kept my face fixed as I moved between enginers, unregarded. It was the perimeter walls I was heading for. I knew those walls. Every house was identical.

  It had been one of our first lessons. Teacher Patrick had taken five of us from the nursery and led us upstairs to the upper house, where he’d opened a cupboard and slid out a drawer. On it was a large sheet of very old paper. It had a picture.

  ‘A map,’ he’d told us. ‘From the first days.’

  ‘What’s a map?’ asked Edith.

  ‘A drawing of our world.’

  It felt funny to consider the world like that. Who would think to draw it from above?

  The lines showed us everything we already knew, but imagined differently. The hexagonal rooms reminded me of the hive. We pointed out the parts we recognised. Look, there’s the commons with the source in the centre. That’s the kitchen and the oven. There’s the netter tanks. That’s the old service house, shaded black.

  The service house was empty and, as children were prone to do, we made up stories to fill in the void. Simon said it was where monsters spent their days before prowling into the world at night. Celia said it was where our dreams were stored like seeds. Darryl said it was where God prepared his miracles.

  As was often the case, the truth was less exciting. Teacher Patrick pointed to the shaded hexagon on the map and told us that the growlights in the service house had been faulty and stopped working in the first days, prompting the servicers to leave, afraid of the dark, as they should be; as we all were. Many generations ago, servicers picked up their mattresses, clothes and portable tools, carried them out and locked the doors behind them, relocating to other houses.

  ‘This map of the world,’ Teacher Patrick continued, ‘is a bird’s-eye view.’

  ‘What’s a bird?’ I asked, hoping it would lead to a story of the first days: of dragons, cows and other mythical creatures.

  But Teacher Patrick shook his head. ‘It’s just a word.’

  Not everything had an explanation, I came to learn, especially not the unused way that had once linked the engine and service house, and how it would lure me back again and again, when my pain got bad.

  Danger, warned the sign on the door. A picture of gloves. A cross.

  Unobserved, I pushed the lever with a bare hand and went in.

  The first time I’d entered this unused way, I was eight.

  Teacher Sarah had been leading a group of us through the engine house. It was our third day of lessons there, moving from room to room to learn the workings of energy, oxygen and other things that couldn’t be seen. I’d hoped, even then, that I wouldn’t be placed in the engine house when I turned ten. I didn’t like the fuss the adults made over dials and numbers. Nor did I care for the ceaseless intrusions of clicks, rumbles, scrapes and hisses. Most of all, I didn’t like the manner of the senior enginers. They weren’t as welcoming as the kitcheners and seeders had been. They looked down at us as if we were nuisances worse than bees. The enginers’ instructions were stern, their rules strict. Don’t cough near here. Keep your hands behind your backs. This isn’t a toy. They behaved as if their invisibles were more important than anything else in the world, even the crops.

  I hadn’t paid much attention that day. What I wanted was to return to the nursery and continue my game of marbles with Edith.

  That was until the enginer elect decided to join us. We stood up taller – it made us feel special to have the attention of an elect, the most senior and responsible member of any house.

  ‘You’re finished here?’ Though he asked this of Teacher Sarah, it was us he was looking at.

  ‘Almost. There’s just the matter of –’

  ‘Good. There’s a lesson I would like to share with these children.’ He studied us each in turn. Rocked a little on his heels. ‘Come.’

  The enginer elect turned and strode along and, despite the muttered protests of Teacher Sarah, we followed, giddy with a new sense of excitement. The enginer elect wants to teach us something? How privileged we felt. How grown up.

  When he stopped beside the door of the unused way, Teacher Sarah mumbled another objection, to which the elect declared, ‘They’re not babies, Sarah.’

  We beamed – we weren’t babies; we were almost youngsters – and watched as he grasped the handle and slid the heavy door to the right, revealing the way behind it.

  It had the same shape as other ways of the world: narrow with a low ceiling, four footsteps wide, ten footsteps long, joining one house to another. But this one was disused and kept dark, even in the daytime, its lights and vents removed and installed in other houses long, long ago. There was no need, anymore, for thoroughfare to a service house which no longer functioned. Now, the way led nowhere.It remained closed, useless and empty – or so we’d thought.

  It wasn’t entirely empty. Enough light filtered in from the engine house to reveal the many boxes and items stacked along its walls. This was where broken engines were put, the elect told us, and where old engines were stored when they’d served their purpose.

  ‘Step carefully,’ he warned us. ‘Keep your arms by your side.’

  We followed, emboldened by the enginer elect’s unexpected faith in us. The floor of the way felt dusty underfoot. The air was cool and stale. We clustered, bumping each other, trying to contain our delighted giggles. We followed him
to the far end of the way, where we huddled, waiting, watching the muted glisten of his eyes. We’d never known such darkness in the daytime. We’d never been so close to the untouched service house, the place of quiet mystery.

  ‘So – who is ready for the lesson?’

  Our hands shot up. Simon’s arm knocked a box, causing it to topple from its stack. The elect didn’t scold him, only picked up the box and returned it to the top of the pile.

  ‘Which of you children can tell me what is behind this door?’

  ‘It’s the service house,’ I said, then corrected myself. ‘It was the service house, before the lights inside failed. It was a house for servicing the whole world.’

  This was what Teacher Patrick had taught us. Once, there’d been huge tools meant for sharpening knives, shaping needles, mending nets – tools that made everyone’s lives easier, better. Lining its perimeter walls, the house had grown a hundred flax plants which, when worked by the eight fancy machines, could provide enough fabric for every person to have new clothes each winter and new sheets every third summer. But the heavy machines had been left behind when the lights stopped working and the servicers walked out for good.

  The elect regarded me, then the other children. ‘And who can tell me what happened in the service house?’

  ‘Bradley, don’t.’ It sounded like a plea.

  I turned to see Teacher Sarah’s silhouette where she’d remained at the door of the engine house.

  ‘The lights . . .’ began Simon.

  ‘The lights went out, yes – but why?’ It was hard to see the elect’s expression in the almost-dark. ‘Which of you knows what really happened to ruin the lights? What did the servicers do to cause it?’

  My heart skipped a beat. The servicers caused it? I looked to the other children, each as wide-eyed as I was.

  ‘Bradley.’ Teacher Sarah. ‘Please.’

  ‘What do you teach them, if not this?’ He rapped solidly at the door behind him. I could barely breathe.

  ‘What happened in the service house,’ the enginer elect told us, ‘was fire.’