There was a girl who died every morning, and it would not have been a problem except that she kept bees.
When her heart had shuddered back to life and she had clawed her way back from the lands beneath, she sat up and drew a long sucking breath into the silent caverns of her lungs. Her first breath was always very loud in the little cottage, but there was no one there to hear it.
She wrapped her robe around her. It was a dressing gown in the morning and winding sheet at night. Then she swung her feet over onto the floor and the cold tiles were no colder than the palms of the newly dead.
She stumped out to the beehives and tapped each one with the key to her cottage, three times each.
“The old master is dead,” she said as the hives buzzed and the bees swirled around her. “I am the new master.” And she said her name, three times each over every hive.
Sometimes a bee would land on her wrist and wiggle its antennae at her. Sometimes it wouldn’t. There was a bit of blue embroidery on the collar of her dressing gown, and the bees had to investigate it thoroughly some mornings, while other mornings they ignored it entirely.
This story is from the May/June 2017 edition of Cicada Magazine for Teens and Young Adults.
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This story is from the May/June 2017 edition of Cicada Magazine for Teens and Young Adults.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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