Page 16 of Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One 2)

“Your father taught you all this?”

“Yeah. Well, he had to learn. He read his father’s beekeeping books because he didn’t do much with the hive until his dad died, so he didn’t know much about how it worked. Then we built more. My dad likes to build things. He’s really good at it. He built the rooms onto the house and the picnic tables and the…”

She trailed off, kept her head down, her hands busy.

“It’s natural to miss him, miss your family.”

“If I think about it too much it’s too hard.”

He’d told her he’d never loved, but he had. He’d loved his mother. Fifteen hundred years didn’t kill the memory of his sorrow at leaving her.

His duty was to teach, not to comfort, he thought. And yet, some comfort, some understanding surely paved a path toward teaching.

“What you do here, the sacrifice you make, the knowledge and skills you earn, you do for them. For the world, but they’re in the world. What your mother did to keep you safe, what your birth father did, your life father. And they gave you a life, a foundation. Brothers, family. A reason, Fallon, above mere duty to face what comes. They taught you well and gave you knowledge. Enough that you can teach me how to build a home for bees.”

“If … If I’d said no, would they die?”

“I can’t say. I don’t know. But you didn’t say no. Yet.”

She flicked a glance over at him, went back to her work.

She studied his slatted board, approved it, then had him follow her step-by-step as she built one honey super and he the second.

“Okay, this part’s really messy. We’ve got to coat this plastic with beeswax. It gives the bees a start. We need to melt the wax first. I can take it in, melt it over the fire.”

Mallick quirked an eyebrow. “Or you could consider this part of the task practice.”

She liked that better.

She’d put the two cakes their benefactor had left them in a small cauldron. And now under Mallick’s watchful eye, she held her hands over it, glided them down the sides, up again.

He felt the heat, slow and steady, saw the light shimmering from her palms, her fingertips. Soft, pure white.

Inside the cauldron, the wax began to melt.

“What do you call on?”

“The light,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the melting wax. “The heat. Not fire—not flame. Warmth and light.”

“Where does it rise in you?”

“Everywhere. From the belly and … below. From the heart and the head. It’s through me.”

“How do you control it?”

She frowned at that. “I … think. Enough to melt, but not to burn or boil. That’s enough.”

She looked up, smiled. “Now it gets messy.”

It took most of the afternoon to build and construct, to paint the exterior a bright white. While Fallon circled around it, crouched down to examine, Mallick stepped back. And found himself foolishly satisfied to have had a part in building something with his own hands.

“It’s good,” Fallon decreed. “Sound and sturdy.”

“You’ll give me lessons on the keeping of the bees once we get them. Do they come to the hive, attracted by the box, the wax?”

“You wouldn’t get a healthy colony that way, and you’d never draw the queen. You call them, invite them.”

“Show me.”

“I scouted a colony yesterday. They’ll like it here. You’ve never called bees?”

“No. It’s not my gift. Show me,” he repeated.

She closed her eyes a moment, a young girl, long-legged, slender, her raven-wing hair in a braid over one shoulder.

“I am in the air, of the air. I am in the light, of the light. I am on the earth, of the earth. I am by the water, of the water. And all these, magicks join. I am of the magicks that join the creatures that walk, that crawl, that fly, that burrow, that swim. We are all of, in, by, on. The queen nests while others brood, work, hunt, build. Here I offer a home, humbly. Come and see. Come and live. Come and thrive.”

She spread her arms. “Come.”

He saw nothing, heard nothing but the girl, her arms spread wide, her body statue-still. And her face, he thought, luminous.

A minute passed, then another, then a third. He thought to stop her, to tell her she could try again another time.

Then he heard the swarm.

The air filled with a deep, droning buzz, and Fallon stayed still. The cloud, a swirl, swooped out of the woods. His instinct was to rush to her, to pull her away, inside to safety.

Before he moved, she opened her eyes. And glowed.

A large honeybee—the queen?—hovered over the palm of her right hand. And the swarm covered her outstretched arms, her hair, her shoulders, in a mad buzz.

She laughed as though surrounded by butterflies.

Did she know, could she know, all she had? Mallick wondered. All she might be if he didn’t fail her? At that moment, her power was so strong, but still young and painfully innocent.

What would she be, what would she hold when that power matured, and that innocence was lost?

She moved then, tipping her fingertips down in a gesture toward the hive. “Welcome,” she said. And as one, the swarm entered the hive.

“How do they—” He broke off to steady his voice. “How do they know where they should go inside the hive?”

Her answer came with a puzzled smile. “Well, I told them.”

“Ah. All right then, well done. I’ll put the tools and so forth away. You’re free until dusk.”

“I want to take Grace for a ride.”

He nodded. “Don’t go too far, and be no later than dusk.”

She ran off, young, innocent. Mallick listened to the hum of the bees, and felt very old.

BECOMING

Learning is not child’s play;

we cannot learn without pain.

—Aristotle

CHAPTER SIX

Every day for three days, Fallon visited what she thought of as faerie-land. She tried magicks on the owl with no success. She tried bribery, intimidation, and what her mother called reverse psychology.

I don’t want your stupid apple anyway.

He simply sat, guarding the apple that hung tantalizingly from that high branch.

She swam in the pool so at least she felt clean. The little faeries grew used to her and came out to dance or skim along the water when she bathed.

But she couldn’t convince any of them to help her get the apple.

She sat on the grass at the end of her first week, drying her hair, studying the stubborn, hard-eyed owl.

She couldn’t climb the tree, but what if she went up without climbing it? She’d been practicing—away from Mallick’s watchful eye—and though her form proved shaky, she’d managed to levitate about two feet off the ground.

The apple, to her gauge, would require a solid ten-foot lift. And then she had to consider that big, sharp beak, those keen talons. So she’d have to practice until she could go high, and go fast.

She wanted to outwit the owl as much on principle now as for the bathroom.

“One week down, a hundred and three weeks to go,” she said out loud as she braided her hair.

She still hadn’t unpacked, told herself she could leave in the morning, be home in less than two-days’ ride.

She didn’t mind the lessons and lectures and practice as much as she’d thought she would. Some of it was interesting, even if it had started to cut into her free time since Mallick had added physical training.

Still no sword.

And while she didn’t see how being able to balance herself on one hand or juggling balls of light would help her save the whole damn world, she liked learning. She didn’t mind the studying or learning about the people Mallick claimed were her ancestors. She liked the spell casting.

But everything took so long, had to be done over and over again. She couldn’t imagine spending another one hundred and three weeks doing the sa

me things over and over. Or having nobody but Mallick to talk to.

Maybe she’d try balancing on one hand over the water. Now that would be really interesting. If she could work with two elements—water and air—balance on the surface of the water.

Even Mallick would be impressed.

She would practice levitating in her room with the apple as the goal, and practice the balancing here in faerie-land. When she had perfected those skills, she’d use them as a lever to start learning how to use a sword.

She wished she’d thought of the water-balancing earlier because now she’d already taken most of her free time for the day.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured.

She didn’t sense or hear anything until almost too late. She spun quickly toward the sense in time to see the boy slip half out of a tree, an arrow already notched in his bow.

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