The Ever After

Chapter Eleven: Beehive House

"BZZZZZZZZZ."

May was lying on a bed, in a room with a low, rounded ceiling. She sat up, feeling like she'd had a long, vivid nightmare.

"Bzzzzzzzzz."

The noise was coming from beyond a door that was rounded at the top, like the ceiling.

"Bzzzz. You didn't dream at all last night, my dear," she heard from the other room. "Slept like the dead. Come have some soup, zzzzz."

The voice tapered into a series of long, soft buzzes. May slowly slid out of bed, tiptoed up to the doorway, and put her hands against the wood. She gave it a tiny nudge.

From the sliver of room that revealed itself, May could make out a small, sloped space and a man in the middle of it with his back turned. He was a very tiny, very old man—only a little taller than May—in a long cloak that was interrupted every six inches with a yellow stripe, or a black one. He reminded May of—

"A bee. Yes, I get that all the time. Only natural, I suppose. My great-great-grandmother was part bee. She was also part goblin. Lord knows how that happened. But I assure you, I don't favor the goblin side. Come on out, won't you?"

The man turned and smiled warmly. May gasped.

"Oh come, dear, no need to be so dramatic." He frowned as he waved a hand in the air in a come-hither gesture. "You've been around Pumpkin for way too long already."

His eyes were completely shut—but what had made May gasp was that they had no way of opening. There were no eyelashes, no lids, just skin where his eyes should have been. Two antennae twitched on top of his head. His chin was adorned by a pointy, triangular white beard.

Was he—

"Blind? Certainly am. Have been my whole life."

Oh. Was he reading her mind? And who was he? He wasn't like the ghosts she'd seen last night. Like Pumpkin, he didn't look like a person at all. And where was Pumpkin?

"That's a tough one. I'm one of a kind, as we all are, of course. I'm a spirit first and foremost, but . . ."

The man shrugged indifferently, turning his back to her again and throwing around this and that pot. "It's hard to explain to a Live One."

May ran a hand down her arms and pinched the skin inside her elbow. Her skin was slick with sweat.

"Pumpkin's in the back with the bees, by the way."

"Um." Her voice came out rusty, like it needed to be oiled. "Sir? Where am I?"

The man didn't seem to notice that she'd finally used her real voice.

"Beehive House, Belle Morte. The most frequented vacation spot in the southeast. Belle Morte, that is, not Beehive House. I like my privacy, actually. I'm Arista." The man turned again, and his hand shot toward May truly as an arrow, as if he could see perfectly well after all. His antennae stood stiffly, proudly. "And you are May. Pumpkin told me. Do you have a last name?"

May faltered for a second, surprised. "May Bird. Sir, I thought—"

Arista nodded. "I can't read what you're not thinking," he said, in answer to the question she hadn't asked. "You weren't thinking your name, so I couldn't see it."

"See it?" May shook her head. "But what I—"

"See the words. You know how these things go. It's a bee thing."