THE VIEW FROM THE LANDING BOARD was a shock. The orchard raked black branches against a white sky, and beyond it raw brown fields stretched to the high and distant tree line. Several foragers stretched their cramped limbs and looked at each other. All were ravenous. They shivered as they raised their antennae and scented the cold air. There was no wind or rain, and a pale haze in the cloud showed the sun still lived. One by one they started their engines. The sound was loud and unnervingly different in the winter air. There were no Thistle guards to do it, so each of the foragers laid down her own homecoming marker to guide them all back in. Flora watched them. A Calluna forager nodded to her in approval.

“You have the right.” Her voice was cracked and dry, and Flora could hear how empty her belly was. “And your kin-scent is so strong—”

“None of us could ever miss it!”

“Do it, Sister.”

For the first time in her life, Flora laid her kin-scent down on the landing board, proclaiming her kin could forage. The homecoming marker immediately absorbed the new chemical signature and it rose up more strongly. The sisters started their engines.

Flora’s wings were weak from their long time folded and the cold air shocked her as she struggled for altitude. Every scent and air current had changed, and the smell of the warehouses was stronger. Her antennae suddenly flashed with an incoming message—and to her delight she recognized the unique frequency of Lily 500’s data running in her brain. A foraging location, with coordinates over the town.

Cage of glass, cage of glass, were the only words attached. Flora had no idea what it meant, but the coordinates were so insistent that she began her descent over the houses and their dirty green patchwork of gardens.

The wind grew stronger, and with it, the cold. Each pump of blood to her wings took more fuel than before, and a lightness in her crop signaled danger. Her pride again, insisting she would find forage in the hardest conditions, in the farthest fields. Now she would have to chase the sun’s dropping azimuth home without refueling—

Cage of glass, insisted Lily’s data in her brain, cage of glass!

“Be quiet! Be quiet!” Flora whirled in the air, her energy level sending a warning to her brain. If she touched cold ground now it would suck the last of it from her body and she would never rise again.

She caught a trace of sweetness—bright and young and pure. A flower—a young, beautiful flower. Flora locked onto it. Fragrant beyond buddleia, iris, or even honeysuckle, a thread of the sweetest fragrance curled from a cube of light against the side of a building. Flora veered away from her reflection before she crashed into the huge window.

Inside the cage of glass were plants, some bright and luscious of petal, some tiny and white. The sweet scent she followed was inside, coming from a flower calling to her, imploring any bee, any pollinator to come in—but Flora did not know how to enter. The wind dragged her along the glass wall and she caught the scent more strongly. It came from a little gap halfway down.

THE AIR IN THE CONSERVATORY was warm and humid, and the plants did not grow out of the earth but from brightly colored pots on stands and on ledges along the walls. A metal dish of mashed meat was on the ground and several flies fed from it, but more lay dead or dying on the windowsills and on the floor. Flora ignored everything but the beautiful plant calling to her with its pure, sweet scent, open and untouched and longing for a bee.

First she had to avoid the drunken bluebottles contaminating all the bigger flowers. Many alighted on the heavy orange lily heads still waiting to open, drawn by the thick bead of nectar showing at the ruched tip of the petals. Other flowers also waited, and Flora did not know if they were ready, for their petals were fleshy and green like peapods, their pursed and meaty red lips edged with strange white tendrils like fangs. Feeling her wingbeats they murmured lasciviously to her and pushed their murky perfume across her path, but they held no appeal.

Amid their lewd clamor rose the one true scent that called to Flora, the virgin bloom of a little orange tree, a tortured miniature graft of three different plants. Its tiny ultraviolet florets shone in the dull winter air, and she felt its desire for her straining from its roots.

“Hush, hush.” Flora pushed her own scent through her feet as she settled on the dark, glossy leaves. The plant’s citrus sweetness immediately brightened her senses and the fatigue of her journey fell away. There was not one other bee in the glass room, and Flora’s panniers opened in readiness for the haul of pollen and nectar she would surely be able to take back to the hive from this marvelous place. She climbed up and positioned herself over one of the creamy white florets, and the contact of her feet on the flower’s virginal petal made them both tremble. Flora held it softly, then sank her tongue into its depths. The exquisite taste sparkled through her mind and body like sun on water, and she drank until each floret was empty.

Behind her, the green-fleshed flowers waited their turn. As Flora combed the minute gold pollen beads of the orange blossom into her panniers, she felt their patient desire. When she looked again, their green lips had parted to show a glimpse of inner red, and their white fringing had a more festive look. Their thick coarse nectar could not compare with the near-divine bouquet of the orange blossom, but it was plentiful, and the way it rose to her attention was very flattering.

Despite herself, Flora’s own scent pulsed more strongly from her body. So strong was these flowers’ desire for her that they actually moved toward her, their inner petals moistening under her gaze. Flora hovered, mesmerized by their lust.

“Come to me instead,” crooned a high voice. Flora looked up to see a big black Minerva spider sitting in her hazy cobweb. “What a sweet servant. Come let me hold you.”

“I have seen your kind,” Flora called back. “No thank you.”

Her wings beat harder with the adrenaline of spider-danger, exciting more thick perfume to rise from the green-fleshed flowers. Perhaps they were a kind of weed. In these conditions sisters would drink spurge if they could find it, and it would be a fine thing to go back with a cropful of fresh nectar, no matter its provenance.

The fleshy blooms gaped wider, encouraging her decision. Who knew when the weather would permit another forage? Perhaps she could drink the orange blossom nectar herself, and then bring back this more plentiful one. Flora opened up her antennae channel a little more in case Lily 500 had any comment, but there was no signal of any kind.

The green flowers suddenly pumped their scent, flooding Flora’s brain and forcing her attention back to them. Their red mouths gaped wider, and on each inner lip stood three long white filaments like pistils or anthers, except they bore no pollen. The only nectar was a viscous slick at the join of the petals—crude but plentiful.

At the cloying smell, Flora hesitated. Shamelessly, the vulgar flowers begged for her touch, swelling even more nectar so that the thought rose in Flora’s mind that here was enough to feed the whole Cluster.

Before she could decide which bloom to choose, the air swarmed with flies driven wild by the same scent. Flora swerved out of the way as they buzzed crazily around the green flowers. The bluebottles shouted crude compliments and kicked at the white fringes with filthy feet to tease them. They swooped and swirled until the air twisted with the heavy perfume of the flowers and the carrion and excrement on the flies’ bodies. Some of them crashed into the bright glass and fell to the ground, stunned and buzzing. Irritated by their antics but mindful of the Minerva in the corner, Flora rose higher. The spider peered out between her sticky curtains.