Each returning forager was met with a storm of applause as she touched down with her load, but none had such a haul as Flora. She danced her directions to a packed and enthusiastic crowd in the Dance Hall, and many did not even wait for her to finish before they rushed off to find the catkins themselves.

All the foragers did well that day, only stopping as the sun sank early in the afternoon and the chill evening forced them back. Some had found bright orange pollen from crocuses, some early daffodils with their rough vivid taste, and the mood in the canteens was buoyant.

More good news came as they finished their meals. Two young Teasel nurses burst in, their faces bright with excitement.

“Sisters! Holy Mother’s eggs flow strong again,” cried one. “Worker after worker.”

“And for every hundred of us, a male! Their Malenesses are coming, sisters! Truly it is spring, tell everyone!”

Like the memory of summer, the massacre of the males had vanished with the Cluster, and so their joy and excitement was fresh and pure. All the bees remembered was the thrill of Devotion, once again traveling through the wax comb to reassure the colony of Holy Mother’s health, and her ongoing love for them. Spring was here, and all fear was gone.

But Flora remembered everything, and that night as she lay in her berth, listening to the happy gossip and chatter of her sisters, she carefully scanned her body. There were nicks and tears along the edges of her wings, and their joints ached from her first long flight since the Cluster—but there was nothing else of note. Though she knew she aged, she was healthy and strong—except for the emptiness in her heart and the void in her belly. There was nothing to hide, and nothing to fear. The spiders feigned power with cruel, empty taunts, and there would be no third egg.

The next day a Calluna forager rushed back to the hive dancing wildly of a great blazing forsythia bush on the edge of the town, and all the foragers sped to find it. It was better than they hoped, wild and untrimmed so that its thousands of golden florets yielded nectar at the slightest touch, and so many bees visited it that it hummed with the Holy Chord.

All the foragers from the orchard hive visited it for hours, enraptured at the constantly twining threads of scent and the sudden bursts of glittery pollen showering onto their backs. At last even the most vigorous foragers were finally ready to stop, and with loaded panniers and well-filled crops they flew home together. This was a comforting strategy they permitted themselves only when the sky was clear of the scent of the Myriad; otherwise the scent and sound of so many richly laden bees would be irresistible to their enemies.

The cold spring breeze was in their favor, and as the sisters sped back toward the hive, they hummed in bright anticipation of the praise that would meet them as they thumped down onto the landing board.

It was not to be. Approaching the orchard, Flora saw that the foragers who had left the forsythia bush before them were still hovering fully loaded in the air, held back by a cordon of Thistle guards. They were demanding to land, and complaining of the extra fuel it was costing to keep them waiting.

“Forgive us, Madam; forgive us, madam foragers,” shouted back the Thistles. “But the Sage decree you wait, for special purpose.”

“What special purpose? What could possibly be more important than bringing in forage?” It was an Ivy, a late-born forager with plenty of strength. “I cannot believe you turn us away—shame on your kin!”

“Please, Madam!” The Thistle closest to the Ivy buzzed in distress. “We cannot, we are instructed by the priestesses. Accept, Obey, and Serve!”

Little black dots of sisters appeared on the landing board, and Flora smelled her kin-sisters, the sanitation workers. All the elimination flights had been performed, so it was unusual for them to appear on the board. They wept, and each carried a little burden. One by one, they lurched off the board and flew away, far past the place of elimination. When the last had disappeared, the Thistles moved back for the incoming foragers.

“Forgive us, sisters,” they said.

ON THE LANDING BOARD, Flora smelled the traces of her kin-sisters’ feet, and the peculiar and unpleasant load they had carried. She stood waiting to see if the floras came back, but there was no sound or scent of them.

“What did they take?” she asked the little Clover receiving her forsythia nectar. “What were the floras carrying?”

The Clover shook her head and hurried back into the hive. Flora followed and grabbed her. “Tell me what happened to my kin!”

The Clover started to cry. “I am forbidden. Accept, Obey—”

Before she could finish Flora pressed her own antennae around the Clover’s and held her firmly so that she could not run. The Clover did not know how to seal them, and her panic spilled into Flora’s mind, tumbled with images of the Nursery.

“They say the brood is plagued.” She leaned against Flora and wept. Flora pulled some pollen from her pannier and stuffed it in her hands.

“Hush. Tidy that and stop weeping, or the police will smell your distress—”

The Clover looked around in terror. “Are they here?”

“Not yet, so tell me quickly—what do you mean, plagued?”

“The babies turn to slime in their cribs, still begging for food even as their flesh falls apart. No one may speak of it on pain of the Kindness and now I have disobeyed—”

Flora pushed more pollen into her hands. “You have done nothing wrong. Who forbids it?”

The Clover looked at her in terror. “The priestesses. They are angry.” She fled.

FLORA WENT ON to the Dance Hall, looking for any sanitation worker on the way. There were none to be seen and the hive was immaculate. The scent of the Queen’s Love hung fresh and plentiful in the lobby, and the atmosphere was so calm that Flora wondered for a moment if the little Clover had been in her right mind.

Watching her forager comrades dancing their spring day’s adventures pushed the strange incident to the back of her mind. Despite the peculiar cordon of Thistle guards outside the hive and the sight of her sanitation kin-sisters with their little bundles, a strange calm settled in Flora’s brain, not at all unpleasant, but quite alien to the vivid alertness of the foraging state.

She looked around her. Her fellow foragers also seemed unusually calm, with none of their characteristic acerbity of expression. The smell of Sage was strong and constant, as if markers had been laid around the chamber, but even as Flora noticed it, she felt too tired to think of such trivia.

When it was her turn to dance, she added her steps to the vast choreography laid down in the floor, of alder catkins and daffodils, crocuses and aconites. Dancing sharpened her mind, and she focused on conveying very precise information—the exact azimuth of the sun to catch a warm air current, the roundabout to avoid where all the flowers were now smog-tainted, and last, the route to the great blazing forsythia bush. At this, the bees finally roused themselves to applause.

“Bravo,” called some male voices from the back.

The sisters spun round and gasped in excitement, for a party of newly emerged drones had come to watch. Their smell was pungent and thrilling, and even those older foragers who had seen males before were unprepared for the virile magnificence of these new specimens. Every sister in the Dance Hall gazed at the males, each with his massive, powerful thorax, bobbing plume, and dazzling armor—then in a great rush of excitement they ran to greet them.

Flora stood alone, her dance now forgotten.

“Honor to Your Malenesses. Oh, Your glorious Malenesses,” came the infatuated cries of the young sisters, and the drones laughed and let them stroke and polish them. One of them swaggered over to Flora.