She was a most majestic young creature, her dark bands sparkling, russet fur lit up, and her broad face strange and terrifying. Flora tried to signal to her to go lower, but the princess was carried higher on the current she had found. Flora smelled what she followed—it was hyacinth, and it came from the town.

“No, we must not go there—” Flora felt a surge of alarm, though she did not know why. “There is no shelter—”

But the fragrance grew stronger, and other bees smelled it too. All at once the swarm was possessed by hunger; their crops were empty and light and their minds dizzy. There was nothing Flora could do but fly with her daughter. As the swarm began its descent, she located the flowers in the middle of a shopping plaza busy with people. Uniformed gardeners pulled the hyacinth plants from the soil of big concrete tubs, and threw them into the back of a truck.

People began screaming as the swarm came down from the sky. They ran for safety as the bees spread out and searched the half-dead flowers, but their scent was empty promise, for they were bred for show, not pollen. Angry and disappointed, the bees buzzed helplessly above the truck.

“You must stop,” Flora begged her daughter. “If you settle, so will they, and then we can think. Darling child, I beg you.”

The dark princess slowed her wingbeats and fell behind her mother. Not knowing what else to do, Flora landed on some warm metal that smelled benign. Her daughter fluttered down beside her and clung to her, shaking with adrenaline.

Even in this exposure and fear, it was bliss to press her child close to her, this huge princess who held their lives in hers. The air shimmered with wings as the thousands of sisters gathered together as they had done in the Cluster, many drones among them too, for without their sisters they would die. Hanging from the hand of a statue, like a great dark sack of treasure, the colony pulled close together around their princess.

Once more Flora pressed her antennae close to her daughter’s. “If we stay here, we will die.”

Her daughter looked at her with great innocent eyes, and Flora knew that she was stunned from her fight and her emergence. She could not lead; she was too young.

“Madam, can we help?” Sanitation workers squeezed beside them, their eyes bright and antennae high. “Tell us how.”

“I do not know.” Flora tried not to cry.

Madness. Sister against sister. Disaster.

“Madam Forager, you must.” One of them leaned forward to her. “You have fought wasps and served the Queen. You have laid an egg for our kin and spent the night outside the hive without dying!”

It was true. Flora’s antennae surged with memories. The tree in the forest. The Queen’s Library. The last panel, the comet from the cradle. Not a star in the sky, but a swarm from the hive—the hive was the cradle, and the swarm its only true child, which she must nurse to safety.

“Quickly,” she said to them. “Who is strong? Who can dance?”

Two came forward, their gazes dark and direct.

“All of us, Madam. We learned in the Cluster.”

“Then follow.” Flora began to dance on the back of the mass of bees, as if they were the comb floor of the Dance Hall. “You must learn this exact direction if you would save us.” She checked the position of the sun, then began dancing out the steps to the hollow tree, and the line of hills, and its scent of beech, hollow beech, until she felt the rhythm repeated back by the two flora dancers, exact and precise. Bees below them shifted and cried out in agitation, but Flora’s pupils danced on, using their feet to spread the rhythm and the information to every bee they touched. Only when Flora felt the rhythm catch in other parts of the swarm did she go back to her daughter.

The dark princess’s face had changed again. It was older, more beautiful, and more knowing.

“I am not Queen,” she told her mother, “until I mate.”

“First we must find safety,” Flora said. “I know where we must go.” She could feel vibrations going through the hanging swarm, stronger and wider as hundreds, then thousands of bees were stirring to the news. She wanted to ask the foragers to keep the swarm contained—but it was hard to look away from her daughter. Then she smelled Linden close by.

“Ever at your service, Madam.” He stood by her side, old and ragged and beloved to her eyes.

Flora’s heart fell from the sky. “I did not call you.”

“No.” The dark princess looked at him. “I did.”

Linden’s whole face and body changed before Flora’s eyes. He grew young and handsome, and his scent flushed strong.

“Choose another . . .” Flora whispered to her daughter. “There are others—”

“But he is best,” her daughter said. “That is why you love him.” She started her engine, and with thunderous roaring of the Holy Chord, the dark comet of the swarm lifted into the air, the true child of the hive.

UP IT WENT, over the gray and red blocks of the town and its tiny patchwork of gardens. No longer dull and dark inside the hive, the gleaming bronze floras had spread the message fast, for many knew the way and flew as outriders, keeping the swarm tight to contain it. Flora kept up beside her daughter, the wind streaming fast and loud around them so that she could not beg again that her old friend be spared—

Linden flew close by them, and she looked at him one last time. He had grown young with his great task, the whole point of his life. He did not look back, his gaze locked on her beautiful daughter, intent in readiness for his sole task. He let his scent flow strong and high, and other drones smelled it too, and raised their own pheromones in banners of lust. Excitement spread through the swarm, and the sound of its passage grew loud above the fields. Flora looked at her dazzling daughter, her face no longer strange but a new epitome of beauty.

They were over the fields and the hills were in sight. Flora’s body was tiring, but they were nearly there. Then her daughter glanced around and looked directly at Linden. A sweet musk spread behind her, and with a burst of speed she broke through to the front of the swarm. Flora heard the sharp rise in the high timbre of Linden’s thoracic engine as he raced in pursuit of her daughter, a cloud of his scent blowing over her. The princess rose up above the swarm where all could see her, and circled to spread her scent and let every drone smell it.

Her cuticle glittered blue-black in the sun, her russet fur glowed bright red, and her wings beat bronze and gold sparks from the air. Flora drew on all her power to keep up and watch, admiring her daughter’s strong young legs folded tight beneath her elegant thorax. She could not see Linden—and then her daughter roared in surprise as he came upon her from above, seizing her with a new strength.

At his intimate grasp the princess soared higher above the swarm, his body fused tight against her for all to see.

The swarm chased below them, as faster and faster the princess fled the drone on her back, until with a great cry of ecstasy he flung himself away from her.

“It is done,” Flora cried out. “It is done—” She watched the tiny speck of Linden’s body spinning down toward the fields. She tore her eyes away and back to her daughter, whirling high to spread her mated scent across the air. The bees breathed it and cheered as a cordon of Flora ladies-in-waiting rose up to escort their princess back down to the safety of the swarm, Linden’s organ hanging as proof from her body.

She is mated!

The princess is mated!

The Queen is mated!

The joyful cries gathered the swarm together, tightening all the sisters as they rushed to breathe the stunning sexual perfume of their powerful new Queen. Other drones raced ahead to try to catch her too, but the new Queen was not to be caught again without consent, and she sped ahead, the swarm behind her.