Honeycomb Heart - opening chapters

Chapter One

Vivian was woken by a demonic screech. When she ignored the source of the sound and continued to lie in bed, her hair was tugged on. A hard beak closed on Vivian’s earlobe when she still neglected to rise.

“Happy birthday!” the parrot screamed as she hopped around on the pillow, pulling at Vivian’s hair and pajamas. “Happy happy birthday!”

“Masha,” Vivian moaned, knowing her older sister must be close by. “Get your familiar out of my room.”

“We’re both adults now, Vivian. Haven’t we grown past the whole keep-out schtick?” Masha, leaning against the doorframe, expertly dodged a thrown pillow. “Gigi, I don’t think she can hear you.”

The parrot burst into another repeat of her song, this time flying around Vivian’s bedroom and diving towards her head.

“How am I supposed to get up when I’m under aerial assault?” Vivian said.

“By thinking of poor Wesley. Grandma’s making a big breakfast, and the longer it takes us to go downstairs, the more treats he’ll beg off her. He’s not getting any thinner, Viv.”

Vivian grimaced. She lay in bed for another minute, feigning sleep while watching Gigi make laps around her bedroom. Right after Gigi passed overhead, Vivian dashed to her dresser, grabbing an outfit. Masha stood fully in the doorway, slowing Vivian down so Gigi had a few more chances to serenade her before Vivian could escape to the bathroom. Nothing less than a locked door was enough to stop the parrot when she was in pursuit, and even then Vivian could hear Gigi’s talons clicking against the metal handle.

As Vivian dressed, the cloud of noise pollution also known as Masha and Gigi moved downstairs. By the time Vivian joined them in the kitchen, Masha was setting pancakes on the table and Gigi was gorging herself on blueberries. 

“There she is,” Grandma said, pulling Viv into a hug. Vivian held her back, looking over her grandmother’s shoulder to see Wesley glaring at her. The curly-haired little mutt must not have gotten as many treats as he wanted. Or he was mad somebody was touching his person. Or both. Probably both. “Here, sit facing the door. Masha, do keep Gigi quiet, we don’t want to miss any big moments.”

A chill went down Vivian’s bare arms. The morning was early, still warming up, and Grandma had all the windows and the front and back doors thrown wide open. It made Vivian feel vulnerable, like she could be watched from any angle. Wesley growled at the doorstop, a weighted canvas dog. He was more than smart enough to know it wasn’t a real dog, but he loved having something he could bully and harass whenever he wanted. He tugged on the canvas dog’s tail with his teeth, likely intending to drag it away and bury it somewhere, but Grandma scooped him up and placed him on his cushioned high chair at the end of the table. He settled there, mollified by being recognized as the head of the household.

“It’s cold out,” Vivian complained. “Maybe Wesley has the right idea for once.”

The little dog glared at her from across the table.

“Or maybe he just doesn’t want another family member,” Masha said, spearing blueberries on her fork.

“We have to keep the house open and welcome,” Grandma said. “Come now, Wesley. You remember when we met, don’t you? You wouldn’t want someone else stuck outside waiting.”

Wesley absolutely would not give a damn about the comfort of another animal, Vivian knew, especially another dog; canine familiars ran in Grandma’s side of the family, her sire-mother’s, while her carry-mother’s side was much more random. But she kept her mouth shut. The telling of how older family members first met their familiars was a tradition on eighteenth birthdays, and Grandma was clearly gearing up to tell hers.

“No, we wouldn’t want anyone left waiting on the stoop like you were,” Grandma told Wesley, patting his head. “We were always very punctual, my mothers and sisters and I. Very much had our routine. We liked it when everyone knew and agreed on what would happen and when. Birthdays were no excuse to sleep in, so we were having breakfast at the same time and in the same way as always. We gave thanks to the land and people that fed us, and then we gave that food our whole attention. A totally quiet table. And halfway through breakfast, what do we hear? We hear the tiniest sound from outside. So quiet I thought I imagined it. And then again, louder. What do we find on the front porch but Wesley, sitting there pretty as a picture? I don’t know how long he waited there to be acknowledged, but my family sure didn’t make the best first impression on him, not at all, especially when he learned there wasn’t a plate waiting for him at breakfast! He was haughty towards my mothers for weeks.”

“I think I would’ve preferred that to how Gigi was at first,” Vivian said.

“Gigi didn’t do anything wrong,” Masha said, a mischievous spark in her eyes. “She found me when I was getting catcalled by another girl, and had to bravely fend her off.”

Gigi cackled. Three and a half years after joining the family, and Vivian still wasn’t sure if the parrot had only dive-bombed the offender, or done that foul activity birds occasionally performed mid-flight.

“Obviously she was in a protective mood after that,” Masha continued. “She had to make sure everything and everyone around me was safe. That required being thorough.”

Thorough was certainly one way to describe the parrot digging through every cabinet and closet in the house several times over. It wouldn’t have been so annoying if Gigi hadn’t thrown the contents of Vivian’s sock and underwear drawer around her bedroom. Six times. Vivian would never hurt Masha, and would therefore never hurt Gigi, but the temptation sometimes surfaced. Despite the parrot’s nuisances, she had to admit Gigi and Masha made a good pair—Masha always left out the parts of stories that might make her sound bad, and Gigi would scream over anyone who tried to fill in the gaps. Wesley too could be an absolute sweetheart with Grandma so long as there wasn’t anything around he might consider a competitor for her attention…

“Bad dog!” Gigi screeched. “Bad gran!”

Grandma guiltily pulled her hand away, a bit of pancake unsuccessfully hidden in her fist. Wesley, with zero signs of shame, abandoned the table for one of his many plush beds.

“Grandma, you know that’s bad for him,” Masha said. “And what’s bad for him is bad for you. Watching your own blood sugar levels isn’t enough.”

"He just loves food so much," Grandma said. "I can get by without treats, but it's harder for him, and you know it hurts my heart to see him unhappy."

"It'll literally hurt your heart if something happens to his. Stick to the healthy dog treats we got for him."

A growl came from the dog bed. To Vivian’s understanding, Wesley had never been happy about needing to share his human so much with her granddaughters. Them buying those healthy treats had not won them any points with the canine.

"Can we stop talking about this?" Vivian mumbled.

They tried to move on. The pancakes were a tasty distraction. Vivian couldn't fairly blame Wesley for wanting some, even if his constant insistence on eating another species's food did make her mad at him.

After breakfast there were presents. Hexian women knew that if you wanted an eighteenth birthday present to be appreciated, you gave it before the girl was distracted by her familiar arriving. It was a mix of things she genuinely wanted and more customary gifts. Grandma gave her a gift card for the photography studio in town, for her and her animal partner to use, as well as one of the long, soft, flowy dresses Vivian loved but couldn't bring herself to spend her savings on.

"I'll give you your main present later," Masha said. "Depending on what your familiar is, it might not be the best idea I've ever had, but I think you'll love it even if you don't use it at first. But this is me being a super practical older sister to make up for that."

Vivian nodded and tucked the feed store gift card away in her pocket. Every town had one. Familiars that hunted or foraged tended to be extraordinarily good at it, aided by their human level of intelligence, but some species might not have easy access to their needed or preferred food wherever they wound up living with their person.

Masha leaned in to accept Vivian's hug, whispering in her ear as she did.

“I was scared at the time too,” Masha said. “But please try to believe me when I say it’ll be worth it. Do you want to spend some time with Mom and Maman before we go enjoy the weather outside?”

Vivian nodded.

“Come find me when you’re ready. No rush.”

Vivian went to the living room, kneeling before the shrine there. Here, no matter what other activity was happening elsewhere in the house, it always felt quiet. The one place where she knew she wouldn’t get ambushed by Gigi, or have Wesley half-heartedly attempt to herd her outside. 

The low shelf before her had been at the perfect height for her to see and touch when her mothers died. She’d been five and a half years old then, Masha nine, and though she’d often thought of moving it higher up in the dozen years since, she’d never gotten around to it. Still, Vivian didn’t like the uneasy feeling that she was physically growing away from her mothers as she grew taller. The pictures there were spread throughout the last decade of their lives, Masha and Vivian making appearances in a few of them as infants and toddlers, along with their familiars, Cherry the dog and Noir the black panther. Vivian sometimes wondered if Masha realized she was almost as old as their parents were in some of the pictures, if that disturbed her. She didn’t ask.

Grandma sometimes spoke to the pictures while she sat in a nearby armchair with her knitting. When they were little and still shared a room, Masha used to slip away at night to do the same. In the last three years, she did so more openly during the day, though with Gigi loudly singing to cover her words.

Vivian never talked to the pictures. She’d never known what to say. But she looked over them, and touched the worn red fabric of Cherry’s bandana, and both of her mothers’ wedding necklaces. One had a pendant, a yellow stone carved and inlaid with obsidian to match Noir’s eyes; the other was a chain of small rings, each banded with tawny or black enamel to match Cherry’s coat. It was a Hexian tradition for a bride’s family to give their new daughter-in-law a necklace inspired by their bride’s familiar. Grandma had gotten a dark worry stone added to each. That was another tradition, to mark the necklaces as belonging to a deceased loved one. Vivian and Masha had sometimes worn those necklaces when they were younger, a way to carry part of their mothers with them. It was normal to see an older, widowed woman wearing both her necklace and her wife’s, as Grandma did. Vivian remembered the stares as she and Masha wore jewelry that had instantly marked them as orphans. She’d kept her head down, letting the imitation of Noir’s eye do all the staring back where it hung from her neck. She could’ve tucked the necklace into her shirt, but if she couldn’t see it, then she started to worry something had happened to it, the pendant fallen, broken, lost forever. Now the necklaces spent most of their time at the shrine, though Masha occasionally wore them.

As she sat before the shrine, Vivian imagined a formless shadow padding through the house, coming to sit beside her. A creature sent by her mothers. But when she turned to look, it was just her in the living room. She squeezed Cherry’s bandana, the fabric frightfully thin between her fingers, and got up.

Vivian had never been one for big parties, and today was always going to carry some level of stress with it, so the plan was for her to just spend time with her family. Masha already had their bikes waiting outside. Grandma lived at the center of Hex’s mishmash of ecosystems and climates, the meadowlands. An outsider would’ve looked over the sun-dappled grassy fields rich with wildflowers and thought it was a place of only happiness. Vivian knew better, but she did love it here, now that she no longer saw it as the place she was stuck instead of home.

She and Masha biked through the tall grass, following trails that persisted year after year despite the annual cycle of the grass overgrowing and dying back. Their path took them around the edge of town just as the day was warming up. Masha had taken the day off work, and Vivian hadn’t started a job yet since her recent graduation from school. Their town was small enough that it had few roads; some other parts of Hex were getting more and more updated technology, but even those were at least a decade or two behind the rest of the world, and the meadowlands were even further behind them. The line of telephone poles that had slowly marched like a weary traveler to Hex’s heartland were, as usual, occupied by old Ms. Merrill’s vulture. His bald-looking head presiding over town was a sight Vivian had grown up with. He’d scared her when she was young, until Ms. Merrill, who had a formidable presence herself, found out she and Masha were frightened and had called him down so they could feed him dried jerky. A couple times early in their life here, Vivian or Masha had gone out to play in the meadows and gotten tired and lost; Erwin the vulture had been the first to find them, soaring like a dark omen overhead, followed at length by his human, her cane and boots beating against the ground as she came to take them back to their grandmother. Vivian had always expected to get yelled at, but the solemn old woman had never done so. She’d known their story. Everyone here did.

But the story didn’t have to be bad right now. Erwin’s head swiveled to follow them as they biked, then returned to watching the other familiars gathered in town. Although plenty of people were at work, it was too nice a day for their familiars to stay cooped up. Someone’s monkey chased birds, either familiars or wild, through the branches of a tree. A donkey and horse grazed on a nearby lawn, entirely at peace with the crocodile—or it might have been an alligator, Stacy was always so difficult and would respond to questions of which the creature was with an eye roll—floating languidly several yards away from them in a big pond. Viv waved to her friend Cal, spotting her heading up the road. Cal rode on the back of Buddy, her cow familiar. They weren’t going very fast, but Vivian knew that suited the both of them just fine. The slowest errand-runners in the world, Buddy and Cal. They made up for it with all the work they did on their family’s farm; her parents’ familiars were too small to do any heavy lifting, and her sisters too young to have familiars at all.

Masha rolled to a stop, and Vivian joined her for a break.

“I was thinking of interviewing Erwin for the magazine,” Masha said.

“Just Erwin? Not Ms. Merrill?”

“He sees everything and I trust him more to tell me what, even if he can’t speak. Come on. Think how much outsiders would eat that up. ‘Hexian Life Through the Eyes of a Vulture.’ It would fly off the shelves.”

Vivian frowned. The magazine Masha worked for had a reader base on Hex, but it was also distributed in other parts of the world. And digitally, though she was still a bit confused about what that actually looked like. A few people worked at the meadowlands office, taking turns on the only computer in town to electronically send writing to their coworkers across the country. Though she respected her sister’s writing, that having a wider reach meant there was a paycheck in it for her, the idea of anything from Hex—even just words—being sent out to the rest of the world made her uncomfortable. Ongoing communication and trade with their nearest national neighbors had started not too long before Masha was born, with outsiders stopping by the tinier island off the mainland that served as a trading post. Even with that limited trickle of technology and other items entering Hex for the past twenty-five years, they were still incredibly isolated. Vivian did not think this was a bad thing. After all, it had arisen out of necessity.

“So?” Masha said, interrupting her train of thought. “What do you think about that article idea?”

“I think you need to be careful,” Vivian said. “That vulture watched us grow up. You start asking him for stories? For gossip? Who knows what they might have on us?”

Masha looked between Erwin’s favorite perch and the copse of trees where the monkey was still chasing its friends. “That’s direct line of sight, yeah. I’ve kissed a lot of girls beneath that willow.”

“And yet you’re still single,” Vivian said dryly.

Masha playfully smacked her shoulder. “I’m trying. Not all of us want to be alone, Viv.” She pedaled forward, getting up to speed.

“I don’t want to be alone either,” Vivian mumbled to herself, surprisingly hurt by what she knew had been a harmless tease from her older sister. She tried to shake it off, scanning her surroundings for any approaching creature, but saw nothing.

After their ride, Masha and Vivian met up with Grandma at their favorite ice cream shop. Vivian saw Grandma waiting outside the shop, glancing around with a perky hopefulness, Gigi perched on her straw sunhat. Vivian felt strangely embarrassed as she rolled up to the shop without a familiar in tow, though Grandma showed no sign of disappointment. They ate slices of ice cream cake, strawberry jam frozen between layers of chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream like shiny red glass. Wesley was about to make a scene in the shop until the owner, familiar with his antics, brought him an empty waffle cone to enjoy, and since this was the human family members’ lunch they let it slide.

Then it was back home, watching a movie with all the doors and windows open to allow easy entry for whatever creature would be called to Vivian. Dinner. Vague discussion of the possibility of more dessert, with the eventual agreement that they were all far too full, Masha elbowing Vivian and proclaiming this was a sign her younger sister was A Real Adult now. The actual proof that she was a full-grown woman still hadn’t appeared. A third of another movie.

And still, nothing arrived. The day continued its march on, seeming to last forever, and if Vivian were anyone else she’d have stayed up until something happened, but she didn’t. She tried to excuse herself as soon as it began to darken outside.

Masha and Grandma exchanged an unsure look.

“Maybe you should sleep downstairs in the living room tonight,” Masha said.

“They’ll make it to me either way, right?” Vivian said. “Does it matter? I want to be in my own bed.”

“Now darling, you remember what happened to the Carpers a few years back,” Grandma said.

“Yeah, they became scammers.”

“Mimsy showing up did a real number on their house, Vivian. It can be a problem, and we shouldn’t make the risk of it worse.”

Vivian still thought the idea of selling home insurance specifically for a new familiar arriving was a bit dishonest. But she couldn’t fault the Carpers for wanting to do something after Mimsy the elephant, upset because she’d arrived before her human partner had woken up, tried to get to her person despite the windows and walls in her way.

“I could leave my window open?” she ventured.

“Back in my day, girls would sleep out under the stars if their familiar hadn’t shown up by bedtime,” Grandma said. “But if that’s where you’d be most comfortable…”

Vivian took that as a win. As she settled into her bed, the thoughts that had plagued the back of her mind for a decade returned in full force. Maybe it was better if nothing showed up for her. She didn’t doubt that having a familiar was rewarding, but couldn’t shake the sense that the vulnerability that came with it was too steep a cost. The connection between human and familiar wasn’t just emotional—it was a life bond. Your familiar would be extra smart, have a full range of emotions, and live as long as you did. If you lived to ninety, so would your familiar, regardless of its species’ natural lifespan.

But if you or your familiar died, it was permanent lights out for the other too.

So maybe, Vivian had been considering for twelve and a half years, it did make more sense to be alone.

Chapter Two

Vivian had been at just the right temperature when she fell asleep. She woke up early without the aid of Gigi or her regular alarm, surprised to find that she felt cloyingly sweaty. She tried to roll onto her side but stopped, confronted with the odd sense that it wouldn’t be wise to. It was actually just her left arm that was too hot, despite it being outside her blankets, flopped over her waist. With her other hand she flicked on her bedside lamp, lighting her dark bedroom. Vivian looked down at her left arm, which was covered in a wriggling yellow-and-black carpet, and shrieked.

Gigi screeched from the neighboring bedroom in answer and challenge, and then Wesley was barking too, and she could hear the distant creaking noises that meant Grandma was getting out of bed as quick as her old bones could, and the lighter pitter-patter of Masha on her way—

Vivian was sat up in bed and staring at the swarm of insects on her arm when her older sister all but broke the door down.

“What did you—oh.” Masha’s excited yelling cut itself off. “Wow, that’s a lot of bees.”

“I’m aware, thank you!” Vivian snapped. 

They covered her entire forearm, hundreds of them, marching about on her bare skin in circles and curling lines that made her dizzy to watch. Or maybe she was just feeling faint. Surely they couldn’t be…? Vivian’s still-waking mind became aware of a… a presence. Specks of simple thoughts and feelings clustered together into one large complicated mass. Ideas and news jumped from member to member, traveling across the swarm like an electrical current—bright colors not flower, bird? Yes, bird, but like us. Safe. Older sister. Yesterday’s perfume—always some kind of movement or communication happening among them. Exhausting. Overwhelming. And that was without even mentioning the physical sensation of having all those little legs against her skin as they crawled around and over each other.

Whatever her final feelings were on generally having a familiar, Vivian wouldn’t have wanted hundreds of little insect familiars in particular. She wasn’t afraid of bugs, or allergic to bees. But if she had to have a familiar, she would’ve preferred something else. Something with an expressive face she could see, or a voice she could hear. Something sturdy and safe she could trust to never get hurt or die, to never take her down with it. Really, she would’ve settled for just that last part. Would’ve accepted a, what weird foreign toy had Masha told her about? A pet rock. If Vivian was forced to share her life with something but could choose what, she would’ve picked a rock, and forgotten all that nonsense about having a lifelong companion.

She would not have picked bees.

By the time she had processed all that, Grandma had drawn herself up the stairs. Wesley huffed to be picked up until Masha placed him on the bed, at which point he decided the swarm was no rival of his and lost interest; Gigi watched with curiosity, quiet for once. Vivian looked between the two adults in her life, feeling like she was owed some kind of explanation.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an insect familiar before,” Masha said. “Or multiple creatures for one person.”

“It’s rare, but it happens,” Grandma said. “Your mother knew a girl who had a swarm of cicadas as her familiar. She was a farming girl. It caused quite the panic when they showed up because everyone thought they were locusts.”

“What do I do with them?” Vivian said.

“They’re your familiar. You know what to do.”

Except she didn’t. She really didn’t.

Grandma petted her head. “One step at a time. Why don’t you start with getting dressed and eating, and we’ll go from there? The first few days are always confusing.”

Masha and Grandma stepped out of the room, trailing their respective, single, normal familiars. Vivian stared down at the teeming mass of bees on her arm. Some of them buzzed their wings, vibrating against her skin. A sense of happiness came over her, from outside herself; she might be uncertain about this, but the bees—her bees—seemed very happy to be here. With her.

“Please get off,” she whispered.

As one, the bees rose from her arm. Vivian flinched back against the headboard, unprepared to have them all suddenly in the air and closer to her face. The swarm settled on her desk, landing on her journal, her pens, her eraser, everything laid out. It reminded Vivian of the time she’d seen a spider in the shower, crawling over her shampoo; even though it had only been on the outside of the bottle, the contents seemed tainted afterwards. Vivian tried to swallow down that memory, and all the feelings welling inside her. The connection between familiar and human was a two-way street. Emotions went both ways—unless she didn’t want it to. Vivian clamped down on that new part of herself, and her emotional awareness of the swarm dimmed. She still knew where they were, even with her eyes shut, as if they were a newly grown fifth limb. But that twitching and turning mental presence faded, bringing her relief.

The swarm briefly buzzed their wings, making an audible noise and startling her. As if they were asking why she’d cut them off like that.

“I need to get dressed,” Vivian mumbled, running to the bathroom. She didn’t want to change in front of them in case they decided to land all over her again.

When she was done, she stuck her head back in her bedroom, giving in to a stupid hope that maybe they had left in those few minutes. The swarm rose, settling on her shoulders and hair before she could get away from them. She didn’t like knowing they were all over her, and while it was still visually disturbing, she quickly learned that having them all clustered in one spot where she could see them, on her left forearm again, was the lesser of two evils. Vivian tapped the spot, and they moved there. They had a tight grip on her, not getting jostled off as she went downstairs.

Her family was already putting together breakfast. Vivian, unsure what she was doing but aware that the many little mouths of her familiars were craving food, poured a little water into a shallow dish and mixed in as much sugar as would dissolve. She went to put the dish down outside on the patio.

“I’m sure they won’t be a bother at the table,” Grandma said. “They couldn’t possibly be messy eaters.”

Vivian frowned, but brought the bowl back in. She’d heard that elsewhere in the world, animals ate separately from their… she supposed the correct word would be owners, not humans. Most Hexian women ate alongside their familiars when possible, if they and their other company were comfortable doing so. Noir had always eaten his food—usually whole rodents or birds—before everyone else’s mealtime, and then joined them to laze under the table and race against Cherry for scraps he didn’t even want. It seemed to Vivian like that would be a good solution here. Their food wasn’t upsetting to see eaten like Noir’s had been, but they themselves were… insects. At the table, near everyone’s food. Still, Vivian put the sugar-water bowl on the seat of an extra chair, out of sight. Her bees went to drink from it in shifts, always rejoining her afterwards. They were on her non-dominant arm, which was preferable to the other, but it wasn’t like she never used it. She traced a finger from her left wrist to inner elbow, the bees parting like water around it. When she slowly waved her arm near the table, they moved to the other side, where it was safer.

“Imagine if you had spiders,” Masha said.

Vivian glared at her.

“What? I’m just saying. And they’re so fuzzy.”

“So are some tarantulas.”

“They’re easy to feed.”

“And you love being outdoors,” Grandma said. “I’m sure you have that in common.”

Vivian couldn’t argue with those facts. But she wanted to. She wanted to shake the bees off all over the table and yell at her family that this felt like some kind of cosmic mistake. She didn’t, of course. There was some other anticipation hanging in the air, visible in Gigi’s ruffled feathers.

Once they’d finished breakfast Masha grabbed her, unusually nervous. “Viv, before you see your big present, I promise I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

“What do you mean?” Vivian said, wary. When Masha wanted to be pushy or stir up trouble, she always just did it and then made up for it later. This was new.

“Obviously I didn’t know what your familiar would be when I got it. That was what they had. So just… please don’t be too upset.”

“Did you get me bug spray or something?”

“You’ll understand when you see it.”

Full of apprehension, Vivian followed Masha to the garage. She watched in silence as her older sister rolled up the door and removed a stack of empty boxes blocking her view of the far right corner. Masha seemed to have constructed a three-sided cardboard box around whatever the present was, decorating it with big holographic stickers, pink duct tape, and a ribbon that would’ve been massive on an ordinary gift but was almost pathetically small on whatever the two-yard-long box was.

“I did my best with the wrapping,” Masha said. “It’s a very unusual shape, you know how it is. Here, pull the tape off.”

Wincing, Vivian grabbed the free end of the duct tape and pulled. The box fell apart, revealing—

The item itself made her heart jump for joy, but she could see why Masha was worried. Vivian ran her hand over the gracefully craned-back neck of the scooter. It was beautiful, all rounded parts and soft curves. It was also yellow with black stripes. Even the helmet hanging by its straps from the handlebars had a similar color scheme.

“I’ll pay for a new paint job,” Masha blurted out.

“You bought me a motorized scooter, Masha. You’ve dropped more than enough money on me already. Where did you even get it?”

“Remember a month ago? I went to the trading post to write an article for the magazine about new items? This was there.”

“New sounds expensive,” Vivian said, grateful but worried.

“Well, I may have, uh… there was a man.”

“A man?” Usually merchants sent women. Vivian herself had never seen a man in real life before, only in books and movies.

“Yeah. He was, like. Being weird towards me. In a way that was a little… I might have found it threatening if it wasn’t him and thirty other women in the room,” Masha said. “So I used it. May have undone a button or two on my blouse. Talked up myself, and the magazine—“

“Masha, you did not seduce him,” Vivian said, alarmed.

“It worked and I’m safe. And I got a huge discount. He thinks I’m going to write an article that’ll have every Hexian wanting one by the holidays, figured it would be a good investment.”

“And will you?”

“Yeah, once you tell me how it is.”

“I can’t believe you flirted with him.”

“Men forced our ancestors to come here by accusing us of being unholy temptresses,” Masha said. “Now the men that visit do so thinking the moment a bunch of us lay eyes on the first male human our families have met in literal generations, we’ll be all over them. Am I really so bad for taking advantage of that?”

“Maybe,” Vivian said. 

“Ouch.”

“But you’re a good sister.”

Masha hugged her. “Please don’t tell Grandma about the seducing part. I only mentioned the article.”

Vivian rolled her eyes.

“So you like it, right? Because it’s not like I can return it. But if you want it repainted—”

“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” Vivian said. Their countrywomen were skilled with all kinds of materials, but to turn metal into such a sleek vehicle was beyond their manufacturing. They altered and repaired what they did have, but new cars still came from overseas. Vivian ordinarily would’ve preferred one of those used vehicles, but knowing her sister had gotten one over on an outsider who thought too highly of himself changed that. She could smell the wax on the new scooter, the rich and musty odor of the biofuel that bubbled up from strange springs across Hex. Its color scheme was jarring, but added to the illusion that the scooter was an energetic and lively thing. 

Masha’s relief was visible. “Oh good. I was worried you might—you know.”

“What? Foist bright red and green and blue colors on you against your will?”

Masha smoothed down the hem of her pink dress. “You know I look good in any color, Viv.” She paused, seeming to roll unspoken words around in her mouth.

“What aren’t you saying?” Vivian said.

“Just thinking. Somehow we both wound up with familiars that can say our names.”

Vivian looked down at her gauntlet of yellow and black. Her bees buzzed at once, making a low vvvvvv sound.

“Wow. Lucky me,” she said, but she mostly just felt emotionally drained and so there wasn’t too much sarcasm behind it.

“I guess you’d have to drive pretty slow for them to keep up with you though,” Masha said.

“Yeah.” And wouldn’t it be such a shame to leave them behind, a sulky part of her mind thought. Distances of more than a couple miles between human and familiar could be very uncomfortable for both parties, but what was she supposed to do? Go into stores and other buildings surrounded by a swarm of bees?

Vivian yelped as the living two-colored carpet that was her gathered familiars crawled up her arm. She froze as they went inside the short sleeve of her shirt, gathering on her bare shoulder.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “Masha, I really really don’t like it.”

“Does it hurt? Are they stinging you?”

Her bees were appalled at the very idea. Vivian was their special person and they would rather die than sting her, though of course if they did sting her the end result would be the same anyway, but they’d still feel horrible about it. They loved her and wanted to be with and on her as much as possible and were even now basking in her body heat.

Vivian again clamped down on their connection.

“It’s just…” Vivian tried to explore how she was feeling separate from that. “It doesn’t hurt…I guess it doesn’t feel bad either.” Because there was no threat to it, unlike when most people pictured being walked on by several hundred insects at once. “Remember when Gigi first started pulling on your hair?”

Masha grinned. “So you’ll find it endearing eventually.”

That was probably an overstatement. “It’s new.”

“Now that they’ve tucked themselves away, why don’t you try out your present?”

Vivian put on her helmet and started up the scooter. The first rev of its engine was accompanied by a faint reek, strange and foul—perhaps some of the fuel originally put in its tank, a bit of overseas wrongness. She hoped that would be the only time she’d smell it. She startled when her bees hummed in unison to match the engine, but steadied herself. She went slow over the rough dirt road that led to their house, getting a feel for how the scooter turned and accelerated. Vivian had only rarely driven Grandma’s sedan, and didn’t like the bulk of it. In comparison, the scooter was agile and alive. It was a pleasure to ride, and maybe if Masha asked extremely nicely and told her personal alarm clock to let Vivian sleep in for a week, Vivian would even let her ride it too. For the article. If she focused on the wind against her skin, she could even try not to focus on the cluster of bees under her shirt.

Vivian sighed. Barely over an hour had passed since getting her familiar. Sometimes the start was rough, she’d known that. Sometimes the love took a little longer to arrive. She wasn’t being fair to them. How would she feel if their roles were reversed?

Normally people did things with their familiars, especially in the first week, so that human and animal could get to know each other’s personalities. Vivian had no idea what one did with bees. For now, she decided to show them around town. 

There were many old haunts from her and Masha’s younger years, some of which had  first been their sire-mother’s, or even Grandma’s, many decades ago. Viv drove to a small pond away from town. It was a quiet place frequented by frogs that, if tempted with a calm voice and the right bait, could be caught and then used to gross out one's sister by chasing her around the pond with it. 

“We used to play here when we visited Grandma,” Vivian told her bees, who came crowding out from beneath her sleeve to see. “There are frogs and ducks and dragonflies, and it’s the one spot where Cherry would stop being such a good girl and go chasing after them. Noir always wanted to catch fish, but none of them were big enough to be worth the time, I guess. He was picky that way.” Vivian sighed and sat beside the pond, careful not to get her shoes muddy so she wouldn’t dirty her new scooter. “I’m sorry about how I’ve been so far. This change has just… brought up some uncomfortable feelings for me. I’m sure I’d have felt this way no matter what you wound up being.”

Despite having said that, she wished she had an animal’s face she could look to for a reaction. Her emotional connection to her familiars was too new for her to be comfortable with it, to trust it when it told her that they accepted her apology. Some of them took flight and buzzed around the pond, exploring it. They shared her sense that it was a good place. Plenty of plants to scent the air, each with their own story to tell. There were far too many bees for Vivian to watch at once. Dispersed, her sense of where they physically were in relation to her was also much more difficult to use. They were like specks on the wind once they spread out. Shading her eyes against the sun, her gaze settled on one bee hovering close to the water.

She was watching when, in a flash of silver, a fish briefly popped out of the pond to swallow it.

Vivian was too stunned to properly react at first. It didn’t hurt, though it felt like it should; familiars and humans could sense each other’s pain. Maybe, because it was just one individual, the pain was too small for her to feel, too minuscule a fraction of the whole. The sensation was more like having the ground beneath her unexpectedly drop by a centimeter. It was a small change that still shook her, made her afraid that the entire world might suddenly fall away. Should she scream? Should she cry? Her bees weren’t panicking, and while those who had separated from her did return, it didn’t seem to be out of fear. They landed on her face and hair, a few crowding close to her eyes so she instinctively closed them, keeping her from seeing her surroundings. If this was an attempt at comfort, it wasn’t working. They were calm about it, accepting the loss as an unfortunate normalcy.

Vivian did not accept it. Her familiars were connected to her, their lives entwined with her own, and while she’d always felt somewhat delicate, her own vulnerability was nothing compared to theirs. If she lost them all, that would be the end of her.

Did she even have to lose them all? For women with one familiar, it was all or nothing. What would happen to her if she lost half her swarm? Would there be a turning point where it was suddenly over? Would her health gradually decline as she lost more and more of them? That was assuming she did lose more of them, but that seemed like the obvious future now that she’d seen how quickly and easily they could be snuffed out.

Amidst the red cloud of panic taking over her mind, Vivian saw one clear path. With thousands of tiny legs clinging to her, she drove back home. She ran upstairs to her room and threw open her window. Within reach was a space under the eave, sheltered from wind and rain. Vivian touched it, and at her unspoken command the bees crawled up her arm, gathering upside down on the wood.

“Here,” she said. “This is where you can make a hive and your queen… do you have a queen? I’m sure you either do, or you don’t need one, one of those two options. You can make a hive and lay eggs and there will be more bees and everything will be alright.”

Her bees agreed with two parts of that statement: that they didn’t need a queen to make more bees, and that everything would be alright.

But they disagreed that there would be a hive here, and so she wasn’t sure if she could trust them.