Honeycomb Heart - opening chapter

Note: there may be minor changes between sample chapters and the final published version.

Chapter One

Vivian was woken by a demonic screech. When she continued to lie in bed, face stubbornly stuck in an unimpressed expression, something tugged on her hair. A hard beak closed on Vivian’s earlobe, tugging when she 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. “Get your familiar out of my room.”

“We’re both adults now, Viv. 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 making dive bomb passes at 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 continued laziness, but actually watching Gigi make laps around her bedroom. Right after Gigi passed overhead, Vivian threw off her sheets and 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/assault her before Vivian could escape and make it 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 tapping her beak against the door, talons clicking against the metal handle.

As she dressed, the noxious 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 still early, still warming up, and Grandma had all the windows and curtains thrown wide open, as well as the front and back doors. It made Vivian feel like she could be watched from any angle, vulnerable. Wesley growled at the doorstop by the front door, a weighted canvas dog. He was more than smart enough to know it wasn’t a real dog, he just couldn’t stand there being anything else that could even remotely be mistaken for and receive attention that rightly belonged to him. 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, miffed, but mollified by having his position as the head of the household recognized.

“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 if it was 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 she could tell Grandma was 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. You gave thanks to the land and people that fed you, and then you sat down and you gave that food your 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 a few minutes later, 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 thought my parents were very rude for quite some time. He was haughty towards them 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 and followed by another girl, and had to bravely fend her off.”

Gigi cackled. Three and a half years after she’d become part of the family, and Vivian still wasn’t sure if the parrot had only dive-bombed the offender, or done what birds occasionally did when the need for a natural process took hold 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. You have to admit, she was thorough. Very caring.”

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 specifically thrown every article of clothing in 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. It was a situation that could work out, Vivian reminded herself. Maybe…

“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 dog 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. It felt less like a shadow had been cast over the day, and more like she'd spent a few minutes in the light before stepping back into the darkness. The pancakes were good, though. Vivian couldn't fairly blame Wesley for wanting some, even if his 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 at least one. Familiars that hunted tended to be extraordinarily good at it, but there were still exotic species that might not have their needed or preferred food wherever they wound up living with their person, and who wanted their familiar away from their side half the time looking for mice to eat? It was a thoughtful gift, but one that made Vivian think harder about the future than she wanted to.

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 that 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 out of the house.

The low shelf before her had been at the perfect height for her to see and touch when her mothers died, a collection of pictures, their necklaces, and a collar that had belonged to her mom’s familiar. She’d been five and a half then, Masha not much older at nine, and though she’d often thought of moving it higher up in the dozen years since, she’d never gotten around to it. 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 ten years of their lives, infant Masha and Vivian making appearances in a few of them, 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. Vivian had loved her mothers but didn’t ever feel comfortable talking about them.

She knew that Grandma sometimes spoke to the pictures while she cleaned the shrine, or when 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 collar, and both the 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. Her mothers’ wedding necklaces, inspired by their bride’s familiar, a Hexian tradition. 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 grown up wearing those necklaces, carrying part of their mothers with them. It was more normal to see an older, widowed woman wearing two necklaces, her own 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 t-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 familiar — formless in her mind’s eye — 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 collar, feeling the press of its metal hardware against her palm, 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. If Vivian had to pick an image to accompany the word spring in a dictionary, she would just take a picture of her surroundings. Hex was a mishmash of ecosystems and climates, and Grandma lived in the heart of 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 somehow 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. Plenty of people were at work, but it was too nice a day for their familiars to stay cooped up. 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 marched their way across the country here to the heartland and then stopped like a weary traveler 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 scared 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 over them, 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. Someone’s monkey chased birds, either familiars or wild, through the branches of a tree. There was a communal garden plot in the middle of town, and its harvest changed depending on what the residents’ familiars were. 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 use words. 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, of course, 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 and communicate with 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 or Ms. Merrill 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 forever, 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, an eye out for any approaching creature, but saw nothing. She caught up to Masha.

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 like the gaudiest accessory the world had ever known. 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. That was their lunch, and 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.

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 sign that she was a full-grown woman still had yet to appear. 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 midnight waiting for something to happen, 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 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. She tried to remind herself that life went on post-familiar, even if it was sometimes in a different shape than before.

“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 a steeper cost than anyone talked about. 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.