Wild Magic

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She is watching a frog hop beside a pond when she hears the humming. For several minutes she sits on her grubby heels and listens, then she shakes her head impatiently, gets clumsily to her feet. Wiping her muddy hands on the shift she starts toward the sound. ‘‘Maksi,” she says. As she trots around the house, she makes a song of the name. “Maksi, Maksi, Mak la la si la la Mak la la si la la Mak la la seeee…”

When she sees the boat and the Bee-eyed Woman standing in it, she stops and stares. “Not Maksi.”

The humming grows louder and more compelling. Faan slows. She doesn’t like that woman’s eyes. They frighten her.

Step by step the Bee-eyed Woman hums her closer. Closer.

She is walking on sand now. She doesn’t like walking on sand. It gets between her toes and makes them sore. Closer.

Mamay said never go in the water.

The sprites said never go in the water.

They aren’t here now.

She whimpers, but the sprites don’t come.

The water is cold. It pushes at her. She stumbles and goes floundering under the surface.

The Bee-eyed Woman reaches out, her arm stretching and stretching, plucks her from the selat.

Faan wails as she swoops across the water.

“Be quiet.” The Bee-eyed Woman sits her on the deck. “You aren’t hurt.”

Faan ignores her and wails some more. “My Liki. I want you-ooo. Leee leeee… Leee keee…”

The mahsar pops out of the air beside her, hisses at the Bee-eyed Woman.

“Good,” she says. “I was waiting for you.”

She hums and the mahsar curls up with her back against Faan, deep asleep.

Faan yawns; her eyes droop shut and she sleeps. The Bee-eyed Woman hums another note.

A honey shimmer trembles about the child.

“Be loved,” the Bee-eyed Woman croons over her. “Let he who finds you cherish you to death and beyond. Let them who dwell with you cherish you. Be loved, Honeychild, by everyone you need.”

The Bee-eyed Woman hums.

A block of crystal hardens around Faan and Ailiki the mahsar.

The Bee-eyed Woman hums a double note, spreads her arms. A dome of crystal forms about the island, stopping everything inside.

Kori Piyolss, mother and apprentice sorceror, sleeps.

Settsimaksimin, Sorceror Prime, and his lover Simms the Witch sleep side by side.

The sprites melt into the soil and sleep.

The trees and everything on the island freeze in place and wait.

The Bee-eyed Woman turns her head.

The honey-amber boat glides off the way it had come.

Sibyl

A mist flows from the stone, eddies and blows about in the strong wind coming up the cave from the lava lake at the heart of the mountain, a hot wind like the breath of the sun.

Near the mouth of the cave, on the dark side of the line where sunlight meets shadow, there is a chair carved from stone, broad and worn, old as the mountain.

The mist blows toward the sunlight, coalesces into a big woman with an ancient wrinkled face, iron black and collapsed on the bone; the smell of age hangs about her, musty and intimidating.

She settles in the big chair, sits there wrapped in layers of wool and silk, leaning back, relaxed, amused, her face obscured, her once-beautiful hands curled over the worn finials, a jewel on her thumb shimmering blue and green and crimson, a black opal that echoes the bright lights in her black eyes.

She opens her mouth and declaims:

The wheel is turning, the change is near

One by one the signs come clear:

Salagaum flower

Through the nights and the days

High Kasso seeks power

In odd little ways

In the Beehouse’s Bower

The Honeychild plays.