Secret Dreams (38 page)

If she had been a larva then, it would have been all right. But when the cell was a room, she was also a soft person. With the awful bees pushing and prodding, and scraping her with their sharp pincers. Then zip! the bee vanished, and the wolf in his suit and pants came back, growling at her in a wolfish voice she didn't understand.

How did the wolf fit into a man's suit of clothes?

Wasn't it terribly uncomfortable, cramped and hot?

While ever some awful person screamed his lungs out right in her face. While the pounding in her head throbbed like a kettledrum and her legs slowly fused together, losing their bones and flesh. Until she became an egg once more, the walls of her room turning to pleasant wax. Clean and empty inside.

Safe.

Time came and went like this. A long time, during which she was either a sleeping egg, clear all the way through — or watching the bees come into her room, then hiding from the wolf while the cretin went on shrieking. Later she discovered the Gurgler next door making all the noise. But at first she knew nothing….

Gradually a great silence came to the annoying little room, a deep quiet in the air around her, with the Gurgler keeping mum for a while. The bees had gone, as though the whole hive was letting her rest, recuperate…. So one afternoon when a golden light fell across her bed, she opened the window a crack, letting the sweet breeze steal inside.

And the room stayed a room for some time, allowing her to sit up and look about. A small brown sparrow had flown in at the window,-it looked this way and that, at the room and back at the sky. She wondered vaguely if the sparrow would turn into a wolf or a bee. But it simply fluttered its wings pertly, then preened in the autumn sunshine, chirping once. She fancied the chirp meant “Hello!” and she wished she could chirp back. She also found that she was hungry.

Food.

A goodbad word.

She had a cloudy recollection of meal plates being pushed inside the room by one of the worker bees and some awful, dirty animal in rags gobbling at the plates as she watched from the bed. They called the dirty animal a name: Frau Lies…. But all that seemed in the distant past — for now the hive put the meal plates where she couldn't reach them. Outside the door. Where she smelled the food for endless periods of time.

The savory smell lured her right to the crack in the door, snuffing and sucking and licking her lips, licking the floor right beneath the door and even the crack itself. She could just see the plate through the crack, sitting out in the hall, and she clawed the floor on her side, leaving sweaty streaks from her fingers. She heard the wolfs snarly voice outside. But sometimes she heard snatches of speech. “I've brought your
grrrrrrrr
, Fräulein….”

Did the wolf know her trembling fingers were pressed to the wood of the door? Feeling the food's warmth beyond? And her lips pressed to the door crack, trying to suck the delicious stuff through the narrow gap? She was frantic, starving, on the verge of opening the door—

When the food smell vanished. They'd taken the food away….

Time passed. A century? The goodbad food smell dragged her from the bed. She crawled to the door. Her trembling hand touched the doorknob. The warm metal knob turned so easily that suddenly a bar of light plunged into the dark room. She snatched the meal plate inside and slammed the door.

She gobbled down a few mouthfuls and immediately retched, vomiting them onto the floor. After a few minutes the spasms subsided. She gulped the spit-up where it lay and snatched some more from the plate. A great fist wrenched her guts around, doubling her over. She writhed on the floor…. Her stomach heaved and shook itself,-she fought to keep the food down, then snatched another mouthful. She sobbed, choking as the sourness of her stomach rose into her burning throat. But she had cleaned the plate. She had eaten. Eaten food. Gobbled it all. Even the sourness from her insides and whatever bits came back up …

Before she melted into a clear little egg this last time, she heard the rumor of animal sounds in the hall. The wolf and one of the worker bees, named Zee, were speaking together. The wolf saying, “You are my witness. On the thirteenth of October, 1905, the larva consumed its first meal in five centuries, between the hours of one and four in the morning …”

And the Zee bee buzzed back, “Jawohl, Herr Wolfpants!”

Sometimes when Wolfpants or the Zee bee came to the door they also brought the Brass. But what was this round brass thing? Just looking at the gleaming metal made her shiver. It had a name, surely … a dirty name. Old Sewer Mouth? Wrong! Wrong!

She set it in front of her dresser. And slowly but surely, as she emptied her meal plates, the Brass mysteriously filled. Yet how it came to be filled she did not know. How unspeakably glad it made her to see a fresh one! Then finding herself back in bed, thanking the Brass from the bottom of her heart: a sweaty relief coursing through her limbs as though mighty hands had wrung her out. And all the while the Brass filled higher and higher.

One night a full moon rose brightly across her window. It lit the whitewashed walls, turning them to silk and the marble floors to opal. In the branches of a nearby tree perched the coal-black figure of a hunting owl. When it turned its head the moonlight caught its nighteyes, making them deep pearls, staring incuriously at her. Down below in the garden, another animal, not one of the Burghive beasts or some mutant from the glass fishbowl, stood quietly in the night.

“A deer …," she said voicelessly to the window. The deer had been nibbling at the grass border of a dry flower bed. But as if hear^ ing her speak, it raised its head and looked to her window. And one of its wooden brown eyes turned to amber. Abruptly the sense of the whole world's reality struck her — its immeasurable, monumental existence — wholly independent of who and what she was. À real moon, a real garden … a real owl, a real deer, all occurring in this moment of time.

The deer in the garden looked steadily up at her but did not speak.

“I'm in a madhouse,” she murmured softly. And this time the deer dipped its head, as though ashamed, troubled with an aching sadness.

She squatted on the floor over the Brass. Her own reflection in the window — a hunched leper, swathed in rags. The rim of the Brass felt warm under her bottom,- and she bit her lips to keep from crying out in good pleasure for the love of Herr Wolfpants and the big Brass he brought her.

But wasn't he terribly uncomfortable, bringing her all those Brass and saving none for himself? After all, where did
he
go when Old Sewer Mouth called him? Down in the garden? And what about the meal plates? Did he keep none for himself? Herr Wolfpants must be starving, bringing her his meals every day and then snarling over the scraps. Wasn't he growing hungrier and hungrier, so ravenous he might burst in and devour her? How terrifying.

If he devoured her one day, she would never be born. Just gobbled down as a clear egg without a center, while the worker bees hovered nearby, wringing their hands. She knew that if she did not solve this problem for herself, one day he would gulp her down in a single bite. She must give him a precious offering, to placate him. Something of herself…

Her babies.

She would give him her babies to eat. Or put in the Brass if he wished. And then she might gain time to be born again. Born herself.

Her babies.

How long it took to make them. She ate only potato now, no grease of any kind, no meat. So she returned it to the Brass in the proper consistency to work with. Tearing off bits of sheet,- starting each tear by chewing a pinhole with her teeth. Tear it, then chew a bit cross-wise and tear it again to make a strip. Thirteen strips she cut in the darkness under the covers; thirteen times on the Brass. Shaping them in the thick air … chewing bits of meat to pulp so that she might wipe down their tiny bodies with a sticky paste of
food
for the wolf to eat. And lastly making the little cowled heads, using grease to harden the hoods.

When she finished, she cooed over them, caressing them, gazing tenderly down at their thirteen empty heads.

Soulless.

So that Herr Wolfpants might see any face he wished there … Sweet pink baby faces. Rosy cheeks, cuddly and succulent. Any face at all. Except hers. For hers had yet to be born. Thirteen she made for him. Each one a year she had been waiting — marking the time back. All the time she waited since she died.

Would Herr Wolfpants understand?

Her thirteen children lay outside the door. Waiting for him to devour them so that she might be spared and born again herself. She heard Herr Wolfpants growl softly, ‘Thank you, Fräulein Bee. Ill save them for later. Maybe someday well eat them together, you and I …”

The door opened, and Herr Wolfpants pushed his suit-sleeve wolf-paw inside the dark room: the paw balanced a shoe box on top. He had gone to great trouble to settle her babies comfortably. Wasn't he going to eat them after all? He was a wolf, wasn't he? He smelled like one and bristled like one…. Oh yes, he'd gobble them up.

The Gurgler was screaming again next door….

Lying on his bed, just as she lay on hers, but he was a stump of a person, with no legs and little fleshy paddles for arms and hands. Rocking back and forth, fluttering his useless chicken wings. Soon she'd sneak into his room and throttle him. Take him by the throat and choke all the whimper right out of the helpless little turd. Wring and twist while he tried to beat her off with his disgusting little flappers. Until his beating and bleating finally ceased, eyes bulging in their sockets, and his tongue lolled out purple.

Yet why did the Gurgler shriek every time Herr Wolfpants tried to leave with the Brass or one of her empty meal plates? Why did the Gurgler carry on so?

After all, they weren't his meal plates. Those weren't
his
Brass.

And then she understood: the helpless, stumpy Gurgler with his useless flappers knew how to see through walls and down hallways — knew when she had become an empty white egg without a center and when she had two legs just like a person. Even knowing when she planned to be born. He was warning her, yes, warning her not to let the Burghive take any of her bee self, not one scrap of her precious insides. Not a shred of food. Not a drop from the Brass. So that she might collect enough of her sacred mounds, her sacred clay, enough of herself to grow fuller and fuller. The cell tighter and tighter.

Until she, the She-Mother, gave birth to herself again.

Once, one of the worker bees, a nasty female drone, came into her room and tried to take a bit of her holy royal insides. She killed it with a blow to the back of the neck, cutting off its head entirely, and the drone flew into a decapitated rage. It buzzed mindlessly into the hall, smashing into walls and finally dying in some lonely, dark corner of the Burghive.

Herr Wolfpants had been coming every day. But since he showed no signs of devouring her, she let him enter the room. He brought her those square, oblong, leafy things — books. And it was a long time before she recalled, realized, that the books had many names,-that they weren't all called
Anatomy
. And even longer before she remembered she could read.

Finally one day she had amassed enough of her precious insides to make a whole person. Now she let Herr Wolfpants take away the overflowing Brass. She had more than enough within.

Pregnant, heavy with her new self… how wonderful. She could feel herself moving inside, a new animal growing. Stretching, getting ready to come forth. But nine months was much,
much
too long to wait. No, she would let it grow for a little while more, but not forever.

She would give birth in thirteen days, then. One day for each of the thirteen years she had waited as a corpse before coming to the Burghive. Before she became a little white egg without a center … She felt herself grow more and more swollen — swelling, filling, expanding moment by moment. At first it felt delicious, tight and warm, but as the days drew on, the warm deliciousness went away and she felt clogged with pain. Outside, the entire Burghive seemed to hold its breath. Even the Gurgler fell silent, not whimpering at all. The whole hive waited, work ceased. All eyes turning to her cell …

They were waiting for the Queen Bee to be born. She had become the Queen Mother, and out of her bowels the new Queen would come. She heard her expectant attendants hovering about her cell door, almost frantic with anticipation. The tenth day had come, or the eleventh — she could barely keep count. The pressure mounted in her belly. Her swollen body ready to split down the middle. Her whole being one long, stifled groan …

That's when the assassins chose to strike. A worker bee and a nurse bee. Holding her down with their jointed claws. They came at her with a pointed snout to puncture her abdomen and kill the Queen Baby growing inside. And it flashed through her whole being, from her tingling mouth to her dark clenched hole, who these assassins were: hirelings from a rival larva somewhere else in the Burghive. Caretakers of another clear egg without a center. And they wanted their own larva to take possession of the hive. The Gurgler shrieked like a harpy, spreading the alarm: “Help! Help! Achtung! They're raping the Queen! They're raping the Queen!” But no one came. And she knew who the helpless Gurgler used to be
—
with his stumpy body and useless flappers dangling at his sides. The twisted offspring of another pregnant Queen. The assassins had raped her too. Punctured her vitals with the sharp snout and flushed out the Gurgler prematurely. Now he lay forever in his cell, rocking back and forth, unable to do more than shriek his tale of woe.

She tried to fight them off, keep them from sucking out her baby Queen too soon, too soon! They were going to make another Gurgler. Stick their big pincers up her,
up her
, and tear the baby out —

Herr Wolfpants burst into the cell. He ripped off the worker bee's head with one swipe and slashed the domed eyes of the nurse bee with his bare claws. Then yanked their wings off and tossed their torn bodies into the hall, where they wriggled their thin hairy legs in twitching spasms. She still felt excruciatingly pregnant, as though her whole bottom half were filled with logs. Only the twelfth day! Her baby self still had one more day to grow, one more day for its eyes to form, its lips to bud.