I’m having a tough time with this chapter.  My gut tells me that my system of “magic” isn’t quite built yet; that I don’t really have a handle on how magic works in this world.  I should probably do something about that…but my gut also tells me to keep writing…

At any rate, here’s an excerpt from the latest:

            The hive is strong, it sings, it dances, it revels in the old tree.  Smell the queen, taste her, lovelovelove her!  But on the wind, there is something else, something greater-than-queen, and the hive loves deeper, the queen loves for the first time something not of her own body.  Loves it, follows it out of the darkness of the hive, into bright sunlight, open air.  It is wrong to be out so far in the wind, in the sun!  But love is stronger than fear, stronger than the wrongness that aches.

            It is God, oh God!  And He sits on the ground and calls us all to his hand, and we build for Him of our love, our lives, and his love devours us.  Four times, he devours us, kingly, kindly, and it is wrongness but it is right, but it is love, and how, how, oh God!  We kill our forty days of summer in the few hours it takes to serve you, feed you.  How sweet to die in your hands!

            The queen landed on his cheek.  Lisk didn’t move to brush her off.  She should sting him.  He had killed them all, all…

            Don’t be afraid.  She loves you, Lisk.

            Love.  The queen edged her way into his hair.  He felt her laboring there for a long moment, and then she was still.  The song that tickled his ears faded.  Lisk reached up to take her out, but his hands were trembling and he tore her instead. 

            Anna was quiet.  Lisk held the queen’s mangled body in his hands, sick with what he had done.  Love.

            Lisk.  You didn’t know.

            As if ignorance made this…easier.  As if that was an excuse.  Didn’t know, didn’t think, just…ate.  Devoured.  Lisk didn’t know what to do with the queen, now.  He held her, torn and gory, in his hands.  The hive had thought he was God—what was it Vangel West had said?  God was good; not nice. 

            You didn’t know.

            “Did you, Anna?” he asked.

            She didn’t answer him.  And so he knew she’d known.  This whole time, she’d known he was killing the hive, stealing their days, just so he could eat sweets. 

            Lisk, no…

            Yes.  Yes, and this was more horrible than…anything.  More horrible than his wings’ whispers about Papa being a murderer.  More terrible than the vision of the dragon.  This wasn’t just wickedness inside him, this was wickedness all through the world.  How could he trust anything, if he couldn’t trust Anna? 

            Lisk, I love you, please…

            Lisk ran from her.  It was all he could think to do.  His feet slipped on the grass, so he had to catch himself, and when he did, he smashed the queen’s body into the ground.  Anna called out for him, but he ignored her, pulled himself up, and ran.  Eyes closed, mind open, Lisk ran through God’s world.  The prairie grass whipped his legs.  Faster.  Faster!  Until his wings tore off, until speed ripped Anna away from him, and he was free of her, free of a good God that killed bees and stole their honey. 

            But he loved her even as he ran.  And maybe that was the worst thing, knowing he did.  Because he never wanted to stop loving her.  He’d worshipped her.  He’d loved her, and she’d known the whole time what he was doing, and hadn’t told him, and why?  Why, oh God, Anna? 

            Not just bees, Lisk.

            She wasn’t near him.  He didn’t see her.  Lisk wiped his eyes, and kept running.  Her voice tumbled down from the tips of his wings to his shoulders, rolled into his mind.

            Men, women, children, animals…everything will love you, obey you.

            Let them hate me instead.  I’d rather they hate me.  Hate you.