number of drones; in all of that number, she was lucky to find a single male to pleasure, much less fecundate, her.
And then I saw the hive. Built in the shape of a hexagon, it was too large for a house, too small for a palace, and seemingly too vulnerable for a fort. Its framework was of slender tree trunks. The workers had obviously uprooted the trees with utter ruthlessness and I was only relieved to find that they had utilized willows instead of oaks. Now they were facing the trunks with clay, and, where the clay had dried, glazing it with a material which resembled wax. Some of the workers were wheeling out of the sky with deep-bottomed bowls of clay from the banks of the Beaver Lake. Others were producing the wax. The production was not a pleasant process. Three workers were wading, waist deep, in a vat like an oversized wine press and, with the help of ladles, mixing a base of resin with an excretion from their own bodies, an odorless, colorless liquid which poured from their undersized breasts, or nipples I should say, since their breasts were no more than an intimation. (To a worshipper of the Great Mother like myself, it seemed unspeakable that a bosom should be perverted to such a use. Poor things, I suppose it was the only kind of maternity they knew, giving birth to building materials.) Once the resin and waxy excretion were properly mixed, other workers arrived to trowel it onto the hardening clay of the walls, where in turn it hardened into a glistening, yellowish glaze no less decorative than the thin sheets of alabaster with which the Cretans face their palaces. When the edifice was finished, it would dazzle the eye like a huge, many-faceted topaz.
Having first observed the workmanship, I now more closely observed the workers and confirmed my first impression that they were the least feminine females I had ever met. They were gray, hairy, and thick-bodied, with stubby wings which looked insufficient to lift them from the ground. The wings beat incessantly and thunderously, and the workers managed to fly out of sheer mindless exertion. All of them wore a single expression, or lack of expression, bordering on petulance (and none of them wore any clothes). Their queen was flitting among them and giving stern and precise orders in a voice of incongruous sweetness. “Apply wax here.” “Let the clay dry there.” “Who fetched this rotten timber? I told you precisely which trunks to cut.” She was as beautiful as a phoenix even when she frowned, and she did nothing but frown until she saw me.
Then she smiled and never once, during all the time that I talked to her, did she relax that fixed and perfect smile. Identified by her tunic of tiger-striped silk, she was small and delicate, with feet about the size of my big toe. Her wings were as tenuous and brilliant as a dew-touched spider web in a burst of sunlight. Her eyes, like those of the drones, were slanted so that they seemed somehow not to share in the smile even when her lips curved upwards and her small white teeth glittered with pearled perfection. But an alien goddess and not our own Great Mother had fashioned her. She lacked amplitude, and I do not mean of proportion. I mean of spirit. What was littleness in her body was pettiness in her soul.
“My dear neighbor,” she said, casually stroking what appeared to be a foxtail draped around her neck. “Your coming is as the new moon out of the frosty treetops. I wish that I had tiger lilies to strew at your feet. I wish that I had myrrh to bathe your ankles…”
I am a blunt woman myself and her niceties began to cloy. I shoved forward my basket. “I’m Zoe, the Dryad, and I’ve brought you some acorns and a partridge.”
“Acorns and a partridge,” she echoed, with seeming delight (and perhaps a tinge of mockery for the graceless rustic who brought such inelegant gifts?). “A rarity of rarities.” The foxtail twitched; it was obviously alive and did not belong to a fox.
I fought down the urge to throw the partridge in her face and break her porcelain composure. I must not jeopardize my mission with any outbursts of temper; I must imitate Kora.
“I have come to welcome you to the Country of the Beasts.”
“Your presence in itself is a welcome. Your gifts are beyond measure.” What would she have said if I had brought her diamonds or sapphires? “As you see, my humble dwelling is far from finished. Still, there is a room where we may visit and exchange those confidences which unite the ladies of all lands. Perhaps you will teach me the customs of your land so that I may comport myself with fitting decorum. In my own country, I was a queen. Here, I am a guest, and perhaps I may unintentionally give offense.”
The so-called humble dwelling was a labyrinth which would have put the famous architect Daedalus to shame. The wax-glazed walls glittered like many mirrors, and at every turn we confronted our own images: Saffron’s perpetual smile, my own stout, reddish features which looked unbelievably coarse beside such exquisiteness and which, try as I might, wore a look of stoic determination instead of pleased expectation. Corridors led into corridors, rooms into rooms. Candelabra, burning with myriad lily-shaped candles, hung from the ceilings and bathed us in a shifting gauze of light. In one room, honey bees were depositing nectar in silver bowls; in another, a worker with a ladle was mixing pollen and wine and stirring the mixture as vigorously as a female Centaur might sweep a floor. Finally we found ourselves in Saffron’s audience room, hexagonal like the hive and apparently situated at its exact center.
Leopard skins covered the floor to a thickness of several inches, and the black and golden spots, reflected endlessly in the polished walls, gave me the feeling of a jungle infested with beautiful, merciless animals. A wicker chair, supported by silken threads and backless to accommodate the wings of the queen, swayed from the ceiling. In the center of the room there was a stone pedestal curiously lacking a statue. Perhaps it was intended to hold an image, as yet uncarved or uncast, of a winged deity.
She shrugged a tiny helpless shrug. “Because of the storm, we arrived with few belongings. You must forgive my poor room. Not even a statue for my pedestal.” (Never mind, I thought. Given a little time and you’ll have stolen all you need.) She motioned me to the skins and nodded deprecatingly at the chair. “You will not find it comfortable.” (She meant that my weight would snap the supporting threads.) With a brief flutter she settled into a chair, dangling her ankles, and peered down at me with a curious mixture of deference and-derision? Defiance? I could not read such inscrutability. I took my revenge by imagining her a cockatoo on a perch in the palace of an Egyptian pharaoh, and the ludicrous image salved my pride.
“And the Minotaur youth. Your noble-maned young friend? I saw him with you the day of our arrival. Where is he now?”
“His name is Eunostos and he got in a fight when he-”
“Yes?”
I might as well tell her the truth and watch her reaction. “When he quarreled over a Dryad with a band of Panisci. He thought they had kidnapped her.”
“And had they?” She never flickered an amber eyelash.
“Yes. But they sold her, it seems. Nobody knows who bought her.”
“A pity. But this Eunostos. I should imagine he gave a good account of himself.”
“He always does,” I said proudly. “This time he took on six at once and left all of them with a cracked horn or a broken hoof. He’s recovering in my tree.”
“I trust his injuries will heal? Nothing vital is permanently impaired?”
“Nothing at all.”
“A beastly young bull,” she said with admiration, using the term “beastly” as we do here in the country, just as a Man might say “manly.” Saffron herself was a Beast according to our definition, much as I hated to claim her.
Then I saw the pendant; Kora’s pendant, the silver effigy of her Centaur father. Or rather I caught a tiny glimpse of silver horns glinting in an open casket of jewels: anklets of amber from the rivers of the far north, ivory necklaces from the land of the Nubians, malachite pins from the local workshop of the Telchins and no doubt stolen from them. It may have been foolish or forgetful of her to entertain me in the very room which contained incriminating evidence. Perhaps my visit had taken her by surprise. On the other hand, the queens of the Thriae are supremely confident that their smooth tongues can extricate them from any predicament. Precautions seem to them beneath their pride.
I tried to look inscrutable and, so far as I could tell from her frozen smile, she had not observed my discovery.
“Well,” I said, “I have kept you from your workers long enough.” I could not resist adding, “They seem to need some direction.”
She laughed. “Indeed. They have two virtues, strong wings and mindless obedience.”
“And the drones?”
“One virtue at best. But we must make do with the resources at hand, mustn’t we?” Her interest in Eunostos
