the new sustenance, and, in a moment, the thick feeder left off from the slab it was draining and drove its thorns into the more recent supply. The tree shivered and a sound very like a moan of pleasure came from somewhere in the matrix of branches.
Grolion loped back to the workroom. The two men, on their knees beside the design, looked up with apprehension, but he waved them to continue. “All is as it should be,” he said, almost genially. “Soon we will be able to put this unpleasantness behind us. Continue your work while I inspect the premises.”
He left the area and I could hear clinks and clatters as he rummaged through other rooms. After a while, he came back to the garden, a bulging cloth sack in his hand. Leaving the bag near the workroom door, he went to the tree again, saw that it had fully drained the latest steagle. Its tubules were again sampling the air. An expression that I took to be simple curiosity formed on the man’s foxlike face. Unfolding the knife once more, he cut again, standing on tiptoe to make the upper incision, stooping almost to the ground for the lower, and thrusting the blade arm-deep into the cuts. Out fell a huge block of steagle and Grolion stood drenched in viscous pink. He brushed at himself, then went to immerse himself among the singing fish, which gave out an excited music as the flavor of their water changed. The tree, meanwhile, was writhing in vegetative ecstasy, sending up new shoots in all directions.
The resident and the invigilant were now finishing the starburst. The former laid a line of deep vermilion against a wedge of scintillating white nacre, then bid the latter hand him a reed filled with stygian black. This he used to trace a spiral at the heart of the pattern, delicately tapping out the pigment a few scales at a time.
He finished with the black, then called for old gold and basilisk’s-eye green, two of the rarest colors from the barbthorn’s palette. The invigilant passed him the reeds just as Grolion hove into view through the doorway, dripping wet and bending to retrieve his bag of loot. “How now?” he said, his unburdened hand indicating the design.
The resident appeared startled to hear himself declare, “I am about to finish.”
“Then do so,” said Grolion. “I have wasted enough time in this place.”
Now came the moment. I flew close, but my rumbling buzz annoyed Grolion; he brushed me aside with a brusque motion that sent me tumbling. I fetched up hard against the side of the doorway, damaging one of my wings so that I fell, spiraling, to the floor. I looked up to see him frowning down at me, then his huge foot lifted.
“Look!” said the invigilant and the crushing blow did not come. All eyes turned toward the space just above the center of the starburst where, as the final iridescent flakes of color fell from the end of the reed, a spark had kindled in mid-air. In a moment, like a flamelet fed by inrushing air, it grew and spread, becoming a glowing orb that was at first the size of a pea, then the width of a fist, now of a head, then larger, and still larger. And as it grew, the starburst that had been so carefully laid upon the workroom floor was drawn up in a reverse cascade of sparkling colors, to merge with the globe of light, now scintillating with scores of rare hues, having grown as large as a wine cask, and still waxing.
The three men watched in fascination, for playing across their eyes were colors, singly and in combination, such as few mortals have ever seen. But I had no thought for them now, not even for my betrayal and the unjust abuse I had suffered. I flexed my injured wing, told myself that it would bear the rumblebee’s weight long enough. I bent my six legs and threw myself toward the light, willing my three good, and one bad, membranes to carry me forward.
Instead, I drifted to one side, away from the prize. And now the resident noticed me. At once, he knew me. He came around the edge of the tray, from which the last trickles of the intricate design were flowing up into the orb of light, and struck at me with the hand that still held the final reed. I jinked awkwardly to one side, a last few ashy flakes of nacre dusting the hairs on my back, and the blow did not fall. But my passage had brought me close to Grolion again, and his hand made the same sharp stroke as before, so that the backs of his hairy fingers caught me once more and sent me spinning, helpless — but straight into the globe!
I passed through the glowing wall, heard within me the rumblebee’s tiny last cry as its solid flesh melted in the rarified conditions of this little exemplar of the overworld that had now appeared in our middling plane. Freed from corporeality, I experienced the full, ineffable
Somewhere beyond the globe of light, the resident, the invigilant, and the wanderer went about their mundane business. I cared nothing for them and their gross doings, nor for the parcel of flesh, bone, and cartilage that had once housed my essence and was now itself confined in a coffin of lead and antimony.
They had feared my retribution. But there would be no revenge. Then was then, now was now, and I was above it all, in the overworld. I exulted. I reveled. I swilled the wine of ecstasy.
The man who called himself Grolion stared at the multicolored orb. It had stopped growing after the bee had entered it. All of the starburst was now absorbed and the globe hung in the air above the empty tray, complete and self-sufficient. Curious, he reached a hand toward it, but Shalmetz, the man who had finished the design, struck away his arm.
Grolion turned with a scowl, fist raised, but subsided when Shalmetz said, “A sliver of ice thrown on a roaring fire would last longer than your flesh in contact with that.”
Groblens, the fat village officer, pulled back his own hand, that he had been hesitantly stretching toward the microcosm. Grunting, straining, he levered himself to his feet. “Is it over?” he said.
Shalmetz observed the globe. “It seems so.”
“Test it,” said the traveler, aiming his chin toward the blue book on the shelf. Shalmetz touched a finger to the book’s spine. “No spark.”
Grolion gestured meaningfully. Shalmetz made no objection but with a rueful quirk of his lips, passed across the Phandaal. “You are welcome to it,” he said. “I will return to my job at the fish farm.”
“Give me back the steagle knife,” the fat man said. “It is of no use beyond this eldritch intersection of planes.”
“It will have value as a curio,” the foxfaced man said.
Shalmetz looked through the window. “The village may need it to keep the tree content. It seems to have developed a fondness for steagle.” And more than a fondness. The barbthorn had been growing, and was now half again as tall as it had been that morning, and substantially fuller. Moreover, it had grown more active.
“I will cut it one more portion,” he said, “to keep it occupied while we depart. After that, it becomes part of my past and therefore none of my concern. You must deal with it as you can. I recommend fire.”
To Shalmetz and Groblens, the plan had obvious shortcomings, but before they could address them, the traveler was loping to the base of the tree. Again, he cut deep, wide, and long, and in moments another block of steagle dropped before the questing feeders. The tree fell upon the new food with an eagerness that, when displayed by a vegetative lifeform, must always be disturbing.
But there was an even more troublesome coda to its behavior: even as its smaller tubules fixed themselves to the slab of steagle, the main feeder, now grown as thick as a man’s body, darted toward the still closing gap in the air from which the pink flesh had come. Before the opening could close, the thorn-toothed orifice thrust itself through. The end disappeared. But it had connected, for immediately the tube began to pump and swallow, passing larger and larger volumes along the feeder’s length, as if a great serpent was dining on an endless litter of piglets.
A deep thrumming came from the plant, a sound of mingled satisfaction and insatiable gluttony. It visibly swelled in height and girth, while a new complexity of bethorned twigs and branches erupted from its larger limbs. The man with the knife stepped back, as the tree’s roots writhed and grew in harmony with the rest of it, cracking the wall against which it had grown, tearing up the stone pavement in all directions, upturning the fountain and sending the singing fish out into the inhospitable air to gasp and croak their final performance.
The man turned and ran, stumbling over broken flagstones and squirming roots that sprang from the earth beneath his feet. Shalmetz and Groblens fled the workroom just as the tree’s new growth met the foundation of its wall at the garden’s inner end. In an instant, the wall was riven from floor to ceiling. The room collapsed, bringing down the second story above it, though when the debris settled, the kaleidoscopic orb that held a facsimile of the overworld, which in turn held the blissful essence of the house’s builder, remained unscathed, shining through the billows of dust.
