All the Bees in the Hallows

by Lauren Keegan

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Bees choose their masters. Bees don't sting good people.

Marytè is a devoted beekeeper. She lives by the old rules: work with fellow beekeepers, be a good Christian and a good harvest will follow. These rules help her cope with her grief when she inherits her husband's tree hollows. But as harsh conditions and tax increases threaten the harvest, Marytè begins to question her faith, her community and her own sanity.
There is little help to be had from her eldest daughter. Austėja is no worker bee. She takes risks, speaks her mind and dreams of escaping their isolated community. As her mother works, she finds refuge in the ancient forest and the old beliefs instilled in her by her defiant grandmother.
When Austėja discovers the mutilated body of the Hollow Watcher and uncovers a honeycomb of lies and betrayal, she is intent on finding the truth and protecting her family. Will mother and daughter overcome their differences, learn the truth behind the murder and complete the honey harvest?

Release date: October 8, 2024

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 330

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

1557

Musteika, Alytus County

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Austėja

The bitter air strikes my cheeks as I stumble from the gloomy house into the snow-dusted field. When I breathe in, my chest expands fully for what feels like the first time in weeks. The pressure has elbowed its way in, sharp and stabbing, since my tévas became sick. Outside the suffocating house, some of that pressure eases. The expanse of forest soothes my aching heart. I glance back: smoke drifts behind the house, sifting out through the vent above the hearth. The door is closed. No one has followed me. I don’t know if it is relief I feel or disappointment.

I lift my skirt above my ankles and run. Get away. It’s all I can think of doing. Get away from home and Senelè’s wails, Motina’s solemn and silent expression and Danutè’s worried face. I can’t be there right now, in that room, with all that sadness. There is nothing we can do.

The waiting is unbearable.

The forest beckons me. The cool air prickles my nose, is sucked in, snags on the lump in my throat. I slow down and skim the edge of the swamp on my way to the forest. It’s safer this way. I don’t want to look at the iced swamp, but my gaze is drawn there anyway, and I wonder what is concealed beneath. What creatures lie stagnant, stuck? Waiting for spring to crack open the ceiling and let in the light.

The clouds hang low, dark and heavy. With each step, I close in on the forest, break free from the tenuous marsh and into the solid, fixed, pine groves. Distance. The gap between me and home stretches with every heavy tread. The space fills with spruce and pine, lichen and the odd oak. Beech and alder too. Close-knit and familiar, they lean on each other, as my family does now. Only I am leaning away, like the wildflowers in spring that tilt towards the light of the sun. My family are huddled around an ashen bed while I scamper away. Pine needles shake off snowflakes, dusting my hair and coat.

My body is heavy with the bulk of the boots, the winter’s-end snow and the weight of grief surging through me. I force myself to focus on the fallow deer footprints in the thickening snow, which sits more densely between the trees than back in the clearing. A capercaillie bird canters, echoes through the forest, and my shoulders tense. Spring is closer than I’d thought. It won’t be long before these birds perform their spectacular courtship and hungry beasts awaken from their slumber.

Again, I run, scanning the snow for traces of the deer, but the track vanishes. I crash into the trunk of an oak, falling into the slushy undergrowth, moss and rotten leaves hidden beneath. It is here, leaning into the oak’s sturdy torso, that I feel closer to him. It is only with this distance between us, between me and the bed where my father lies, where he wheezes and gasps and mutters, that I feel connected with him once more.

Before the coughing disease, he was tall and strong and solid. Much like this oak. Even as his seasons turned and his leaves fell, he remained standing. Before this illness, he never let me down. Now, however, he lies weak and small, his spirit ready to leave his body. It will drift on up to the High Hill, where he will join my older brother Azuolas, who left us last winter, and my older sister, who left before I was born, and Tévas’s own parents and brothers. He will exist alongside we who remain, but apart. It will never be the same again.

I lean against the rough bark, run my index finger along the lines that tell of his age, strength and survival. I rely on the oak’s deep connection to the earth, the roots anchored into the ground below my feet. I inhale the mixed scent of wet earth and must, the smell of my father. I will not walk this forest with him again.

I should pray. I want to. Motina would want me to. The new priest will expect this of us. But the words won’t form when I open my mouth. I tighten the linen headscarf at the nape of my neck and glance up through the barren oak canopy to the mottled sky. I plead with the forest; I don’t know what. Please. Save him. Keep his spirit here with us. Please.

Beneath the warmth of my coat, a shiver passes down my neck and trickles down my arms. Like an escaped gasp, the breeze sucks in around me. The crisp air constricts my lungs and immobilises me as the snow softens beneath my boots. The trees fall silent but my heart raps like a tree hollow being chiselled out by a woodpecker.

Senelè says the wind, Vejas, is the knowledge of the world. She says it is curious and determined. If it wants to see the bottom of the ocean, it blows the water from the sea and causes a flood. Well, if Vejas is here now in the forest, she is having a breather.

In the silence a cuckoo call echoes. Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo.

And the vibrations shatter my body. I squeeze my eyes shut. And then my chest expands, and the forest breathes once more. I slip, no longer held by the sturdy oak torso but shaken off at the foot. My legs are tingly and unsteady as I draw myself up. Home. I must get back, to the cottage, and my family, and the bed. I had been so desperate to escape the den but now my chest aches for nothing more than my family pack. Before it is too late.

I run again; hulking up my dampened skirt, I move as fast as my cold limbs allow me. My ankles are stiff, and I no longer know why I wanted all this distance. I halt at the edge of the frozen swamp. There’s no time to skim the edges, I must take the direct route. Slow. Steady. I creep across the tempering ice. This time I do not think about what is caught beneath.

Instead, I think of Tévas. At dawn he told me in his raspy, gaspy voice that he had one final request. I leaned in close with anticipation. His breath was sweet, honey scented. Honey-tea was all he consumed in the days since the mead ran out. His eyes flickered and then he fell into a deep slumber. What if I am too late? How am I to know of his last request? How can I do this one last thing for Tévas if I do not know what it is? If I’m too late, I’ll have disappointed Senelè. I shouldn’t have left.

Crack.

I stop. I’m almost there. At least I think I am – it’s hard to be sure with all this white where the swamp ends and solid land begins. My back foot slides away and my boot plunges into the water. Whoosh.

‘Ahh.’ Only shin-deep, but the shock of the cold paralyses me. I remain still, and the trickle of water beneath the ice directs my attention outwards. Deep in the forest, a wolf howls, and a breeze follows, sending shivers down my neck. I will myself to ignore the rush of adrenaline within and the worries of what might have happened if the ice had cracked when I was tiptoeing across deeper waters, and what may still happen if the frozen slab beneath my other foot cracks and crumbles too.

I set aside the fears, dust them off as if they are snow upon my coat. My focus is on getting home, to Motina, who will be angry when she sees my sodden boot. It will take near a week by the fire to dry completely.

I pick up my heavy skirt again. My arms reach out to balance as I lift my foot out of the water, and I drag one foot in front of another. Driving forwards. Almost there.

As I reach the cottage, my younger sister Danutè throws open the door. Her face is red and tear streaked. ‘Tévas—’

‘He’s gone,’ I say. The bird’s call echoes in my ears. The knowledge in the icy wind left a sting on my cheek, and yet I desperately want my sister to tell me I’m wrong.

‘How did you know?’ She looks down at my saturated dress and boot.

My stomach drops. I push her aside, entering the cottage, and realise I am wrong about my father’s scent. He no longer smells like must and earth, not like the forest at all. The air is thick and heated, and it catches in my throat. Not in the same way of the icy air outside, not in the way that reminds you you’re alive. I turn back to the door, but Danutè has closed it. Maybe if I don’t look at him, the smell will go away. I can hold on to the scent of the damp forest and the promise of spring, of life.

My stomach falls further, if that is possible, and I drag my feet through the dirt ground. I do not know Tévas’s last request of me. It is said that if you don’t grant the last wish of a dying person, misfortune will visit the person who ignores it. What happens to those who did not choose to ignore, but simply did not hear?

‘Austėja,’ Motina says and her low voice catches.

I turn and face my mother. Disappointment is evident in her deeply furrowed brow and the downwards pull of her lip. I have let her down – though she does not understand. I am not like her; I cannot just sit here calmly and watch him leave. I had to move, run, breathe in fresh air.

‘Come,’ she says, and her tone is gentle. I can almost believe she does not resent my getaway. Almost.

I feel the internal pull to be beside Motina, beside Danutè and my grandmother Senelè, to be at my tévas’s bed, but my feet won’t move. The chill and dampness seep into my bones. The grief sits heavy in my heart.

I swallow. ‘Did Tévas say anything?’

Motina’s eyes narrow and her head twitches, and my cheeks flush in shame. It is not the right time to ask. And yet I do not know if this slight movement of her head tells me he said nothing or not to ask this question of her now. I was not with my father when he took his final breath, but I endured it in the forest, alone.

I step closer.

My motina sniffles, Danutè sobs and Senelè weeps. Her weeps become wails, louder and intense. And then she cries with words.

‘Oh, my dear son, why did you have to leave us? Oh, why did you have to take a trip up to the High Hill?’

A white scarf is wrapped around my grandmother’s plump face. She dabs her nose and eyes with a tattered cloth. Her words are pleading; she sucks in breath. Sobs. Gasps. Tévas is in a very deep sleep, and she pleads with him to wake. According to our old beliefs, there is still time to convince him to come back to us. Though Motina does not believe this, it is not the Christian way.

‘If only you had a look at your two daughters and wife, if only you had stayed here and brought them up. If only you came back to your old mother. My dear son, do you not hear your mother speak?’

I am drawn forwards to Senelè’s lamenting, to my father’s bed. His face is no longer strained or pained, but slack. It no longer holds his character, his warmth, his cheerful disposition. His spirit.

‘If only you hadn’t flown away to the High Hill. Ask the earth to let you go, to open the windows and let you fly. Travel back along the high road and come back to me. Follow the bright sun: she will show you the way.’

Danutè slips her hand into mine. She darts a nervous look between Senelè and me. I squeeze her hand. She’s worried the new priest will come. He may not tolerate the old ways like the former priest did. She needn’t fear, though; the forest shows no sign of visitors. He will not come today.

‘Ask those pied cuckoo birds to lend their speckled wings. Oh, my dear son, fly back to us. Come to the window, so I can see you once more. Oh, we can cuckoo together, maybe that would wake you up. Oh, my dear son, you’ve forgotten the road. You’ve forgotten your daughters and your family. You’ve gone to the High Hill. You’ve gone to the High Hill without knowing anything.’

Senelè’s voice grows weary, and the words cease. She rocks back and forth, her arms around her torso. We stand together around Tévas’s bed and yet I feel lonelier than ever. She looks to me, but I can’t find my voice or the words, and so silence descends. Shame too. I was not here when my father left, and I am not strong enough to carry the ancient traditions.

I look up because I cannot look at Tévas or my family. It is too painful. The roof is made from the bark of spruce. Tévas layered the dried vegetation with his own hands.

He told me of the way he’d collected fallen conifers, including one from a lightning strike, in winter when the moisture in the air was at its lowest. Conifer was the best material, he explained. He selected mostly spruces to keep his mother happy. Senelè once told me that you build a house made of pine for positive energy but to absorb negative energy you build a house from spruce. It seems obvious to me that you build a house that radiates positivity. Why would you build a house that allows bad things to happen at all?

My gaze sweeps from the hardened dirt floor to the clay and rock, compressed to leave no gap where the first log lies and all others stacked up on it. Will the gloom in the air be absorbed by these spruce logs?

A thud on the roof and a melodic call. Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo.

Senelè’s gaze darts to the window.

Danutè gasps. ‘Cuckoo!’

I bring my gaze to Tévas and wish he were still here to make us whole again, to connect us, the trunk to all us branches. Without him we are not joined. If Tévas were here he’d laugh off this cuckoo, but he is not and I’m afraid I’m the only one to sense the shift in the room. Danutè closes her eyes and tilts her chin up. To her the cuckoo will signal Tévas’s receival in heaven. Senelè will see her son in the cuckoo’s call and will think she can convince him to come back from the High Hill.

I know it is just a bird, making a sound, just as it did in the forest. It does not know what has occurred within the timber dwelling beneath its claws.

Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo. Hoo Woo.

Or does it? It is sometimes said the cuckoo’s song freezes the actions of people, turning them to fate. My family are in mourning, and so mourning will be our fate for the year to come.

I don’t need a cuckoo to tell me of this misfortune.

Motina’s frown lines soften, and she no longer cries. Senelè squeezes her shoulder, thinking she believes the cuckoo is her husband communicating with them. But I know Motina: I see the way her lip twitches, and I know how she thinks. To her, the cuckoo’s call does not freeze her in mourning, nor is it a message from Tévas.

To Motina, the bird call is the first sign of spring. The cuckoo is here to sweep away the last of winter. She’s thinking of the work that lies ahead. The work she will now do alone.

With renewed encouragement, Senelè’s wails erupt again. They slice through the room as cleanly as Tévas’s axe into a felled pine.

‘Oh, my dear son, stay here with us. Ask the earth to release you from the High Hill and come back.’

Motina looks down at my father’s hand, clutched within hers, but I can’t pull my gaze from her face. The cuckoo has given Motina hope. There are now two reasons for my mother’s impatience for spring’s arrival. The first is to bury my father’s body in the thawed earth and let him rest in peace.

The second is to welcome the bees.

CHAPTER TWO

Marytè

Upon her husband’s death, there is only one place in which Marytè feels compelled to go and that is to the hollows. She is not absconding, in the way of her daughter. Marytè feels sick knowing Austėja was not there for her father’s passing, but it also does not surprise her that in that final moment of need Austėja thought only of herself. No, Marytè does not flee. While her mother-in-law wails, Danutè sobs and Austėja’s heart fills no doubt with guilt, Marytè finds the strength to rise, disentangle her fingers from her husband’s cool hands and do her duty. There is always work to be done.

The master is dead and so she must tell the bees.

Marytè marches through the dense woodland until she arrives in a clearing and heaves the rope higher on her shoulder. It is around one hundred feet long, heavy but durable. Flax fibres retted, hand-twisted and spun by Marytè herself. A small woven basket is attached securely to her waist to carry her trusted tools: carving knife and hand axe.

The river remains frozen but crackling sounds echo through the forest. It is unsafe to cross. Austėja’s sodden boot is evidence of this. She should’ve known better. Marytè gathers fallen branches and clusters them together, positioning them across the frozen river to the opposite escarpment.

She is pleased with her makeshift bridge. It is no medgrinda, wooden road, but it will allow her to safely take passage. Her bridge, a kamšos, is a less expensive, simpler version. She’s heard the men of Darželiai, a village six miles north, are building medgrindos stretching for miles and wide enough for carriages to pass, for the arrival of the Duke and the new priest. Winter’s end is not a safe time to travel through Lithuania because of the numerous wetlands: rivers, lakes, marshes and swamps. In winter it is like a freeway, a direct route across the ice, but in spring, travel is more treacherous.

It was three springs ago the Duke last visited them and so he’ll want to be here for the beginning of bee season, she presumes. Her chest tightens, as her thoughts drift to her husband Baltrus and how he will not be here to greet the priest or the bees. There is some relief buried in her chest too. Baltrus is no longer in pain or struggling to breathe. He is now at peace.

At first, Marytè steps cautiously across her makeshift bridge but her pace quickens as she nears the other side. Putting distance between herself and the river, she enters the ancient part of the forest. A mile from home, where the trees are centuries old, there is little human interference. She breathes in clean, fresh air. She knows she has made the right decision to come.

It was not easy to leave the cottage or meet her older daughter’s outraged expression. Austėja looked at Marytè with those grey-wolf eyes and silently pleaded with her to stay.

‘They are šeima,’ Marytè said.

Austėja lifted her chin in that way she often does now when she believes she knows best. ‘No, Motina, we are šeima.’ We are family.

Marytè was in no mood to argue with her daughter, and besides there was no time. It is her duty as a beekeeper to extend the news of Baltrus’s death to their bee family. Austėja knows of the consequence if Marytè fails in this: if she does not awaken the bees, they will fly away with Baltrus to heaven. Or worse, they will die of heartbreak, Senelè would say. And what will happen to her daughters then?

Marytè cannot see how her daughter can have been part of this small but active community for eighteen winters and not know the importance of their work. It has been in Marytè’s family for many generations, and in her husband’s for even longer. It is in her blood to be a beekeeper, and yet Austėja turns away from it.

Her contempt reminds Marytè of the unpleasant odour emitted by the black and white striped Hoopoe bird to deter threats. Only it’s not a bad smell that Austėja emits, but a bad attitude to their precious way of life. Austėja is this way with any responsibility that she has not chosen for herself. Why can’t she see? Marytè is a beekeeper, and so, once married, her daughters will be too. This is the way they do things.

Marytè sighs as she wrangles her way through the forest. Perhaps Austėja will change her mind when she marries. Marytè just needs to find the right son-in-law – when the timing is right, of course.

When Austėja became of marriageable age, a Marti, Baltrus was keen to take in a son-in-law, but as his health declined it became a lesser priority. Austėja, from what Marytè could gather, was keen to marry too – the prospect of finding her unique purpose in life enticing – but she rejected every potential candidate among their bičiulystè, beekeeping comrades, in Darželiai, to the north. Senelè insists they make a match for Austėja from a different village. Laima, the goddess of fate, blesses these types of marriages and sends misfortunes to pairs who come from the same village. Marytè doesn’t allow herself to be too caught up in Senelè’s superstitions, but she also does not want to tempt fate, particularly on the eve of her first beekeeping season as a widow. Whether the son-in-law joins their family from near or far it is only customary that Austėja finds a suitable husband among bičiulystè.

While Baltrus had been training Azuolas to continue their traditions, Marytè passed her knowledge on to Austėja. A woman, as she has come to learn, should not rely solely on her husband for her livelihood. Embodied in her future hopes she’d spun the word austi into her oldest living daughter’s name, meaning ‘to weave’. An ode to the woven-. . .