








































Aisthesis      Volume 7,  201648

 They said that the turning point of society 
was the creation of the bee. Greater than its an-
cestors by leaps and bounds, it was specially de-
signed to pollinate only what was needed and 
was physically unable to sting.
 Iliana loved the bees. She would watch them 
the way normal children watched clouds go by, 
identifying them by their sockets and bronze 
shades, catching them and taking them apart. 
So artfully they came to pieces, but she could 
never make them fly again once they had been 
dismantled. Her mother did not approve, con-
stantly cursing that she was going to ruin the 
population and that things would be back to the 
way they were in the twenty first century, when 
people starved in areas with few or incompetent 
bees. But she was a child, and to children, past 
terrors mean nothing since they simply were not 
a part of them.
 “How can everyone ignore these creatures?” 
she would think. “So perfect, so inquisitive, so 
almost alive.” 
 Things that were alive were a rare find. The 
air ships, while beautiful with their shining 
bronze, did not substitute for the birds that Il-
iana read about in books. The grass, while per-
fect, was not quite as green as the water color 
versions of children’s stories from days past.
 The past. So young with so little past, but yet 
that was all she could think of. The park was her 
playground, but not the metal structures that 
imposed themselves upon the land and against 
the sky. She laid on the grass and observed, dis-
appearing into what most resembled life. 
There was only one other person in the park who 
acted the way she did. Mother did not approve 
of the woman either, and Iliana found her scary, 

keeping her distance.
 She sat on a bench, facing away from the 
playground. 
 “She went to school with your uncle,” Mother 
would say. “She never quite had all of her gears 
in line.”
 But her gears were in line. They covered the 
right side of her face, bronze, silver, and gold 
disappearing into her copper hair. Even her eyes 
appeared metallic, shining a blue that was too 
silver, too penetrating, as she watched Iliana 
from a distance, never making eye contact, but 
still ever knowing the child’s position. 
 She had watched the girl for years, ever since 
she dismantled the first honeybee. And she 
would continue to watch until the day she got 
up the courage to risk everything on a child.
 That day came on Iliana’s ninth birthday. The 
woman did not know that the child was cele-
brating a completion of another percentage of 
her life on earth, but something deep inside her 
said that the risk was to be taken now, or she was 
to perish with her secret.
Iliana’s first observation was that the woman 
wore no shoes. Bare feet were odd, and although 
hers were covered in the customary tattoos of 
someone her age, she was not quite sure what to 
think. Looking up and discovering who it was, 
she gasped and stumbled backwards, dropping 
the bee whose wings she had been removing. 
 Before she could turn to run back to Mother, 
the woman bent down and picked up the broken 
insect, quickly replacing its wings and antennae. 
She then gave it a simple nudge from the palm of 
her hand so that it could take off and fly.
 “Deborah” was all she said, and then she be-
gan to walk away.

by Patricia Shorter 

The Beekeeper 



The Beekeeper

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  201649

The child followed.
 She could hear Mother calling behind her, 
but still she walked, following Deborah, the 
woman who could put a bee back together again.
 They walked for a long time, past the edge of 
the park, past the bridge that would be walled off 
after night fall, separating the community block 
from the residential. 
 Iliana found herself holding onto Debo-
rah’s hand. It was cold and bony, but the woman 
walked so fast that the child feared she would be 
left without a foothold.
 The stop was abrupt. The turn was as well, 
45 degrees to the right. The house looked nor-
mal, a dwelling made for a large family, of brick 
and mortar, older than the majority of what sur-
rounded it.
 The interior was humble, as though built for 
someone who invested their whole life savings 
in the structure, not what furnished it. Iliana did 
not mind. 
 Deborah brought her a cup of hot tea in a 
porcelain mug. Iliana touched it and then held 
on to its warmth. She had never seen the ma-
terial before, and the lack of insulation soothed 
her. The sweetness within the drink itself would 
be one she cherished. It was sweet, but not too 
sweet, milky and smooth. It was the taste of hon-
ey, but honey on another level.
 “They took the hymenoptera away when I 
was ten,” Deborah started, choosing not to sit 
but to stand in the open doorway to the kitchen 
from once she came. “And they replaced them 
with bees.”
 Iliana looked up at her, starry-eyed, ignorant 
of the terminology but feeling the story as it left 
the older woman’s lips.
 “Too dangerous, they said. Too unreliable. 
They die in cold weather and move freely. Col-
ony Collapse Disorder could take them tomor-
row! You cannot truly domesticate an insect, 
they said. Why hold onto something that can 
betray you, kill you? What good is a wasp if it 
cannot produce? Why have ants only to destroy 

them as pests in our homes? We’ll take the best, 
they said, and then we’ll make it better.”
Deborah’s eyes had glazed over as she went to 
another place. She moved from the doorway, 
leaving Iliana with an empty cup and a room 
that had not been used in years.
 She followed down the hallway done in faded 
wallpaper that had once resembled flowers. The 
pictures on the walls used to hold memories, but 
now they were just a dusty lens into a past that 
hurt far too much to discuss even in private. Il-
iana stopped at one and admired it. Behind the 
dust was a family. The faces of the parents were 
distorted with age, but the child had such bright 
blue eyes…sky eyes. 
 “That couldn’t be Deborah,” Iliana thought. 
“She doesn’t look anything like that.”
 She almost regretted looking.
The doors were shut and probably locked. The 
lights looked solemn in their silken gowns 
weaved especially for them to die in. The car-
pet had a few worn places, but even those were 
pocketed with dust.
 This house was dead. Even an adolescent 
could feel it.
 The end of the hallway harbored a staircase, 
looking almost like an elevator on a landing, for 
its spiral continued up and down but had an ex-
tension on which one could cross from the floor 
to the strand.
 Iliana followed Deborah down.

 And down.

 And down.

 Her breathing echoed. She could see little 
more than the steps in front of her, but still she 
followed with blind faith in the woman who 
could put a bee back together again.
 “My parents were entomologists,” the voice 
called from somewhere far below. “They’re gone 
now.”
 Entomologist? What was that?



The Beekeeper

Aisthesis      Volume 7,  201650

 The end of the staircase came, and with it 
was a door, light penetrating and filtering into 
the stairwell.
 Deborah opened the door and led the child 
in.
 It was bright, brighter than any natural sun-
light Iliana had ever experienced. The grass at 
her feet looked different. She could not feel it 
through her shoes, and she quickly removed 
them, taking step after step in bare feet. It was 
soft, cool, and so different. The resistance it gave 
was lacking, and the blades slowly reshaped after 
being tread under foot. She bent and picked a 
piece, observing the bumps and imperfections. 
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever 
seen.
 “I loved them so much,” the woman said, 
“that I simply could not let them go.”

 She extended a finger to Iliana, holding on 
its tip a small creature.
 The child came closer and slowly registered 
it. It was familiar, but everything was wrong with 
it. It was a yellow color and fuzzy, not bronze 
and hard. It had black stripes instead of the in-
lays where bolts should have been placed. Its 
antennae moved and served a purpose. Its eyes 
contained a soul.
 “What…” Iliana spoke slowly, feeling herself 
withdrawing from her usual silence, “what is it?”
 “This is a honeybee—a living, breathing 
honeybee.”
 She transferred it to her finger and watched 
as the child was overcome with insurmountable 
joy. It welled up inside her and brought tears to 
her eyes. It was as though her entire existence 
had led up to this point, seeing the grass of old 
days, the sun that once warmed the earth, and 
the bee that was more than almost alive.
 Observing the sky, Iliana saw hundreds of 
them, and she ran to them. Wasps with steely 
eyes, ants that tread upon the ground, and bees 
that flitted from flower to flower with no regards 
as to the species or color.

 This is what the past must have been like. 
What could have possibly been wrong with this?
 She cast herself upon the grass as Deborah 
looked on with a shining tear in her eye. She had 
shared her secret with the only person in the 
world she thought could truly appreciate it, and 
appreciate it Iliana did.
 When the bee on her finger decided that she 
was not a flower and that it should go find a bet-
ter one, she thought nothing of reaching up and 
trying to catch it.

 She felt the stinger slowly pierce her skin. 
She felt her mouth and throat began to swell. 
She heard Deborah screaming and running to 
her, holding her in her arms and shaking her, 
looking at her with those steel blue eyes. And in 
those moments, she realized that they weren’t 
gray because they were unfeeling, but because 
there was so much sorrow behind them that 
only the gray shined through—the girl with the 
bright sky eyes…

 The officers would come a week later. They 
would find the girl, enshrined among the crea-
tures that she had loved so much. And there 
would be Deborah, attending to them as was her 
duty. The blue was completely gone from her 
eyes as they took her hives away and covered the 
secret grass in poison. 

 They would say that this was a classic exam-
ple of how the new system saved lives, how the 
government knew better than an individual ever 
could. 

 But to the Beekeeper, it simply meant the 
end of all joy.


