"Small Batch" by Brynne Karees [Part 2] + Q2 Prompt Sneak Peek!
Re: Visions; Q1 Release [Batch 5]
If you missed Part 1 “Small Batch”, read it here first!
“Small Batch” [Part 2]
by Brynne Karees
About the artist:
Liv is a freshman in high school who has been drawing, designing, and creating original art since her My Little Pony fan art days in preschool. In addition to being a skilled artist, Liv is also Brynne’s daughter, making the dual-medium submission both a mother-daughter work of art and a commissioned piece, bartered for “on-trend” fashion from Hollister.
“Silent Protector” is an original work of graphic art designed by Liv as part of the dual-medium submission envisioned for Small Batch.
Scotland, 1406
Bee came out into darkness, inside a cottage of stone and wood. The scent of tears stung her nose first. Then blood.
She buzzed the cloying room, hunting for an open window, any crack in the thatch to escape the terror her friend was enduring. Grunts and sobs made a surreal cadence in the dark. Then a sourness she couldn’t unsmell, and the sobbing broke into a gasp as the monster’s hand came off the girl’s mouth. Bee found a small break in the wood and fled the ruin of a girl who had already paid too much.
In the fresh air of the Highlands, she sucked in another breath and found the scent of Ceridwen’s happiness exactly where she’d feared it would be, laid down earlier along this same path, on the walk that had led toward the monster’s lair. Ceridwen had believed Gareth her savior. Bee angled her wings and followed the shining trace of that hopeful trail back through the night, toward the healer’s grove.
Until a darker scent clouded the way.
A grief-filled tang hit her like a noxious bomb. Bee shut her watering eyes in time to escape seeing Ceridwen’s sister gasp for her last breath. Was it cowardly to look away from Iseabail’s broken body? The shame gnawed at her. But she couldn’t rewrite a moment of it. She could only exist inside it, no more consequential than a speck of dust settling on the still surface of a pond. Those were the rules. Anything more, and the Aetheric Principles would rip her off Earth and into The Darks, with the other Guilty citizens of the realm.
She wanted to stop. To shift, and beg the dying girl to hang on just a few minutes longer, long enough for Ceri to find her. But she couldn’t. She had to keep going.
Bee had to breathe in the pain, hold it, because it was the only way to find the next one. These were the moments that broke Ceridwen, and Bee had to keep going. If Bee lost the trail and arrived late, if Ceridwen stepped into that moment before the glyph was set, then Wennie would die earthside, and Bee and Xayne would never make it home.
She flew on until the forest thinned and a Rowan tree stood at the heart of a clearing. On its trunk, a Gaelic knot was carved into the bark, three loops twisted back into each other, forming a tree. Marking the edge of Clan MacLeod territory. A soft, pulsing green light glowed from the knotwork carving; invisible to anyone untouched by the aether.
Bee hovered at the clearing’s rim. The scent of despair swelled, and she knew Ceridwen had just stumbled out of Gareth’s cottage and found Iseabail’s body.
Her heart broke. Quietly, like a memory of her own, she heard a song. Nyx, sending her a sound to carry. Something to remember. A song to hope she’d hear again. A song to wake the world.
Bee shook off the despair and flew into the glowing knot, toward Ceridwen’s next moment of need.
London, 2016
Bee came out into wind that smelled of diesel and the Thames.
A girl stood on the outer rail of a bridge. Young. Thin. Both hands gripping the cold iron behind her, eyes on the dark water below, mouth working around words she couldn’t quite get out. The wind pulled her hair sideways.
This made no sense. Bee had tracked Ceridwen, but this wasn’t Ceridwen.
This was Mabel.
Then Bee saw her friend, twenty feet down the bridge, in the deep shadow of the next lamppost, arms wrapped around her own ribs.
Ceridwen was crying. Silently. Watching the moment one of her best friends chose to step into an unknown sign of hope instead of stepping off the side of a bridge.
Bee looked between the two women, and understanding dawned. It made sense to anyone who knew Ceridwen. She was there for Mabel. Wennie would always be there for her friends, even when—especially when—they felt no one else was.
Bee hovered above the rail and latched onto the scent pouring off Ceridwen. Love. Hope.
Ceridwen wasn’t moving toward Mabel. She wasn’t calling out. She was standing in the dark, on a bridge, in a city six hundred years after she was born, in a country where she had no business being by her own history. Waiting for the moment that Mabel would step through her glyph.
Why? Because Wennie didn’t want her friend to be alone in her darkest hour.
Ceridwen, standing in the shadows, didn’t see Bee. She saw nothing but her hurting friend.
After a long time, the young Mabel, before she chose the face she wears in Anéliose, sat down and folded her legs under her so they didn’t dangle over the edge. She put her forehead to the lamppost and released wracking sobs into her sleeve.
The Ceridwen in the shadow exhaled as her friend let it out.
When the worst of it faded, Mabel lifted her head and saw the pink neon glowing off the graffiti of the bridge. Bee watched as Hollywood’s favorite darling found sanctuary far from Earth.
Bee closed her eyes and found the scent of grief again, the one she’d memorized. She couldn’t let herself drift toward the spicy ginger zing Mabel always brought into a room. She inhaled, and there it was. Ceridwen’s hurt, the familiar burn, was getting closer.
The tiny bee flew through the glyph, following it down the trail of despair.
Scotland, 1093
The smell hit her before the light did. Wet green. Wet everything. Smoke and fire tried to accost her, but at the edge of the Isle, in the green of Scotland, a bee’s nose tracked the scent of life. Bracken, peat, and rain soaked into wool. This corner of the world was brimming with it, even at the heart of a battle.
The grief was different here. Less bitter bite, more old melancholy.
Bee buzzed through the rain and the scents of war until she caught Ceridwen’s scent by the water, hidden along the coast. Unseen in her tiny form, she closed in on two figures as they slogged through the muck along a well-hidden trail that hugged the bank of the River Clyde. One was Ceridwen, looking the way Bee knew her now. Which meant that the Walk here, from the tiers of time, would happen soon.
The second figure turned as the clouds parted and moonlight caught the blond of her hair. The filth-covered woman was laughing at something Ceridwen had said. Each titter was a fresh micro-pang of grief whispered into Ceridwen’s heart that meant the tinkling sound sliced into Bee’s abused nose. An echo poured in from Nyx, confirming what Bee already dreaded: the sound matched Iseabail’s long-silenced joy. Coming from a woman who could never be her, from a time before Iseabail was born.
Yes, Ceridwen was grieving. But these small hurts weren’t the source of the sour scent Bee needed. This was old, swallowed pain. Bee needed the fresh scent.
Seeing how close Ceridwen was to her Anélioseian age confirmed for Bee just how little time was left. Something was about to happen, something that would make Ceridwen call out to her mother for help. If Bee didn’t reach the location of the sound Nyx had heard before Wennie could, there would be no way to set the glyph home.
Bee had to be gone before they arrived, and she still did not know where she was going.
Rain soaked into her wings. The wind made it hard to fly straight. She gave up her stealth and shifted into her dragon form. Tightening her scales to form a frictionless surface, the dragon cut through the chilled Highland night, using her powerful muscles to carry her up and away from the small distracting tangs of hurt; toward the source of the life-ending noxiousness still awaiting her friend.
She rose and scented the wind for a direction. The breeze off the west whispered a melody, and she turned toward the sound only she could hear.
Higher, above the smoke and blood. Higher still. Until she didn’t need Nyx at all. Along the coast, a swirling, suffocating scent of charred hope circled a jagged island abandoned in the middle of the sea. A fog of pain, bleeding through the layers of time. At its center was the Isle of Arran. That was where Ceridwen and her blond companion were headed. And something on that island would end Wennie if Bee couldn’t get there first.
Bee tucked her wings and pierced the wind and rain like an arrow across the water. The scent grew stronger with every wingbeat.
This high above the land, Bee could see the threat her friend had missed. Ceridwen was too distracted by the woman wearing her sister’s face. Wennie wasn’t staying alert, unaware the pair were being followed. On the Clyde, an innocent woman was leading Ceridwen to a cavern of safety that would end in both their deaths.
Bee flew harder. She circled the island once before landing. The peppery tang of terror was here.
Then she heard drums.
Drums and pipes.
Ancient sounds and new sounds and static, like a radio out of tune, all competing for her attention. She knew Nyx was reaching for her, drawing her toward the place in time, the exact location she needed to be. She latched onto the sounds, closed her eyes to a world much too bright for tiny bees, and tracked the scent that would lead her to the pulse of the drums. The pulse of Ceridwen’s heart, that sound that Nyx alone could hear.
She followed it down the western coast and into the mouth of a cave that opened low under a sea-cliff. Bee flew straight into the mawing dark, darting the tunnels, not one wingtip touching the jagged walls, so fixed was she on the peppery scent riding the drums.
She emerged into a chamber of damp, dark stone. Merged in the sensory moments of Ceridwen’s impending death, Melidara could see the silhouettes of the trapped women, as if cast from a shadow lantern. Huddled together, against the back wall, she heard the echoing sob of a girl who had lost all hope.
This was it.
Bee hovered before the wall, breathing hard and forced herself to steady. She had made it in time.
She flew to the furthest opposite wall in the dark stone chamber, turned, and fixed on the dying shadow puppets.
“Fuck me sideways,” she said aloud, “this is going to hurt.”
Melidara, the last Queen Bee of Earth, and the First Dragon of Anéliose drew down the nadir of Ceridwen’s suffering and flew at the wall of sharp, deadly stone as fast as her wings could throw her.
At the last possible instant when the chill of the rock was already brushing her wingtips, just before she became compost, the pearlescent swirl bloomed across the stone and the golden dragon punched through it like a needle parting the threads of time.
She was gone. Where she’d pierced the wall, a glyphmark was left behind: the ancient Pict symbol for the honeybee.
The Frozen North — a very, very, very long time ago
The cold hit Bee like a fist thrown by Tyson.
She was grateful for her dragon form as she tucked her scales tight against the ice that wanted to collect beneath them. A honeybee couldn’t survive this. Armor down, she darted across the frozen tundra, hunting a scent that shouldn’t exist.
Nothing. Nothing for miles. White on white on white, broken only by the long blue shadows of aqua ice and the glitter of water trapped under the untouched surface. No scent came to her that hadn’t been born in the cold.
But it had to be here.
Nyx had heard the screams.
Then she saw something. It was hard to measure with nothing but white between them, but in the distance, dark clouds of smoke rose from behind a mountain of ice. Signs of fighting, of destruction.
She was close. Battle was unnatural here, and only something unnatural could have dragged Ceridwen to this hometime.
Bee flicked her tail and loosed a whip-thin stream of fire from the stinger at its tip. No more than a candle’s worth, but enough to melt a hand’s-width down through the ice. She sniffed. Tasted the older air trapped in the shard.
No human had ever stood here.
She moved on.
Low and slow, watching for any sign of the place where Ceridwen’s fear would one day break through time and taint all this untouched glory. Melting and tasting the air as she went, searching for the scent of sorrow that might save them all.
Out on the white plain, a family of woolly mammoths moved. Six of them. A bull, two cows, three young, one so newly born its fur hadn’t darkened yet. The herd walked in a loose, protective ring around the calf, and every few steps the bull turned his great shaggy head to check the smallest of them, ensuring safety for them all.
Hovering, Bee caught the scent of the family rising up: warm wet wool and grass-breath and the milky musk of the calf. Under all of it, threaded through, the unmistakable golden scent of love.
She breathed it in. Took it into her wings, into her chest, into the marrow of her small dragon bones. The cold that had been eating her receded half a step, and the power that fed her fire warmed. She rose higher, six mammoths’ love burning gently inside her like a banked coal.
She turned, and the scent she’d come for drifted to her at last, as though it had been waiting the whole time.
She followed it over a low rise of ice and down into a wide, flat basin. In the middle of it, where there was no shelter, no landmark, no reason on earth for a person to be. The scent led her to a patch of ground no different from any other. And still it led her there.
Bee landed. She filled her lungs with the scents that would someday fill this place. This was where the world would try to break Ceridwen again.
Not on Bee’s watch. Not if she could help it.
The sharp tang of terror cut into her nose the closer she came. Her snout began to bleed. And on the wind, the sound of a woman screaming into a frozen nothing echoed back to her.
Nyx was here.
Bee pulled it all inside herself. All the scent and blood and pain and death and sorrow, into the middle of herself, enough that Ceridwen could get through the moment. Enough that Ceridwen wouldn’t have to carry it alone.
Bee lowered her head to the ground and bowed. Wings folded down, she whispered, “I’ve got you, Wen. I’ve got you. You won’t get trapped. I will not leave you out here alone.”
She closed her eyes and anchored the exact spot into her mind. She didn’t need her eyes for this.
When she lifted her head, ice had gathered along her crown. At the dawn of the world, knowing the fox who’d talked her into this whole blasted mess was still listening, she shouted, “Get the wine ready bitches, I’m coming home.”
She launched from the ice, rising over the wide frozen expanse. When she’d gone higher than she’d ever been, she didn’t stop. Up and up, until the great white cap on the top of the world was nothing but a blanket floating on a ball of water.
Then she circled once and hovered, catching the scent one last time. Locking onto her target.
Wennie, take us home was Bee’s last thought before the dragon roared and dove back into the white. Rocketing toward the earth like a missile aimed at the start of time.
Melidara flew straight into the heart of sorrow, and the world flexed around her like a membranous film—resistant at first, but too thin to hold back all the pain this world would someday foist onto humanity.
Bee tore through millennia of it, feeling every sting that would build the bridge, from this moment, back to Ceridwen. Back to where she was now. Safe, outside the trails of time. Back into Anéliose.
Anéliose , Now
When she breached the barrier, the torchlit hall of the tavern took her in, and the familiar warmth and yeasty scent of the place made her smile. Until the movement set off the pain in her throbbing snout and reminded her this was only the beginning.
Nyx materialized in front of her. “Did you find her? The screams have stopped. It must mean you made it in time. Did you save her?”
Bee rubbed her sore nose and looked at her biggest secret. That was more words than Nyx usually said in a spire-cycle. Bee knew she should comfort her friend, but the fox would not appreciate the sentiment any more than Melidara was willing to give it. Instead, the dragon asked, “Did you doubt me?”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “I doubt you could find your way out of a paper bag without my sounds to guide you.” Then the fox lowered her head, offering rare softness. “But no. I did not doubt your commitment. Thank you, old friend.”
As Nyx began to fade back into shadow, Bee hollered, “Wait, is there any wine left?”
A chuffing laugh was all that answered.
Bee flew out into the tavern, into the smell of bread and beer. At the bar, Aeliana tipped a pitcher of blackberry wine and emptied the last of it into Mabel’s glass.
Pouting, Bee changed course.
The bright smile on the blonde’s face would not save her from Bee’s wrath if that was the final cup.
Xayne was at his corner table. Empty cup. Empty chair across from him. Everyone moved around him like he was either a piece of furniture or something to be feared. She could tell by the anxious way he kept flicking open his pocket watch that he hadn’t spoken to a soul, just waiting for his moment to leave. Which told her everything about how long she’d been gone.
The man couldn’t make it through a single spire in public without his emotional support dragon. Bee let his annoyance warm her as she landed on the edge of his table.
“There you are,” he sighed. “Where did you go? You made me come down here on a specials night. You know I hate specials nights, and you… left. I should be practicing.”
“Aeliana said the wine was still hot. So, I took a side quest for some good ice. You know I don’t like to burn my tongue.” She shook out her scales, and ice from the top of the world tinkled onto the table. Slumping, she added, “Looks like I’m too late, though. I think Mabel got the last of it.”
Xayne rolled his silver eyes. “You are exhausting.”
“I’m charming?” she offered as an alternative.
She watched Mabel lift the glass, and longing pooled in the dragon’s eyes as fast as the saliva pooled in her mouth. “Do you think she’ll share? Maybe if I offer her a secret about Doran —”
Xayne looked horrified. “Bee, you can’t do that. We promised him.”
“But—” Before she could justify the offense, the kitchen door banged open.
Sir Basilton, the basil-plant-turned-sous-chef, held the door and bowed as the tavern’s head chef came through behind him. Terri waddled in backward, laughing, clutching one handle of a great iron cauldron of steaming blackberry wine. On the other handle, laughing her way into the room, was Ceridwen. The wine sloshed dark and fragrant between them.
“All right, you heathens!” Terri hollered. “I only ladled out enough for a small batch, so don’t be greedy. There is only enough for one pot.”
A cheer went up from the tables.
Ceridwen, still laughing, turned a head of chaotic red curls toward the room and caught sight of Bee. “Yes, Bee. That means you too,” she scolded. “I had better not find you swimming in it like last time.”
“I should report you to Kallista for slander!” Bee replied before winking at Wennie.
Ceridwen rolled her eyes, the gesture so identical to Xayne’s that Bee had to look at the floor to hide her smile.
And there, at Ceridwen’s heel, where no fox had stood a moment before, was Nyx. Quiet as shadow. Black on black. Pewter eyes fixed on Anéliose’s first Dragon.
For now, the two of them had kept their people safe. For now, the girl laughing over a cauldron of wine did not know she was the beginning. The gateway to the end. For now, neither of them had told her what it cost to keep her safe, or what waited behind the next glyph she’d choose.
Bee held the fox’s eyes a heartbeat longer than she normally allowed.
Turning away, the first Dragon of Anéliose launched off Xayne’s corner table, smacking him across the face with her tail on the way. She looked at him and winked before she hollered across the bar, “Cannonball!”
And flew straight for the most delicious small-batch blackberry wine the world would never know.
About the author:
Brynne Karees Author is a mother of five, an RN Clinical Informaticist, an ADHD basket case, and a daily cannabis user. She’s also a huge fan of urban fantasy, sci-fantasy, epic fantasy, and humorous fantasy by authors like Seanan McGuire, Rick Gualtieri, and yes… Peckham and Valenti.
Find Brynne on Threads, Instagram
This short concludes our releases for the Q1 Prompt “Side Quest!”
The Q2 stories will be released in early September. Here is a sneak peek at our Q2 Prompt:
Q2 PROMPT
Encountering the Unexpected
On your journey of flame, burning a blazing trail behind you, it is not always possible to judge what is ahead without losing momentum. Thus, you will no doubt find yourself bumping into something unexpected along the way.
How will you treat this unforeseen event?
With your fire you could choose to burn any obstacle to the ground, stopping only long enough to generate a firestorm before moving on. But perhaps you’ll see the wisdom in making another choice.... However large or small the unexpected may be, grandiose or of little consequence, you’re moving so swiftly it’s inevitable you won’t see it coming.
You can find our more about our short story anthology project here! —>
Thanks for reading <3
Love the concept of Bee!
I love bee!!