1.27.19
It was on one of these afternoons, somewhere between chores and suppertime, that the orchard keeper’s wife came to visit. “Would you like to come see our bees?” she asked Luca. He nodded, and she took his hand. On the walk to their property, she explained to Luca that the bees ate the sweet liquid in the center of flowers, and how bees help flowers make more flowers by delivering pollen between male and female plants on their legs. Luca didn’t grasp it all, but it sounded too good to believe. “Did you bring the bees here?” he asked. No, she said. She said she and her husband had set up their apiary to help the bees find a place to live and make their honey. In exchange for their safe keeping, the bees helped keep their orchard healthy, and provided them with wax and honey. She explained that the bees had been there on the mountain before Luca was born, before she and her husband had moved to the village, even before the village was a village. It all sounded very complicated to Luca, and he didn’t know if the orchard keeper’s wife was just telling him a story to entertain him, or if it was the truth. It made him think about how long the mountain had been around, and whether there was a time when there weren’t any people at all, and the only things that lived on it were plants and bugs and other animals. That didn’t seem right to Luca, but the questions this new reality raised were making him tired, so he decided to put them away for later.
Thanks for reading. More next week.