Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees

Look out for other favourites from Odo Hirsch

Antonio S and the Mystery of Theodore Guzman

Hazel Green Something's Fishy, Hazel Green! Have Courage, Hazel Green! Think Smart, Hazel Green!

Bartlett and the Ice Voyage Bartlett and the City of Flames Bartlett and the Forest of Plenty Bartlett and the Island of Kings

Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool

First published in 2011

Copyright
©
Odo Hirsch 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

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ISBN 978 1 74237 683 7

Teachers' notes available from www.allenandunwin.com

Cover design by Josh Durham

Typeset in 11/16 pt Sabon by Midland Typesetters

This book was printed in September 2011 at McPherson's Printing Group, 76 Nelson St, Maryborough, Victoria 3465, Australia.

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ebook Producation by
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ODO HIRSCH
was born in Australia, where he studied medicine and worked as a doctor. He now lives in London. His books for children are favourites with young and old and have been translated into several languages.

Praise for Odo Hirsch

‘Irresistible!'
The Times,
UK

‘Strange, delicate, delightful.' Philip Pullman,
Guardian
, UK

‘Hazel Green is a memorable character, a child full of ingenuity and determination . . . Not to be missed!' Jo Goodman,
Magpies

[
Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp
] is a beautifully crafted and heart-warming story.' Maurice Saxby,
Magpies

Darius Bell walked up the drive. The gravel crunched under his feet, and Darius smiled as he heard it, feeling like an explorer crunching his way across a dry, rocky desert. But if he was an explorer, he didn't have far to go. At the end of the drive ahead of him was Bell House, with its clock tower rising above it.

The clock in the tower showed eighteen minutes past eleven. Whether it was eighteen minutes past eleven in the morning or eighteen past eleven at night, no one could have said. For years the clock hadn't worked at all, but an earth tremor the previous year had got it going again, although irregularly, to say the least. Sometimes it crept forward five times slower than it should have, and sometimes it stood still as if utterly tired out, and sometimes it jumped ahead an hour or three as if to make up for lost time. As to when its chime boomed out, that depended on when the clock hands happened to be pointing to the hour, which might happen eighteen times in an afternoon and then not for days together. Darius's brother, Cyrus, grumbled that when the clock hadn't worked at all, at least it had managed to show the right time twice a day. But Darius thought the clock was perfectly suited to Bell House, where hardly anything worked as it was supposed to and repairs were seldom made.

Whatever the time was, it wasn't eighteen past eleven, that was for sure. It was late in the afternoon on a cloudy day in spring, and Darius had just come back from school.

He had crunched about halfway up the drive to the House when he heard someone call his name. It was Mr Fisher, the gardener.

The ground beside the drive had once been a landscaped lawn elegantly dotted with flowerbeds and willows, but that was in the days when the Bells were one of the wealthiest families in the city and the House itself was full of the most costly and exquisite furniture. That had changed long before Darius was born. Mr Fisher, who had started off as a gardener, had turned into more of a farmer, and the landscaped land around Bell House had turned into a series of fields and orchards. Mr Fisher supplied the Bells with fruit and vegetables and in return he lived with his family in the gardener's lodge and sold the rest of his produce at the market, where his fruits were known for their exceptional succulence and freshness.

Darius dropped his bag beside the drive and headed past rows of beans. Mr Fisher was standing in a field of tomato plants. They were only knee-high, and he had spent the afternoon transplanting them from the pots where they had been growing inside one of his glasshouses. On a handcart beside him were the last couple of trays to be planted.

‘Hello, Darius,' he said when Darius arrived. ‘I wonder if you've seen Marguerite.'

Darius shook his head. Marguerite was Mr Fisher's daughter, and only a year younger than Darius. Some- times they walked home from school together.

‘I thought she might like to help me plant the last tomatoes,' said Mr Fisher. ‘I've been waiting for her.'

‘I didn't see her after school.'

Mr Fisher didn't say anything. For a moment, there was silence.

‘Can I help you, Mr Fisher?'

‘Would you like to?' said the gardener. ‘You don't have to.' But even as he said it, Mr Fisher couldn't hide a smile of delight. He didn't need assistance, but he loved his work so much – the ploughing, the planting, the pruning, the picking – that he couldn't help wanting to give anyone else who came by the opportunity to enjoy such a marvellous thing as well.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘I'll show you.' Mr Fisher took one of the trays to the furrow where there was space for the remaining plants. He shook one of the plants loose from its pot, and picked up a small spade. ‘Fifteen centimetres deep,' he said, crouching down and digging quickly. ‘Fifteen across. Pop it in – don't disturb the stake. Top it up with soil and pat it flat. Use the back of the spade. Three pats and it's done. There!' He stood up. ‘Leave forty centimetres to the next one,' he said, and handed Darius the spade.

Darius took it. Mr Fisher watched as he dug a hole, put a plant in, and patted the soil flat around it.

‘Not bad!' said Mr Fisher approvingly. ‘We'll turn you into a gardener yet!'

For the next twenty minutes they worked in silence. Darius followed Mr Fisher's instructions carefully, trying to do exactly as he had been shown. The last of the plants went in.

Mr Fisher looked along the rows of tomato plants, hands on his hips. ‘What do you think, Darius?'

Darius looked along the rows of young green plants as well. ‘Not bad, Mr Fisher.'

‘Can you
see
it, Darius? Not now, but what it will look like in a couple of months? When the vines are tall? When the fruit's ripening?'

Darius imagined the field as he had seen it in past years. From these little shoots, the plants would grow until they were taller than him and festooned with bright baubles of red tomatoes hanging in clusters from their stalks.

‘Can you
smell
them, Darius? Fresh tomatoes?' Mr Fisher's face was turned up, his eyes closed, his large nose quivering as if he could already smell the scent in the air. ‘Can you
taste
them? A juicy tomato still warm from the sun?'

Mr Fisher took a deep breath and let it out with an expression of complete satisfaction.

‘I love this time of year, Darius. I suppose that must seem strange. There's lots of work and not a fruit in sight. Barely a flower, barely a hint of what's about to happen. And yet I love it because I can already see it – I see it as it will be when the summer arrives. I see the flowers blooming, the fruit swelling. I see tomatoes on the vines, strawberries in their bushes, cherries in the trees, grapes by the bunch. In my mind I can see it already, like a dream. All I have to do is work and the dream will come true. Every year. It never fails. How many people can say that about their dreams?'

Darius thought about it. ‘Very few, I suppose.'

‘Exactly. Hardly anyone. Hardly a person alive. The work's hard, but I feel lucky to do it.'

The gardener was silent for a moment, seeing visions in his mind of all the growth that would burst out across his fields in the weeks to come, a smile lingering on his lips. It made Darius smile just to watch him. Then he began to gather up the empty pots. Darius helped him. They stacked the pots on the handcart at the edge of the field.

Mr Fisher put his spades and various other tools on the handcart and got ready to push it back to the potting sheds behind the gardener's lodge.

‘Thank you for helping,' he said. ‘There'll be extra tomatoes for you this year. You can take your pick.'

‘You don't need to do that, Mr Fisher.'

‘Nonsense, Darius. It's a pleasure.' Mr Fisher raised the handles of the handcart, but then he stood gazing at a pair of figures who had appeared in the middle of another field, where his pumpkins grew.

Darius looked. The two figures were dressed entirely in white, top to toe, and even their heads were covered and their faces hidden with a kind of white veil that came down to their chests. They were like two visitors from space, thought Darius, or travellers from another, ancient time who had somehow landed in Mr Fisher's pumpkin field.

Mr Fisher smiled at the sight. Then he turned back. ‘I'll see you again soon, Darius.'

‘Yes, Mr Fisher.'

Darius watched the two time-travellers. On the ground between them stood a large wooden box in which they seemed to be taking a great deal of interest.

Darius went to the edge of the field. The pumpkin vines in front of him ran in long lines on the ground. There were no flowers on them yet, but Darius knew it wouldn't be long.

The time-travellers had taken the top off the box. One of them held a tin can with a nozzle, and out of the nozzle came a creamy white cloud of smoke. The second one pulled a rectangular panel out of the box and began to look at it. Then he put the panel back and pulled out another. And then another. Finally he put the top on the box and the other person capped the nozzle on the can.

Now
Darius came closer, stepping over the pumpkin vines. The two time-travellers turned to him. They pulled their hats off their heads and with them went the white mesh veils that had been covering their faces.

They weren't time-travellers, of course, but Deavers. Although perhaps in a way they were time-travellers, because Mr and Mrs Deaver were a quiet, grey-haired couple, like a pair of small, wrinkled, rosy apples, and if everyone's life is a journey through time – which it must be, because you start in one year and end in another – then the Deavers had been travelling longer than most.

The Deavers had been keeping bees on the estate around Bell House for as long as Darius could remember. They lived in a building that had once been the buttery, and they also kept chickens in what had once been the dairy. The box they had been examining contained one of their beehives, and there were another hundred or more scattered around the estate. Like the Fishers, the Deavers gave a certain amount of their produce to the Bell family and sold the rest of it at the market. It was a perfectly good arrangement which suited everyone. Darius realised it wasn't a particularly common way of doing things, but in his opinion, that only made it all the better.

‘How are the bees?' asked Darius.

‘We've got a bit of a surprise here,' said Mr Deaver. He opened the top of the box. Darius wondered what he was doing. Mr Deaver hadn't put his protective veil back on, and Mrs Deaver wasn't pouring smoke into the hive, which was supposed to make the bees sleepy and less likely to attack.

Mr Deaver pulled one of the panels out. It was one of the frames where the bees produced their honey in a comb they made out of wax. There wasn't a single bee on it. And there wasn't a single bee flying out of the hive.

Darius looked cautiously inside. The box contained a series of panels like the one Mr Deaver was holding up. Darius could see a couple of bees moving slowly on one of the panels, dark shapes sluggishly circling on the surface of the wax.

Darius looked up at the Deavers. ‘There should be more, shouldn't there?'

They nodded.

‘Where have they gone?'

‘They've swarmed,' said Mr Deaver.

Darius looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘It's how hives multiply,' said Mrs Deaver. ‘In springtime, a mass of bees flies out to make another hive. Half the colony might go, sometimes even more.'

‘But there are hardly any left here.'

‘That's true. Sometimes, very rarely, one swarm goes after the other, and you end up with hardly any left behind.'

Darius frowned. ‘But if bees swarm every spring, how do you manage to keep . . .'

‘There are ways to prevent it,' said Mr Deaver. ‘Or at least to reduce the chance.' He chuckled. ‘That's one of the things that makes a good beekeeper, Darius, the skill to keep your hives from swarming. The last one we had that swarmed was . . . was it five years ago, Marjorie?'

‘Six, Herbert.'

Darius peered into the hive again. ‘These ones here, what's happened to them?'

‘The sick and the dying always get left behind,' replied Mrs Deaver.

Darius looked at one of the bees moving sluggishly in the box. It was sad, he thought. It didn't seem fair that you would get left behind by everyone else just because you happened to be sick at the wrong time. But Nature, he knew, could appear to be cruel. That was what Mr Beale, his science teacher, always said when he explained how some creatures survived and others didn't.
Appear
to be cruel, Mr Beale always emphasised. Just as it could
appear
to be kind. It was neither. To be kind or cruel you had to have intention. And Nature, according to Mr Beale, was without intention. Nature just . . . 
was
.

‘I don't suppose you've seen where the swarm's gone?' asked Mr Deaver. ‘Bees going in and out of a tree where you haven't noticed them before?'

‘Or flying up near a chimney?' said Mrs Deaver. ‘Or under a roof?'

Darius shook his head.

‘Will you let us know if you do?'

‘Of course. Does this mean the other hives will swarm as well?'

‘I hope not! We've done everything we can to prevent it. Every so often, though, one of them will swarm, no matter what you do.'

‘I suppose one in six years isn't bad,' said Darius.

‘Not bad at all!' said Mr Deaver. ‘It's a shame when it happens, but if we lose one hive every six years, we can't complain.'

‘And what will you do with this one?'

‘We'll have to restock it,' said Mrs Deaver. ‘Next year we should have honey from it again.'

‘So does that mean we won't have any pumpkin-flower honey this year?'

‘Not unless we move another hive from some- where else.'

Mr Deaver looked at her. ‘Which one?'

Mrs Deaver shrugged.

In the buttery, where the Deavers extracted and purified their honey, one long wall was lined with shelves, and the shelves were always stacked with jar after jar of honeys varying in colour from the lightest cream to the darkest brown, each of which came from a different hive. The ambers, browns, yellows, creams and mahoganies of the honey wall, as Darius had always called it, were mesmerising. Not only the colour, but the taste and texture of each honey varied according to the kinds of flowers from which the honey had come.