Chapter Four
The bees were leaving Sevenleaf, and Ambrose was heartbroken.
He stood in the circle of his hives and watched, helpless, as they streamed away from him. It was no swarm, or in no way that he recognised. They simply drifted away, a few at a time, vanishing beyond the borders of his gardens and into the streets of Berrie.
Not that they could strictly be termed streets any longer. The starflowers had grown at an astonishing rate and now carpeted the roadsides, shining blue during the day and silver beneath the moonlight. They had swept across the gardens of all of the houses and taken root, and no efforts to discourage their growth had resulted in the slightest thinning of their number. Now they were creeping into the roads themselves, and there they thrived, resisting the pas
