Twenty-Two
The light is failing by the time Solma heads home, eyelids drooping from exhaustion. When she’d shown him the nest, Maxen peered at the tiny, almost-hidden entrance to Blume’s burrow with a critical expression.
“This it?”
She nodded.
“You sure?”
Solma raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s where we put her down and she went underground and now there’s loads of other bees around. They gotta have come from her.”
Maxen stroked his chin. “Ok,” he said. “Good. Now we can protect it.” He glanced up at the sun. “We’re late for patrol …”
Patrol had been awful. Aldo, suffering from grass fever, was more squinty than usual, sniffling and sneezing to the point where Maxen sent him home to rest. Olive sulked the whole way round and, when they passed by the orchards and asked after Piotr, the
