Purple Pop's Arc

Chapter 14 of 16

The orders piled up, but her one rare bee was gone, lost on the trip home. Without it, the moonlit honey would not flow, and her signature pops would vanish from the shelf. Purple Pop walked back into the woods at dawn, hoping the beekeeper could spare what she could not. The beekeeper's yard sat quiet under tall grass. Painted hives stood in a soft row, their lavender boards glowing in the early light. A woman in a wide lavender hat looked up from a tray of combs and listened as Purple Pop laid out her problem. They struck a trade. A young queen and a starter frame, alive with pale bees and pale petals, for a standing order of glazed pops each week. The beekeeper pressed two more gifts into her hands: a small blue bottle that hummed faintly, and a cutting of vine that glowed soft purple along its leaves. Feed the hive with one, plant the other, and her bees would grow strong. Purple Pop carried the frame home and set it under the shaded arch behind her cottage. She tucked the vine into the soil and rested the blue bottle beside it. By dusk, her new bees were circling the blooms. The shelf would fill again, but now she owed weekly pops to a second hand, and her week was already full.