George had six days left, and he did not know which way to fly. He clung to a reed above the pond and watched the surface for the small warnings other flies missed. He was the best in his patch at holding still over water. His brother had been faster. His brother had died in the night, without a ripple, and George had never told him the truth about who was quicker. Six days was the average a long-legged fly could still expect, if nothing worse arrived first. George meant to find the hidden flower before then, the one whose nectar was said to stretch an insect's life past the usual count. The trouble was the map inside his head was blank. He had asked every fly in his patch and gotten shrugs and warnings that he was wasting his last week. So he flew to the tavern built inside a fallen log, where insects traded rumors over spilled sap. He landed on a barrel and listened. A cricket said the flower grew where no rain fell. A moth said the opposite. George bought nothing and learned less. He was ready to leave when a bumblebee dropped onto the barrel beside him, wings damp, one leg shaking. She introduced herself as George the Bumblebee. She said she had come from the rainforest canopy. She said she was lost, out of contingencies, and looking for anyone heading anywhere useful. George told her what he wanted. She thought for a moment and set a small brown book on the barrel between them. "Beekeeper's journal," she said. "Traded for it two seasons back. Never used it. Bee routes, not mine." George opened the cover. The pages smelled of smoke and old wax. Halfway through, a hand-drawn map showed a chain of hives along a river, and past the last hive, a single flower sketched in yellow ink. Beneath it, three words: long-life bloom. A compass rose pointed the reader east, toward the sun's rising edge. George closed the book and pressed his front legs against the cover. His direction was chosen. He asked the bumblebee what she wanted for it. She said she wanted a guide out of the log and someone who could read water, because her wings were still wet and she could not risk another wrong tree. George agreed. He had six days, one map, and a partner who could not navigate. He stepped off the barrel and out into the light, east now, with a road at last and less time than before to travel it.

By the second morning, George knew his wings would not be enough. The river ran east the way the map promised, but the map did not care about wing size. George beat his small wings until his back ached, and the bumblebee flew low beside him, still drying, still slow. They rested on a stone by noon. George counted the bends of the river ahead and did the math. Five days left. Too many bends. He had chosen the direction. He had not chosen a way to cover it in time. He searched the bank for anything that floated. Twigs rolled and sank. A leaf turned to pulp when he pressed it. Then he saw a broken walnut shell caught in the reeds, one half split clean, the inside dry. He climbed in and rocked it. It held him. It would hold the bumblebee too. He pushed it into the shallows and the current took hold at once, faster than his wings had ever carried him. The bumblebee climbed aboard and gripped the rim. George crouched at the front and read the water the way he read it above his pond at home. He called out ripples before they reached the shell. Left. Right. Steady. The shell slid past three bends before the sun moved a finger's width. For the first time since the tavern, George felt ahead of his own days. Then he heard wings above him, wings much larger than his own, and a shadow crossed the water. A dragonfly landed on the reeds ahead, blue-bodied, wings long as George was tall. She said she was flying east along the river to her winter grounds and had seen the shell from above. She asked what two small flies were doing in a nut. George told her about the map, the flower, the days he had left. The dragonfly listened. She said she could carry one passenger on her back, no more, and she was leaving now. George looked at the bumblebee. The bumblebee's wings were nearly dry. She could follow the river on her own from here, slowly, and meet him at the last hive on the map. George climbed onto the dragonfly's back and gripped between her wings. The bumblebee pushed the walnut shell back into the current for her own use and lifted a leg in farewell. The dragonfly rose. The river unrolled beneath them faster than George had ever moved in his life. He had traded a partner for speed, and he had bought back his days.