Scrivener Bees

Chapter 1 Clemency Pogue realized that the closest her parents came to each other was kissing her opposite cheeks at the same time. She kept trying to duck out of the way at the last moment and trick them into a little affection. "Clem dear, do you want a kiss good night or not?" her mother asked, eyes ringed with fatigue after a full day of work. "Yes, please," Clemency said. Mr. and Mrs. Pogue leaned down to the bed with puckered lips. Clemency feinted forward and then dodged back, leaving a head-sized gap of empty space between her parents' kissers. Mr. and Mrs. Pogue stopped in midair, lips unpuckering. "Rascal," her father said, tousling Clem's hair. "Sleep well. I love you." "I love you," her mother said to Clemency. Then Mr. and Mrs. Pogue looked at each other and sighed. It was less the kind of sigh you would expect from turtledoves and more the kind of sigh you'd expect from leaky tires. "I love you," Clemency said to them both, hoping it was catching. Clemency had stayed up most of the night before, madly scheming ways to make her parents fall back in love. She had come up with a plan involving two mop-heads, rubber cement, a bag of chowder, some string, and a hobgoblin. But she knew that it was not her right to call on the hobgoblin Chaphesmeeso unless a truly earth-shattering catastrophe was at hand, especially with the fugitive changeling still at large. But it frustrated her enormously to be faced with a problem she could not smash. She was Clemency Pogue! She had traveled the world! Twice! In pants of her own design! Vanquished dangers most could not imagine! And invented root beer in her spare time! Yet she could not make her parents be nice to each other. Sleep would not be denied a second night and was pressing hard on Clemency's eyelids with dry, cottony fingers. But as she drifted off, Clemency's thoughts took a working vacation to Brazil. She remembered a hopeless and love-struck boy she had helped there. Clem had returned to life the Fairy of Love and Tenderness, by the discovery of the dead sprite's name. "Twittamore," she whispered. The fairy could help her; she would have to, because Clemency knew her name. Just before sleep enveloped her, Clemency said, "Twittamore, come away to me." Clemency woke at dawn to the muted whirr of fairy wings. Near the window, the Fairy of Love and Tenderness used her wand to touch a fat, grundy housefly, and then pointed at a spider's web in the corner of the room. The fly's segmented vision became a collage of interlocking hearts, and giddy with affection, he charged the web. In the eyes of the fly, the spider was suddenly gorgeous, playful, each of those eight legs goingallthe way up. "My dearest! My immortal beloved!" buzzed the fly as he tangled himself in the spider's web. The spider loved the fly, much like the author loves pancakes. In a matter of moments, the fly was cocooned and several hours early for a lunch date. Clemency watched the fairy swiftly send two more houseflies to rose-colored doom before she heard her parents' muffled voices from the kitchen. "Twittamore," Clem said. The fairy's attention snapped to her like a sticky stone. Clemency crept to her door and eased it open a mite. Through the narrow gap, she watched her dad pour batter into a waffle iron as her mom gathered her things for work. "Not this year, we can't afford it," her mom said. "It's only once that you'll turn forty," her father said. "We should celebrate it." "Fine, celebrate! Celebrate all you want, I'll be at work. One of us has to make a living." "Now, honey..." "Honey your waffles. Don't 'honey' me." Clemency grimaced at the fairy, who was hovering by her head. "That's my mom and dad," she said softly. "I want them to be nice to each other." "Don't yell, you'll wake Clemency," her father said, tFriend, David Michael is the author of 'Scrivener Bees ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416907695 and ISBN 1416907696.