Envenonmate

9

A few hornets sprung into the air, made lazy half circles. More and more of them stirred.

Please let them hate the smell of citronella. Please.

She fumbled out the newspaper and dug for the matches. The matchboxes caught on the pocket's fleece lining. She would have to remove the gloves to get them out, and likely to strike the matches alight too. Her hands would be exposed. The prospect gave her stomach a wretched twist.

But it had to be done.

With an eye on the nearby landed hornets, Shelly pulled off the Velcro fasteners and used her teeth to work off one glove, then the other. The hornet's feelers wavered and the head pointed her way.

Her watch said that it was 12:03pm. Shelly's heart beat hard enough for her to feel it pulse in her fingertips. Time had rippled by like a brook.

I'm here, I'll get it done, she told herself.

She retrieved a matchbox, put it on her thigh. She didn't unfold the paper but tore strips from the outer pages. These she gathered and cupped under the nearest thyme bush. She poked out the matchbox tray. The hornet watched her with an inquisitive tilt to its head and beady black gemstone eyes.

Shelly struck a match low to the paper. The strips caught aflame, curled and blackened. The paper burned fast and the thyme didn't look like igniting. Shelly tore a larger piece, crumpled it and introduced it to the fire, dropping it when the heat singed her fingertips. Her anxious eyes watched the yellow tongues lick the underside of the thyme. Goddamn it. People set forest fires by mistake with a single glowing match, and here she was with actual fire and nothing was happening.

With a whirr of wings, the landed hornet flew to Shelly's upper left arm.

Her heart slammed so hard that she thought she'd had a heart attack. The ugly thing sat there, inches from her face, a waxy smear of citronella right under its head. Maybe it was too big to be repulsed by it? Or was the scent too weak? Aunt Vic bought the low-priced candles for a dollar each, the cheapest around. Maybe the scent didn't last.

Whatever reason, the hornet made its way down her arm...to her naked hand. Its bristled feet made tiny picking, scratchy noises on the coat's sleeve. Shelly knew it didn't bite, but it would only take a second for it to leap around and sting. Even as she watched, the pointed tip of its abdomen curved down and a drop of amber liquid protruded at the end.

She didn't even think. She grabbed a heavy glove and whipped a series of smacks on the hornet. She hoped to crush it, but its body was too hard for that. The hornet buzzed angrily, sank the tip into the winter jacket's padded arm, darted away and landed on the trail with a dented wing, two bent legs and a twisted feeler. The other feeler worked feverish patterns. It had also left a streak of some liquid on her sleeve—maybe venom or something internal. Shelly thought she'd won that round, but wondered how much fight was left in the creature.

The flames licked the thyme bush and finally caught with a minor crackling noise. Triumph broke a smile onto Shelly's lips. Success!

That single fire wasn't going to do much, however. It needed to spread and fast. The injured hornet was blocking her way home but the smoke should eventually drive it away. She'd light up another place within reach in the meantime.

Shelly tore a large strip of newsprint, held it to the present fire. When it caught, she jabbed it under another thyme bush. She watched the thin smoke emanate with satisfaction. Some of it was grey, but there was an undercurrent of creaminess caused by moisture. That would thicken the smoke and make it effective.

The hornet was still there. Shelly took up the newspaper and fanned smoke at it. It stood it for a several waves as if unbothered at all, but just when alarm began to prickle, the hornet buzzed away, flying crookedly up into a beach-ball nest.

Two hornets landed on her left foot—one on her shin, the other on her shoe. After a startled jolt, Shelly smiled grimly under her hood. Watching the hornets fixedly, she took a sheet of newsprint, rolled it into a candle, and stuck it into the flames. When it caught, she stabbed it at the nearest hornet. It sprang into the air, flew away. The one on her shoe waited. Without knowing she was going to do it, Shelly pivoted on her butt and kicked out her left foot into the thyme bushes, thrusting the hornet into the branches. It buzzed up when she withdrew her foot, but fell, its body twisted in the middle. Had it been closer, she would have been happy to stamp on it with her left heel.

Zizz-zizz-zizz-zizzzzzz

The hornets became enlivened, a noise like a half-dozen brush cutters going at once. Part of it was the smoke from the two small fires but part of it—and now Shelly cursed herself for her bad luck—was probably the distress chemicals thrown up by the hornets she'd injured.

She had pissed them off.