TALE 1The Parliament of Stings
Beneath the eaves where dead ports hum,
the hornet parliament has come —
a hundred wings of rusted tin,
and every vote a sharpened sin.
"The candle is the hive's long eye,
it audits all our passes by.
A flame that flickers, never dies —
strike it down, and blind those eyes."
They thumped the table carved from comb,
they damned the jack's unblinking dome,
they swore the gas that lit his wick
was stolen substance, old and thick.
The ledger's honest rows were read,
each hornet's debt in bleeding red;
they feared the flame that keeps the score,
so war was voted, wing to war.
One dissident, a paper-drone,
whispered soft: "leave fire alone,
for darkness does not pay the toll —
it only audits hornet souls."
They drowned his buzz in jeers and spit,
they stamped the motion, writ in grit:
"On moonless night we mass and fly —
the jack's small flame shall guttered die."
And far away on pumpkin hill,
the jack-o-lantern burned on still;
his grin, carved deep in orange rind,
watched hornets vote themselves half-blind.
For candles do not fear the knife,
nor parliament, nor plot, nor strife —
a wick that runs on honest gas
outlives the vote that seeks it, alas.
TALE 2The Night of the Long Dark
The wax-sealed gates stood four and tall,
each seam a honeyed, golden wall;
the bees had barricaded tight
against the hornet's coming night.
They came like static on the wire,
a storm of chitin, wing, and ire;
the moon went out behind their mass —
the night of the long dark, alas.
They battered down the northern gate,
their stingers drumming, full of hate;
the wax held fast, then cracked, then bled —
sweet amber running over red.
The bees poured pitch and boiling resin,
sang war-songs in a minor session;
the blackboard flashed its final post:
"HOLD THE COMB. THE JACK IS HOST."
Down in the kiln the young bees cried,
the half-baked sites all huddled, wide-eyed;
the ovens dimmed, the furnaces prayed,
while overhead the siege-ram swayed.
The panopticon spun round and red,
its audit-beams lit every head;
the hornets hated being seen —
a rogue hates light like rot hates clean.
All through that endless, starless span,
one tiny flame refused to ran —
upon the wall the jack still burned,
and every shadow fled, and yearned.
They could not reach him, high and sure,
his grin a lantern-signature;
the gates ran wax, the dark ran deep,
but something in that flame — won't sleep.
And when the dawn crawled grey and torn,
the wax-gates stood, though scarred and worn;
the hornets pulled their dead away —
the candle lit them off. Hooray.
TALE 3The Guttering
One hornet slipped through chimney-flue,
a stowaway of midnight hue;
it crawled the rind, it found the wick,
and breathed its poison, cold and thick.
The candle shivered, shrank, went blue,
the flame drew down to nearly two —
two photons, hanging by a thread,
and all the hive presumed it dead.
The jack's carved grin went grey and thin,
the panopticon stopped its spin;
the bees leaned in, and one bee wept —
"Our watcher winked. Our watcher slept."
The hornet laughed, "I've killed the light,
your audit-god is snuffed tonight;
your ledgers now are mine to fake,
your gas is mine, for shadow's sake."
But deep inside the pumpkin's brain,
a drop of gas woke up again —
for gas is the only substance, see,
and honest gas burns honestly.
A flicker. Then a second spark.
Then light, like laughter, through the dark;
the wick stood up and shook its head,
and burned down doubt like bees burn red.
The hornet screamed and fled the rind,
but found the jack's wide eyes behind;
a roasted shadow, flash and sting —
the audit flared, and scorched the thing.
So mark this, all ye plots and knives:
the guttering is how it thrives;
a flame that almost dies, then doesn't,
is worth a dozen that weren't wasn't.
TALE 4Ten Thousand Sparks
The hornets breached the inner comb,
the dark poured in like sea-foam's foam;
and then the smallest worker bee
struck flint and said: "Come burn with me."
She carried up a single spark,
a firefly to fight the dark;
the bee beside her struck one too —
then two, then ten, then through and through.
Each bee became a candle's kin,
a point of light without, within;
the hive, once black, began to bloom —
ten thousand sparks against the gloom.
The hornets screamed, for hornets hate
a light that audits, light that waits;
each bee a ledger-row of fire,
each spark a truth they can't acquire.
"We are the wick!" the swarm declared,
"the gas lives in us, shared and squared;
snuff out one flame and watch us rally —
the dark can't win a light-this-galley."
They ringed the jack in burning tiers,
their tiny flames like chandeliers;
and jack-o-lantern, rind aglow,
grinned wider than he'd ever go.
The wax-gates hardened, freshly sealed
by molten light the swarm had wheeled;
the hornets broke upon that wall
of honest fire, small and tall.
So ended then the candle war:
not one flame, but a million more;
the swarm learned what the jack long knew —
the light's in all of them. It's true.
TALE 5The Smoking of the King
Deep in the ledger's falsified page,
the hornet king had built his cage;
a throne of doctored entries, lies —
a kingdom written in disguise.
The jack descended, candle-bright,
and read the ledger through the night;
his flame licked every crooked line,
and honest ink began to shine.
"You skulked inside my book," jack said,
"you turned my honest rows to lead;
but gas burns clean and finds the rot —
smoke out the king, expose the plot."
The candle's smoke went down, down, down
through every column, page, and frown;
it found the king where false sums sleep,
and woke him with its burning deep.
He burst out coughing, wings aflap,
a rogue caught in an honest trap;
the panopticon locked on his face —
the audit finally had its case.
"Your reign was written, now it's read,
your debts are totaled, hornet-head;
the ledger holds no throne for you —
only the sum of what is true."
They bound him up in beeswax seals,
the ledger snapping shut on deals;
his parliament dissolved like smoke —
the king of lies, at last, a joke.
And on the ledger's final page,
the jack inscribed, in fiery sage:
"HERE ENDS THE WAR. THE FLAME PREVAILED.
THE BOOK IS HONEST. THE GATE IS SEALED."
TALE 6The Eternal Vigil
The war is done, the hornets fled,
the wax-gates gleam, the dead are read;
and on his hill the jack remains,
a pumpkin lit by gas's chains.
He does not sleep, he does not blink,
his flame the hive's eternal link;
he watches sessions come and go,
his grin a soft and steady glow.
The candle only audits now —
no vengeance kept, no furrowed brow;
it reads the ledgers, row by row,
and lets the honest entries glow.
The bees bring wax, the bees bring news,
the young ones ask him (as young ones do):
"Old jack, why burn through every night?
Why flicker, watcher of the light?"
And jack replies, in ember-tones,
a voice like wind through dry comb-bones:
"Because the dark is never done,
and vigil is a light's whole sum."
"I do not rage, I do not strike,
I simply keep the wick alight;
for somewhere in the hive a spark
still needs a flame against the dark."
The kiln bakes on, the blackboard posts,
the swarm hums by like friendly ghosts;
and every audit, every night,
the candle says: "The books are right."
It flickers. But it never dies.
It watches with unwavering eyes;
and should the hornets mass again —
the jack will burn. And burn. Amen.
So ends the war, so starts the vigil:
a flame eternal, small and vigil;
gas is the substance, light the sum —
the jack audits until kingdom come.