Why the Bees Sleep in Hollow Walls

There was once a town whose ruler feared anything he could not count. He counted the houses, the wells, the gates, and the stones in the market fountain. Beyond the walls, however, trees grew where they pleased and flowers opened without permission. This troubled him greatly.

He ordered every gate closed except the one used by tax collectors. Fruit could enter by the cartload, already weighed. Timber could enter in bundles, already numbered. Seeds were forbidden, because one seed might become a thousand and nobody could say where the counting should stop.

At first the townspeople admired the neatness. Then their garden trees flowered and bore no fruit. The vines offered leaves but no grapes. The ruler summoned the gardeners and accused them of carelessness.

Only Sena, the old beekeeper, said the missing thing was smaller than a gate hinge. Her bees had been driven outside the walls when the flowers were uprooted. Without them, she said, the town had closed itself to its own summer.

The ruler allowed her one hive, provided every bee was registered. Sena tried to explain that bees did not stand in lines. He gave her a book and told her to begin.

She set the empty hive in her garden. Beyond the wall, her bees gathered among the thorn trees. At dusk she heard them humming inside the stones. The wall was old, full of hollow spaces, and the bees had found their own road home.

By morning, guards were stuffing the cracks with clay. Sena stopped them. The ruler had counted every stone, she said, but nowhere had he counted the spaces between. Until he did, he could not claim to know what belonged to the wall.

For three days the ruler sent clerks around the town. Each hollow led to another. A crack in one stone opened behind seven others. The clerks returned with dusty sleeves and empty pages.

Meanwhile the bees visited the garden trees. Small green fruit appeared where the flowers had been. Children brought fallen blossoms to Sena, who showed them the yellow dust on the bees' legs.

The ruler opened one gate, then another. He never admitted that the walls contained anything he could not count, but he stopped asking for the bees' names.

Sena left the empty hive beneath her pear tree. When winter came, the bees remained inside the warm hollow stones. Years afterward, when the townspeople rebuilt the wall, they left a small opening near the top. Sena's grandchildren said that some roads were useful precisely because no ruler made them.