1st 5 Pages November Workshop- Krumwiede Rev 2

Name: Lana Krumwiede

Genre: Middle-grade Fantasy 

Title: DILUVIANS

Pitch: 

Ten-year-old science-crazy Beatrice is learning about beekeeping from her elderly neighbor.  When the neighbor’s only relative whisks him off to a senior care facility, Beatrice begins hearing things. Mosquitos recite poetry, moths whisper advice, and cicadas chant warnings. Beatrice has inherited her neighbor’s secret ability to communicate with insects. She’s the new Insect Diluvian. 

Beatrice is now privy to an entire world she never knew existed in her own backyard. She discovers how insects work together, squabble, and struggle to survive in a hostile world. Her new ability traces back to the original Diluvian who could speak with all animals, a legendary person known by many cultures and by many names—Noah, Gilgamesh, and Manu, among others.  Beatrice also has a run-in with the Diluvians’ enemy, a secret organization with a twisted scheme to recreate the Great Flood. Without any training, Beatrice must learn how to use her new ability quickly, get the feuding species of insects to set aside their differences, and enlist their help in averting a global disaster.

First Five Pages:

The first time Beatrice communicated with an insect was the day Mom finally agreed to let her have a beekeeping lesson. 

It was the perfect day for it—a white-hot July afternoon. Beatrice wore a zip-up suit with long sleeves and long pants, thick gloves, some serious boots, and a wide-brimmed hat with a veil that hung down to her chest. Kid-sized, of course. 

Mr. Andelin, her eighty-one-year-old neighbor, wore the same protective gear. Adult-sized, of course. He opened the lid of the white box on top. 

Not a box, Beatrice reminded herself, a super. That was the correct name for it. When it came to science, correct vocabulary was important.

A low, constant hum came from the hive. Quite a few bees were zipping around. When one flew by, a soft buzz would get louder and then fade away, like a tiny jet zooming past. One landed in front of her face on the other side of the mesh that hung down from her hat. She had to almost cross her eyes to look at it. “Hey there, little guy.”

Mr. Andelin looked up, bees circling his head like electrons around a nucleus. “Girl, you mean.” 

That’s right, worker bees were girls. In the insect world, females were fiercer than males. They were the workers, the queens, the warriors, the hunters. They were the ones with stingers. While Beatrice liked the idea of fierce females, she didn’t want to get stung by one. 

Gently, Mr. Andelin lifted one of the wooden frames from the super. 

Beatrice leaned in for a good look. Rows of tiny golden hexagons bulged with honey, and only a few bees were crawling around. She counted a total of seven. Oh, now eight. Most of them would be deeper in the hive. “Is the buzzing getting louder? Or is that my imagination?” 

“The veils are making them uneasy,” Mr. Andelin said. “They’ve never seen me wear one before. We need to move slow and quiet to keep them calm.”

Could insects really notice things like that? In the videos she’d watched, beekeepers always wore veils and used smoke to calm the bees. All the times Beatrice had seen Mr. Andelin working at his hive, he didn’t use either. 

The only reason he wore the suit and hat today was because Mom had insisted. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Mom to agree to this, and full protective gear for both of them was one of her conditions. 

“Why don’t you like wearing a veil?” Beatrice asked.

Mr. Andelin gave a tiny shrug and answered quietly. “The bees and I have an understanding. I make sure they have what they need, and they share their honey. It’s all very friendly.”

Hmm. That sounded very non-scientific. It was true that bees were intelligent. Scientists had even trained them to search out land mines in military zones. But they couldn’t have friendly feelings toward people, could they? “What do you mean, an understanding?”

“I trust them, and they trust me—that’s what friends do. How would you feel if every time I came to visit you, I wore a bullet-proof vest and a helmet?” 

“I don’t think that’s the same thing.” Trust sounded fine, but it didn’t seem like the best idea with bees. 

Pulling a popsicle stick from his pocket, Mr. Andelin ran it along the honeycomb and offered it to Beatrice. "Would you like a taste?" 

      

Beatrice took the popsicle stick, but there was a slight problem. The veil was in the way. "Um, how do I . . ." 

      

"Raise it just a smidge." 

When she hesitated, he nodded and said, “Go ahead,” then turned his attention back to the hive.            

Lifting the veil only as much as she had to, Beatrice eased the popsicle stick under it. Before she knew what happened, the bee was inside the mesh, buzzing around her face. Startled, she dropped the popsicle stick, which stuck to her pants. 

Part of her wanted to fling off the hat and run. But another part of her didn't think that was very smart.

“Beautiful work, ladies,” Mr. Andelin said. 

     

 Beatrice opened one eye just enough to see that he still wasn’t looking at her. "Uh, there's a bee in my face." 

 Mr. Andelin finally looked up. "Jasmine! Where are your manners? Humans need their air space. Now, Beatrice is going to lift the veil so you can see your way out.”

Gingerly, Beatrice placed one hand at the bottom of the veil, but she didn't lift it yet. "What if more bees get inside?"

"They won't," said Mr. Andelin. "Jasmine's just curious. And a bit too outgoing for her own good.”

Strange how Mr. Andelin thought of his bees like people, giving them names and personalities. And even stranger that he could tell them apart. Beatrice lifted the mesh a little, then a little more.

"That's it," Mr. Andelin said. "Out you go. No hard feelings, right Jasmine?""

The bee flew away, and Beatrice let go of a big breath. She told herself to relax, but she wasn’t listening. Even after the dozens of videos she’d watched. Even after the stacks of library books she’d read. Even after the four and a half essays she’d written on the benefits of beekeeping for a ten-year-old, which was mainly to convince Mom. Even after all that, Beatrice now had a twisty-gut anxious feeling about the bees.

Mom was the one who was queasy about bugs, not Beatrice. Whenever a bug showed up in the house, Mom refused to get near it, dead or alive. Beatrice would scoop the bug into a cup, cover it with a card, and release it outside. The bug was probably just lost, and nobody deserved to be executed for being lost. 

But this was different. A colony this size had about fifty-thousand bees, and if they got aggressive, they would defend the hive with their lives. 

Twisty-gut feeling and all, Beatrice was dying to get a good look inside the hive, especially the brood nest, the innermost part where the queen and the larvae lived. At least, the scientist part of her wanted to.  The scaredy-cat part of her wanted to go home and read about it. The scientist won out. 

Mr. Andelin was removing the wooden honeycomb frames one by one to inspect them. He moved slowly and didn’t talk.

Beatrice did the same. This was one of the things she liked about him. She could ask him dozens of questions, or spout as many science facts as she liked, and it didn’t annoy him. He seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes when she helped him water his flower garden or refill the butterfly feeders, they didn’t talk at all, which was perfectly comfortable. 

Mr. Andelin lifted another frame and looked it over. He spoke softly, but loud enough for Beatrice to hear. “Look, Hazel. Rosa has a mite on her back. Right there. Can you get it off?” 

Oh, gosh. Now he was talking to them. Did other beekeepers do that? People talked to dogs. And she’d seen a movie once where a boy talked to a cow while he milked it. 

Maybe he talked to his bees because he was lonely. Mr. Andelin lived by himself and didn’t have family nearby. Beatrice could understand lonely. She had Mom, every other weekend with Dad, and a few friends at school. But when it came to someone to talk to about ordinary stuff, not so much.