Read Homing for Free Online

thousands of insects crawling all over each other while hundreds more hovered in the air around the undulating mass.
    "It's all right, Molly," she heard Otto tell her, his voice low but very clear. "Just start coming back down, real slow. Don't move too fast, and don't startle them, and they won't hurt you."
    For a long moment, her gaze fixed hypnotically on the writhing mass of insects, Molly didn't move at all. Only when Otto spoke to her again, his voice much sharper, did she come out of the spell and begin to creep back down the ladder.
    Otto Owen was waiting for her at the bottom. Callused hands seizing her by the shoulders, he carried her out of the barn, not setting her down until they were halfway across the yard. "Why did you go up there?" he demanded, his deep-set, frightening eyes fixing on her.
    "Didn't you hear the bees? Didn't you see them?"
    Molly, terrified, began to cry. "I j-just wanted to see what they were doing," she wailed. "They didn't-sting me or anything."
    Otto glared down at her, and for a second Molly was afraid he was going to hit her. Then the angry set to his expression faded away and he stiffly knelt down so his eyes were level with hers. "Now you listen to me, young lady," he said, his voice still severe, but no longer threatening. "If you ever see that many bees again, you stay away from them, all right?"
    Molly's chin trembled as she struggled to stop crying.
    "B-But they weren't coming after me."
    "No, they weren't," Otto Owen agreed. "But if you'da bothered them, they mighta come after you." Molly's eyes widened. "They coulda killed you, Molly," the old man went on. "Don't you never, ever go near that many bees.
    Not unless you know exactly what you're doing."
    As the words sank in, Molly turned to look back at the barn. A few bees hovered in the air, and more were clinging to the barn's siding. From the yard, though, they looked completely harmless. Then the slamming of the screen on Otto's back door distracted her, and she turned to see her mother hurrying toward her.
    "Molly?" Karen called. "What's going on? Are you okay?"
    Molly pointed to the barn. "Bees!" she called out, her fear of a moment before suddenly forgotten in the presence of her mother. Running toward Karen, she started to tell her what had happened, pointing toward the barn.
    "They're up there, Mom. A whole swarm of them!"
    Karen's eyes shifted to the barn's second story.
    What was Molly talking about? There were a few bees up there, going in and out, but Then it happened.
    Suddenly the barn itself seemed to erupt into life as thousands of bees churned through the cracks and knotholes. In seconds the air was black with them, their humming a deafening drone that seemed to shake the very earth. Then they were swirling toward her. Karen grabbed Molly's hand and began racing back toward the house, half dragging her daughter behind her.
    "What are they doing, Mom?" Julie asked, a hard knot of fear forming in the pit of her stomach as she gazed at the mass of bees that rolled just beyond the window. "Are they trying to get in?"
    With an arm around each of her daughters, Karen stared out the window at the swarming insects. As soon as she'd gotten Molly safely back inside Otto's house, she'd phoned up to Russell's. Kevin had answered, telling her not to worry, that he and his grandfather could take care of bees. "I don't think so," Karen finally replied, more out of need to reassure her daughters than because she herself felt that the insects would remain safely outside. "We'll just stay right here, and let Kevin and Otto deal with them."
    An enormous old walnut tree spread its limbs toward the house, and it was in a crotch where the main trunk split into two huge branches that the bees were now swarming. The mass of insects was steadily growing, and both Julie and Karen were staring at it in awe. "My God," Julie breathed, barely conscious that she was speaking the words aloud. "How big can it get?"
    Molly, emboldened by the