Free A Turn of Light by Julie E Czerneda

the fruit closer.
    Beneath the trees, behind the Uhthoffs’ home, were the hives. Whenever Uncle Horst found a wild colony, he’d tell Kydd, who’d would march off with his sack to invite the bees home. Jenn didn’t think there was conversation involved, other than gentle hands and a knowledge of their nature. Once in Marrowdell, the bees seemed content to stay. Like most villagers, they avoided the Bone Hills and meadows beyond, but there was plenty of nectar to be had between the village gardens and the wildflowers lining the gullies.
    Despite the lengthening shadows, they droned back and forth, head height, knowing better than any where to go.
    Seven hives. “Which one?”
    Wainn peered into the nearest. Bees bumped into him, crawled over his shoulders, then flew off on their routes. “Wen could ask them for you.”
    She could use Wisp, not Wen. Wisp enjoyed playing with bees. He’d whirl them dizzy then set them on a flower without a hair of their bodies left ruffled. Then again, bees didn’t appear to find this game as entertaining as she did. Best not have Wisp involved.
    Not yet.
    Which was as far as she let that tendril of thought go. The book first. Learn what was needful.
    A bee landed on her nose. Jenn went cross-eyed trying to read its face. “Would you help us find a book, please?” she asked.
    “You have to use its words, not ours,” Wainn told her. “Like Wen.”
    The bee left. Feeling foolish, Jenn crouched to look inside one of the hives. Something lined the outer walls, but she couldn’t tell if she looked at honeycomb or leather binding. Bees walked softly over her hands and arms, wings never still, their hum its own kind of music.
    Music that would change to a battle cry if she tried to take anything from their hive. Jenn had watched Kydd lift a panel of honeycomb, dripping and golden, using his free hand to guide the bees back inside. He cared for them, they trusted him.
    Who’d think to look for books here? Even if they did, who could, without being stung? She wasn’t sticking her hand in there.
    As for why these books were hidden instead of on a shelf—only Kydd Uhthoff could explain that.
    “What if he wants to read one?” Jenn mused aloud. “Isn’t it too much trouble?”
    “No trouble. He asks me. I know all the words.”
    She straightened to stare at Wainn. “You do?” She hadn’t known he could read Rhothan, let alone any other language. He’d been with them during classes, yes, but she’d never seen him open a book.
    He nodded. “I know all the words in all our books. Father calls me his library. He asks me for words too, if he doesn’t want to reach to the top shelf.”
    “So you know what this book says about changing one thing into another.”
    “Oh, yes.” A wide smile. “All the words.”
    Jenn smiled back. “Would you like a piece of Peggs’ pie?”

    The turn had come. It slid as night’s leading edge across the trapped ones, brushed blue over their ivory flanks, pooled darkness where their edges bled beneath the forest. It faded greens and etched black under flowers, intensifying their colors until the meadow drowned in waves of yellow, white, and mauve. The wide golden fields, rooted in the dark, reaching for the light, took fire as the edge passed over them and showed their true nature.
    The turn had come and shapes revealed themselves, small and anxious, wings ablur. Efflet. They fell silent and left their fields. Approached and settled carefully beyond reach, row upon row, pale eyes unblinking, claws knuckled at their breasts. Wisp ignored them. Unreliable creatures, efflet, but they sought his presence despite his tempers.
    Company, of a sort.
    The light of this world faded; the light of his lingered. In their fleeting balance, what belonged elsewhere could no longer hide. Wisp gazed bemused at his own claw, used it to snap the head from an aster. Such particular magic, light. Beyond the grasp of the wise, outside the reach of fools, though neither