of that animal. Wild tigers and pangolins are nearly extinct now in China because of their value in traditional Chinese medicine, and bats are routinely eaten or used in traditional cures.”
I shivered, grossed out at the thought, but if anyone should be understanding of cultural differences, it was me.
“In Myanmar, you can walk into a major market and purchase a slice of elephant skin, which they believe heals eczema,” Imogen continued. “In spite of the advent of modern medicine, the demand for exotic animal parts like rhinoceros horns, tiger bones and claws, pangolin scales, even donkey hides has actually been increasing. That, of course, drives the animal trafficking. A kilogram of elephant skin goes for about a hundred dollars. To protect the endangered elephants, conservationists use swarms of African bees to try to drive wild herds away from the areas poachers are known to frequent. Elephants are terrified of bees.”
“Their stingers can penetrate an elephant’s hide?”
“No. It’s too thick, but when bees swarm—and African bees swarm aggressively—hundreds might sting an elephant in its most sensitive areas, the trunk, mouth, and eyes. Perhaps even thousands.”
I cringed, getting a mental picture of the horrifying attack.
“Our ancestors derived from such an incident,” Imogen said. “Our researchers have extensively studied the origin of our species. They’ve tracked it back to a single Asian elephant. It disturbed a hive—they can house forty-thousand or more bees—and was stung in overwhelming numbers. Some enterprising fellow then found the dead elephant and sold its parts, resulting in quite a payday no doubt. But that wasn’t the only result. We don’t know the exact number, but many people ingested the medicines that were made from that elephant, who’d been poisoned with the venom of thousands of bees. The humans took ill, appeared to die, and then awoke hours or days later, depending on their health before they took this ‘cure.’”
“They became vampires,” I said, understanding now.
“Yes. The mass amounts of venom caused their livers to fail. Like all of our kind, they were no longer able to digest food and process its fats, carbohydrates, and protein and get the nutrients into the bloodstream. They were forced to drink the nutrient-rich blood of humans to survive. Those who refused and continued to attempt to eat human food, died. That’s also why our kind cannot carry children to viability. The liver is what produces blood during fetal development.”
“So vampires can get pregnant?”
“Not all of them—not the worker bees.” She wrinkled her nose at her pun. “But there are tales of queens mating successfully and producing live offspring. Long before my time—I’ve never seen it happen, but there is always hope.”
“Is that why it takes so many vampire bites to turn a human? Because we’re essentially like bees?”
“Exactly—a single bee sting is unlikely to kill a human. But a swarm...”
She smiled, and I wondered how it could be so beautiful and so terrifying at the same time.
“People think of elephants as calm, friendly creatures because of the pitiful, defeated examples they’ve seen in zoos,” she said. “But in the wild, when threatened, an elephant can be extremely dangerous, deadly even. Elephants kill five hundred humans a year. Thousand pound logs are like twigs to them, and when provoked they can rampage with devastating results.”
Her tone expressed admiration. “Both our ancestral species are quite deadly when they want to be. Did you know both are matriarchal as well?”
I shook my head. Neither my Amish schooling nor my own reading had included any information on the societal relationships of either elephants or bees.
“They always look to a female for leadership,” Imogen said. “No one is sure why elephants are this way, but in honeybees, it’s a pheromone possessed by the queen bee that causes the drones to follow and serve her—and die to protect her if necessary. She is also responsible for the well-being of her hive. Which is why you, little one, will make an excellent queen someday.”
“Queen? Me?”
She lifted her hands in a reassuring gesture. “Not for a long time—I’m nowhere near ready to hand over my reign. Perhaps a few thousand years from now. But when the time comes, you will be ready, and I’ll rest easy knowing our people are in competent hands.”
“This is... this all sounds crazy. I may be your daughter, but I would make a terrible ‘queen bee.’”
“At the moment, yes, but you’ll learn. I will teach you everything I know.”
“But I don’t even have that... pheromone thing or whatever.”
“Don’t you?” She gave me a smirk. “Do