#a character in fast n furious wears this outfit. apparently.

[crafting-mojo]

shes fast, hes furious

[mairzymarzipan]

The Boy with the Twine Ball Heart

I feel my heart beating Oh, you make me feel Like I'm alive again

This story has been pretty persistent clawing itself out of my brain

Another possible future chapter, maybe from book 2?  

So I brushed off this character, the Kitchen Witch, for an RP, and I really wanted to see what would happen if Nathanael met her.

A bee landed on his arm and it was all he could do not to jump.  It easily stretched the length of his upper arm, it’s antennae were still moving even after it stopped, and it was covered in hairs.  After a second though, it flew away, only giving a little push of it’s legs.  It joined it’s fellows in the air, all flying this way and that, all buzzing loudly.

Nathanael expelled air out his mouth, and was just glad he wasn’t allergic to bees.  Wait, if bees stung wood, would that matter?  

He located Hussar not far off, flicking his tail and rolling his eyes, but not seeming to be too bothered by the insects.  The pale purple flowers were still laying on his back.  Bees hovered over it curiously, but Hussar kept flicking them away.  

And straight ahead, a fat yellowy building that looked like coiled rope.  The river flowed out of it to the left of them, a channel of pure honey.  There are several holes between the ropes of the building and bees came flying and out of them.  They were all only a half inch wide, though.  Which was too say, for too small for the nutcracker and horse.

“Are you sure this is the witch’s house?”

Hussar shot him an annoyed look, but it softened, “Yes, my Prince, I’m sure.”

Not exactly the little candy cottage he’d imagined, though he supposed that a candy cottage would be a little too expected in The Kingdom.  “How do we get in?”

Hussar sighed, and clopped nearer to the nutcracker, “Your memory loss is a blessing, Your Majesty.  Right.  If you want to go in, first brandish the flower.  The bees will do the rest.”

“The bees?”

“Yes, my Prince, like so,” he reached for one of the flowers with his teeth, but seemed to hesitate, “Your Majesty, you should take yours first.”

“Oh, OK,” Nathanael grabbed the stem of the flower.  It was more stem than flower, with lots of little blooms on the end of branches.  Of course, ‘little’ meant just about the size of his palm.  Hussar grabbed his stem now, and pulled the flower around and up like some kind of flag twirler.  He let it hang there, an offering.

Nathanael also put his flowers in front of his body, though with his arms he was able to hold it in a more dignified way, like he was holding a flag in a parade.  Actually, he was wearing a purple marching band outfit and holding out purple flowers.  Maybe this was perfect.  

A bee landed on one of Hussar’s blooms.  Oh, that was nice- feed the bees.  But how long would the horse have to stand there in that uncomfortable position before the bee was done?  Another bee came to another bloom, making it sag a little.  Then another bee at another bloom.  Nathanael frowned.  How many bees were going to come?

His own plant jostled a little as a giant bee landed on a bloom, then another.  “Hussar, what n-” Nathanael looked over just in time- bees were swarming around Hussar.  Every flower had a bee on it but the other bees hadn’t gotten that message, apparently.  They few very close to the horse.  Alarmingly close.

“Hussar!”  Nathanael cried, dropped the flowers, and ran over to him.  He couldn’t move very fast for sour worm roots, though, and Hussar was covered before he could get there.  They covered his legs, his saddle, his tail, his head, his nose and last of all his ears.  Just when Nathanael was on top of his, the bees dispersed in a cloud, and exploded around the boy, buzzing furiously.

Hussar was gone.

He stared at the patch of sour candy powder where Hussar had just been but only his hoofprints gave indication he had been there.  “Hussar?  Hussar!  Hussar!”  What- was this?  Had Hussar died?  Had the bees severed his killy?  But then he would have left a body behind if he it was a violent death.  What, then?  What had happened?  Even his flower was gone.

Bees flew to and fro everywhere, but just above Nathanael’s head was particularly loud.  It was a cloud of bees like on the Winnie the Pooh cartoon.  How weird and concentrated it looked.  Nathanael suddenly had a weird idea about the swarm.

He ran back to his stalk and picked it up, just as the cloud funneled itself into a singular hole.  No way can that be what happened, he thought, and yet, somehow, didn’t stop holding the plant.  Again the bees came to land on his blooms.  One by one, they filled up the places where a bee should logically be, until there were no such places left.

The swarm came for him, just as it came for Hussar.  The bees flew loud and furious less than an inch from his ears.  There was no way this was going to work but- if Nathanael had learned anything about The Land, it was that the thing you thought least likely to happen usually happened.  This was weird and it’s internal rules was weird and you could rant and rave and fight it all you wanted, or you could just go with it.

Bees landed on his body.  On his arms, on his back, on his legs, his hat, his face.  They covered his face. The blackened his sight with their fuzzy bodies.  Buzzing was deafening.  Hairy legs touched him through his uniform, and tickled on his face.  

This had been a bad idea.  Nathanael wanted to run.  He dared not run.  He wanted to scream.  His screams were drowned out by incessant buzzing-!

“Finally decided to arrive, have ye?”

The buzzing had stopped.  Nathanael opened his eyes.  He was in a hexagonal room with a fireplace and a cauldron in it.  There were pots hanging from the ceiling and a table made from honeycomb.  He expected to see some glow worm cages hanging with the cookware, but instead the walls themselves seemed to be glow soft yellow from cracks.  Nathanael found himself slightly relieved to be in yellow rather than sickly green or blinding white light.  The walls themselves were yellow and waxy.  The room had no doors, but there were hexagonal shaped holes where some bees were exiting.

Hussar was here, on the other side of the table, a plate on said table in front of him.  

“Hussar!”  Nathanael waved, “I thought I lost you!”

“Where would I go, but here?”  The horse cocked his head.

There was also a woman at the end of the table.  She was square and muscular and square jawed as well.  Her cheek had a scar on it, and her eye was patched over.  She had a pointy nose and a pointy orange witch’s hat.  Her dress was brown, with flowers, and her apron was orange.

Before Nathanael could make an opinion of where he was, a plate was shoved into his hands.  “I’ll be needing your help tasting somethin’, dearie.  Here, have this honey flan.”

Nathanael blinked at the dish.  It looked like just about the best flan he’d ever seen.  It smelled divine.  Nathanael had a fork.  It was so appetizing, it made him a little angry.

“Of course not,” he said.  What was the point of this?  “Are you the Kitchen Witch?”

“I’m a witch,” the woman said, “and I’m in a kitchen, ain’t I?”

Well, that made sense.

“Your Majesty!”  Hussar cried, “Don’t you want a favor from the witch?”

“Uh,” well, he hadn’t been thinking of looking at him and determining where his killy was to be a ‘favor’, but he supposed it was if she had to fire up her x-ray.  Or maybe it was just turning on her magic.

“Your Majesty,” Hussar lowered his head miserably to the plate on the table, “we mustn’t be rude to the Kitchen Witch.”  Now Nathanael noticed the horse-site bite marks in the flan.

“Wait, how did you-?  I thought dolls didn’t-?”

Nathanael looked back over and startled a bit.  Who was that?  There was a teenager with dirty blond hair in front of him.  She had a pointy nose and a big orange hat and an orange apron.  She was leaning on her broom and tapping her foot.  She spoke in a voice very similar to the last woman, “Oh, I see how it is.  His Majesty thinks he’s too high and mighty to try some flan, do he?  Well maybe he’s too high and mighty to get a readin’.”

“N-no.  No!  That’s not it,” wha- what?  Who is this woman?  Where did the eye patch lady go?  He looked to Hussar for clues, but the horse was taking another pained bite of the flan.  His lips were stretched all the way up and his teeth were reaching for it, and his eyes were watering.

So, Nathanael had to eat.  He picked up the fork.  At least he had a real mouth, unlike a vast majority of dolls.  He put the flan in his mouth and shut it, and waited for the weird squishy feeling of food getting stuck in his mechanism.  

The buttery flan tumbled past his teeth and onto his tongue.  It melted into the bottom of his mouth.  His tongue crushed it into his palate, and it’s softness filled his mouth.  It was buttery and sweet and soft and perfect, and Nathanael shut his eyes.  He swallowed, “Mmm!”  And smiled to the girl, “So good!”  He took another bite.  Just as good.

Wait a minute!  His eyes snapped open.

The girl was smiling at him with the joy of someone who bought their friend a surprise birthday gift.  “Glad te see somebody appreciates my cooking.”

“You cooked this?”  Nathanael whispered, “But- how?!”

“The recipe’s an old secret- no tellin’!”

“No- I mean,” he touched his chest, where his esophagus should be.  Was?  He still felt the lingering memory of the soft flan moving down it, “I ate it…”

“So yeh did,” the girl’s eyes were half lidded, and Hussar moved around the table to sort of stand between Nathanael and her.  

“Dear Witch, you must understand: Our Prince has recently returned from The Darkness at the Edge of the World.  The Darkness has- changed him.  Made soft his memories.  He- he truly does not recall you.”

The girl blinked, then seemed to study Nathanael, “The Prince, eh?”

Nathanael shut his mouth all the way, no longer able to detect his tongue and gums inside it.  The Witch?  So this is the Witch?  Who was the woman before, then?  

The flan still smelled delicious, “Can I- eat the rest of this?”  He asked.

“Better th’n throwin’ it to the bees,” she glanced at Hussar’s half finished plate, “I take it you’re not gonna eat no more?”

Hussar put his ears down, “If I may be kindly excused.”

Nathanael, meanwhile, was packing flan into his face.  He was savoring every soft, buttery, sweet bite.  He didn’t care how this magical food worked.  For all he knew, he was going to turn into a wooden blueberry.  He just wanted every bit of it.   He savored it all, until there was no flan to be savored.  Until he couldn’t even lick any more drops of honey from his plate.

The woman in the room was looking at him quite amused.  She was a regal looking lady with a queenly updo under her big orange hat.  “I otter invite ye to my ‘ive more often.”

Nathanael blinked a couple of times, “Are- are you the same woman as was here before?”

“O’course!  D’yeh think there’s seven witches?”

Again, Hussar cringed on Nathanael’s behalf, “As I said, my Prince’s memories are-”

The Witch put up a hand, “Relax a single minute, won’t ye, horse?  He’s being miles a better guest than you are.”

Stung, Hussar stood bolt straight.

Nathanael smiled sheepishly over his behavior but, in his family, a clean plate was a compliment, and Witch seemed to feel the same way.  “Um, thank you?”  

The Witch took the plate from him, and folded her hands in front of her body, regal like, “So ye came fer wisdom?”

“A reading,” Hussar raised a single hoof, “of killy placement.  You see, after His Majesty’s time spent in the Darkness, he came to suspect that the Darkness changed more than just his hair.  The Darkness, as you know, is strange, wild magic.”

The Witch looked bored between the two of them, “Bridle and ‘eart,” she said, pointing to Hussar and then Nathanael.

“Heart?”  Hussar gazed into Nathanael’s eyes, “So it has changed you,” he pawed the honeycomb floor and seemed to weigh this, “well, this is actually good news, isn’t it?  It’s so much harder to pierce a doll’s heart then to break his teeth!”

Nathanael put his hand on his sternum.  All of him- the part that felt, and noticing things, and made him alive- was right there.  Was it like, symbolic?  Now there was a mass of wood where his heart used to be, but hearts were kind of like, all about life.  Life and love.  If you didn’t have a heartbeat you were said to be dead and if you didn’t have a heart you must have been evil.  Nathanael didn’t think either of these things applied to him.  

A killy was no replacement for a heart but they were the closest things that dolls had to organs.  And it would also be a relief not to be so careful of his mouth, like Hussar said.

“Be there any’tin else?”  The Witch asked.

Like, future stuff?  Nathanael wasn’t sure he was sold on this business about her being a prophet.  Come to think of it, why should he trust her diagnoses of his killy?  It wasn’t like Nathanael could confirm what she said.  Not without dying.  How did he know she was even magical?  Sure, she could shift shape, but so could Red and no-one thought she was amazing.  

Of course, then there was the matter with the teleporting bee swarm, and the flan.

The flan.

Scratch all that- The Kitchen Witch was definitely an unusual doll.  There was something very strange about her.  Still, though, songs about the future?

“I believe,” Hussar said, “we’re all set.  That is ah- unless you want to consult the Witch, Your Majesty?  It is something you used to do…”

“Um,” he made a circle around his heart, then snapped his fingers, “uh, yeah!  I would,” actually, he wanted to ask about the flan.  He knew he was still a doll and dolls don’t eat, so what was the deal with that flan?  This time, he wouldn’t accept a lame half-answer like ‘it’s a secret recipe’.

“I see,” Hussar inclined his head slightly, and swiveled his ears around the doorless room, “may I be excused?”

“Sure,” Nathanael said, and frowned, “how do people get out of here?” he asked the Witch.

The Kitchen Witch simply clapped her hands, and bees came streaming into the room from the hexagonal holes.  They filled up the space for a moment, but pooled around Hussar, covering him.  Hussar seemed relieved to see them, “I will keep a look out for you, Your Majesty.”

“Thanks,” Nathanael said.  There was no more horse, just giant bees.  Nathanael had to admit, it looked alarming.  The bees departed, leaving an empty space where the horse had been, and squeezed into one of the holes.  Nathanael kind of wondered if the bees had taken him apart piece by piece, and were gonna put him back together again like a puzzle.  Had that happened to Nathanael?  He moved to one of the holes and peaked out.  There was a swarm on the caramel jungle floor, and it was vaguely shaped like a horse.

“Some prince,” the Witch said behind him.

“Sorry?”  Nathanael asked, turning.  The Witch was now middle aged and fat.  Fat and round, like a beach ball, with a warm smile on her face.  

She poked his chest where she’d stated his killy was, “Some.  Prince.”

Nathanael blinked several times, but didn’t really follow.

“A doll’s killy doesn’t just move about.  And the Darkness at the Edge of the World is only deep.  No magical thing.  It won’t change your hair color.”

Nathanael’s mouth opened a bit, and he felt a chill in his mechanism.  She could tell.  He was trapped in here alone, and she could tell.  Nathanael chuckled, “Ma’am, I assure you I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I am the Prince of Dolls.  I fell from Pine Cone Point many years ago.  It was a long time of isolation and I might have forgotten some things, but I’m still the same man.”

The Witch just shook her chubby cheeked face very slowly, “Why y’still lie?  You don’t trust me, do ye?”

Trust the Witch?  Well, he didn’t know the Witch.  It wasn’t like he knew that she couldn’t be trusted, but trust was something that was earned.  The Witch cupped her hands together, “I’ll let ye feel it.”  

She took a deep breath, and things seemed to get slower in the hexagonal room.  The air seemed to buzz.  Not with insects but with some kind of energy.  The lights in the walls dimmed, but there was still a glow.  It emanated from the Witch.  Her cheek was glowing yellow, the skin around her eye glowing magenta, her throat glowing orange.  These places glowed brighter and brighter until light seemed to burst from her skin.  And they did.  There were glowing strings floating just in front of her, like bits of neon.  Not just these three, but four more that floated just about her skin- or plush or whatever.

She was young- just a little kid.  She was old- the oldest, most bent old woman Nathanael had ever seen.  She was fat as a pumpkin.  She was skinny as a beanpole.  She was blonde, brunette, redheaded, gray haired.  She had scars.  She had acne and birthmarks.  Her skin was utterly clear.  She was a different woman every few seconds, but always with a pointed nose, and always wearing that hat, that dress and that apron.

After a while, Nathanael realized that the women weren’t infinite- there were seven separate people here.  “You’re like- seven people in one body?”

She spoke with several voices, but one accent.  “It’s a way o’ assessin’ it, yes.”

She put her fingertips on Nathanael’s heart.

It started beating.

Beating.  Beating steadily.  Not something noticeable if you already have it, but Nathanael had been without a heartbeat for so long, and this-!

The Witched moved her hands to his arms and Nathanael put his fingers on his sternum.  It thumped through bone and two layers of cloth to be felt on his fingertips.  He tried feeling his pulse in his neck, too.

“Just the heart, lad.”

He realized that there was something glowing immediately in front of him.  Some floating neon like the Witch had.  He tried to grab the blue object, but his hand just sort of passed through it.  It’s form quivered and scattered, like a Star Wars hologram, then took shape again.  

“Is- is this my killy?”

“It be a representation of it, lad.  A projection of itself for your eyes.”

His killy.  Only this wasn’t just a line or a circle.  It was a ball of string, rolled up into itself.  If Nathanael were to unfurl that, it would be way longer than all of the Witch’s killies put end to end.  

“Why blue?” he asked.  The Witch had so many colors.  Yellow, orange, red, magenta, blue, white, green.  They were all good, but what did the colors mean?

“Nothing particular.  Yer just blue.  But this killy- this killy be far too big for a doll.”

Nathanael put his hands hands back on his sternum just to have a place to hold them.  His jaw untightened a little as he stared at the witch.  Her form alternated from old to youngish as she looked at his curiously.

She knew.

“I.  I- uh.”

“I got one question for ye: how did a nice lad like you come to be here?”

Nathanael sighed and his shoulders drooped.  What could he do?  Hide from her?  The very essence of himself was floating in front of his chest, making his heart beat like he was falling in love.  He couldn’t deny this.  He reached out for the thing behind him and it turned out to be warm.  The cauldron.

“Uh, my family angered a demon,” he said, pulling his fingers back.

“Oh,” the Witch’s eyes glazed over a bit, “the Big World is an oddity.”

“Yeah?  The Land’s oddityer.”

The Witch shrugged, “Odd’s relative.”

Apparently.  His heart had been beating long enough to make the rest of him feel strange.  He had heart, after all, but no way of pushing air into his chest.  How did his heart breathe without his lungs?  His stomach was full as if from cement, and not hungry at all, and his bladder functions didn’t exist.  

“Could you spread it around?  Uncoil the string, make the rest of me human, too?”

The Witch sighed, “Your heart ain’t human, luv.  It just feels real.  For the temporary.”

“Oh.”  Nathanael cupped his twine ball heart projection even though he couldn’t touch it.  It didn’t cast a warmth or anything but it was nice to sort of hold it.  It made his gloves appear blue, and his purple sleeves look blackish.  

A sniffle built up in his nose, followed by a stinging in his eyes.  A tear touched his cheek, surprising him.  He wiped it, and looked at the Witch.  She was still standing quite close to him.  

“I thought it was just my heart?  I- I haven’t cried since I got here.”

“But lad, the heart cries.”

Nathanael hitched as more ugly tears overflowed from his eyes.  “I guess so,” he whimpered.  Honestly, he felt like he didn’t know anything lately.  His entire perception of reality had but flipped around, twisted, and sent through the paper shredder.  He sobbed some more, and put his hand over his wet eyes, “I have to stop.”

“Why, lad?”

“I have to.  I have to be strong.”

He could feel a hand was on his- a hand that kept changing dimensions.  Sometimes it had stubby fingers, sometimes it was dry, sometimes it was soft and sometimes the fingers were long and spidery.  Nathanael let himself be lead to a seat at the table.  When he opened his eyes, his killy was still floating just above the wood, rotating leisurely.

“I shouldn’t be doing this right now,” he insisted.

“Ain’t no one here to watch.”

No one but the Witch, he must have thought she was an idiot.  He cried into his palm, and the Witch sat across from him.  She reached over the table and took his free fingers, “There, there.  You have so much anguish to catch up on.”

That statement struck something fragile within him, and Nathanael felt himself crumbling more.  He was sobbing now.  

“Tell me what troubles ye,” the Witch said after a time.

“I want,” Nathanael sniffled, “I want to go home.  I want my old body back.  I want my life to make sense again.  But I have to be the Prince of Dolls.”

The Witch nodded, and squeezed his fingers.  “Cry, luv.”

“I can’t.  Not me.”

“Why not, lad?”

“The kind of man I am-” Nathanael just let the thought trail.

But the Witch was already ready with an answer, “Stop a moment, lad.  Think of the men you admire.  Those who you try an’ emulate the most.  Do they never cry?”

Well, Nathanael knew this wasn’t true.  People cried.  Men cried.  Cis men cried.  “It’s just, difficult,” he said, “different for me.”

“Holdin’ your emotions against their will does not a man make, and it don’t make you strong, either.  Strength is changin’ when you need to.  Sometimes strength means lettin’ yourself crumble to dust you can build yourself up new an’ better.”

Nathanael just sort of absorbed this remark.  Huh, maybe she had a point, but he wasn’t sure.  Even so, he pressed his face into his hands and cried.  More freely this time.

“That’s right, lad.  Cry all ye need.  You’ve got many a battle ahead o’ye, but ye don’t have to have to fight them right now.”

So, he did.  He just cried, face illuminated by his heart, until he no longer felts a need to cry.  When he looked up, the Witch was smiling at him.  Still glowing, and still shifting between forms.  But her killies flickered a little.

“Feeling better, lad?”

Nathanael nodded.

“Good,” she winced, and her wince passed from one face to another, “because I can’t hold onto this.”

Nathanael opened his mouth, but then it became clear.  “I understand.”

The Witch shut her eyes and made a closing gesture with her body.  Her killies faded, then retreated back under her skin.  Nathanael’s heart, too, retreated back into him, phasing into his chest.  It beat slower, and slower, and then stopped all together.

Nathanael put his hands on the table, having nothing to do with them.  The Witch got up and he sort of stared out into space.  After a few seconds this was interrupted when a hot steaming mug was slid in front of him.

“Oh.  I’m not hungry,” Nathanael said.

“I know that.”

“Oh.  Well, thanks, then.  Guess it can’t hurt.  Uh.  It doesn’t hurt me right?”  The mug gave off a delicious smell- familiar, and the chunks in the chickeny broth looked way familiar, “No way.  This looks just like my mom’s chicken soup.”

“It be, lad.  Ye touched my cauldron.”

Nathanael whistled, “Are you trying to make me cry again?”

“No,” the Witch said, “but the food was there, and I thought‘t give you some comfort.”

Nathanael almost couldn’t stand to eat it.  It was pretty much a perfect recreation, and he didn’t want it to go away.  “You know everything, don’t you?”  Nathanael was finally convinced this woman was everything Hussar made her out to be, “Will I ever get home?”

“It ain’t clear,” the Witch said.

Nathanael frowned, “You don’t know that?  But I thought you could hear the future.”

The Witch sighed, “My hearin’ ain’t exact, luv.  The song I hear is a medley- the melodies from all the paths the future may take, all interwoven.  No one melody be more prominent than the others ‘til you take a path.”

“But you knew that I had many battles ahead of me.”

“That’s a given, luv.  Battles take on many forms, and ye don’t fight every one with a shield n’ sword.”

Well then.  That made sense.  “So you don’t know whether I stop being a nutcracker in the future?”  

“O’course ye do, luv.  Everyone stops being what they are eventually.”

Nathanael narrowed his eyes.  He wasn’t talking about dying, “Alright.  Do I ever get to be human again?”

“Nothing can stop you from being human.”

“I guess.  But-”

“It ain’t clear.”

Finally.  “Of course it’s not,” he sounded bitter but he wasn’t really.  He was just- crumbled.  The strength had before, as illusory and as it had been, was in pieces right now and, and he couldn’t lean on it.  Weak and naked, like phoenix that had just exploded.  But also felt a bit, more serene.  Like there was a clear pool in which he could see all he needed to see.  ANd on top of that, the Witch knew what he was, and didn’t tell him no.

“Thank you,” he said to the Witch, who was now old and bent.  “Thank you so much,” he moved to one of the hexagonal windows.  Hussar was pacing in front of the beehive, looking back at it every once in awhile nervously.  “I don’t suppose I can just, stay here.”

“In a doorless kitchen?  This ain’t no place for a human boy.”

Nathanael sighed, “Prince of Dolls, actually.  According to like, everyone.”

“Even more reason, then, to have my bees escort y’out.  I can’t be accused of holding a political figure hostage, can I?”

“No,” Nathanael would just wait for it then.  He crossed his arms, and shoved his back into the wall, looking for a moment more like a delinquent from a movie than a beloved Prince, “How can I be their Prince when I’m not even one of them?”

The Witch was stirring her cauldron with her broom and looking at Nathanael out the side of her face.  “Maybe this land don’t need the Prince for a prince,” she said finally, “maybe wot it needs is, a Child.”

Nathanael stared at with Witch.  Did she mean that?  At a loss, he said, “I’m seventeen.”

The Witch shrugged, “Children ain’t always children.”

“I guess not,” Nathanael said, “but- I don’t want to be a chosen one.  I never asked for this.”

“I ain’t talking heroism.  That sorta thing’s overrated, anyway.  What I’m sayin’, luv, is maybe you don’t shouldn’t try so hard to be someone else.  Maybe you can be you, and still me the Prince of Dolls.”

“Maybe,” he doubted it.  

But the Witch had more to say, “A little kindness and compassion can’t hurt the Kingdom.  Trust your instincts, luv.”  

Before Nathanael could ask her to elaborate though, she was clapping her hands.  Bees flew in from the porthole he’d been peaking out of, and also all the other holes.  The room got darker, especially as they covered him up.  Nathanael realized that he could possibly escape the bees outside the hive, but this room was too small to avoid them.