Stickle and the Number on the Bark

Stickle is a good guesser, mostly. She’s careful and quick. But she has one problem, and she didn’t even know about it until the day of the bark.

That morning, on her way to the great hall, Stickle passed a beetle scratching marks on a piece of bark. It was counting something of its own, beetle business, and the marks it had scratched said ninety-two. Stickle didn’t think about it. She just saw it and flew on.

In the hall, Comb held up the question: “How many petals fell from the wild rose yesterday?”

Stickle thought. She tried to picture the rose. And the number that floated up was “about ninety.”

“Ninety,” she said.

Later that day, Lonehum, who always guessed first and alone, said she’d guessed forty. When the nursery bees counted the fallen petals properly, there were thirty-eight.

Stickle was puzzled. Ninety was miles off. Where had it even come from? She hadn’t counted anything. She hadn’t measured anything. It had just felt like the right sort of number.

Then she remembered the bark. Ninety-two.

Her wings went prickly. The beetle’s number had had nothing to do with roses. Nothing at all. But it had crept into her head and sat there, and when she reached for a guess, it was the first thing she grabbed.

She told Comb, feeling silly. “A beetle’s number got stuck in my head. It wasn’t even about petals.”

Comb didn’t laugh. “That happens to every bee,” she said. “The first number you see works like an anchor. Your guess drifts, but only as far as the rope lets it. It stays near the anchor.”

“How do I stop it?”

“You can’t always stop it,” said Comb. “But you can notice it. When a number comes very quickly, ask yourself: where did that come from? Did I work it out, or did I just hear it?”

The next guessing day, before she’d even reached the hall, Stickle heard a cricket chirping that a hundred ants had passed its stone. A hundred. She felt the number land in her head like a pebble.

Comb’s question was about how many flowers the morning scouts had visited.

“A hundred,” said a voice in Stickle’s head immediately.

Stickle stopped. Where did that come from? Not from flowers. From the cricket.

Pulling away from it felt like climbing out of honey. It was sticky. She made herself start fresh. Each scout visits about ten flowers on a short trip. There had been six scouts out that morning. Sixty, then, roughly.

“Sixty,” she said. “And I’m noticing that I heard the number one hundred on the way here, so I made myself work it out instead.”

A few bees laughed, not unkindly. The count came back at fifty-five.

Stickle felt a buzz of pride. She hadn’t got rid of the anchor; she’d heard it, and it had pulled at her. But this time she’d seen the rope, and she’d untied it herself.