07 The Grumblebees

CHAPTER 7 THE GRUMBLEBEES "The next piece of the Ember Stone has to be here somewhere!" Tag said. Blaze hopped around, searching beneath rocks at the base of the tree. Skyla climbed up to search among the higher branches. Tag flew overhead, searching the highest branches.

Suddenly, something caught Tag's attention. He could hear a low buzzing sound near his ear. He shook his head, but the sound continued. Tag swooped to the ground and hooted at his friends. Skyla scrambled down the tree trunk. Blaze hopped over, tilting her head to one side. Tag held his wing to his ear. "Do you hear that?" The friends listened carefully. Tag thought it might just be the breeze blowing the leaves, but the noise grew. It sounded like a whisper on the winds, becoming louder and louder.

Skyla's eyes widened. "Is the tree... talking?!" she asked. The buzzing sound grew louder, until Tag could almost make out words. "Maybe it is...," he said. "After all, it is called the Whispering Oak." Tag jumped as a tiny voice shouted right by his ear: "Go away!" The same thing must have happened to Skyla and Blaze, too, because they both jumped at the same time. "Who's there?" Skyla cried, pulling back an acorn in her slingshot.

Tag felt something buzz past his face to land on a branch. He flew closer to see a small bee sitting on the branch. It was waving one of its legs at him. The branch moved and he saw another bee. Tag couldn't believe he hadn't noticed it before: The tree wasn't covered in leaves after all—it was covered in bees! But these were not normal bees. They were striped dark green and brown, and they had long, sharp stingers.

"What are you?" Tag asked. "They might be Thorn's spies," Skyla whispered. "We're not spies!" a small bee shouted. "We're grumblebees. Now get away from our tree!" "But—" Skyla protested. The grumblebees buzzed louder. One by one, they flew from the branches until the oak tree was bare. They swirled in the air like a green-and-brown storm. cloud. "Peep!" Blaze called out to get the grumblebees' attention. They only buzzed louder. "Careful!" Skyla warned. "They might sting."

As the bees swarmed around Tag's head, he could hear hundreds of tiny voices shouting at the same time. They were all yelling over one another so the voices didn't make sense. "I can't understand what you are saying!" Tag shouted at the grumblebees. The grumblebees stopped shouting. They hovered in the air. Then, in a single voice so loud that it almost made Tag fall over, they shouted: "GO AWAY!"