I took this week’s photo while I was on Bute a while back. At least, I think so. It was earlier this year at some point. To be honest, this year has been… interesting. Plenty of ups to balance out the few sizable downs and even those seem to have come out okay, so it looks like we’re going to finish up on the sunny side again. Perhaps I shouldn’t tempt fate in that way — I’ll be breathing out a huge sigh of relief when (‘cos I’m an optimist at heart) my near and dear join the 2022 survivors club.
Ah yes, the bees! We visited *mumbles indistinctly* abbey. Or possibly it was a monastery. Religious ruins at any rate. The site had been largely taken over by nature, with solid mature trees growing in what would surely have been inconvenient locations in a working abbey. One such tree loomed over the gate to the upper grounds and chapel. As we approached it seemed the tree also buzzed. Which is in my experience unusual for a tree. On entering the upper grounds, we could see a swarm of bees forming a hive. Knowing little about bees we were, naturally, wary of sauntering up to inspect them. However, after being there a short while they seemed peaceable enough. I ventured closer and snapped a few shots. The bees, obviously, carried on being bees and minding their own business.
I blinked and rubbed his eyes. I’d been staring at the bees for two days now. And the night between. Not that I’d seen them much in the dark hours. Hadn’t seen much of anything. Master Hartlan had chuckled when I’d asked for a lamp and told me that if I was focussing on the bees correctly, I would perceive them without sight. Grudgingly I had to admit he was right.
“Any joy, Calum?” asked Master Hartlan.
“None,” I replied. Perhaps a little more sullenly than was warranted.
“Well,” said my Master, “through—”
“I know,” I interrupted. “Through patience comes all things.”
Yes, it was rude. I was tired. Hungry too. I knew it was the price to pay for greatness, and a small one at that. Ask me any other time and I’d tell you it was a price I was more than happy to pay. Funny how that’s not always the case while you’re paying it.
“Quite so,” said Master Hartlan. “Well keep it up, you never know when it will happen. Remember, you are trying to get inside their mind. You must understand them. Without understanding there is nothing.”
He had always been far too patient with me. Occupational hazard, I suppose. You don’t get to be a Master Summoner without it.
I didn’t see my mentor leave. My attention was already back on the bees. For a change I focussed on the buzzing. Through my long vigil I had all but tuned it out. As background as the sound of my own breath. This time I listened to them. That undulating sound that rippled and flowed around the swarm. Not just one sound. A whole harmony of them. Layers of nuance and context shifting, ebbing, pulsing. Like waves of thought in my own mind.
I felt the pattern lock.
My perception shifted.
I was the hive. I was the swarm.
This is where it gets tricky. You’re expecting me to say I could feel my body, hard and chitinous, bumped and jostled by my hive-mates. That’s not how it works though. I could feel the parts of my body, surging and flowing together to a single purpose. Each one bore a small shard of me. My mind composed of thousands of smaller fragments. I was in no single one of them. No part of the whole where my core me resided. I was them all and they all were me.
Distantly, I felt a pang of hunger. Remote and alone. A single forgotten fragment. But more important, in a way. I could sense that. Strange though the concept was. It was hungry and I could do something about that. I selected a cluster of a few dozen fragments of myself. They pulled a chunk of honeycomb off the hive and flew it over to the remote fragment, dripping its sticky payload on the grass.
If you’ve never removed a chunk of your mind and sent it forth it will be difficult to describe the experience to you. Harder still to relate what it’s like to welcome that part back and with it the thoughts and impressions that you didn’t have at the time, but suddenly had always had them. Well, if you visit the monastery one day, perhaps you will learn too.
When the hive-enclave returned I absorbed the memories of bringing the honey to that other part of us. It had raised an appendage and propelled the honey into what must have been its mouth. I could feel the hunger ebb. We turned our full attention to the matter of building the hive-home. Not that our attention had ever—
“Well done, Calum!” I could feel Master Hartlan’s meaty hand pat my back. My real back that is. Not the hive’s.
I shook myself all over, recalling my body’s true layout. Two arms, two legs, only one head. A mind that existed in a single place at a time.
“What did it for you?” asked my Master.
“It was the buzzing,” I said. “I listened to the buzzing and then I could feel their mind. Not lots, just one mind shared among them.”
“The buzzing?” said Master Hartlan. It wasn’t really a question. “That’s most unusual. Well, keep that to yourself, lad. The sonomancers will go nuts if they think we’re muscling in on their turf.”
Brandon Lim 