“You know something of bees,” she said.
He looked at her, and something more like a human smile than the last time she had seen the corners of his mouth curl upwards changed his face. It seemed to quiet the flicker, as if the hum of the bees had a calming effect on this too. “A bee sting is very like fire, is it not?”
She smiled too, hesitantly. “I suppose it is. Are you—”
“Hurt? Harmed?” he said. “No. It is very difficult to burn a priest of Fire, although it can be done.”
She said, “I am glad that when you were sent away you went to Fire.” Again she had spoken unthinkingly, in the carelessness of relief, but he replied readily:
“A bee could not sting a third-level priest of Earth any more than she could sting a thirty-year-old oak. A bee could not sting a third-level priest of Air any more than she could sting a sunbeam.”
Think before you speak, she said to herself fiercely, but aloud she said immediately, “A thirty-year-old oak cannot be transplanted and live; and what happens to the light when a cloud passes in front of the sun? I am still glad, if you had to be sent away, you went to Fire. You walk on the earth and you cast a shadow; you speak in ordinary words and—and you can be stung by a bee. You are more human than you fear.”
She could see him considering how to refute her words; but the silence stretched to a minute and at last he said only, “Thank you.”
“Honey—” she began again.
“Yes. You were going to give me some honey.”
That was not what she had been about to say, and she was bewildered for a moment. Then she recalled herself, and gestured at the tray. “I didn’t know how you would like it.”
“What would you recommend?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Opened it again, said resolutely, “Straight out of the jar.” She handed him a spoon, and the jar.
“There are two spoons.”
“I will have some too, if you permit.”
And he laughed. It was a creaky, crackly noise, and if she had not been already much accustomed to the strangeness of him, she might not have realised that was what she was hearing; it sounded rather like the noises a fire makes burning sappy wood. But she did realise, and she smiled. “You are Master,” she said.
“And you are Chalice, and the first, so far as we know, Chalice of honey, and it is your honey. I am honoured to taste it, and will it not…will it not make the bond necessary between us stronger to eat a little of your honey together?”
Involuntarily she glanced at the back of her right hand, where, sometimes, when the light was just right or just wrong, there was a faint scar visible. “It is not fitting nor desirable that the bond began with hurt,” she said. “But it did begin then, when your hand slipped on the cup of welcome.”
“It is a strange Mastership and a strange Chalicehood,” he replied. “The last Master and Chalice died ill, and without Heir or apprentice. We are making new ways because we must. We have had one burning between us. Let us have the sweetness now.”
Two, she thought. Two burns and two sweets. For it was a strange sweetness when you healed my hand; and one of my bees burnt you. Do you fear to overwhelm me? You shall not. And the land chose me without your will—while you still lay in Fire. Yes. Perhaps what we do is possible.
Possibly I am strong enough.
She realised she was smiling, and looked at him again, and when he smiled back, this time, it was unmistakably a smile, not merely the remains of an old human reflex not quite abolished by Fire. “Does honey always make one smile?” he asked, as if it were a serious question.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Yes, it does. With your permission, Master, I will give you some to take back to the House with you. Do not let Ponty know you carry it!”
The night the Onora Grove burned she had been sleeping fitfully, for there was a ferocious storm tearing at the landscape, and the earthlines were uneasy. When the lightning struck not far from her cottage, she was out of bed and dragging on her clothes before she had thought of anything she might do. Even after it had occurred to her that she needed to have thought of something to do—and could still think of nothing—she went anyway, snatching up the smallest and plainest of the Chalice cups off the shelf as she passed, one that had no specific meaning or duty, and stuffing it down one pocket in her cloak; a small jar of honey went into the pocket on the other side.
When she opened her door and stepped out the rain felt strangely warm against her face, but the wind buffeted her like a blow from a fist and she stumbled, holding on to her door-handle for balance. She scuttled down the path from her door, leaning against the blustering gusts. The wind was behind her as she turned onto the main path, which was wide and smooth enough for wagons, so she ran, clutching her skirt and the ends of her cloak against the force of the gale. The rain drove against her, through the cloak, through her clothing, to her skin. The sky was turning red as she sprinted toward the grove, and through the roar of the wind she began to hear the hissing of the rain-lashed fire. The wind slewed around and the fog billowed out to meet her; her lungs hurt from smoke as well as running.
She almost hurtled into the Master; in his black cloak he looked like more smoke and fog. She had not come far, but her legs were trembling with effort, and with fear. The Master was standing, apparently merely watching the fire; but he turned to her at once and said, “Good, you’re here,” as if he had been waiting for her—expecting her. “Can you bring me water from the stream?”
It should have been hard to hear him through the sound of wind, rain and fire, but it was not; and his voice sounded calm and strong. Bewilderedly she turned around, realised where she was, and went to the stream. It flickered a macabre, almost phosphorescent red; it did not look like water. Nor could she hear its usual cheerful murmur as it tumbled in its bed. She dipped a cupful up and returned to the Master.
“You have brought honey too?”
Wordlessly, she pulled out her jar. It was the calming honey, and she saw it, as she tugged the stopper out, as the tiny frail thing it was, absurdly so, to set against a forest fire. The flames were now leaping taller than the trees, seeming to erupt out of the strangling smoke, and the increasing heat, as close as they were, was no longer only heat but pressure, squeezing her like a giant’s hand. But she felt as if she were already on fire: the flick of her hair against her neck must be leaving welts; the brushing of her own fingers against her skin burned; she expected to see flames licking up the sides of her heavy, sweltering, rain-sodden cloak. But honey was the thing she could do, to mend a rent in the landscape, to put out a fire. And here she had a Fire-priest with her. This time it was not all up to her.
After a moment’s hesitation, as she had not remembered to bring a spoon, she scooped up a little honey on one finger—it felt pleasantly cool—and stirred the finger through the water in the cup. Still wordlessly she held it out to him.
“Can you come any closer to the fire?” he said. “I can protect you, I think.”
It was a little like that day he had first said “stand by me,” the day he had healed her hand, when she had had to pull the bandage off quickly and hold her hand out toward him quickly, before she lost her nerve. Rain, wind and red fire-heat beat and tore at her; the last thing she wanted to do was go nearer the heart of the maelstrom. She knew that lightning fire was hot enough to burn, even through rain, but it felt all wrong—it felt like the end of the world. Was this what Elemental Fire was like—the end of the world?