Sect Year 8 · third month · night of day 3 · the silent life: the third terrace, his eighth year
Odo Fenn kept the hives on the third terrace slowly and in plain sight. He rented the ledges from the clay-mason and paid the rent each harvest in combs and a sack of wax, and in all the years Ossel had known him the old man had never once been seen to hurry up the ledge path. His knees cracked on every step. His hands were brown and spotted and very steady, and when he wanted something done he showed the hands how to do it and waited until they had learned.
“Slow,” he said, and put the smoker into Ossel’s hands.
The smoker was a clay pot with a spout at its side and a lid pierced with small holes. Inside it a fold of rotten oak punk smouldered, with a pinch of dried thyme laid over the top. The smoke came out grey-white and sweet, and it hung in the air around the boy’s face, and he could taste the thyme on it. He liked the weight of the pot in his hand. It was heavier than it looked, and warm at the base, and it didn’t ask him for anything except to be held the right way up.
