"Carolyn Ives Gilman - The Honeycrafters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Carolyn Ives)

"Is it?" Yannas said. "How do you know?"
"If I didn't believe that, life would be like this land here--"
"Yes," Yannas said, looking out over the scoured plain where life was taking hold against all odds. "Life would be like this."
"--a barren, desolate plain. No peaks, no valleys, nothing noble or useful in it. Well, my life isn't going to be like that."
Yannas could remember when she had yearned for crags and gorges, for dangerous rapids and rainbows. Those had been years of glorious, self-destructive gestures. Now, the bees had taught her to see fine textures, to praise little things.
"I had goals once," she said. "As lofty and compelling as yours."
"What happened?"
"The world paid not the slightest attention."
"Don't blame it on the world. It was you who gave up."
Gave up. The words chafed a spot still raw after all these years. "Yes, I gave up!" Yannas bit off the words. "Because I couldn't have made myself what I wanted to be."
"I don't believe that."
"Of course you don't. Why should you believe me just because I have lived twice as long and seen twice as much as you?"
She got up, hefted her pack to her shoulder, and started off. She heard a step behind her, Renata following. She wheeled around, angry and bitter.
"Prove, prove, prove!" she said. "You youngsters always want to prove something, as if that's all that can make you solid and real. You all want to set yourselves apart, draw lines around yourselves and say, 'Here, that's where I begin and the rest of the world leaves off. This is my achievement. I am real.' And it never makes a damn bit of difference."
She turned and stalked off, stones crunching under her boots. I am a bitter, cynical old woman, she thought. I am dry and twisted like a brittle-root. I am a scarecrow on her path, with a sign hung under my neck: "Don't pass this way."
The grasses bent unheeded under her heels, then sprang up again when she had passed.


When the bees were safely out, the master honeycrafters met in Magwin Ghar's tent to plan the journey. For the first time in memory, Magwin posted sentinels to keep their deliberations from reaching the wrong ears.
The six who arrived were each experts, representing the hundred and three things one could create from bee culture: there was Brahm, the fermenter of wines and liqueurs; Bogdan, the chandler of sweet-scented beeswax; Zabra, the mixer of soaps, lotions, and pomades; and Reema, the creator of medicines and rubs from the potent honey of plants that calmed the heart, thinned the blood, or purged the digestion. Extractor Dubich Rhud was there, who purified, cured, and stored the raw honeys in his vast tent -- now almost empty, but soon to become an archive of varietal honeys, each culled from a distinct blend of flowers. Last of all, Yannas came in and sat in the shadows by the tent flap.
As was customary, Magwin Ghar served a rich mead from the last journey. They sat awhile, tasting the sunny meadows in their cups, remembering the peaceful days spent gathering the honey they now drank. It had been a good journey, and they had had huge wagonloads of products to sell as they had retraced their steps west from day to dawn. Now the honey was almost gone, and the wagons were instead rich with grain, cloth, and tools bought from the towns and farms along their route.
"Ah, you should have seen the honeys we gathered in my third journey," old Brahm said, as if to forestall anyone impertinently suggesting that last journey had been the best. "Why, we must have had fifty wagons, and our vats were twice as tall as I. We lived sweetly then!"
Not to be outdone, Bogdan spoke up with a reminiscence of his favorite journey, a story all of them had heard a hundred times, till they knew even the pauses and where to laugh. And all of them did laugh, except Magwin, who seemed preoccupied, and Yannas, who never laughed at anything.
The tent was filled with memories brighter than the candles, and everyone was expecting Magwin to refill their glasses, when instead she said, "We need to put our minds to strategy, my friends. We need to plan a honey that will humble young Renata Oblin and win us her queen."
"The upstart chit!" Zabra grumbled. "She knows no more about honey than my elbow does."
"Maybe so," said Brahm, "but my best apprentice has gone off to join her."
This led to a long series of complaints and recriminations. Half the young people in the motherhold seemed to have defected, the other half were getting forward about proposing crazy new ideas. Three girls who had reached the wander-age, inspired by Renata, had set off to seek a mother bee despite all their mothers' dissuasion. The young men thought of nothing but jockeying for Renata's attention. At last Magwin held up her hands impatiently. "There is nothing we can do. We knew it would be like this."
"I never heard of such a duel," Zabra said half under her breath. "Dragging the whole motherhold in--"
Magwin spoke loudly to drown her out. "I thought of using our Crystal Dew. We've done well with it for three journeys now and it's a favorite in Erdrum."
"I can't keep our apothecary honeys stocked without going farther south to get some forest flower honey," Reema said. "It's been two journey since we've gotten any bloodbloom or hoar. My stores are almost gone."
Others spoke up with objections. Journey plannings were always contentious, and the final route was inevitably a compromise hammered out to balance conflicting needs.
After much wrangling, Magwin squinted into the shadows by the door. "You've said nothing, Yannas. What do you think?"
Yannas had been thinking how much like molluscs they all were: all crusted round with shells of experience. Every experiment they had tried, every idea explored, had formed another layer of crust. By now Magwin's honeycrafters were nearly impervious to mistake, but paralysed by the accretion of things they had tried. Yannas could feel her own experience dragging like a dead weight on her. She didn't want to add more.
"I think Crystal Dew is a bad idea," she said at last.
"But it's your own formula!" Magwin protested.
"It's become too familiar. Can we win with an old honey if Renata creates something novel and new?"
"She hasn't got the experience," Zabra said, as if that settled everything.
Magwin raised a hand to silence her, eyeing Yannas curiously. "So you think we should try a new formula?"
"I think we need a honey like none that has ever been tasted. A honey so bewitching a single drop captures the senses. It must be a distillation of rain, time, sun, and the souls of flowers."
Their faces showed that they had all dreamed of such a honey, once. Perhaps in their youths they had even believed it was possible.
"What formula do you have in mind?" Magwin asked softly.
"You will not believe me if I tell you."
"Try us."
So Yannas began to recite the list of flowers whose nectars she would blend through the alchemy of the bees. The others listened, concentrating. They had all learned as children to decipher the formulas, composing little songs to remember the hard ones. Every child in the motherhold carried in his or her head the formulas for the staple honeys; but only the honeycrafters knew the hundreds of specialized formulas passed down through the generations.
When Yannas finished, there was silence; it had been a long time since any of them had had to critique a new formula, other than the brash and clumsy inventions of the apprentices. This one was not clumsy, but there was a recklessness to it.
"You depend heavily on the border flowers, those at the edge of night and day," Magwin said at last.
"Those are the flowers whose tastes are deep," Yannas said; "they are the ones who have suffered."
"Meadowmatch?" Brahm asked. "It's a stimulant nectar, not a culinary one. It stings in the mouth, like nettles."
"It will be very dilute in a comb blend with primweed and shattercup. You will scarcely taste it, but it will leave a tingle in the mouth that will cleanse the palate like spring water."
They raised more objections. At first Yannas justified her choices; but as the criticism kept coming, she became touchy, then defensive, then finally lapsed into a glowering silence.