and gloves before she opened a hive. She wore some, too.
‘Of course,’ she observed, ‘if you are careful and sober and well centred in your life
the bees won’t sting. Unfortunately, not all the bees have heard about this theory.
Good morning, Hive Three, this is Tiffany, she will be staying with us for a while
Tiffany half expected the whole hive to pipe up, in some horrible high-pitched buzz,
‘Good morning, Tiffany!’ It didn’t.
‘Why did you tell them that?’ she asked.
‘Oh, you have to talk to your bees,’ said Miss Level. It’s very bad luck not to. I
generally have a little chat with them most evenings. News and gossip, that sort
of thing. Every beekeeper knows about “Telling the Bees”.’
‘And who do the bees tell?’ asked Tiffany.
Both of Miss Level smiled at her.
‘Other bees, I suppose,’ she said.
‘So . . . if you knew how to listen to the bees, you’d know everything that was going on, yes?’ Tiffany persisted.
‘You know, it’s funny you should say that,’ said Miss Level. ‘There have been a few
rumours . . . But you’d have to learn to think like a swarm of bees. One mind with
thousands of little bodies. Much too hard to do, even for me.’ She exchanged a thought-
ful glance with herself. ‘Maybe not impossible, though.’
Then there were the herbs. The cottage had a big herb garden, although it contained
very little that you’d stuff a turkey with, and at this time of year there was still a lot of work
to be done collecting and drying, especially the ones with important roots. Tiffany quite
enjoyed that. Miss Level was big on herbs.
There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: when
the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some
versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose
problems would drip green goo and so on. Many people believed this.
You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the
case of Nose Dropwort) and in Tiffany’s world the Creator had got a little more . . .
creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard
to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can’t spell. Most people didn’t even
know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were
poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn’t need, but Miss
Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better
for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too).
This one is False Gentian,’ she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool
workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. ‘Everyone
thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight,
using my blue magnifying glass
Tiffany tried it, and read: ‘GoOD FoR Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate
heavE mashinry’
‘Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,’ said Miss Level.
‘You mean plants really tell you how to use them?’ said Tiffany.
‘Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,’ said Miss Level. ‘Look
at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying
glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus . . .’
Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read.
‘ “May contain Nut”?’ she ventured. ‘But it’s a nutshell. Of course it’ll contain a nut. Er . . . won’t it?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Miss Level. ‘It may, for example, contain an exquisite
miniature scene wrought from gold and many coloured precious stones depicting a
strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it might,’ she added, catching
Tiffany’s expression. ‘There’s no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of
surprises.’
That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her
chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get the message about
this, but he had started to polish the stone.
And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the night-time . . .
Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like
a swarm of flies as it drags itself over the ground . . .
Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with zip-zip noises, until
you come to the big city and, near the centre of the city, the high old tower, and beneath
the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the
library the bookshelves, and . . . the journey has hardly begun.
Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass.
And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept locked
in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates.
But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a
glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are encouraged to go and read it.
The title is Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning by Sensibility
Bustle, D.M. Phil., B.El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the hand-written book
is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver
without harm to the user, but on the very last page Dr Bustle writes, or wrote:
According to the ancient and famous volume JR.es Centum et Una Quas Magus Facere Totest
[*’One Hundred and One Things a Wizard Can Do’] hivers are a type of demon (indeed, Professor
Poledread classifies them as such in J Spy Demons, and Cuvee gives them a section under
‘wandering spirits’ in LIBER IMMANIS MONSTRORUM [The Monster Book of Monsters].
However, ancient texts discovered in the Cave of Jars by the ill-fated First Expedition
to the Loko Region give quite a different story, which bears out my own not inconsider-
able research.
Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it
were, the shape of life. They have no body, brain or thoughts of their own and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently through the endless night between the worlds.
According to Poledread, most end up at the bottom of deep seas, or in the bellies of
volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker
compared to myself, but in this case he is right.
Yet a hiver does have the ability to fear and to crave. We cannot guess what frightens a
hiver, but they seem to take refuge in bodies that have power of some sort – great
strength, great intellect, great prowess with magic. In this sense they are like the
common hermit elephant of Howondaland, Elephantus SoUtarms, that will always
seek the strongest mud hut as its shell.
There is no doubt in my mind that hivers have advanced the cause of life. Why did fish
crawl out of the sea? Why did humanity grasp such a dangerous thing as fire? Hivers, I believe,
have been behind this, firing outstanding creatures of various species with the flame of
necessary ambition which drove them onwards and upwards! What is it that a hiver seeks?
What is it that
drives them forward? What is it they want? This I shall find out!
Oh, lesser wizards warn us that a hiver distorts the mind of its host, curdling it and
inevitably causing an early death through brain fever. I say, Poppycock! People have
always been afraid of what they do not understand!
But I have understanding.
This morning, at two o’clock, I captured a hiver with my device! And now it is locked
inside my head. I can sense its memories, the memories of every creature it has inhabited. Yet,
because of my superior intellect, I control the hiver. It does not control me. I do not feel that
it has changed me in any way. My mind is as extraordinarily powerful as it always has been!!
At this point the writing is smudgy, apparently because Bustle was beginning to
dribble.
Oh, how they have held me back over the years, those worms and cravens that have through
sheer luck been allowed to call themselves my superiors! They laughed at me! BUT THEY
ARE NOT LAUGHING NOW!!! Even those who called themselves my friends, OH
YES, they did nothing but hinder me. What about the warnings? they said. Why did the jar