The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper To Read

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  ‘What are you doing?’

There might be a boldness in the boy’s voice but there was fear in his heart too and the boldness hardly concealed it. Mart May could tell.

He had emerged out of the shimmering white gold of the mid-afternoon high summer garden into the deep green cool, a thin boy with arms and legs as greenish pale as peeled twigs, pale hair; but he stood his ground, once upon it, which Mart admired.

‘Listen,’ he said.

The small boy stared.

‘Go on – you listen.’

They both stood quite still, the man in the strange helmet and ghostly garment and the stick-limbed boy. There was no movement of air among the dark heavy August leaves, so that the vibrating in the branches of the oak tree above them was clearly heard, like the sweet music of comb and paper.

‘What is singing?’

‘The swarm.’

‘Oh.’

After a moment Mart May said, ‘You visiting?’

‘I came last night. It was dark.’

‘On holiday then.’

The boy seemed to consider it, but in the end did not reply.

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