The boy’s family were gone, taken by the great Sickness. The brothers at the Abbey took him in. They were gentle souls, but they were old and serious men, their days set firm in routine: rising before dawn; prayer; rounds of chores; prayer; more chores; prayers; bed. They spoke often of God’s love, and of great inner joy, which was God’s gift, and maybe they really felt it. But there was no spark of play that children need to feel alive, loved, and at home. No one wrestled him like his older brothers, and he had no baby sister to tickle. Nobody sang him asleep as his mother had. If there’s a god, the boy thought, he’s little better than a thief in the night.
The closest thing to merriment in the Abbey was gathering for plainsong. The brothers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, chanting in a language the boy couldn’t understand. Their low drone hummed off the chapel’s stone walls.
“What’s it mean?” the boy wondered. “Why does it sound so sad?” He suspected it just sounded sad to him. Maybe everything would seem sad from now on.
One day there was a buzz of excitement: Modomnoc was to visit the Abbey.
“Who?” asked the child. Do you like sweet things, boy? Well so! Wait and see, was their strange answer.
Modomnoc must have arrived as everyone slept, because the next morning when the boy roused from the dormitory, the old man was already there, greeting various brothers with hugs and laughter.
The boy stayed clear of the stranger, but watched him from afar. The old man was friendly, but spent much time alone, wandering the grounds, delight and wonder on his face as he inspected flower after flower.
A new sound entered the world after Modomnoc’s arrival. Suddenly there were hundreds of bees. The tiny sisters hummed at their work from dawn to dusk, thronging the meadows that flanked the Abbey.
The days grew longer, brighter, more hopeful. The boy watched astonished as a large hive grew under the great oak by the Abbey graveyard. Everyone gave it a wide berth, but Modomnoc was a guest of honour with the sisters. They buzzed about him as he inspected the honeycombs, sampling their bounty with his finger, eyes closed in gratitude. The boy longed to approach this mysterious character, and ask him for that honey. But it felt overwhelming—asking too much.
“Do they never sting you?” the boy managed the courage to squawk from a safe distance one morning. Modomnoc came to, as if from a dream.
“Do my sisters sting me? They do not.” He paused and then added: “I tell a lie. There was one time, early on when I was learning the art of beekeeping. But I took that as a blessing. And a warning.”
“A warning?”
“Indeed. A dire warning—against pride, that first great sin. The sin the serpent in the tree put in me.”
The boy soon learned one of the reasons Modomnoc was beloved: his honeybees helped the brothers make a drink called mead, which they stored reverently for special occasions. In their haste to harvest the honey before autumn, some monks tried to help the old man, but the bees stung the intruders horribly. Modomnoc was left alone with his humming convent. The boy saw him whispering to them often.
The boy yearned to learn the secrets of these whispers. One day he couldn’t hold his tongue, and yelled from his safe perch in the hedge: “What are you telling the bees?!”
“I tell what’s happening in our big human family. The local baptisms, marriages and deaths, and so on.”
“Why?”
“The bees bridge worlds—between flowers and animals, between animals and man, and between man and the almighty. They’re curious, and want to know the lay of the land. If they aren’t told of the important events, they may take offense and leave.”
The boy wanted to whisper to the bees, but he didn’t have faith he’d be spared their terrible sting. He was no Modomnoc.
At night he dreamt of orders of bees, rising in circles around him, like great angelic orders. Were they upset he wasn’t whispering to them? He wanted to tell them: my family is dead. My home is cold as stone.
Without warning or farewell, Modomnoc was gone. Suddenly it was autumn. A chill cut through the morning air as the boy inspected the hive. It had grown huge over the summer. He half-expected the bees to be gone too, vanished after their master, but no. They buzzed their plainchant inside and all around their own small chapel: a swarm of devotion.
Then, with no one around to witness, not even Modomnoc, the boy found himself weeping, and telling the bees everything he had lost, and would never get back. And after the bitter weeping, a great silence fell on him. The boy was so tired of this bitterness; he desperately wanted a taste of something sweet. Slowly, he approached the hive. He imagined the sisters swarming to kill the invader, because they had sworn to allow only the pure of heart take their honey. And he was no man of faith like Master Modomnoc. What was he at all?
As the boy reached out to the hive entrance, a pure dread entered his heart. The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and the world darkened.
He reached inside, ready for the stingers to pierce him, like tiny Roman soldiers with their swords, but he felt only tiny bodies part way for him. Then honey graced his touch. As he drew his hand back, the sun burst from the cloud, all the more dazzling. The amber light shone from his fingers, not of this world. The sweetest gift he’d ever tasted.
I have worked as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble in NYC, and a librarian in Cork Central Library, Ireland. I’m currently a writing teacher at New York University, but I work in conjunction with the Bobst librarians to teach students research skills, and to occasionally lead them into the Narnian wonderland that is the stacks.