Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following a short entry in Bee Farseer’s dream journal, “My Own Voice” opens with a shift in narrative perspective to Bee as she recounts having “freed” her tongue. The day she did so is recounted in great detail, along with Bee noting her position in Withywoods relative to the other children on the estate. Similarities between her and Fitz are also noted, and Bee’s isolation from the other children is attested. So, too, is the beginning of her ability to see branching paths ahead of her, and she begins to exert agency by choosing among them. The choice allows another, larger child to abuse her in such a way that a strip of flesh holding her tongue awkwardly in her mouth is severed; the abuse enacted, she flees from them and recovers.

Having recovered and begun to familiarize herself in private with the formation of words, Bee returns to her attempts at finding fellowship with the other children on the estate. The attempt goes poorly, with the other children assailing her with murderous intent. A servitor on the estate saves Bee and rebukes the other children harshly, and Bee learns their fear of her. She gives them more occasion for wariness by speaking clearly before and to them, and she begins to settle into new routines, the which are described. Some of Bee’s apprehension about Fitz is explained, and he tries to begin to bond with her over games similar to those he had used to play in Buckkeep. Bee’s performance exceeds expectations.

On another day, Bee accompanies Molly as she tends her flowers. Molly dies during doing so, and it is some time before Fitz comes looking for her. Finding them, finding Molly dead, grief pours out of him through the Skill, and Nettle realized what has happened. Bee is overwhelmed by the outpouring, and they recognize one another in their grief. She also whispers a verse from her dreams.

When I first read Fool’s Assassin, many years ago, now, I found myself confused by the present chapter. I had long been accustomed to Fitz’s first-person narration, and I had seen Hobb attempt to use a similar perspective with Nevare Burvelle in the Soldier Son novels. (I’ll get to them at some point, I know, but it will be a while, yet.) For the novel to shift to another narrative perspective, though, and one that is not much dissimilar from Fitz’s, was somewhat jarring for my initial reading. It took me a while to realize what was going on, which annoyed me–not because of the writing, but because my arrogant self chafed at not knowing. (It still does, but that’s another issue, entirely.) It was easier this time around, to be sure, but I recall it being a sticking point in the initial reading.

Yet again, as should not be a surprise at this point, I found myself reading affectively as I read the present chapter. Molly’s death–which, as things go, is a good one; we should all be so lucky as to pass in such peace–made it seem to me like somebody was cutting onions nearby. It’s not the first time, of course, even if I do feel somewhat silly at being moved (again) in such a way over a work of fiction. After all, “it’s just a book,” “it’s not like it’s real,” and “there’re things in the world worth weeping over” without looking for them in fiction. Each of those is true, certainly, and my eyes often water despite no allergen’s effect, and yet I am affected.

More “normally” or formally, I note a slight Shakespearean movement at the end of the chapter. It’s not the first time I’ve marked such a thing, as witness this. (I might have to post the paper here sometime, probably after I work on it some more. There’s a difference between a conference paper and a more developed work, and it might be good to see if I still have what it takes to do the more developed work.) It’s a commonplace in Shakespearean narration that the ends of scenes will rhyme; it’s also a commonplace in Shakespearean narration that supernatural workings rhyme. (I’m put in mind of Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, for one example.) The “poem” Bee whispers into Fitz’s ear at the end of the chapter–“When the bee to the earth does fall, the butterfly comes back to change all”–though presented as prose (there ought to be a line-break at the comma), and though not strictly metrical (both “lines” can be read as trimeter, with three stressed syllables each, but the counts of unstressed syllables are irregular), seems to partake of that kind of thing (Oberon’s incantations–especially in 2.2.33-40–are in tetrameter rather than the accustomed Shakespearean pentameter, after all). I’m not going to ascribe some grand motive to the coincidence; rather, I think this is an instance of Hobb being a writer of her background, presenting the “poem” in a way that “that kind of thing should be done.”

We are all of us products of when and where we come from.

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