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

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Following an excerpt from Bee’s journals, “Mist and Light” begins with Bee musing on the disruption of her peace with her father and Riddle as Shun and FitzVigilant arrive and join them. She excuses herself from the table, wandering outside and enjoying the festive crowd. While there, she encounters again the particular beggar in whom she had had some interest before, and she helps him away from locals who accost him.

Nursing her annoyance at Shun, Bee works to assist the beggar, and as she does, he exults in what he claims is the return of his sight as she is embraced by prophetic insights. The beggar warns Bee against acting on the insights that break upon her, and she becomes aware of sharing thoughts with him. The beggar voices a prophecy of his own, and Bee is left stricken in a world suddenly dulled and muted around her, aware now of the implications of any and every action she might take.

The present chapter is a scant six pages in the edition of the novel I am reading again, and while I do not (yet) have the set of information I need to do the kind of formal study I would (very much) like to do, I have the sensation that it is among the briefest “regular” chapters in the Elderlings corpus. The effect of acceleration continues; matters in the novel rush towards an ending, now, and, given the vantages of rereading, familiarity with Hobb’s corpus, and narrative structures more generally, that ending does not look to be a happy one. It could hardly be so for the first book in a trilogy, and it could hardly be so and be the work of Robin Hobb. (As to the rereading, well, that is something like cheating; I’ll get where I need to get with it in plenty of time.)

If I indulge myself in reading affectively (as opposed to being compelled into it by my own predilections), I find that I wonder how my own daughter, about whom I have made no few (and overwhelmingly appreciative) comments in this webspace, would react. I would like to think that my child would move to help those who present themselves as being in need; she’s expressed sympathies in that line no few times in the past, even if her cynical father has hurried her along more often than not, but that her heart is good is not a blameworthy thing. And I do note that she does get jealous about the focus of her caregivers on others, which is flattering as her caregiver even if it is sometimes…difficult to address. Of course, any comparison between a fictional character and a real person is fraught, and there is something to be said against spending as much time immured in studying writing as I have.

Less affectively, however, and more towards “looking for a moral” in the work (which is, after all, something that a lot of literary study and “literary study” attends to), the strong implication of Bee’s foresight presents itself to me. At the beggar’s insistence–and who the beggar is will become clear if it is not already so–Bee considers a variety of futures her potential actions would make available and begins to recognize that having her foresight does not guarantee that anything she foresees will necessarily occur, or that things she does not foresee will not. That there are so many possibilities as present themselves to her is not more true for her than for others in the text–or among the readership. Awareness of them imposes more responsibility for them, to be sure, but the lack of awareness of them does not mean they are unavailable to others–and that might be the lesson to take from the present chapter.

Maybe.

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