She said “Hello?” and only the echoes returned her greeting.
It took a few days before she was brave enough to sing. She had never liked her singing voice but in her captivity free of embarrassment and expectation she sang, softly at first but then brightly and boldly. The voice that the echo returned to her ears was surprisingly pleasant.
She sang all the songs she knew. She made up her own. In moments when she could not think of words to sing she created nonsense languages for lyrics with sounds she found pleasing.
It surprised her how quickly the time passed.
Now the door opens.
The acolyte who enters holds a ring of brass keys. He offers his other palm to her. On it sits a small disk of metal with a raised carving of a bee.
Accepting the bee is the next step in becoming an acolyte. This is her final chance to refuse.
She takes the bee from the acolyte’s palm. He bows and gestures for her to follow him.
The young woman who is to be an acolyte turns the warm metal disk over in her fingers as they walk through narrow candlelit tunnels lined with bookshelves and open caverns filled with mismatched chairs and tables, stacked high with books and dotted with statues. She pets a statue of a fox as they pass by, a popular habit that has worn its carved fur smooth between its ears.
An older man leafing through a volume glances up as they pass and recognizing the procession he places two fingers to his lips and inclines his head at her.
At her, not at the acolyte she follows. A gesture of respect for a position she does not yet officially hold. She bows her head to hide her smile. They continue down gilded stairways and through curving tunnels she has never traversed before. She slows to look at the paintings hung between the shelves of books, images of trees and girls and ghosts.
The acolyte stops at a door marked with a golden bee. He chooses a key from his ring and unlocks it.
Here begins the initiation.
It is a secret ceremony. The details are known only to those who undergo it and those who perform it. It has been performed in the same fashion always, as long as anyone can remember.
As the door with the golden bee is opened and the threshold crossed the acolyte gives up her name. Whatever name this young woman was called before she will never be addressed by it again, it stays in her past. Someday she may have a new name, but for the moment she is nameless.
The room is small and round and high-ceilinged, a miniature version of her contemplation cell. It holds a plain wooden chair on one side and a waist-high pillar of stone topped with a bowl of fire. The fire provides the only light.
The elder acolyte gestures for the young woman to sit in the wooden chair. She does. She faces the fire, watching the flames dance until a piece of black silk is tied over her eyes.
The ceremony continues unseen.
The metal bee is taken from her hand. There is a pause followed by the sound of metal instruments clinking and then the sensation of a finger on her chest, pressing into a spot on her breastbone. The pressure releases and then it is replaced by a sharp, searing pain.
(She will realize afterward that the metal bee has been heated in the fire, its winged impression burned into her chest.)
The surprise of it unnerves her. She has prepared herself for what she knows of the rest of the ceremony, but this is unexpected. She realizes she has never seen the bare chest of another acolyte.
When moments before she was ready, now she is shaken and unsure.
But she does not say Stop. She does not say No.
She has made her decision, though she could not have known everything that decision would entail.
In the darkness, fingers part her lips and a drop of honey is placed on her tongue.
This is to ensure that the last taste is sweet.
In truth the last taste that remains in an acolyte’s mouth is more than honey: the sweetness swept up in blood and metal and burning flesh.
Were an acolyte able to describe it, afterward, they might clarify that the last taste they experience is one of honey and smoke.
It is not entirely sweet.
They recall it each time they extinguish the flame atop a beeswax candle.