When is magic not magic? (1)

 

Returning to the book….

 

The ancient peoples that were to become the insect-kinden(2) had bartered their souls to the arthropods, but in exchange, they gained power. The link they forged to the races of the insect-kinds opened a door to a larger world in which the human and the invertebrate met. Those early tribes of humanity were able to make contact.

 

Contact with what? With something other, some exemplar, an Aristotelian ideal, a totem spirit, insect gods(3). From this contact sprang what became known as the Art.

 

The first Art, and the most necessary for survival, was that of speech. The earliest leaders, priest-kings of the ancient tribes, were able to intercede on behalf of their people, to turn aside the predators, to propose alliances. Only the Art stood between humanity’s survival (4), and utter extinction. It is a mark of how long ago all this was that, when the book actually opens, the Art of speech is almost unknown, domestication of insects is a routine affair of animal husbandry, and the threat of obliteration at the mandibles of the horde is utterly forgotten.

 

However, there are other gifts that the Art can offer. By meditataion and attunement a supplicant can gain a great deal more. Each of the patron species has gifts at its disposal. It is at this point in prehistory that the different kinden begin to diverge: the Ant-kinden tend towards unity, organisation and rigid hierarchy. The Beetle-kinden are rugged survivors able to exploit any circumstance to their advantage. The Moth-kinden live by the moon in darkness and silence (5). Those who follow hunters master patience and the sudden strike, or grow spurs of bone in imitation of the claws and mandibles of their patrons. Devotees of the social insects learn to touch minds with their fellows. Some can spread transient, insubstantial wings and fly.

 

Some of these gifts are invariable. There has never been a Fly-kinden that could not take to the skies, or an Ant-kinden who could not speak mind to mind. Meditation techniques are taught to children early, one of the few universal traditions of the kinden, and the first flowering of Art tends to coincide with the onset of adolescence. For the rest, the Art is neither ubiquitous nor free, but is earned by concentration and dedication. Some, poor pitied fools, never master even the first steps, and live a bitter and deprived live because of it.

 

To a visitor from our world it would be magic (6): people fly through the air on a shimmer of wings, shoulder great loads without complaint, loose stings of golden fire from their hands or climb sheer walls. To the kinden, magic is something entirely other. Magic is the next great step in their history: the time known by its adherents as the Age of Lore, and by its victims as the Dark Age, or just the Bad Old Days. That comes later. The Art, however, is not magic, not to them. It is a fact of life, a staple of existence, no more remarked upon than the sun rising or a stone falling from the hand to the ground. They take the inexplicable for granted, because it has walked alongside them for so many generations that they cannot remember those distant, dangerous days when it did not shield and nurture them. The Art unites the kinden, and distinguishes between them.

 

But we are still far back in the ebb of history. Now that humanity has kept its toehold in the world, against the might of the monster insects, the stage is ready for a new order to aside…

 

Next: The Days of Lore.

 

(1)   no, not when it’s indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology.

 

(2)   “kinden” is what I took to calling the various races of humanity in the books. My editor favoured “kin” or “kind” rather than the neologism, but to me the expression “Beetle-kind” or “Spider-kin” suggests something more like the animal, rather than the human, so I’ve stuck with it so far.

 

(3)   One of my favourite poems written by Edward Gorey concludes: “And so it was that Millicent Frastley was sacrificed to the Insect God". Got to love a happy ending…

 

(4)   And the survival of those other vertebrates that humanity had domesticated, which remain to this day the only other landbound vertebrates around.

 

(5)   I’d be the first, or at least the second, to admit that my views on the virtues of any given species of insect, and how that would translate to humanity, can be fairly idiosyncratic. However, more of the individual kinden details later.

 

(6)   Once they’d got over the whole giant insect thing.