Say no more! The fine ladies may encounter sacks brimming with wheat and grain. The plants are either drenched in dark water, or their stalks — if squeezed — drip dark water. Some wheat shows minimal contact with dark water, while other grains seem nearly entirely black, as if either rotten or fed dark rotten throughout. The sacks are labeled differently. A small booklet accompanies the purchase papers that are meant to be handed over to the 'merchant Matthias' upon receipt of the grains, for customs. The booklet includes... three recipes/instructions, corresponding to each type of grain. The grain that has been touched by black water or has it in the stalks must be used half and half with regular wheat to make bread. The one barely touched by dark water must be used 3/4 of it with 1/4 of regular wheat and best fermented into alcohol. The wheat that appears to have been fed exclusively dark water while growing and that now looks black must be seeded into ground to make more wheat of its kind.

Disobey these recipes, the instructions say, and the product will be either too 'strong' to be palatable or 'too weak to achieve change' in common men. The grain that must be seeded should be put down in strong, thriving fields, to grow and spread. These, say the instructions, are the lessons of the Hand and Hive.