Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

Denna touched my arm. I felt the sudden warmth of her hand through my shirt. I drew a deep breath and smelled the smell of her hair, warm with the sun, the smell of green grass and her clean sweat and her breath and apples. The wind sighed through the trees and lifted her hair so that it tickled my face.

Only when sudden silence filled the clearing did I realize that I’d been keeping up a steady stream of mindless chatter for several minutes. I flushed with embarrassment and looked around, suddenly remembering where I was.

“You were a little wild around the eyes there,” she said gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of sorts before.”

I took another slow breath. “I’m out of sorts all the time,” I said. “I just don’t show it.”

“My point exactly.” She took a step back, her hand slowly sliding down the length of my arm until it fell away. “So what now?”

“I . . . I have no idea.” I looked around aimlessly.

“That doesn’t sound like you either,” she said.

“I’d like a drink of water,” I said, then gave a sheepish grin at how childish it sounded.

She grinned back at me. “That’s a good place to start,” she teased. “After that?”

“I’d like to know why the Chandrian attacked here.”

“ What’s their plan, eh?” She looked serious. “There isn’t much middle ground with you, is there? All you want is a drink of water and the answer to a question that folk have been guessing at since . . . well, since forever.”

“What do you think happened here?” I asked. “Who do you think killed these folks?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “It could have been all manner of . . .” She stopped, chewing on her lower lip. “No. That’s a lie,” she said at last. “It sounds strange to say, but I think it was them. It sounds like something out of a story, so I don’t want to believe it. But I do.” She looked at me nervously.

“That makes me feel better.” I stood up. “I thought I might be a little crazy.”

“You still might be,” she said. “I’m not a good touchstone to use for judging your sanity.”

“Do you feel crazy?”

She shook her head, a half smile curling the corner of her mouth. “No. How about you?”

“Not particularly.”

“That’s either good or bad, depending,” she said. “How do you propose we go about solving the mystery of the ages?”

“I need to think on it for a while,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s find your mysterious Master Ash. I’d love to ask him a few questions about what he saw back at the Mauthen farm.”

Denna nodded. “I was thinking I would head back to where he left me, behind that bluff, then look between there and the farm.” She shrugged. “It’s not much of a plan. . . .”

“It gives us a place to start,” I said. “If he came back and found you were gone, he might have left a trail that we could pick up.”

Denna led the way through the woods. It was warmer here. The trees kept the wind at bay but the sun could still peer through as many of the trees were nearly bare. Only the tall oaks were still holding all their leaves, like self-conscious old men.

As we walked, I tried to think of what reason the Chandrian could have had for killing these people. Was there any similarity between this wedding party and my troupe?

Someone’s parents have been singing the entirely wrong sort of songs. . . .

“What did you sing last night?” I asked. “For the wedding.”

“The usual,” Denna said, kicking through a pile of leaves. “Bright stuff. ‘Pennywhistle.’ ‘Come Wash in the River.’ ‘Copper Bottom Pot.’ ” She chuckled. “ ‘Aunt Emme’s Tub’ . . .”

“You didn’t,” I said, aghast. “At a wedding ?”

“A drunk grandfather asked for it,” she shrugged as she made her way though a thick tangle of yellowing banerbyre. “There were a few raised eyebrows, but not many. They’re earthy folk around here.”

We walked a little longer in silence. The wind gusted in the high branches above us, but where we trudged along it was just a whisper. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Come Wash’ before. . . .”

“I’d have thought . . .” Denna looked over her shoulder at me. “Are you trying to trick me into singing for you?”

“Of course.”

She turned and smiled warmly at me, her hair falling into her face. “Maybe later. I’ll sing for my supper.” She led us around a tall outcrop of dark stone. It was chillier here, out of the sun. “I think he left me here,” she said, looking around uncertainly. “Everything looks different during the day.”

“Do you want to search the route back toward the farm, or circle out from here?”

“Circles,” she said. “But you’ll have to show me what I’m supposed to be looking for. I’m a city girl.”

I briefly showed her what little I knew of woodcraft. I showed her the sort of ground where a boot will leave a scuff or a print. I pointed out how the pile of leaves she had walked through were obviously disturbed, and how the branches of the banerbyre were broken and torn where she’d struggled through.

We stayed close together, as two pairs of eyes are better than one, and neither of us was eager to set off alone. We worked back and forth, making larger and larger arcs away from the bluff.

After five minutes I began to sense the futility of it. There was just too much forest. I could tell that Denna quickly came to the same conclusion. The storybook clues we hoped to find once again failed to show themselves. There were no torn scraps of cloth clinging to branches, no deep bootprints or abandoned campsites. We did find mushrooms, acorns, mosquitoes, and raccoon scat cleverly concealed by pine needles.

“Do you hear water?” Denna asked.

I nodded. “I could really do with a drink,” I said. “And a bit of a wash.”

We wandered wordlessly away from our search, neither one of us wanting to admit that we were eager to give it up, both of us feeling in our bones how pointless it was. We followed the sound of running water down the hill until we pushed through a thick stand of pine trees and came upon a lovely, deep stream about twenty feet across.

There was no scent of foundry runoff in this water, so we drank and I topped off my water bottle.

I knew the shape of stories. When a young couple comes to a river there is a definite shape to what will happen next. Denna would bathe on the other side of the nearby fir tree, out of sight on a sandy bit of shore. I would move off a discrete distance, out of sight, but within easy talking distance. Then . . . something would happen. She would slip and turn her ankle, or cut her foot on a sharp stone, and I’d be forced to rush over. And then . . .

But this was not a story of two young lovers meeting by the river. So I splashed some water on my face and changed into my clean shirt behind a tree. Denna dipped her head in the water to cool off. Her glistening hair was dark as ink until she wrung it out with her hands.

Then we sat on a stone, dandling our feet in the water and enjoying each other’s company as we rested. We shared an apple, passing it back and forth between bites, which is close to kissing, if you’ve never kissed before.

And, after some gentle goading, Denna sang for me. One verse of “Come Wash,” a verse I had never heard before, which I suspect she made up on the spot. I will not repeat it here, as she sang it to me, not to you. And since this is not the story of two young lovers meeting by the river, it has no particular place here, and I will keep it to myself.

Not long after the apple was gone, Denna and I pulled our feet out of the water and gathered ourselves to leave. I considered leaving off my boots, as feet that can run bare over Tarbean’s rooftops are in no danger of being hurt by the roughest forest floor. But I didn’t want to appear uncivilized, so I pulled on my socks despite the fact that they were damp and clammy with sweat.