Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

“That makes sense, I suppose,” Denna said, watching it. “It starts fires and lives in the woods. If it didn’t have something in its head that made it want to put out fires, it wouldn’t survive very long.”

“That’s probably why it came here,” I said. “It saw our fire.”

After several minutes of snuffing and rolling, the draccus came back to the flat bed of coals that was all that remained of our fire. It circled it a few times, then walked over it and lay down. I cringed, but it just shifted back and forth like a hen settling into a nest. The hilltop below was now entirely dark except for the pale moonlight.

“How can I never have heard of these things?” Denna asked.

“They’re very rare,” I said. “People tend to kill them because they don’t understand they’re relatively harmless. And they don’t reproduce very quickly. That one down there is probably two hundred years old, about as big as they get.” I marveled at it. “I bet there aren’t more than a couple hundred draccus that size in the whole world.”

We watched for another couple minutes, but there was no movement from below. Denna gave a jaw-popping yawn. “Gods, I’m exhausted. There’s nothing like the certain knowledge of your own death to tucker you out.” She rolled over onto her back, then onto her side, then back facing toward me, trying to get comfortable. “Lord, it’s cold up here.” She shivered visibly. “I can see why it’s cuddled up on our fire.”

“We could go down and get the blanket,” I suggested.

She snorted. “Not likely.” She shivered visibly, wrapping her arms around her chest.

“Here,” I stood up and took off my cloak. “Wrap up in this. It’s not much, but it’s better than the bare stone.” I held it out to her. “I’ll watch you while you sleep and make sure you don’t fall off.”

She stared at me for a long moment, and I half expected her to beg off. But after a moment she took it and wrapped it around herself. “You, Master Kvothe, certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Wait until tomorrow,” I said. “I’m just getting started.”

I sat there quietly, trying not to shiver, and eventually Denna’s breathing leveled off. I watched her sleep with the calm contentment of a boy who has no idea of how foolish he is, or what unexpected tragedies the following day will bring.

I woke without remembering when I had fallen asleep. Denna was shaking me gently. “Don’t move too quickly,” she said. “It’s a long way down.”

I slowly uncurled, nearly every muscle in my body complaining at how it had been treated yesterday. My thighs and calves were tight, hard knots of pain.

Only then did I realize I was wearing my cloak again. “Did I wake you up?” I asked Denna. “I don’t remember. . . .”

“In a way you did,” she said. “You nodded off and tipped right onto me. You didn’t even flicker a lid when I cussed you out . . .” Denna trailed off as she watched me slowly come to my feet. “Good lord, you look like someone’s arthritic grandfather.”

“You know how it is,” I said. “You’re always stiffest when you wake up.”

She smirked. “We womenfolk don’t have that problem, as a rule.” Her expression grew serious as she watched me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I rode about sixty miles yesterday, before I met up with you,” I said. “I’m not really used to that. And when I jumped last night I hit the rock pretty hard.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Especially in my everywhere.”

“Oh,” she gasped, her hands going to her mouth. “Your beautiful hands!”

I looked down and saw what she meant. I must have hurt them rather badly in my wild attempt to climb the greystone last night. My musician’s calluses had saved my fingertips for the most part, but my knuckles were scraped badly and crusted with blood. Other parts of me hurt so much that I hadn’t even noticed.

My stomach clenched at the sight of them, but when I opened and closed my hands I could tell they were just painfully skinned, not seriously injured. As a musician, I always worried that something might happen to my hands, and my work as an artificer had doubled that anxiety. “It looks worse than it is,” I said. “How long has the draccus been gone?” I asked.

“At least a couple hours. It wandered away a little after the sun came up.”

I looked down from my high vantage on the greystone arch. Last evening the hilltop had been a uniform expanse of green grass. This morning it looked like a battlefield. The grass was crushed in places, burned to stubble in others. There were deep furrows dug in the earth where the lizard had rolled or dragged its heavy body across the turf.

Getting down from the greystone was harder than getting up had been. The top of the arch was about twelve feet off the ground, higher than was convenient for jumping. Normally I wouldn’t have worried about it, but in my stiff, bruised condition I worried I’d land awkwardly and turn my ankle.

Eventually we managed it by using the strap of my travelsack as a makeshift rope. While Denna braced herself and held one end, I lowered myself down. The sack ripped wide open, of course, scattering my belongings, but I made it to the ground with nothing more serious than a grass stain.

Then Denna hung from the lip of the rock and I grabbed her legs, letting her slide down slowly. Despite the fact that I was bruised all down my front side, the experience did a lot to improve my mood.

I gathered up my things and sat down with needle and thread to sew my travelsack back together. After a moment Denna returned from her brief trip into the trees, pausing briefly to pick up the blanket we’d left below. It had several large claw rents from when the draccus had walked over it.

“Have you ever seen one of these before?” I asked, holding out my hand.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “How many times have I heard that one?” Grinning, I handed her the lump of black iron I’d got from the tinker. She looked it over curiously. “Is this a loden-stone?”

“I’m surprised you recognize it.”

“I knew a fellow who used one as a paperweight.” She sighed disparagingly. “He made a special point of how, despite the fact that it was so valuable and exceedingly rare, he used it as a paperweight.” She sniffed. “He was a prat. Do you have any iron?”

“Fish around in there.” I pointed to my jumbled possessions. “There’s bound to be something.”

Denna sat on one of the low greystones and played with the loden-stone and a piece of broken iron buckle. I slowly sewed up my travelsack, then reattached the strap, stitching it several times so it wouldn’t come loose.

Denna was thoroughly engrossed by the loden-stone. “How does it work?” she asked, pulling the buckle away and letting it snap back. “Where does the pulling come from?”

“It’s a type of galvanic force,” I said, then hesitated. “Which is a fancy way of saying that I’ve got no idea at all.”

“I wonder if it only likes iron because it’s made of iron,” she mused, touching her silver ring to it with no effect. “If someone found a loden-stone made of brass would it like other brass?”

“Maybe it would like copper and zinc,” I said. “That’s what brass is made of.” I turned the bag rightside out and began packing up my things. Denna handed me back the loden-stone and wandered off toward the destroyed remains of the fire pit.

“It ate all the wood before it left,” she said.

I went over to look too. The area around the firepit was a churned-up mess. It looked like an entire legion of cavalry had ridden across it. I prodded a great piece of overturned sod turf with the toe of my boot, then bent to pick something up. “Look at this.”