Patrick Rothfuss - The Slow Regard of Silent Things

But now she knew much more than that. So much of what she’d thought was truth before was merely tricks. No more than clever ways of speaking to the world. They were a bargaining. A plea. A call. A cry.

But underneath, there was a secret deep within the hidden heart of things. Mandrag never told her that. She did not think he knew. Auri found that secret for herself.

She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums.

Auri nodded to herself. Her tiny face was grave. She scooped the waxy fine-ground fruit into a sieve and set the sieve atop a gather jar.

She closed her eyes. She drew her shoulders back. She took a slow and steady breath.

There was a tension in the air. A weight. A wait. There was no wind. She did not speak. The world grew stretched and tight.

Auri drew a breath and opened up her eyes.

Auri was urchin small. Her tiny feet upon the stone were bare.

Auri stood, and in the circle of her golden hair she grinned and brought the weight of her desire down full upon the world.

And all things shook. And all things knew her will. And all things bent to please her.

It was not long before Auri returned to Mantle with a sorrel colored candle pressed with lavender. It smelled of bay and bees. It was a perfect thing.

Auri washed her face. She washed her hands and feet.

Soon. She knew. Soon he would come visiting. Incarnadine and sweet and sad and broken. Just like her. He would come, and like the proper gentleman he was, he would bring three things.

Grinning, Auri fairly danced. She would have three things for him as well.

First his clever candle, all Taborlin. All warm and stuffed with poetry and dreams.

Second was a proper place. A shelf where he could put his heart. A bed to sleep. Nothing could harm him here.

And the third thing? Well . . . She ducked her face and felt a slow flush climb her cheeks. . . .

Stalling, Auri reached out for the small stone soldier sitting on his bedshelf. Strange she’d never noticed the design upon its shield. It was so faint. But yes. There was the tower wrapped up in a tongue of flame. No mere soldier, it was a small stone Amyr.

Peering closer, Auri spied slight lines upon his arms as well. She did not know how she had missed these things before. It was a tiny Ciridae. Of course. Of course it was. It would hardly be a proper present for him otherwise. She kissed the tiny figurine and set it back upon the shelf.

Still, there was the third thing. This time Auri did not blush. She smiled. She washed her face and hands and feet. Then she skipped quickly into Port and opened up the hollybottle. With two fingers Auri lifted out a single seed. The tiny berry bright as blood despite green Foxen’s light.

Auri scampered off to Van and peered into the mirror. She licked her lips and pressed the berry up against them, daubing it from left to right. Then she smoothed the berry back and forth across them.

She eyed her reflection. She looked no different than before. Her lips were palest pink. She smiled.

Auri returned to Mantle. She washed her face and hands and feet.

Excitement bubbling up inside of her, Auri looked at his bed. His blanket. His bedshelf with the tiny Amyr waiting there to guard him.

It was perfect. It was right. It was a start. He would need a place someday, and it was here all ready for him. Someday he would come, and she would tend to him. Someday he would be the one all eggshell hollow empty in the dark.

And then . . . Auri smiled. Not for herself. No. Not ever for herself. She must stay small and tucked away, well-hidden from the world.

But for him it was a different thing entire. For him she would bring forth all her desire. She would call up all her cunning and her craft. Then she would make a name for him.

Auri spun about three times. She smelled the air. She grinned. All around her everything was proper true. She knew exactly where she was. She was exactly where she ought to be.

CODA

DEEP IN THE UNDERT HING,stones warm beneath her feet, Auri heard a faint, sweet strain of music.

AUTHOR’S ENDNOTE:

LET ME TELLyou a story about a story. Because that’s what I do.

Back in January of 2013, I was in a San Francisco bar with Vi Hart: mathemusician, videotrix, and all-around lovely person. We’d both been fans of each other’s work for years without knowing it, and had recently been introduced by a mutual friend.

This was our first time meeting in person. I had just finished the first draft the story you now hold, and Vi had agreed to take a look at it and give me her opinion.

We spent a couple hours talking about the story, our conversation frequently tangenting off in odd directions, the way good conversations do.

Her feedback was really good. Not just clever, but startlingly insightful. When I mentioned this to her, she looked slightly amused and explained that writing was most of what she did. She scripted her videos, then recorded them. The scripting was the lion’s share of the work.

She pointed out some things that needed work in the story, some rough spots, some logical incongruities. She pointed out the parts she liked, too, and talked about the story as a whole.

I should mention that by this point in the evening, I was slightly drunk. A bit of a rarity for me. But since we were hanging out in a bar, it seemed polite to buy a drink. Then I had a drink because Vi was having another, and I wanted to be social. Then I had another because I was a little nervous about meeting Vi for the first time. Then I had another because I was a little nervous about my story.

Well, let’s be honest, I was more than a little nervous about the story. I knew, deep in my heart of hearts, that my new-wrought story was a train wreck. A colossal, smoldering mess of a train wreck.

“It doesn’t do the things a story is supposed to do,” I said to her. “A story should have dialogue, action, conflict. A story should have more than one character. I’ve written a thirty-thousand-word vignette!”

Vi said she liked it.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I like it too. But that doesn’t matter. You see, people expect certain things from a story,” I explained. “You can leave out one or two if you step carefully, but you can’t ditch all of them. The closest thing I have to an action scene is someone making soap. I spend eight pages describing someone making soap. Eight pages of a sixty-page story making soap. That’s something a crazy person does.”

As I’ve said, I was really worried about the story. And perhaps more than slightly drunk. And I was finally getting something off my chest that I hadn’t really shared with anyone before.

“People are going to read this and be pissed,” I said.

Vi looked at me with serious eyes. “I felt more of an emotional connection to the inanimate objects in this story than I usually feel toward entire characters in other books,” she explained. “It’s a good story.”

But I wasn’t having any of it. I shook my head, not even looking up at her. “Readers expect certain things. People are going to read this and be disappointed. It doesn’t do what a normal story is supposed to do.”

Then Vi said something I will always remember. “Fuck those people,” she said. “Those people have stories written for them all the time. What about me? Where’s the story for people like me?”

Her voice was passionate and hard and slightly angry. She might have slammed her hand down on the table at this point. I like to think she slammed her hand down on the table. Let’s say she did.

“Let those other people have their normal stories,” Vi said. “This story isn’t for them. This is my story. This story is for people like me.”