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It was quiet, as if everyone in the troupe was listening for something. As if they were all holding their breath.
It reminded me of the quiet that settles on the coldest days in winter when it hurts to breathe and everything is still.
His face was narrow and sharp, with the perfect beauty of porcelain. His hair was shoulder length, framing his face in loose curls the color of frost. He was a creature of winter’s pale. Everything about him was cold and sharp and white. Except his eyes. They were black like a goat’s but with no iris. His eyes were like his sword, and neither one reflected the light of the fire or the setting sun.
Again I was reminded of the way mercury moved.
“Someone’s parents,” he said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”
Send him to the soft and painless blanket of his sleep.”
shadow pooled around him like thick oil.
Cinder glanced briefly at the shadowed man, then turned away. “You are as good as a watcher, Haliax,” he snapped.
“And you seem to forget our purpose,” the dark man said, his cool voice sharpening. “Or does your purpose simply differ from my own?” The last words were spoken carefully, as if they held special significance. Cinder’s arrogance left him in a second, like water poured from a bucket. “No,” he said, turning back toward the fire. “No, certainly not.” “That is good. I hate to think of our long acquaintance coming to an end.” “As do I.” “Refresh me again as to our relationship, Cinder,” the shadowed man said, a deep sliver of anger running through his patient tone. “I . . . I am in your
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“Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe? From all that would harm you in the world?” Haliax asked with calm politeness, as if genuinely curious as to what the answer might be. “You, Lord Haliax.” Cinder’s voice was a quiet shred of pain. “And whose purpose do you serve?” “Your purpose, Lord Haliax.” The words were choked out. “Yours. None other.”
University/Hiding, Edema Ruh, Faerie.
“I am glad I decided to accompany you today. You are straying, indulging in whimsy. Some of you seem to have forgotten what it is we seek, what we wish to achieve.”
“They come,” Haliax said quietly. He stood, and shadow seemed to boil outward from him like a dark fog. “Quickly. To me.”
Haliax spread his arms and the shadow surrounding him bloomed like a flower unfolding. Then, each of the others turned with a studied ease and took a step toward Haliax, into the shadow surrounding him. But as their feet came down they slowed, and gently, as if they were made of sand with wind blowing across them, they faded away. Only Cinder looked back, a hint of anger in his nightmare eyes. Then they were gone.
It was in the darkest hours of the night when I found our wagon. Our horse had dragged it nearly a hundred yards down the road before he died. It seemed so normal inside, so tidy and calm. I was struck by how much the back of the wagon smelled like the two of them.
I took down my father’s lute case. I lay in my parents’ bed with the lute beside me.
mother’s pillow smelled of her hair, of an embrace.
Then I left. I walked into the forest and kept going until dawn began to brighten the eastern edges of the sky. As the birds began to sing I stopped and set down my bag. I brought out my father’s lute and clutched it to my body. Then I began to play. My fingers hurt, but I played anyway. I played until my fingers bled on the strings. I played until the sun shone through the trees. I played until my arms ached. I played, trying not to remember, until I fell asleep.
After all this time he has not truly allowed his grief to run its course. He has not invited another human being to know how very much the loss of his entire family has wounded him. And so each time it is retold the wound is reopened...for wound it still is with no proper healing yet.
PERHAPS THE GREATEST FACULTY our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind’s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door
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Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things.
This is THE answer in straightforward fashion to questions raised in that book.
Here the why is naked and plain.
Here is the answer to Ary's insanity and perhaps of those of Kvothe's master Elodin, at the Arcanum
I
Then Ben was no longer there, and there was not one standing stone, but many. More than I had ever seen in one place before. They formed a double circle around me. One stone was set across the top of two others, forming a huge arch with thick shadow underneath. I reached out to touch it. .
My father had never finished his song.
It may have been beautiful, but I didn’t notice. I couldn’t notice.
I had everything I needed to survive:
I also had one thing I did not need: time.
a small part of my mind started to slowly reawaken itself.
Of course I played. It was my only solace.
By the end of the first month, my fingers had calluses hard as stones and I could play for hours upon hours. I played and played again all of the songs I knew from memory. Then I played the half-remembered songs as well, filling in the forgotten parts as best I could.
Eventually I could play from when I woke until t...
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Soon after that I began playing . . . how can I describe it?
I began to play something other than songs. When the sun warms the grass and the breeze cools you, it feels a certain way. I would play until I got the feeling right. I would play until it sounded like Warm Grass and Cool Breeze. I was only playing for myself, but I was a harsh audience. I remember spending nearly three whole days trying to capture Wind Turning a Leaf.
By the end of the second month, I could play things nearly as easily as I saw and felt them: Sun Setting Behind the Clouds, Bird Taking a Drink, Dew in the Bracken.
Somewhere in the third month I stopped looking outside and started looking inside for things to play. I learned to play Riding in the Wagon with Ben, Singing with Father by the Fire, Watching Shandi Dance, Grinding Leaves When it Is Nice Outside, Mother Smiling. .
Heartbreak. I can't even...
Needless to say, playing these things hurt, but it was a hurt like tender fingers on lute strings. I bled a bit and hoped that I would callous soon.
I tried humming Snow Falling with the Late Autumn Leaves; Calloused Fingers and a Lute with Four Strings, but it wasn’t the same as playing it.
This casual kindness made my chest ache.
He started to sing “Tinker Tanner,” a drinking song that is older than God. After a second his son joined in, and their rough voices made a simple harmony that set something inside me aching as I remembered other wagons, different songs, a half-forgotten home.
Bloody Hands into Stinging Fists
wide as a river and paved with cobbles. At first there were only
Then, with a sort of silent agreement,
“No, I can’t,” I stammered, pushing away a memory of raw fingers digging in the mud and the smell of burning hair. “I m-mean, you’ve already . . .” I trailed off, clutching my lute closer to my chest and moving a couple of steps away. He looked at me more closely, as if seeing me for the first time. Suddenly self-conscious, I imagined how I must look: ragged and half-starved. I hugged the lute and backed farther away. The farmer’s hands fell to his side and his smile faded. “Ah, lad,” he said softly. He set the squash down, then turned back to me and spoke with a gentle seriousness. “Me and
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Jake was looking at me too, pity written across his honest face. “Sure enough, Pa. She said so right afore we left.”
I ran, my heart heavy in my chest.
And for a few moments I had relief from the great blanketing grief that was constantly crushing me.
When Pike threw me to the ground, my body was almost too numb to feel my father’s lute being crushed underneath me. The sound it made was like a dying dream,
I limped wildly from corner to corner of the square, searching madly for the old farmer who had given me a ride. Searching for the sight of one of those ugly, knobby squash. When I finally found the bookstore Seth had parked beside, I was panting and staggering. Seth and his wagon were nowhere to be seen. I sank down into the empty space their wagon had left and felt the aches and pains of a dozen injuries that I had forced myself to ignore.
I closed my eyes and tried not to remember what it was like to go to sleep warm and full, surrounded by people who loved you.
His voice was old and tired around the edges, but at its center it was patient.
Patient as a heavy stone or a mother cat with kittens.
