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“Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?”
“I don’t wonder why they talk,” I said. “I wonder what they say.”
My search was more a ritual than anything. Looking for Denna was an exercise in futility, like praying for fair weather.
To be both rich and handsome was bad enough. But to have a voice like honey over warm bread on top of that was simply inexcusable.
Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
A lot of folks can sing or saw out a tune on a fiddle. A music box can play a song flawlessly, again and again. But knowing the notes isn’t enough. You have to know how to play them.
She gave Elodin a serious look. “If your name is getting too heavy, you should have Kvothe give you a new one.”
“Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass.” I sighed and penned my name in the single blank space beneath.
“With answers like that we’ll make you a barrister in no time,” he said sarcastically. “Why not just do it, instead of doing your best to try?”
“This is the problem namers face. We must understand things that are beyond our understanding.
“My point is this. In each of us there is a mind we use for all our waking deeds. But there is another mind as well, a sleeping mind.
“Your sleeping mind is wide and wild enough to hold the names of things. This I know because sometimes this knowledge bubbles to the surface.
The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.
Elodin held up a finger, attempting to strike a sage pose and failing because of the leaves in his hair. “Small facts lead to great knowing,” he intoned. “Just as small names lead to large names.”
This was always the way of it. I only seemed to be able to find her after I’d given up hope.
These en’t good days to be a brave man. But he was brave all the same. I wish I’d been brave and dead instead, and him home right now, kissing his young wife.”
Clothes do not make the man, but you need the proper costume if you want to play the part.
“I was looking for a place to put my blood,” I said. “Most people keep that inside,” she said. “It’s easier.”
It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself.
Oddly enough, I had no desire to ask anyone what was going on. When you ask as many questions as I do, you learn when they are appropriate.
“Too late!” he exclaimed, looking childlike for a moment. “You looked too hard and didn’t see enough. Too much looking can get in the way of seeing, you see?”
He looked hard at the scribe. “When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.”
“Then one day the church denounces them, disbands their entire order, and confiscates their property.” I snapped my fingers.
Knights Templar?!
Things are more easily seen from edges. Danger rouses the sleeping mind. It makes some things clear.
“If you fall, you fall.” Elodin shrugged. “Sometimes falling teaches us things too.
My rooms were so pleasant it took me almost a full day to realize how much I hated them.
After a moment’s consideration, I decided lounging was probably similar to relaxing, but with more money in your pocket.
These are yours without obligation, let, or lien. A freely given gift.”
That’s another problem with power. If you possess too much, people don’t dare point out your mistakes. Power can be a terrible thing.”
Rumor forces us to act before we are ready, or ruins a situation before it becomes fully ripe.”
No one wins a dance, boy. The point of dancing is the motion that a body makes. A well-played game of tak reveals the moving of a mind.
A cat does not think of stretching, it stretches. But a tree does not even do this. A tree simply sways without the effort of moving itself. That is how she moved.
What’s more, I had watched a hundred men dash themselves to pieces against Denna like ships attempting to ignore the tide.
The tone of a tune is your heart’s mettle, and there’s no clear water from a muddy well. All you can do is let the silt settle, or you’ll sound sour as a broken bell.”
Ten hours I spent there, and the only act of creation I accomplished was to magically transform nearly a gallon of coffee into marvelous, aromatic piss.
So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game.
She didn’t know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn’t. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free.
Each flattery, each witticism, each piece of playful banter she returned to me, not in an echo but a harmony. Our back-and-forth had been like a duet.
“It’s quite a thing,” she said. “There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”
Mysteries, for example, are not secrets. Neither are little-known facts or forgotten truths. A secret, Teccam explains, is true knowledge actively concealed.
I read that young Netalia Lackless had run away with a troupe of traveling performers. Her parents had disowned her, of course, leaving Meluan the only heir to the Lackless lands.
A word of advice to you. Should you ever see that look on a woman’s face, leave off talking at once and sit on both your hands. It may not mend matters, but it will at least keep you from making them any worse.
“It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”
“Not polite. Not kind. Not good. Not duty. The Lethani is none of these. Each moment. Each choice. All different.” He gave me a penetrating look. “Do you understand?” “No.” Happiness. Approval.
“You need to get a long ways away from people before you can learn to listen properly.”
“But first you should think this over, boy. When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you’ll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.”
“That’s not what I actually said,” the old man murmured. But he did so in a resigned way. Skilled listener that he was, he knew he wasn’t being heard.
“And that is why the moon is always changing. And that is where Jax keeps her when she is not in our sky.
I threw myself against the bars of an intangible cage made of moonlight and desire.
If you have ever dreamed of flying, then come awake, dismayed to realize you had lost the trick of it, you have some inkling how I felt.
