The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE Close Enough to Touch

Time passed. Felurian took me Dayward to a piece of forest even older and grander than the one that surrounded her twilight glade. There we climbed trees as tall and broad as mountains. In the highest branches, you could feel the vast tree swaying in the wind like a ship on the swelling sea. There, with nothing but the blue sky around us and the slow motion of the tree beneath, Felurian taught me ivy on the oak.

I tried to teach Felurian tak, only to discover she already knew it. She beat me handily, and played a game so lovely Bredon would have wept to look on it.

I learned a bit of the Fae tongue. A small bit. A scattering.

Actually, in the interest of pure honesty, I will admit that I failed miserably in my attempt to learn the Fae language. Felurian was a less than patient teacher, and the language bafflingly complex. My failure went beyond mere incompetence to the point where Felurian actually forbade me from attempting to speak it in her presence.

Overall, I gained a few phrases and a great dollop of humility. Useful things.

Felurian taught me several faen songs. They were harder for me to remember than mortal songs, their melodies slippery and twisting. When I tried to play them on my lute the strings felt strange beneath my fingers, making me fumble and stutter as if I was some country boy who’d never held a lute before. I learned their lyrics by rote, without the least inkling what the words might mean.

Through it all, we continued to work on my shaed. Rather, Felurian worked on it. I asked questions, watched, and tried to avoid feeling like a curious child underfoot in the kitchen. As we grew more comfortable with each other, my questions became more insistent. . . .

“But how?” I asked for the tenth time. “Light hasn’t any weight, any substance. It behaves like a wave. You shouldn’t be able to touch it.”

Felurian had worked her way up from starlight and was wefting moonlight into the shaed. She didn’t look up from her work when she replied, “so many thoughts, my kvothe. you know too much to be happy.”

That sounded uncomfortably like something Elodin would say. I brushed the evasion aside. “You shouldn’t be able—”

She nudged me with her elbow and I saw both her hands were full. “sweet flame,” she said, “bring that to me.” She nodded to a moonbeam that pierced the trees above and touched the ground beside me.

Her voice bore the familiar, subtle tone of command, and without thinking I grabbed the moonbeam as if it were a hanging vine. For a second I felt it against my fingers, cool and ephemeral. Startled, I froze, and suddenly it was an ordinary moonbeam again. I passed my hand through it several times to no effect.

Smiling, Felurian reached out and took hold of it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She touched my cheek with her free hand, then turned her attention to her lap and worked the strand of moonlight into the folds of shadow.