The Name of the Wind

While rolling in our overlarge campfire, the draccus had scattered burning branches around the top of the hill. It now wandered to where a half-charred log lay smoldering in the grass. The draccus snuffed, then rolled, crushing the log into the earth. Then it came back to its feet, snuffed the log again, and ate it. It didn’t chew. It bolted the log whole, like a frog getting a cricket down into its gullet.

It did this several times, moving in a circle around the now largely extinguished fire. It snuffed, rolled on the burning pieces, then ate them after they were extinguished.

“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.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN Bluffs

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.”