The Fool stayed on, but in the days that followed, he studiously avoided any serious topics or tasks. I fear I followed his example. Telling him of my quiet years seemed to settle those old ghosts. I should have been content to slip back into my old routines but instead a different sort of restlessness itched. A changing time, and a time to change. Changer. The Catalyst. The words and the thoughts that went with them wound through my days and tangled my dreams at night. I was no longer tormented by my past so much as taunted by the future. Looking back over what I had made of my own youth, I suddenly found myself much concerned for how Hap would spend his years. It suddenly seemed to me that I had wasted all the years when I should have been preparing the lad to face a life on his own. He was a good-hearted young man, and I had no qualms about his character. My worry was that I had given him only the most basic knowledge of making his way in the world. He had no specialized skills to build on. He knew all that he needed to know to live in an isolated cottage and farm and hunt for his basic needs. But it was the wide world I was sending him into; how would he make his way there? The need to apprentice him well began to keep me awake at night.
If the Fool was aware of this, he gave no sign of it. His busy tools wandered through my cabin, sending vinework crawling across my mantelpiece. Lizards peered down from the door lintel. Odd little faces leered at me from the corners of cupboard doors and the edge of the porch steps. If it was made of wood, it was not safe from his sharp tools and clever fingers. The activities of the water sprites on my rain barrel would have made a guardsman blush.
I chose quiet work for myself as well, and toiled indoors as much as out despite the fine weather. Part of it was that I felt I needed a thoughtful time, but the greater share was that the wolf was slow to recover his strength. I knew that my watching over him would not hasten his healing, but I could not chase away my anxiety for him. When I reached for him with the Wit, there was a sombre quality to his silence, most unlike my old companion. Sometimes I would look up from my work to find him watching me, his deep eyes pensive. I did not ask him what he was thinking; if he had wanted to share it, his mind would have been accessible to mine.
Gradually, he regained his old activities, but some of the spring had gone out of him. He moved with a care for his body, never challenging himself. He did not follow me about my chores, but lay on the porch and watched my comings and goings. We hunted together still in the evening, but we went more slowly, both pretending to be hampered by the Fool. Nighteyes was as often content to point out the game and wait for my arrow rather than spring to the kill himself. These changes troubled me, but I did my best to keep my concerns to myself. All he needed was time to heal, I told myself, and recalled that the hot days of summer had never been his best time. When autumn came, he would recover his old vigour.
The three of us were settling into a comfortable routine. There were tales and stories in the evening, an accounting of the lesser events in our lives. Eventually we ran out of brandy, but the talk still flowed as smooth and warming as the liquor had. I told the Fool what Hap had seen at Hardin’s Spit, and of the talk about the Witted in the market. I shared, too, Starling’s account of the minstrels at Springfest, and Chade’s assessment of Prince Dutiful and what he had asked of me. All these stories, the Fool seemed to take into himself as a weaver takes up divergent threads to create from them a tapestry.
We tried the rooster feathers in the crown one evening, but the shafts of the feathers were too thin for the sockets, so the feathers sprawled in all directions. We both knew without speaking that they were completely wrong. Another evening, the Fool set out the crown on my table, and selected brushes and inks from my stores. I took a chair to one side to watch him. He arranged all carefully before him, dipped a brush in blue ink, and then paused, thinking. We sat still and silent so long that I became aware of the sounds of the fire burning. Then he set down the brush. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘It feels wrong. Not yet.’ He re-wrapped the crown and put it back in his pack. Then one evening, while I was still wiping tears of laughter from my eyes at the end of a ribald song, the Fool set aside his harp and announced, ‘I must leave tomorrow.’
‘No!’ I protested in disbelief at his abruptness, and then ‘Why?’
‘Oh, you know,’ he replied airily. ‘It is the life of a White Prophet. I must be about predicting the future, saving the world – all those minor chores. Besides. You’ve run out of furniture for me to carve on.’
‘No, really,’ I protested. ‘Cannot you stay at least a few more days? At least, stay until Hap returns. Meet the boy.’
He sighed. ‘Actually, I have stayed far longer than I should. Especially since you insist you cannot go with me when I leave. Unless?’ He sat up hopefully. ‘You have changed your mind?’
I shook my head. ‘You know I have not. I can scarcely go off and abandon my home. I must be here when Hap comes back.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He sagged back into his chair. ‘His apprenticeship. And you do have chickens to care for.’
The mockery in his voice stung. ‘It may not seem much of a life to you, but it’s mine,’ I pointed out sourly.
He grinned at having needled me. ‘I am not Starling, my dear. I do not disparage any man’s life. Consider my own, and tell me what height I look down from. No. I go to my own tasks, as dull as they must seem to one who has a whole flock of chickens to tend and rows of beans to hoe. My own tasks are just as weighty. I’ve a flock of rumours to share with Chade, and rows of new acquaintances to cultivate at Buckkeep.’
I felt a twinge of envy. ‘I expect they will all be glad to see you again.’
He shrugged. ‘Some, I suppose. Others were just as glad to see me go. And most will not recall me at all. Most, verging on all, if I am clever.’ He rose abruptly. ‘I wish I could just stay here,’ he confessed quietly. ‘I wish I could believe, as you seem to, that my life is my own to dispose of. Unfortunately, I know that is not true for either of us.’ He walked to the open door and looked out into the warm summer evening. He took a breath as if to speak, then sighed it out. A time longer he stared. Then he squared his shoulders as if making a resolve and turned back to me. There was a grim smile on his face. ‘No, it is best I leave tomorrow. You’ll follow me soon enough.’
‘Don’t count on that,’ I warned him.
‘Ah, but I must,’ he rejoined. ‘The times demand it. Of both of us.’
‘Oh, let someone else save the world this time. Surely there is another White Prophet somewhere.’ I spoke lightly, intending my words as jest. The Fool’s eyes widened at them, and I heard a shudder as he drew breath.
‘Do not even speak that future. It bodes ill for me that there is even the seed of that thought in your mind. For truly, there is another who would love to claim the mantle of the White Prophet, and set the world into the course that she envisions. From the beginning, I have struggled against her pull. Yet in this turning of the world, her strength waxes. Now you know what I hesitated to speak more openly. I shall need your strength, my friend. The two of us, together, might be enough. After all, sometimes all it takes is a small stone in a rut for a wheel to lurch out of its track.’
‘Mm. It does not sound like a good experience for the stone, however.’
He turned his eyes to mine. Where once they had been pale, they now glowed golden and the lamplight danced in them. There was both warmth and weariness in his voice. ‘Oh, never fear, you shall survive it. For I know you must.