Golden Fool

“A sour comfort. Tom. Is there any such thing as a true woman?” He asked this so wearily that it twisted my heart to see him so soon disillusioned.

“Yes, there is,” I asserted. “And you are young yet, with as good a chance as any of finding one.”

“Not really,” he declared. He abruptly stood up. A tired smile twisted his mouth. “For I’ve no time to look for one. Tom, I’m so sorry to come and visit so briefly, but I must run now to be back to the woodshop on time. Old Gindast is a taskmaster. Since I discovered you were hurt, he’s given me time each dawn to come and try to see you, but he insists I make up the work in the evening.”

“He’s wise. Work is the best cure for worry. And for heartbreak. Throw yourself into your tasks, Hap, and don’t berate yourself for foolishness. Every man makes his share of mistakes in that area.”

He stood looking at me a time longer. He shook his head. “Every time I think I’ve grown up a bit more, I look round and see myself acting like a child again. I came here to see you, sick with worry about you, and the instant that I saw you could stand, well, all I did was bend your ear with my woes. You’ve told me nothing of all you went through.”

I managed a smile. “And that is how I’d like to leave it, son. Nothing there that I care to remember. Let’s put it behind us.”

“For now, then. I’ll come back and see you again tomorrow.”

“No, no, don’t do that. If you’ve been coming every day, as I know you have, then I know you must be wearied of it. I’m mending nicely, as you can see. Soon enough I’ll be down to visit with you, and then I’ll ask Gindast to give you an afternoon off and we can sit and talk together.”

“I’d like that,” he said, and the sincerity in his voice gave me heart. He hugged me before he left and I feared his youthful strength would snap my weakened bones. Then he left me and I sat staring after him. For the first time in months, I felt I had my Hap back again, I thought as I laboriously took out clean clothing and clambered into them. My relief at regaining Hap was tinged with guilt. I couldn’t keep him a boy. I shouldn’t expect him to be “my Hap” any more than Chade should hope me to be his “boy.” To be relieved that his heartbreak and disappointment had brought him back to me and convinced him of my wisdom was a sort of betrayal on my part. Next time I saw him, I’d have to admit to him that I hadn’t known that Svanja would be false to him, only that she distracted him from his apprenticeship. I didn’t relish the idea.

Dressed, I left my room and went out into Lord Golden’s chamber. I was no longer tottering about, but it was more comfortable to move slowly and carefully. His serving boy hadn’t brought breakfast up yet. The table was bare. He sat before the fire, looking weary. I nodded to him, and then set the cloth-wrapped feathers on the table. “I think these were meant for you,” I said. I put no inflection in my voice. As I unrolled the cloth, he rose from his chair and came to see what I was doing. He watched, not saying a word, as I nudged the feathers into a row.

“They are extraordinary. How came you by these, Badgerlock?” he asked at last, and I felt my silence had dragged the question from him. It burned me that he still spoke with Golden’s Jamaillian accent.

“When Dutiful and I went through the Skill pillar, it took us to a beach. I picked these up along the tide line there. They were lying amongst the driftwood and seaweed like flotsam. As I walked the beach, I found them, one after the other.”

“Indeed. Never have I heard such a tale.”

There was an unspoken question in his neutral comment. Had I concealed these from him deliberately or dismissed them as unimportant? I answered as best I could. “The time spent on that beach still seems strange to me. Disconnected from all else. When I did get back, so much happened all at once: the fight to regain Dutiful, and Nighteyes’ death and then our journey back here, with no privacy to speak to one another. Then, once we got to Buckkeep, there was the betrothal and all.” Even as I made my excuses, they seemed weak. Why hadn’t I told him about the feathers? “I put them away up in Chade’s workroom. And the time just never seemed right.”

He was just staring at them. I looked at them again. Set out in a row on the rough cloth, their flat grayness made them even more unremarkable. Yet at the same time they seemed profoundly strange, artifacts too perfect to have been shaped by men’s hands and yet obviously manufactured. I felt oddly reluctant to touch them.

“I see,” Lord Golden said at last. “Well. Thank you for showing them to me.” He turned and walked back toward the hearth.