A Tale from the Book of Regret
Translated from the original s'a-Qar by Tad Williams

In the long days before the world was defeated there lived a young man who was called Follows-the-Wind. He was of the Changing tribe, in the family of the Gray Fox people. He lived by himself in a pine wood and hunted alone.

It happened that his time came upon him and he hungered for a mate. But the Gray Fox people were scattered, and no woman of his family lived near him. He left his pine wood and went out to walk beneath the sun and the moon, asking those two brothers to lead him to the one who would be his mate.

Many days he traveled, on two legs beneath the sun, on four beneath the moon. Once he stopped to drink from a river. The water maidens mocked his errand, saying, "What, are you too good to take a river-woman to wife? Many another young man has given everything he owned simply to share our embraces."

But Follows-the-Wind only smiled. "Your embraces are too cold for me, and too wet. Still, I thank you for your kindness, for I was very thirsty."

"If it is the only way we can kiss your lips," the water-maidens told him, "we will take it. Poor, lonely sisters we are."

"Lonely? I hear you laughing by sun and moon. And you would laugh all the harder were I to dive in and join you."

"No, no!" they said, sharing the joke. "Because soon you would smile and talk no more, and move only when the river-current carried you. What kind of husband would that make for us?"

"The kind you prefer, I suspect, since that is what you do to all your suitors." So saying he left them, since the sun was setting and the lure of the water-maidens grew more powerful after dusk.

Wherever he walked, on two legs or four, he found no woman of his own people. Once he met a true fox and spoke to him, asking for news.

"Your kind has grown fewer," the fox said. "You are the first I have met in many seasons."

"Where did you meet this other? Was it a man or a woman?"

"It was a woman. She was well-spoken and full of sorrow, but she did not tell me the reason. I met her where the red hills divide, in the season before the cold."

"And have you seen her there again?"

The fox lowered his head. "I do not go there since the stone apes have come."

Follows-the-Wind was puzzled. "What are these stone apes?"

"They are like you to look at, when you walk on two legs, but they are thick and hairy like apes. They pile stones and mud to make nests for themselves. And they can speak only to themselves."

Since he had been young, Follows-the-Wind had believed that only the People, of all creatures, made their homes in that way, building with pieces of wood or piling stone upon stone. He wanted to look upon these stone apes and see what kind of creature they were, so he thanked the fox and walked across the land beneath both the sun and moon, looking for the place where the red hills divided.

He found the place of the stone apes at last, and it was strange even beyond his expectations. The fox had spoken truly. They did look something like the People, although to Follows-the-Wind they seemed awkward and slow, as though it hurt them to move their limbs, even the young ones. The fox had also spoken truly about their houses, which were built of stones and mud-bricks piled together, as the People sometimes built their own houses, but to Follows-the-Wind's eyes the dwellings were unlovely, squat and dark and airless.

He kept his distance when the sun was in the sky, but when the younger brother rose high, Follows-the-Wind took on his other form and went closer. He heard a little of the strangers' speaking and found that it had words he knew, words first spoken in the House of the People, although much of the rest of their talk was strange. He could only listen a while before the dogs that lived in the stone apes' village began to grow restive. They barked and howled, saying: "You do not belong here, Old One! Go away or we will come and pull you down and tear your flesh!"

Surprised, Follows-the-Wind went back up into the hills to think.

The next night he came to the stone apes' village again, this time with the wind in his face so the dogs would not smell him. He listened long to their speaking that night, and stayed until the older brother was standing at the door of the sky.

Five more nights he came to the village, and on the last night he found he could understand much of what the stone apes said. Most of their speech was unsurprising, talk of hunting and mating, but they spoke also of things they called "demons", a word that Follows-the-Wind did not know, but which he understood to mean something different from themselves, something that the stone apes feared which lurked outside their walls. It was hard to know their way of thinking, which seemed so different to his own, but a fear seemed to move through the stone ape village at the setting of the sun, as though darkness were a kind of poison.

They were frightened of something that lived in the night. For a moment, Follows-the-Wind thought it might be him, but it seemed an older fear, and the dogs had not even barked after the first time he had come to the village.

The next night at sunset he lit a fire and with the smoke made a net which he cast wide, far beyond the village on every side. He sat with his eyes closed and did not let himself change even when the little brother climbed into the dark sky to hunt among the stars. His net brought him many things, the song of sleepy birds, the rustling of small things in the undergrowth, and even the shapes of dreams from the stone ape village, dreams full of greed or terror. At last he felt the thing he had sought and gave his net a gentle tug.

She came on four feet and sat just beyond the ring of firelight, her eyes very yellow and very bright. She was beautiful but cold with anger.

"Why do you summon me?"

His net was still upon her, so he could ask one question within the bounds of courtesy. He wanted to ask her why she stalked the stone ape village, but her sad loveliness moved his heart.

"What are you called?"

She looked at him as though at a foolish child. "The name I grant is Smells-the-Next-Rain," she told him. "And now I will go."

"You have given me a gift," was all he said.

She vanished into the night. Follows-the-Wind did not move either to follow her or return to the village, but sat beside his fire all through the time of the moon, thinking his own thoughts.

She came to him the next night, soon after dark, still angry, and asked him, "What are you called?" When he told her the name he granted, she went away again.

He wondered if there was some reason she would not come to him on two legs, but he dared not summon her again in daylight, both for fear of hardening her heart, and also because that was the time the stone apes were abroad and most fearless.

On the second night after the summoning, she came again.

"Why do you sit here night after night? What do you want?" she demanded.

"I have already given you an answer for an answer," he said. "But I will give you these two more without a claim on you, because the answer to both questions is the same as the answer you have already given me."

She stared at him for a moment. "I do not like sweet talk and I do not want a mate. I have blood feud here."

He bowed his head, saddened, knowing that it could last for many seasons, many years. Already he carried Smells-the-Next-Rain in his heart. "If you wish to tell me, I will listen."

She crouched down at the edge of the firelight and told him of the coming of the stone apes, how they had built their village of stone and mud-brick in the center of her own ancient compassment where she and her ancestors had hunted and lived.

"Then they killed my youngest brother, Wet-Morning-Stone," she said. "They chased him with dogs, then killed him with their spears. When his body went back to two legs, they ran in shame at what they had done — shame and fear."

"And what will end the blood feud?"

Her eyes glinted. "When I take a child of theirs and its blood smears the grass."

"And why have you not done so?"

She shook her head and made a little whining noise. "The dogs — there are many in the village. And since I first went there and was chased out again, some of the men stay awake each night at their fires with spears and stones, listening for the dogs to begin barking."

"They are not like us, these stone apes," said Follows-the-Wind slowly.

"They are not apes. They are something else," she replied. "They are the people who are not the People. Bodies as unchanging as dried mud. Deaf and blind to other speech. Short-lived but strong."

"Whatever they are, they are not like us," he said. "I have listened to their speech and learned a little of it. Perhaps they do not understand what they have done. I will go and tell them, and then perhaps they will make it right."

"The dogs will kill you. The men will stab you with their spears."

"Not if I go to them in daylight, on two legs."

Smells-the-Next-Rain told him it was a foolish idea, but Follows-the-Wind had it in his heart that he would never be happy if he could not have her for his mate, and so he wished to end her feud with the people who were not the People. They argued until the sun began to rise into the sky, and Smells-the-Next-Rain returned to two legs. Her eyes were still very yellow and very bright, and she was still beautiful to him, but he would not be moved to change his mind.

"You have no grant to speak for me," she declared. "Whether they knew what they did or not, they have killed my brother. There is nothing they can do to make it right."

"You do not know that until I speak to them," he told her. "They seem in many ways almost like the People. Perhaps there are things about them we do not yet know that will help to pay for your loss."

She shook her head and went away.

Follows-the-Wind stood up on his two legs and went to the village in the dawn light. As he walked in among the houses, the dogs began to howl in excitement and terror, crying "One of the Old Ones is here! Let us loose so we can protect our new masters! We will shed his blood!"

Follows-the-Wind whistled in disgust. "You make allegiances quickly," he told them. "What have the People ever done to you, that you should sell yourselves to these poor reflections?" But the dogs were too wild with excitement to talk to him properly.

By now the people who were not the People had begun to appear, gazing fearfully from their doorways. Some of the men ran out to surround Follows-the-Wind, jabbing at him with spears and knives. They wore clothing made from the ragged hides of animals and had hair on their faces. The smell of their fear made him feel ill. When they had surrounded him, he stopped and lifted his hands.

"I am no enemy," he said slowly in words of their tongue. "I wish to speak to you, to end a feud."

The men and women looked at him, amazed. One of the larger men came forward, big-bellied and tall. "Look," he said, "it is the very demon. It dares to walk beneath the sun's eye."

Follows-the-Wind saw the way the other people who were not the People looked to this man with fear and hope. "If you are the father of this family," he said carefully, "then I give you respect and ask that you make something right, so that your folk and mine can live together. You killed one you should not have killed."

The big man narrowed his eyes. "So the demon-whelp has a sire." He turned to his people. "Now you see what unnatural thing has been haunting our village. What should we do with it? Shall we let it go again?"

"No!" the people who were not the People cried. "Kill it!"

Follows-the-Wind, surprised and dismayed, turned to leave the village, but the spears pressed close upon him, pricking his skin. "You would kill me, who comes to you in peace?" he said.

"Do not listen to this creature," the big man said. "Demons can use our tongue to cast spells, to poison listening ears."

"But what if killing this one brings down another?" an old woman asked. "As killing the whelp brought this one down?"

The big man at first seemed angry that someone else had spoken, but then he smiled. "We shall give this one a death that will give the other demons something to think about. A painful death." He turned to the men with the spears. "Put the bullock chain around his ankle. He will not be able to take on his demon shape until the sun sets, so we will burn him when the sun is high at noon and his smoke will rise so that all the other demons will see and be afraid to come near our village."

And though it took many men of the people who were not the People to overcome Follows-the-Wind, they at last mastered him and dragged him to a barn at the edge of the village and put a chain around his ankle, fastening the other end to a stone in the wall, and left him there. At first many of the village people came to look at him and taunt him, but there was much work to be done building a pyre in the center of the village, and preparing the feast that would accompany the burning, so at last he was left alone.

Follows-the-Wind knew that if he could only take on his four-legged form he could slip from the chain, but had not the strength to change himself when the hot sun was in the middle of the sky. After a wearying hour, he gave up.

"So I will die," he told himself. "And one day they will catch Smells-the-Next-Rain and she too will die."

He looked at the chain around his ankle, the heavy links of dark metal. Even with his fox-teeth he knew he could not gnaw through such a mighty chain. But the thought of Smells-the-Next-Rain was in his heart, aching, and he also felt a great longing for the smells and breezes of his own pine forest.

"It is blood feud now for me as well," he said. "Or it soon will be." And he set himself to escaping.

In later years the village of the people who were not the People was so haunted by a pair of child-stealing demons that the number of folk who lived there dwindled away as they departed the village in search of safer dwellings until none remained, and only the crumbling stone walls were left. But the demons did not leave, and remained in that place even after the stone apes were gone, both wearing the shapes of gray foxes, one with very bright, very yellow eyes, the other with four legs but only three paws.

And because of all that they had learned in the village of the people who were not the People, when the time came at last for Follows-the-Wind and Smells-the-Next-Rain to leave their bodies, they became shadow-voices in the great House of the People, and speak there still to those who will listen.