Who heard the Sound first, no one can say. My shaper told me, when I was young, that the Sound had not always existed. That the wedewyre sprawled much as it does now, but that the stalks were shorter and the sky bigger, and the only sound, mostly, was that of the wind rushing through grass. Then one day someone heard it—like a whisper, they said, not the wind but on the wind; a sound from somewhere else, from beyond the grass. Soon another heard it, and another, until at last everyone heard it, or nearly so.
And so an assembly was called. Everyone was invited, even the wanderers who were constantly straying from the village, needing to be rescued—among them the one called Seeker—and the truants and cheaters and law-breakers—among them the one called Winder. And it was decided that a party
