“The stories are different,” he told her. “In some it lost the lake that once sat in the valley where a river runs now. In others it lost a person whom it loved, and howls because a mortal cannot love the wind the way that the wind loves it in return. In the common version it has lost only its way, because the placement of the mountains and the valley is unusual, the wind gets confused and lost and howls because of it.”
“Which one do you think is true?” the woman asked and the innkeeper stopped to consider the question.
“I think it is the wind, howling as the wind will always howl with mountains and valleys to howl through, and I think people like to tell stories to explain such things.”
“To explain to children that there is nothing to fear in the sound, only sadness.”
“I suppose.”
“Why then do you think the stories continue to be told once the children are grown?” the woman asked and the innkeeper did not have a satisfying answer to that question, so he asked her another.
“Do you have stories they tell to explain such things where you are from?” he asked, and again he did not ask where that was. He still could not place her accent and could not think of anyone he had met who put the same lilting emphasis on the local tongue.
“They sometimes tell a story about the moon when it is gone from the sky.”
“They tell those here, too,” the innkeeper said and the woman smiled.
“Do they say where the sun goes when it too is missing?” she asked and the innkeeper shook his head.
“Where I am from they tell a story about it,” the woman said, her attention on the work in front of her, the steady movement of her hands through the flour. “They say that every hundred years—some versions say every five hundred, or every thousand—the sun disappears from the daytime sky at the same time the moon vanishes from the night. They say their absence is coordinated so that they may meet in a secret location, unseen by the stars, to discuss the state of the world and compare what each has seen over the past hundred or five hundred or thousand years. They meet and talk and part again, returning to their respective places in the sky until their next meeting.”
It reminded the innkeeper of another, similar story and so he asked a question he regretted as soon as it fell from his lips.
“Are they lovers?” he asked and the woman’s cheeks flushed. He was about to apologize when she continued.
“In some versions they are,” she said. “Though I suspect if the story were true they would have too much to discuss to have time for such things.”
The innkeeper laughed and the woman looked up at him in surprise but then she laughed as well and they continued to tell their stories and bake their bread and the wind wound its way around the inn, listening to their tales and forgetting for a time what it was that it had lost.
Three days passed. The storms raged on. The innkeeper and the woman continued to pass the time in comfort, in stories, in meals, and in cups filled and refilled with wine.
On the fourth day there was a knock upon the door. The innkeeper went to open it. The woman remained seated by the fire.
The wind was calmer then and only a small amount of snow entered alongside this second traveler. The snowflakes melted as soon as the door was closed.
The innkeeper’s comment about the weather died on his lips as he turned toward this new traveler.
This traveler’s cloak was a worn color that must once have been gold. It still shone in places. This traveler was a woman with dark skin and light eyes. Her hair was kept shorter than any fashion the innkeeper had seen but it too was near gold in color. She did not seem to feel the cold.
“I am to meet another traveler here,” this woman said. Her voice was like honey, deep and sweet.
The innkeeper nodded and gestured toward the fire at the opposite end of the hall.
“Thank you,” this woman said. The innkeeper helped her remove the cloak from her shoulders, the snow melted and dripping from it, and he took it from her to hang to dry. She, too, wore another layered cloak, sensible for the weather, this one faded and gold.
The woman walked to the fireplace and sat in the other chair. The innkeeper was too far away to hear them but there seemed to be no greeting, the conversation immediate.
The conversation went on for some time. After an hour had passed the innkeeper put together a plate of bread and dried fruit and cheese and brought it to the women, along with a bottle of wine and two cups. They ceased their conversation as he approached.
“Thank you,” the first woman said as he placed the food and the wine on the table near the chairs. She rested her hand on his for a moment. She had not touched him so before and he could not speak so he merely nodded before he left them to their conversation. The other woman smiled and the innkeeper could not tell what she was smiling at.
He let them talk. They did not move from their chairs. The wind outside was quiet.
The innkeeper sat at the far end of the hall, close enough for either woman to beckon if he was needed but far enough that he could not hear a single word spoken between them. He
arranged another plate for himself but only picked at it, save for the crescent-shaped roll that melted on his tongue. He tried to read but could not manage more than a page at a time. Hours must have passed. The light outside had not changed.
The innkeeper fell asleep, or he thought perhaps he did. He blinked and outside was darkness. The sound that woke him was the second woman rising from her chair.