Wheel of Time Reread - The Eye of the World Chapter 1 - Part 1

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The Wheel of Time turns, ages come and pass, and our story starts with what might literally be the most iconic opening paragraph in all of fiction. It's very visual, establishing space, climate, history before we've even seen any people. Rand's name hasn't been mentioned yet, but we already know that the Sand Hills used to be the shore of a great ocean, and a quick glance at the map on the facing page tells us that this means everything we see in the next 100-odd pages takes place somewhere that, until the Breaking, was underwater. Given the specifier "great", we can reasonably assume that this ocean stretched all the way to the Spine of the World, meaning that most of what happens in the series, excepting events on the west coast (Tarabon, Arad Doman, and Almoth Plain), in the Blight, and maybe in the Aiel Waste, happens in places that were underwater before the Breaking. I say maybe the Waste, because it strikes me as entirely possible that it was also part of the ocean, with the Spine of the World a peninsula projecting down from what is now the Blight, the way Windbiter's Finger does off the Shadow Coast. If you're familiar with the way these things go in real life, this reinforces how drastic, how unnatural, the changes of the Breaking really were, because usually after being the bottom of an ocean, the next thing a place becomes is a desert. Now, if we look at places like the Sahara, it's totally possible that there's a cycle here that just hasn't become observable yet because it's only been 3000 years, and in another 10,000ish, maybe most of the westlands will be a desert, although I expect the people of the Two Rivers will still be right where they are now. 

Zooming way forward in time, although not all the way to the present, I notice that the road our as-yet-unnamed characters are walking on is called the Quarry Road, despite the fact that no one in the Two Rivers goes into the Mountains of Mist, nor appears to have any awareness of a time when anyone did. Certainly there's mining, and presumably quarrying, farther north, like up near Baerlon, but if there were ever a quarry in this part of the Mountains of Mist, it was a damned long time ago. One wonders if the reputation of the Westwood and the foot of the mountains as "hard luck country" might have originated from that having been where quarriers lived before the quarry failed, or whatever happened to it, leaving those people in a bad way. This might also go some way towards explaining why the other reason for not farming there is that it's rocky. Given the assertion that only the hardiest men farm in the Westwood, and that those in the Two Rivers who aren't prepared to shrug and start over when things go wrong are "long since gone", one suspects that those who do farm there, including Tam al'Thor and the Dautrys, are likely the descendants of quarrying families. Heck, this might account of the people in Baerlon whom Rand can easily match to Two Rivers families. One of them looks like a Congar, not a family known for their resilience or ability to like, do anything, another looks like Jon Thane, the cabinetmaker, and a third looks like Samel Crawe, the miller. If you tilt your head and squint, this looks like it's possible that there was a quarry, it failed or collapsed or who knows what, and and a lot of the Westwood based folks who worked there, those who didn't feel up to farming, or living so close to whatever the hell went wrong up there, either moved into the village and got into other work (milling, cabinet making, whatever the Congars do), or spread up into Baerlon where there was still mining or quarrying work to be had. 

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It's established that it's cold, and spring should have come a while ago and just kind of hasn't, and the only trees that have green on them are evergreens, although the word is not used, and the existence of broadleaf evergreens is established (this will be discussed more in a later post), dead brambles from last year (likely blackberry or another member of genus Rubus, with perennial roots but vines that fully die back over the winter, although it may be some kind of self-reseeding bougainvillea living in a climate where it's an annual) cover rocky outcroppings, and the weeds under foot are mostly nettles, unspecified spiny things, and "stinkweed", which is almost certainly skunk cabbage. This is an interesting confluence of science and symbolism. The vibe here is that these are like, bad, unpleasant plants, maybe evil plants, but botanically this makes a lot of sense. Nettles are hardy as hell (and incredibly useful - if the winter doesn't end soon they're gonna be eating those), and skunk cabbage is actually thermogenic, making its own heat so it can grow and bloom when the ground is still frozen, and therefore adapted to exactly this kind of climate glitch. While you won't enjoy stepping on it, it's an incredible symbol of hope, of life withstanding the touch of the Dark One, and perhaps, especially with their unpleasant reaction to being messed with, a better symbol of Two Rivers resilience than the stone and oak roots that are invoked later on. 

Despite the delayed spring, it's the day before Bel Tine, and Tam gave his word that he would bring in the apple brandy and cider for the festival. There are two things to talk about here. Bel Tine is obviously Beltane, although it seems to have been moved closer to the spring equinox than the first of May, given what we're told about the expected weather, and the length of time between here and Sunday, which we know to be the summer solstice. The cider and brandy themselves are also a little bit interesting, because there's no mention, so far as I can recall, of apple trees on the al'Thor farm, so maybe other people just like, give Tam their apples for this? Rand and Tam are both described here, and w're told that Rand doesn't look like his father, or much of anyone in the Two Rivers, and that Tam claims Rand's red hair and grey eyes come from his outlander mother, whom he mostly doesn't remember. There's a bit in her about how he puts flowers on her grave every year at Bel Tine and Sunday, and it didn't really hit me until after I started working on this post that he doesn't get the chance to do that this Bel Tine, and it's just kind of never mentioned again. 

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Rand has his bow out, because with the spring coming so late, wolves and even bears have started going after livestock and people. He has the sense of being watched, but it's not a wolf or a bear following them, it's a Myrdraal, although of course he doesn't know that yet. He tells Tam about the mysterious rider, but when they look around again he's gone. Rand reflects that this is the first time he's really felt afraid of the woods here. He's been running around the Westwood "almost since he could walk", which is interesting inasmuch as it implies that little little kids in the Two Rivers are allowed to run around unsupervised. He learned to swim in what's referred to here as the "riverwood". I'm assuming this is what in every other instance is called the Waterwood, but I don't know if Riverwood is an alternate name that just doesn't see a lot of use, or if this is an early installment editing issue or what. In any event, he's afraid now, and despite his best efforts to be cool about it, Tam notices, and tells Rand to remember the flame and the void. As far as I can tell, there are two criteria every second world 90s fantasy series had to meet in order to be like, up to code. First, the protagonist's magic must be a dramatic irony reveal, apparent to the reader before the main character catches on (this makes sense in Wheel of Time, but stretched plausibility in some of its contemporaries). Second, it must contain a description of a meditation technique, in enough detail for the reader to actually practice it. 

They finally reach Emonds Field, and we get a description of the village as a whole, as well as the odd distribution of farms, which I discussed above. It's indirectly established that almost everyone likes Tam, since everybody wants to stop and talk to him on his way to the Winespring Inn. Mostly they want to compare notes on how farming is going, and none of it is good news. Two Rivers stubbornness is established here. "And if the Light doesn't will, we'll survive anyway" is a thing multiple people say during these conversations. Two Rivers folk: literally more stubborn than God. Wit Congar, on the other hand, wants to talk about Nynaeve. He thinks she's too young to be the Wisdom, based largely on her failure to accurately predict the crops and weather this year, and if the Women's Circle won't do something, the Village Council should. Both Tam and Daise Congar roundly reject this idea, although Daise does so with considerably more hostility. This is the beginning of establishing the gender binary as it exists in this setting. There's men's business and women's business, and openly interfering with each other is a moderate-to-serious violation of social norms. 

This segues neatly into the last thing that happens before the closest thing I could find to a reasonable stopping point. Apparently, women in Emonds Field keep trying to set Tam up with their various widowed friends and relatives, asserting that it's "simple fact" that a man can't do without a woman to look after him, and it's been long enough since Kari died. Increasingly, they're turning similar attention on Rand, and he kind of hates it. He's as stubborn as anyone in the Two Rivers, and deeply dislikes feeling like he's being forced into anything. 

We started with the beginning of Chapter 1, rather than the prologue, because the prologue is better discussed in the context of what comes after it. If I could reasonably wait until later in the series to talk about it, I would, but that's not practical, so we're gonna do it at the end of this book. I definitely made the right choice splitting this up, because this post is already super long, and took almost 5 hours to write. Tune in next week for Part 2, and on Saturday for the next installment in the Dresden Files reread series. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!