Stuff to Live For: Are Windspren Attracted to Wind, or Do They Make It?

Stuff To Live For

This is a series of posts I’m making to show off the things in media I love. In essence, the stuff I literally live for. You don’t need to know anything about the topic to read them, although reasonably obvious that I’ll be spoiling a lot of the things I talk about.

When my posts spoil something, I’ll leave a spoiler tag like this:

Okay, so, let me get to the point already.

The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings is a book that is highly loved by many people around the world. Primarily people (me included) like it because it engages with modern topics (mental health, diversity, community, religion) in a setting that is medieval and that usually does not cover those topics with a modern viewpoint.

Another reason why it is one of my favorite books, is because it is at once a fantasy novel and also a sort of love-letter to a certain philosophy that I hold very dear: The idea that you should be the change you want to see in the world.

This book talks about this in many different ways, through many different POVs. One of the central points of conflict in it (and the next books in the series) is the way in which people live always trying to get a foot over each other - scholars hate each other over their beliefs, military generals on the same side of a war manipulate and betray each other for a better social position, slaves steal each others’ food, and so on.

One of my favorite interactions between characters in this book speaks exactly about that, but in an unexpected way.

And do windspren cause the wind? Rainspren cause the rain? Flamespren cause fires?

Throughout the story, we see little creatures called “spren”. They are faeries that, to the eyes of the people in the book’s world, cause certain things to happen. There are many kinds of these little faeries. Rotspren make things rot. Heatspren create heat, and so on. In this world, you would see these ‘spren’ everywhere. By the thousands, “making things happen”.

One of the characters of the book is a windspren, Syl, a little fairy that makes wind. This particular one, different from the rest of them, can talk. Through the book we get to know her deeply. She is a carefree, almost childlike figure in the book, and one interaction the main character has with her around the middle to end of the book happens when he notices that he has a magical power to “bind” things in place (like, stick a stone to a wall sort of thing).

“Bindspren,” Syl said, walking up beside his head; she was still standing in the air.

“They’re holding the rock in place.” (Main Character)

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re attracted to what you’ve done in affixing the stone there.”

“That’s not how it works. Is it?”

“Do rotspren cause sickness,” Syl said idly, “or are they attracted to it?”

“Everyone knows they cause it.”

“And do windspren cause the wind? Rainspren cause the rain? Flamespren cause fires?”

He hesitated. No, they didn’t. Did they? “This is pointless. I need to find out how to get rid of this light, not study it.”

She starts out by pointing out that there are ‘Bindspren’ near the stone that the main character made stick to the wall. They have a quick exchange about the nature of these fairies and what they mean, and the main character, blunt as always, quickly brushes it aside, going back to his plan of trying to hide this new power he discovered by getting rid of the light that comes off of the stone he stuck to the wall.

It’s an interesting thing to think about idly, but to the main character this holds no importance. It’s the kind of thing kids ask about, and that is what he takes this interaction for. Syl, a childlike little spirit, asking silly questions about the nature of the universe.

This exchange, at least to my recollection, isn’t mentioned again until the very end of the book.

Are windspren attracted to wind, or do they make it?

At the end of the book, our main character finds himself in a bind.

A big chunk of his life he has been beaten to the ground, enslaved, and mistreated by the militia of his country. In the middle of a big battle in the war his country is waging against an enemy, he notices he (and his companions, all who have been mistreated by these same people for months) has the opportunity to leave a neighbouring army (not his, but from his country) to die in this battle against the enemy, and use that opportunity to flee, and be free of his shackles.

Honestly, it is only through reading the book that you can see why this is even a question to begin with. The main character has always been an upstanding person, wanting to help others as much as possible, but right now he does not want to think of others. He wants to be free. He is packing his things to leave, to abandon that army to be slaughtered, until this happens:

Kaladin turned to survey his men, and was shocked to see someone standing beside him. A woman of translucent white light.

It was Syl, as he’d never seen her before, the size of a regular person, hands clasped in front of her, hair and dress streaming to the side in the wind. He’d had no idea she could make herself so large. She stared eastward, her expression horrified, eyes wide and sorrowful. It was the face of a child watching a brutal murder that stole her innocence.

…

Syl still stood beside him, facing eastward. It made his very soul twist in knots to see that look of despair on her face. “Are windspren attracted to wind,” she asked softly, “or do they make it?”

“I don’t know,” Kaladin said. “Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not. You see, I’ve remembered what kind of spren I am.”

“Is this the time for it, Syl?”

“I bind things, Kaladin,” she said, turning and meeting his eyes. “I am honorspren. Spirit of oaths. Of promises. And of nobility.”

This interaction has so many layers to it, each as interesting as the last.

For Kaladin

First we can see Kaladin (the main character) dealing with her in the same way a person would deal with a child in a complicated, heavy situation.

We can really see the ‘big brother - little sister’ relationship here, as he ignores her to deal with more important issues, even while she clearly looks heartbroken. He doesn’t have the time (or, maybe even more importantly, he doesn’t have the courage) to deal with her in this moment.

When Syl asks him if windspren are attracted to wind, he sees this as the same silly question Syl has asked him a thousand times before. He doesn’t want to deal with it, it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Syl then tells him she found out the kind of Spren she is, and still he treats her like you’d treat a child. Annoyed, wanting to get this interaction over with to attend to ‘more important’ matters.

“Is this the time for it, Syl?”

Even at her mention of Honorspren, his reaction isn’t to respond to her. His subconscious throws him into a loop of different memories, finally understanding what this question really means (we’ll get there).

For Syl

Through the book we grow to understand that Syl isn’t actually a child. She is in fact carefree, but a lot of her childlike qualities come from her forgetting who she is (due to stuff that I won’t talk about right now).

An important part of her character arc is remembering why she is the way she is. Why can she talk while other spren can’t? Why does she seem to think while other spren don’t.

In this moment, she remembers what kind of spren she is, and this question in this specific interaction stops being childlike curiosity, but rather the most important question she could ever ask.

“Are windspren attracted to wind, or do they make it?”

She remembers that she is in fact not a windspren, but Honorspren, and seeing herself abandon those people to be slaughtered, this becomes a question of who, in essence, she is.

Are Honorspren attracted to honorable actions, or do they make them. What should she do. If she was what made noble and honorable actions happen, then what does that mean for her right now, in the middle of abandoning people to die?

As we’ve seen before, Kaladin doesn’t understand this, and dismisses it entirely.

“Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not…”

This isn’t the same conversation Kaladin was having in any way. Kaladin responds to her with annoyance, but she interprets something else. She hears a question that she should have already asked herself.

Does it matter? Does it matter if honorspren are attracted to honor or if they make it? Shouldn’t she be honorable, regardless of what the answer to the question is?

And she comes to a conclusion. Indeed, perhaps not.

For the Book

Firstly, this is an interesting callback to a previous interaction that Kaladin and Syl had earlier in the book.

This is also an amazing reflection of who Kaladin and Syl are, and the relationship between them. Its also extremely realistic.

Kaladin, the big brother, is used to treating Syl like a child, and quickly jumps to that modus operandi in this stressful situation. Syl, on the other hand, is having an extremely important moment where she realises who she really is, and in turn, being the actual adult in the interaction, takes Kaladin’s now “child-like” view of who she is as exactly what it is. Childish. She doesn’t berate him for being annoyed at her, she doesn’t even engage in his remarks. She mostly ignores him, sort of lost in her own thoughts about what is happening.

This interaction, all at once:

• Wraps Syl’s character arc for this book. We now know, at least partly, what she actually is (which is a question that accompanied us through the entire book), we understand more about what she cares for, and she regains consciousness in a way we hadn’t ever seen before.
• Serves as the trigger event for Kaladin’s last (in my view) important moment in the book, where he decides what actually matters to him.