Rand frowned. “That’s just a riddle.”

Seeing his son’s distraction, Tam stopped the cart. He reached into the back and pulled out a worn, leather-bound book—not a ledger, but a book of old stories. The Travels of Jain Farstrider .

Rand obeyed. Tam didn’t lecture. Instead, he told a story.

“What did he play?” Rand asked.

“He played no song of battles or kings,” Tam said. “He played a simple tune about a farmer who found a broken wheel on his cart. The farmer had no spare, so he sat by the road and wept. A stranger came by and asked, ‘Why weep?’ The farmer pointed to the wheel. The stranger said, ‘That’s not a broken wheel. That’s a piece of firewood, a hoop for a barrel, and a lesson in patience. But first, you have to stop calling it broken.’”

“It’s a tool,” Tam said. “The gleeman’s gift wasn’t the song. It was the way of seeing . When the snows melted that spring, the people of Emond’s Field remembered that story. And whenever something seemed ruined—a harvest, a fence, a hope—they asked themselves: What is this, if not what I think it is? ”

That night, Rand dreamed again of the faceless rider. But this time, instead of running, he looked at the darkness not as an enemy, but as a sign —a sign that he was being called to leave, to grow, to learn. He woke not with fear, but with a quiet purpose.

“The farmer,” Tam continued, “stopped seeing what was missing and started seeing what was there . He used the rim to bind a barrel, the spokes for kindling, and the hub as a pulley. He walked to town, traded the barrel of salted fish for two new wheels, and returned home before nightfall.”