Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 483
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It was completely dark, but it was not the darkness
Jordan noticed first. It was the silence.
When he was very young, he had run singing through the
woods one day, and met an old man coming the other way.
"You like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?" asked the
old man. His face had wrinkled up around a grin.
"I like music," Jordan said. His mother had told him to
be modest.
"So do I."
"Then why don’t you sing?" He’d blurted it out, and
immediately felt embarrassed. The old man was not offended.
"I’m too busy listening," he said. "I’m listening all the
time."
Jordan cocked his head. "I don’t hear anything."
"Yes you do." The old man made Jordan listen for the
sound of the breeze in the leaves, the distant cawing of a family
of birds, the crackle of twigs underfoot. "All sound is music,"
he had said, "and there is no place without sound."
"I bet there is."
"All right." The old man smiled. "For the next week, I
challenge you: find silence. I’ll be staying at the Horse’s
Head. When you’ve found silence, visit me there and I’ll give
you a copper penny."
Jordan never did collect the penny. Strange how it was
the first thing to come to mind upon waking now; or maybe not