Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Whose mother?” said Shinny, and Apple said, “Mine. And that’s Therru.” But she did not push forward in the crowd, even when an officer of the ship came ashore to invite old Relli aboard to play for the king. She waited with the others. She saw the king receive the notables of Valmouth, and heard Relli sing for him. She watched him bid his guests farewell, for the ship was going to stand out to sea again, people said, before night fell, and be on her way home to Havnor. The last to come across the gangplank were Therru and Tenar. To each the king gave the formal embrace, laying cheek to cheek, kneeling to embrace Therru. “Ah!” said the crowd on the dock. The sun was setting in a mist of gold, laying a great gold track across the bay, as the two came down the railed gangplank. Tenar lugged a heavy pack and bag; Therru’s face was bent down and hidden by her hair. The gangplank was run in, and the sailors leapt to the rigging, and the officers shouted, and the ship Dolphin turned on her way. Then Apple made her way through the crowd at last.
“Hello, mother,” she said, and Tenar said, “Hello, daughter.” They kissed, and Apple picked up Therru and said, “How you’ve grown! You’re twice the girl you were. Come on, come on home with me.”
But Apple was a little shy with her mother, that evening, in the pleasant house of her young merchant husband. She gazed at her several times with a thoughtful, almost a wary look. “It never meant a thing to me, you know, mother,” she said at the door of Tenar’s bedroom—“all that—the Rune of Peace—and you bringing the Ring to Havnor. It was just like one of the songs. A thousand years ago! But it really was you, wasn it?”
“It was a girl from Atuan,” Tenar said. “A thousand years ago. I think I could sleep for a thousand years, just now.”
“Go to bed, then.” Apple turned away, then turned back, lamp in hand. “King-kisser,” she said.
“Get along with you,” said Tenar.
Apple and her husband kept Tenar a couple of days, but after that she was determined to go to the farm. So Apple walked with her and Therru up along the placid, silvery Kaheda. Summer was turning to autumn. The sun was still hot, but the wind was cool. The foliage of trees had a weary, dusty look to it, and the fields were cut or in harvest.
Apple spoke of how much stronger Therru was, and how sturdily she walked now.
“I wish you’d seen her at Re Albi,” Tenar said, “before—” and stopped. She had decided not to worry her daughter with all that.
“What did happen?” Apple asked, so clearly resolved to know that Tenar gave in and answered in a low voice, “One of them.”
Therru was a few yards ahead of them, long-legged in her outgrown dress, hunting blackberries in the hedgerows as she walked.
“Her father?” Apple asked, sickened at the thought.
“Lark said the one that seems to be the father called himself Hake. This one’s younger. He’s the one that came to Lark to tell her. He’s called Handy. He was... hanging around at Re Albi. And then by ill luck we ran into him in Gont Port. But the king sent him off. And now I’m here and he’s there, and all that’s done with.”
“But Therru was frightened,” Apple said, a bit grimly.
Tenar nodded.
“But why did you go to Gont Port?”
“Oh, well, this man Handy was working for a man... a wizard at the lord’s house in Re Albi, who took a dislike to me....” She tried to think of the wizard’s use-name and could not; all she could think of was Tuaho, a Kargish word for a kind of tree, she could not remember what tree.
“So?”
“Well, so, it seemed better just to come on home.”
“But what did this wizard dislike you for?”
“For being a woman, mostly.”
“Bah,” said Apple. “Old cheese rind.”
“Young cheese rind, in this case.”
“Worse yet. Well, nobody around here that I know of has seen the parents, if that’s the word for ’em. But if they’re still hanging about, I don’t like your being alone in the farmhouse.”
It is pleasant to be mothered by a daughter, and to behave as a daughter to one’s daughter. Tenar said impatiently, “I’ll be perfectly all right!”
“You could at least get a dog.”
“I’ve thought of that. Somebody in the village might have a pup. We’ll ask Lark when we stop by there.”
“Not a puppy, mother. A dog.”
“But a young one—one Therru could play with,” she pleaded.
“A nice puppy that will come and kiss the burglars,” said Apple, stepping along buxom and grey-eyed, laughing at her mother.
They came to the village about midday. Lark welcomed Tenar and Therru with a festivity of embraces, kisses, questions, and things to eat. Lark’s quiet husband and other villagers stopped by to greet Tenar. She felt the happiness of homecoming.
Lark and the two youngest of her seven children, a boy and a girl, accompanied them out to the farm. The children had known Therru since Lark first brought her home, of course, and were used to her, though two months’ separation made them shy at first. With them, even with Lark, she remained withdrawn, passive, as in the bad old days.
“She’s worn out, confused by all this traveling. She’ll get over it. She’s come along wonderfully,” Tenar said to Lark, but Apple would not let her get out of it so easily. “One of them turned up and terrified her and mother both,” said Apple. And little by little, between them, the daughter and the friend got the story out of Tenar that afternoon, as they opened up the cold, stuffy, dusty house, put it to rights, aired the bedding, shook their heads over sprouted onions, laid in a bit of food in the pantry, and set a large kettle of soup on for supper. What they got came a word at a time. Tenar could not seem to tell them what the wizard had done; a spell, she said vaguely, or maybe it was that he had sent Handy after her. But when she came to talk about the king, the words came tumbling out.
“And then there he was—the king!—like a swordblade—And Handy shrinking and shrivelling back from him—And I thought he was Spark! I did, I really did for a moment, I was so—so beside myself—”
“Well,” said Apple, “that’s all right, because Shinny thought you were his mother. When we were on the docks watching you come sailing in in your glory. She kissed him, you know, Aunty Lark. Kissed the king—just like that. I thought next thing she’d kiss that mage. But she didn’t.”
“I should think not, what an idea. What mage?” said Lark, with her head in a cupboard. “Where’s your flour bin, Goha?”
“Your hand’s on it. A Roke mage, come looking for a new archmage.”
“Here?”
“Why not?” said Apple. “The last one was from Gont, wasn’t he? But they didn’t spend much time looking. They sailed straight back to Havnor, once they’d got rid of mother.”
“How you do talk.”
“He was looking for a woman, he said,” Tenar told them. “A woman on Gont.’ But he didn’t seem too happy about it.”
“A wizard looking for a woman? Well, that’s something new,” said Lark. “I’d have thought this’d be weevilly by now, but it’s perfectly good. I’ll bake up a bannock or two, shall I? Where’s the oil?”
“I’ll need to draw some from the crock in the cool-room. Oh, Shandy! There you are! How are you? How’s Clearbrook? How’s everything been? Did you sell the ram lambs?”
They sat down nine to supper. In the soft yellow light of the evening in the stone-floored kitchen, at the long farm table, Therru began to lift her head a little, and spoke a few times to the other children; but there was still a cowering in her, and as it grew darker outside she sat so that her seeing eye could watch the window.
Not until Lark and her children had gone home in the twilight, and Apple was singing Therru to sleep, and she was washing up the dishes with Shandy, did Tenar ask about Ged. Somehow she had not wanted to while Lark and Apple were listening; there would have been so many explanations. She had forgotten to mention his being at Re Albi at all. And she did not want to talk about Re
“Did a man come here last month from me—to help out with the work?”
“Oh, I clean forgot!” cried Shandy. “Hawk, you mean—him with the scars on his face?”
“Yes,” Tenar said. “Hawk.”
“Oh, aye, well, he’ll be away up on Hot Springs Mountain, above Lissu, up there with the sheep, with Serry’s sheep, I believe. He come here and says how you sent him, and there wasn’t a lick o’ work for him here, you know, with Clearbrook and me looking after the sheep and I been dairying and old Tiff and Sis helping me out when needed, and I racked my brains, but Clearbrook he says, ‘Go ask Serry’s man, Farmer Serry’s overseer up by Kahedanan, do they need herders in the high pastures,’ he said, and that Hawk went off and did that, and got took on, and was off next day. ‘Go ask Serry’s man,’ Clearbrook told him, and that’s what he done, and got took right on. So he’ll be back down with the flocks come fall, no doubt. Up there on the Long Fells above Lissu, in the high pastures. I think maybe it was goats they wanted him for. Nice-spoken fellow. Sheep or goats, I don’t remember which. I hope it’s all right with you that we didn’t keep him on here, Goha, but it’s the truth there wasn’t a lick o’ work for him what with me and Clearbrook and old Tiff, and Sis got the flax in. And he said he’d been a goatherd over there where he come from, away round the mountain, some place above Armouth he said, though he said he’d never herded sheep. Maybe it’ll be goats they’ve got him with up there.”
“Maybe,” said Tenar. She was much relieved and much disappointed. She had wanted to know him safe and well, but she had wanted also to find him here.
But it was enough, she told herself, simply to be home—and maybe better that he was not here, that none of all that was here, all the griefs and dreams and wizardries and terrors of Re Albi left behind, for good. She was here, now, and this was home, these stone floors and walls, these small-paned windows, outside which the oaks stood dark in starlight, these quiet, orderly rooms. She lay awake awhile that night. Her daughter slept in the next room, the children’s room, with Therru, and Tenar lay in her own bed, her husband’s bed, alone.
She slept. She woke, remembering no dream.
After a few days at the farm she scarcely gave a thought to the summer passed on the Overfell. It was long ago and far away. Despite Shandy’s insistence on there not being a lick o’ work to be done about the farm, she found plenty that needed doing: all that had been left undone over the summer and all that had to be done in the season of harvest in the fields and dairy. She worked from daybreak till nightfall, and if by chance she had an hour to sit down, she spun, or sewed for Therru. The red dress was finished at last, and a pretty dress it was, with a white apron for fancy wear and an orangey-brown one for everyday. “Now, then, you look beautiful!” said Tenar in her seamstress’s pride, when Therru first tried it on.
Therru turned her face away.
“You are beautiful,” Tenar said in a different tone. “Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren’t the scars. You aren’t ugly. You aren’t evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress.”
The child listened, the soft, unhurt side of her face as expressionless as the rigid, scar-masked side.
She looked down at Tenar’s hands, and presently touched them with her small fingers. “It is a beautiful dress,” she said in her faint, hoarse voice.
When Tenar was alone, folding up the scraps of red material, tears came stinging into her eyes. She felt rebuked. She had done right to make the dress, and she had spoken the truth to the child. But it was not enough, the right and the truth. There was a gap, a void, a gulf, on beyond the right and the truth. Love, her love for Therru and Therru’s for her, made a bridge across that gap, a bridge of spider web, but love did not fill or close it. Nothing did that. And the child knew it better than she.
The day of the equinox came, a bright sun of autumn burning through the mist. The first bronze was in the leaves of the oaks. As she scrubbed cream pans in the dairy with the window and door wide open to the sweet air, Tenar thought that her young king was being crowned this day in Havnor. The lords and ladies would walk in their clothes of blue and green and crimson, but he would wear white, she thought. He would climb up the steps to the Tower of the Sword, the steps she and Ged had climbed. The crown of Morred would be placed on his head. He would turn as the trumpets sounded and seat himself on the throne that had been empty so many years, and look at his kingdom with those dark eyes that knew what pain was, what fear was. “Rule well, rule long,” she thought, “poor boy!” And she thought, “It should have been Ged there putting the crown on his head. He should have gone.”
But Ged was herding the rich man’s sheep, or maybe goats, up in the high pastures. It was a fair, dry, golden autumn, and they would not be bringing the flocks down till the snow fell up there on the heights.
When she went into the village, Tenar made a point of going by Ivy’s cottage at the end of Mill Lane. Getting to know Moss at Re Albi had made her wish to know Ivy better, if she could once get past the witch’s suspicion and jealousy. She missed Moss, even though she had Lark here; she had learned from her and had come to love her, and Moss had given both her and Therru something they needed. She hoped to find a replacement of that here. But Ivy, though a great deal cleaner and more reliable than Moss, had no intention of giving up her dislike of Tenar. She treated her overtures of friendship with the contempt that, Tenar admitted, they perhaps deserved. “You go your way, I go mine,” the witch told her in everything but words; and Tenar obeyed, though she continued to treat Ivy with marked respect when they met. She had, she thought, slighted her too often and too long, and owed her reparation. Evidently agreeing, the witch accepted her due with unbending ire.
In mid-autumn the sorcerer Beech came up the valley, called by a rich farmer to treat his gout. He stayed on awhile in the Middle Valley villages as he usually did, and passed one afternoon at Oak Farm, checking up on Therru and talking with Tenar. He wanted to know anything she would tell him of Ogion’s last days. He was the pupil of a pupil of Ogion’s and a devout admirer of the mage of Gont. Tenar found it was not so hard to talk about Ogion as about other people of Re Albi, and told him all she could. When she had done he asked a little cautiously, “And the archmage—did he come?”
“Yes,” Tenar said.
Beech, a smooth-skinned, mild-looking man in his forties, tending a little to fat, with dark half-circles under his eyes that belied the blandness of his face, glanced at her, and asked nothing.
“He came after Ogion’s death. And left,” she said. And presently, “He’s not archmage now. You knew that?”
Beech nodded.
“Is there any word of their choosing a new arch-mage?
The sorcerer shook his head. “There was a ship in from the Enlades not long ago, but no word from her crew of anything but the coronation. They were full of that! And it sounds as if all auspices and events were fortunate. If the goodwill of mages is valuable, then this young king of ours is a rich man.... And an active one, it seems. There’s an order come overland from Gont Port just before I left Valmouth, for the nobles and merchants and the mayor and his council to meet together and see to it that the bailiffs of the district be worthy and accountable men, for they’re the king’s officers now, and are to do his will and enact his law. Well, you can imagine how Lord Heno greeted that!” Heno was a notable patron of pirates, who had long kept most of the bailiffs and sea-sheriffs of South Gont in his pocket. “But there were men willing to face up to Heno, with the king standing behind them. They dismissed the old lot then and there, and named fifteen new bailiffs, decent men, paid out of the mayor’s funds. Heno stormed off swearing destruction. It’s a new day! Not all at once, of course, but its coming. I wish Maste
“He did,” Tenar said. “As he was dying, he smiled, and he said, All changed. …’”
Beech took this in his sober way, nodding slowly. “All changed,” he repeated.
After a while he said, “The little one’s doing very well.”
“Well enough.... Sometimes I think not well enough.”
“Mistress Goha,” said the sorcerer, “if I or any sorcerer or witch or I daresay wizard had kept her, and used all the power of healing of the Art Magic for her all these months since she was injured, she wouldn’t be better off. Maybe not as well as she is. You have done all that can be done, mistress. You have done a wonder.”
She was touched by his earnest praise, and yet it made her sad; and she told him why. “It isn’t enough,” she said. “I can’t heal her. She is... What is she to do? What will become of her?” She ran off the thread she had been spinning onto the spindle-shank, and said, “I am afraid.”
“For her,” Beech said, half querying.
“Afraid because her fear draws to it, to her, the cause of her fear. Afraid because—”
But she could not find the words for it.
“If she lives in fear, she will do harm,” she said at last. “I’m afraid of that.”
The sorcerer pondered. “I’ve thought,” he said at last in his diffident way, “that maybe, if she has the gift, as I think she does, she might be trained a bit in the Art. And, as a witch, her... appearance wouldn’t be so much against her—possibly.” He cleared his throat. “There are witches who do very creditable work,” he said.
Tenar ran a little of the thread she had spun between her fingers, testing it for evenness and strength. “Ogion told me to teach her. ‘Teach her all,’ he said, and then, ‘Not Roke.’ I don’t know what he meant.”