Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
“No,” the child said, pointing left, to the village.
“This way,” Tenar repeated, and set off on the right-hand way. Ged came with her.
They walked between the walnut orchards and the fields of grass. It was a warm late afternoon of early summer. Birds sang in the orchard trees near and far. He came walking down the road from the great house towards them, the one whose name she could not remember.
“Welcome!” he said, and stopped, smiling at them.
They stopped.
“What great personages have come to honor the house of the Lord of Re Albi,” he said. Tuaho, that was not his name. The bone dolphin, the bone animal, the bone child.
“My Lord Archmage!” He bowed low, and Ged bowed to him.
“And my Lady Tenar of Atuan!” He bowed even lower to her, and she got down on her knees in the road. Her head sank down, till she put her hands in the dirt and crouched until her mouth too was on the dirt of the road.
“Now crawl,” he said, and she began to crawl towards him.
“Stop,” he said, and she stopped.
“Can you talk?” he asked. She said nothing, having no words that would come to her mouth, but Ged replied in his usual quiet voice, “Yes.”
“Where’s the monster?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought the witch would bring her familiar with her. But she brought you instead. The Lord Archmage Sparrowhawk. What a splendid substitute! All I can do to witches and monsters is cleanse the world of them. But to you, who used at one time to be a man, I can talk; you are capable of rational speech, at least. And capable of understanding punishment. You thought you were safe, I suppose, with your king on the throne, and my master, our master, destroyed. You thought you’d had your will, and destroyed the promise of eternal life, didn’t you?”
“No,” said Ged’s voice.
She could not see them. She could see only the dirt of the road, and taste it her mouth. She heard Ged speak. He said, “In dying is life.”
“Quack, quack, quote the Songs, Master of Roke—schoolmaster! What a funny sight to see, the great archmage all got up like a goatherd, and not an ounce of magic in him—not a word of power. Can you say a spell, archmage? Just a little spell—just a tiny charm of illusion? No? Not a word? My master defeated you. Now do you know it? You did not conquer him. His power lives! I might keep you alive here awhile, to see that power—my power. To see the old man I keep from death—and I might use your life for that if I need it—and to see your meddling king make a fool of himself, with his mincing lords and stupid wizards, looking for a woman! A woman to rule us! But the rule is here, the mastery is here, here, in this house. All this year I’ve been gathering others to me, men who know the true power. From Roke, some of them, from right under the noses of the schoolmasters. And from Havnor, from under the nose of that so-called Son of Morred, who wants a woman to rule him, your king who thinks he’s so safe he can go by his true name. Do you know my name, archmage? Do you remember me, four years ago, when you were the great Master of Masters and I was a lowly student at Roke?”
“You were called Aspen,” said the patient voice.
“And my true name?”
“I don’t know your true name.”
“What? You don’t know it? Can’t you find it? Don’t mages know all names?”
“I’m not a mage.”
“Oh, say it again.”
“I’m not a mage.
“I like to hear you say it. Say it again.”
“I’m not a mage.
“But I am!”
“Yes.”
“Say it!”
“You are a mage.”
“Ah! This is better than I hoped! I fished for the eel and caught the whale! Come on, then, come meet my friends. You can walk. She can crawl.”
So they went up the road to the manor house of the Lord of Re Albi and went in, Tenar on hands and knees on the road, and on the marble steps up to the door, and on the marble pavements of the halls and rooms.
Inside the house it was dark. With the darkness came a darkness into Tenar’s mind, so that she understood less and less of what was said. Only some words and voices came to her clearly. What Ged said she understood, and when he spoke she thought of his name, and clung to it in her mind. But he spoke very seldom, and only to answer the one whose name was not Tuaho. That one spoke to her now and then, calling her Bitch. “This is my new pet,” he said to other men, several of them that were there in the darkness where candles made shadows. “See how well trained she is? Roll over, Bitch!” She rolled over, and the men laughed.
“She had a whelp,” he said, “that I planned to finish punishing, since it was left half-burned. But she brought me a bird she’d caught instead, a sparrowhawk. Tomorrow we’ll teach it to fly.”
Other voices said words, but she did not understand words any more.
Something was fastened around her neck and she was made to crawl up more stairs and into a room that smelled of urine and rotting meat and sweet flowers. Voices spoke. A cold hand like a stone struck her head feebly while something laughed, “Eh, eh, eh,” like an old door creaking back and forth. Then she was kicked and made to crawl down halls. She could not crawl fast enough, and was kicked in the breasts and in the mouth. Then there was a door that crashed, and silence, and the dark. She heard somebody crying and thought it was the child, her child. She wanted the child not to cry. At last it stopped.
THE CHILD TURNED LEFT AND WENT SOME way before she looked back, letting the blossoming hedgerow hide her.
The one called Aspen, whose name was Erisen, and whom she saw as a forked and writhing darkness, had bound her mother and father, with a thong through her tongue and a thong through his heart, and was leading them up toward the place where he hid. The smell of the place was sickening to her, but she followed a little way to see what he did. He led them in and shut the door behind them. It was a stone door. She could not enter there.
She needed to fly, but she could not fly; she was not one of the winged ones.
She ran as fast as she could across the fields, past Aunty Moss’s house, past Ogion’s house and the goats’ house, onto the path along the cliff and to the edge of the cliff, where she was not to go because she could see it only with one eye. She was careful. She looked carefully with that eye. She stood on the edge. The water was far below, and the sun was setting far away. She looked into the west with the other eye, and called with the other voice the name she had heard in her mother’s dream.
She did not wait for an answer, but turned round again and went back—first past Ogion’s house to see if her peach tree had grown. The old tree stood bearing many small, green peaches, but there was no sign of the seedling. The goats had eaten it. Or it had died because she had not watered it. She stood a little while looking at the ground there, then drew a long breath and went on back across the fields to Aunty Moss’s house.
Chickens going to roost squawked and fluttered, protesting her entrance. The little hut was dark and very full of smells. “Aunty Moss?” she said, in the voice she had for these people.
“Who’s there?”
The old woman was in her bed, hiding. She was frightened, and tried to make stone around her to keep everyone away, but it didn’t work; she was not strong enough.
“Who is it? Who’s there? Oh dearie—oh dearie child, my little burned one, my pretty, what are you doing here? Where’s she, where’s she, your mother, oh, is she here? Did she come? Don’t come in, don’t come in, dearie, there’s a curse on me, he cursed the old woman, don’t come near me! Don’t come near!”
She wept. The child put out her hand and touched her. “You’re cold,” she said.
“You’re like fire, child, your hand burns me. Oh, don’t look at me! He made my flesh rot, and shrivel, and rot again, but he won’t let me die—he said I’d bring you here. I tried to die, I tried, but he held me, he held me living against my will, he won’t let me die, oh, let me die!”
“Child,” the old woman whispered, “dearie—call me by my name.”
“Hatha,” the child said.
“Ah. I knew.... Set me free, dearie!”
“I have to wait,” the child said. “Till they come.”
The witch lay easier, breathing without pain. “Till who come, dearie?” she whispered.
“My people.”
The witch’s big, cold hand lay like a bundle of sticks in hers. She held it firmly. It was as dark now outside the hut as inside it. Hatha, who was called Moss, slept; and presently the child, sitting on the floor beside her cot, with a hen perched nearby, slept also.
Men came when the light came. He said, “Up, Bitch! Up!” She got to her hands and knees. He laughed, saying, “All the way up! You’re a clever bitch, you can walk on your hind legs, can’t you? That’s it. Pretend to be human! We have a way to go now. Come!” The strap was still around her neck, and he jerked it. She followed him.
“Here, you lead her,” he said, and now it was that one, the one she loved, but she did not know his name any more, who held the strap.
They all came out of the dark place. Stone yawned to let them pass and ground together behind them.
He was always close beside her and the one who held the strap. Others came behind, three or four men.
The fields were grey with dew. The mountain was dark against a pale sky. Birds were beginning to sing in the orchards and hedgerows, louder and louder.
They came to the edge of the world and walked along it for a while until they came to where the ground was only rock and the edge was very narrow. There was a line in the rock, and she looked at that.
“He can push her,” he said. “And then the hawk can fly, all by himself.”
He unfastened the strap from around her neck.
“Go stand at the edge,” he said. She followed the mark in the stone out to the edge. The sea was below her, nothing else. The air was out beyond her.
“Now, Sparrowhawk will give her a push,” he said. “But first, maybe she wants to say something. She has so much to say. Women always do. Isn’t there anything you’d like to say to us, Lady Tenar?”
She could not speak, but she pointed to the sky above the sea.
“Albatross,” he said.
She laughed aloud.
In the gulfs of light, from the doorway of the sky, the dragon flew, fire trailing behind the coiling, mailed body. Tenar spoke then.
“Kalessin!” she cried, and then turned, seizing Ged’s arm, pulling him down to the rock, as the roar of fire went over them, the rattle of mail and the hiss of wind in upraised wings, the clash of the talons like scytheblades on the rock.
The wind blew from the sea. A tiny thistle growing in a cleft in the rock near her hand nodded and nodded in the wind from the sea.
Ged was beside her. They were crouched side by side, the sea behind them and the dragon before them.
It looked at them sidelong from one long, yellow eye.
Ged spoke in a hoarse, shaking voice, in the dragon’s language. Tenar understood the words, which were only, “Our thanks, Eldest.”
Looking at Tenar, Kalessin spoke, in the huge voice like a broom of metal dragged across a gong: “Aro Tehanu?”
“The child,” Tenar said—“Therru!” She got to her feet to run, to seek her child. She saw her coming along the ledge of rock between the mountain and the sea, toward the dragon.
“Don’t run, Therru!” she cried, but the child had seen her and was running, running straight to her. They clung to each other.
The dragon turned its enormous, rust-dark head to watch them with both eyes. The nostril pits, big as kettles, were bright with fire, and wisps of smoke curled from them. The heat of the dragons body beat through the cold sea wind.
“Tehanu,” the dragon said.
The child turned to look at it.
“Kalessin,” she said.
Then Ged, who had remained kneeling, stood up, though shakily, catching Tenar’s arm to steady himself. He laughed. “Now I know who called thee, Eldest!” he said.
“I did,” the child said. “I did not know what else to do, Segoy.”
She still looked at the dragon, and she spoke in the language of the dragons, the words of the Making.
“It was well, child,” the dragon said. “I have sought thee long.”
“Shall we go there now?” the child asked. “Where the others are, on the other wind?”
“Would you leave these?”
“No,” said the child. “Can they not come?”
“They cannot come. Their life is here.”
“I will stay with them,” she said, with a little catch of breath.
Kalessin turned aside to give that immense furnace-blast of laughter or contempt or delight or anger—“Hah!” Then, looking again at the child, “It is well. Thou hast work to do here.”
“I know,” the child said.
“I will come back for thee,” Kalessin said, “in time.” And, to Ged and Tenar, “I give you my child, as you will give me yours.”
“In time,” Tenar said.
Kalessin’s great head bowed very slightly, and the long, sword-toothed mouth curled up at the corner.
Ged and Tenar drew aside with Therru as the dragon turned, dragging its armor across the ledge, placing its taloned feet carefully, gathering its black haunches like a cat, till it sprang aloft. The vaned wings shot up crimson in the new light, the spurred tail rang hissing on the rock, and it flew, it was gone—a gull, a swallow, a thought.
Where it had been lay scorched rags of cloth and leather, and other things.
“Come away,” Ged said.
But the woman and the child stood and looked at those things.
“They are bone people,” Therru said. She turned away then and set off. She went ahead of the man and woman along the narrow path.
“Her native tongue,” Ged said. “Her mother tongue.”
“Tehanu,” said Tenar. “Her name is Tehanu.”
“She has been given it by the giver of names.”
“She has been Tehanu since the beginning. Always, she has been Tehanu.”
“Come on!” the child said, looking back at them. “Aunty Moss is sick.”
They were able to move Moss out into the light and air, to wash her sores, and to burn the foul linens of her bed, while Therru brought clean bedding from Ogion’s house. She also brought Heather the goatgirl back with her. With Heather’s help they got the old woman comfortable in her bed, with her chickens; and Heather promised to come back with something for them to eat.
“Someone must go down to Gont Port,” Ged said, “for the wizard there. To look after Moss; she can be healed. And to go to the manor house. The old man will die now. The grandson might live, if the house is made clean....” He had sat down on the doorstep of Moss’s house. He leaned his head back against the doorjamb, in the sunlight, and closed his eyes. “Why do we do what we do?” he said.
Tenar was washing her face and hands and arms in a basin of clear water she had drawn from the pump. She looked round when she was done. Utterly spent, Ged had fallen asleep, his face a little upturned to the morning light. She sat down beside him on the doorstep and laid her head against his shoulder. Are we spared? she thought. How is it we are spared?
She looked down at Ged’s hand, relaxed and open on the earthen step. She thought of the thistle that nodded in the wind, and of the taloned foot of the dragon with its scales of red and gold. She was half-asleep when the child sat down beside her.
“Tehanu,” she murmured.
“The little tree died,” the child said.
After a while Tenar’s weary, sleepy mind understood, and woke up enough to make a reply. “Are there peaches on the old tree?”
They spoke low, not to waken the sleeping man.
“Only little green ones.”
“They’ll ripen, after the Long Dance. Soon now.”
“Can we plant one?”
“More than one, if you like. Is the house all right?”
“It’s empty.”
“Shall we live there?” She roused a little more, and put her arm around the child. “I have money,” she said, “enough to buy a herd of goats, and Turby’s winter-pasture, if it’s still for sale. Ged knows where to take them up the mountain, summers.... I wonder if the wool we combed is still there?” So saying, she thought, We left the books, Ogion’s books! On the mantel at Oak Farm—for Spark, poor boy, he can’t read a word of them!
But it did not seem to matter. There were new things to be learned, no doubt. And she could send somebody for the books, if Ged wanted them. And for her spinning wheel. Or she could go down herself, come autumn, and see her son, and visit with Lark, and stay a while with Apple. They would have to replant Ogion’s garden right away if they wanted any vegetables of their own this summer. She thought of the rows of beans and the scent of the bean flowers. She thought of the small window that looked west. “I think we can live there,” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
URSULA K. LE GUIN is one of the most distinguished fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Nebula, Hugo, National Book, and Newbery Honor awards. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu
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