Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Ah,” said Tenar. And presently, “The peach you planted will need water to grow. Once a day, till the rains come.”
Therru got up and trotted off around the corner of the house to the well. Her legs and feet were perfect, unhurt. Tenar liked to see her walk or run, the dark, dusty, pretty little feet on the earth. She came back with Ogion’s watering-jug, struggling along with it, and tipped out a small flood over the new planting.
“So you remember the story about when people and dragons were all the same.... It told how the humans came here, eastward, but the dragons all stayed in the far western isles. A long, long way away.”
Therru nodded. She did not seem to be paying attention, but when Tenar, saying “the western isles,” pointed out to the sea, Therru turned her face to the high, bright horizon glimpsed between staked bean-plants and the milking shed.
A goat appeared on the roof of the milking shed and arranged itself in profile to them, its head nobly poised; apparently it considered itself to be a mountain goat.
“Sippy’s got loose again,” said Tenar.
“Hesssss! Hesssss!” went Therru, imitating Heather’s goat call; and Heather herself appeared by the bean-patch fence, saying “Hesssss!” up at the goat, which ignored her, gazing thoughtfully down at the beans.
Tenar left the three of them to play the catching-Sippy game. She wandered on past the bean patch towards the edge of the cliff and along it. Ogion’s house stood apart from the village and closer than any other house to the edge of the Overfell, here a steep, grassy slope broken by ledges and outcrops of rock, where goats could be pastured. As you went on north the drop grew ever steeper, till it began to fall sheer; and on the path the rock of the great ledge showed through the soil, till a mile or so north of the village the Overfell had narrowed to a shelf of reddish sandstone hanging above the sea that undercut its base two thousand feet below.
Nothing grew at that far end of the Overfell but lichens and rockworts and here and there a blue daisy, wind-stunted, like a button dropped on the rough, crumbling stone. Inland of the cliff’s edge to the north and east, above a narrow strip of marshland the dark, tremendous side of Gont Mountain rose up, forested almost to the peak. The cliff stood so high above the bay that one must look down to see its outer shores and the vague lowlands of Essary. Beyond them, in all the south and west, there was nothing but the sky above the sea.
Tenar had liked to go there in the years she had lived in Re Albi. Ogion had loved the forests, but she, who had lived in a desert where the only trees for a hundred miles were a gnarled orchard of peach and apple, hand watered in the endless summers, where nothing grew green and moist and easy, where there was nothing but a mountain and a great plain and the sky—she liked the cliff’s edge better than the enclosing woods. She liked having nothing at all over her head.
The lichens, the grey rockwort, the stemless daisies, she liked them too; they were familiar. She sat down on the shelving rock a few feet from the edge and looked out to sea as she had used to do. The sun was hot but the ceaseless wind cooled the sweat on her face and arms. She leaned back on her hands and thought of nothing, sun and wind and sky and sea filling her, making her transparent to sun, wind, sky, sea. But her left hand reminded her of its existence, and she looked round to see what was scratching the heel of her hand. It was a tiny thistle, crouched in a crack in the sandstone, barely lifting its colorless spikes into the light and wind. It nodded stiffly as the wind blew, resisting the wind, rooted in rock. She gazed at it for a long time.
When she looked out to sea again she saw, blue in the blue haze where sea met sky, the line of an island: Oranéa, easternmost of the Inner Isles.
She gazed at that faint dream-shape, dreaming, until a bird flying from the west over the sea drew her gaze. It was not a gull, for it flew steadily, and too high to be a pelican. Was it a wild goose, or an albatross, the great, rare voyager of the open sea, come among the islands? She watched the slow beat of the wings, far out and high in the dazzling air. Then she got to her feet, retreating a little from the cliff’s edge, and stood motionless, her heart going hard and her breath caught in her throat, watching the sinuous, iron-dark body borne by long, webbed wings as red as fire, the outreaching claws, the coils of smoke fading behind it in the air.
Straight to Gont it flew, straight to the Overfell, straight to her. She saw the glitter of rust-black scales and the gleam of the long eye. She saw the red tongue that was a tongue of flame. The stink of burning filled the wind, as with a hissing roar the dragon, turning to land on the shelf of rock, breathed out a sigh of fire.
Its feet clashed on the rock. The thorny tail, writhing, rattled, and the wings, scarlet where the sun shone through them, stormed and rustled as they folded down to the mailed flanks. The head turned slowly. The dragon looked at the woman who stood there within reach of its scythe-blade talons. The woman looked at the dragon. She felt the heat of its body.
She had been told that men must not look into a dragons eyes, but that was nothing to her. It gazed straight at her from yellow eyes under armored carapaces wide-set above the narrow nose and flaring, fuming nostrils. And her small, soft face and dark eyes gazed straight at it.
Neither of them spoke.
The dragon turned its head aside a little so that she was not destroyed when it did speak, or perhaps it laughed—a great “Hah!” of orange flame.
Then it lowered its body into a crouch and spoke, but not to her.
“Ahivaraihe, Ged,” it said, mildly enough, smokily, with a flicker of the burning tongue; and it lowered its head.
Tenar saw for the first time, then, the man astride its back. In the notch between two of the high sword-thorns that rose in a row down its spine he sat, just behind the neck and above the shoulders where the wings had root. His hands were clenched on the rust-dark mail of the dragons neck and his head leaned against the base of the sword-thorn, as if he were asleep.
“Ahi eheraihe, Ged!” said the dragon, a little louder, its long mouth seeming always to smile, showing the teeth as long as Tenar’s forearm, yellowish, with white, sharp tips.
The man did not stir.
The dragon turned its long head and looked again at Tenar.
“Sobriost?” it said, in a whisper of steel sliding over steel.
That word of the Language of the Making she knew. Ogion had taught her all she would learn of that tongue. Go up, the dragon said: mount! And she saw the steps to mount. The taloned foot, the crooked elbow, the shoulder-joint, the first musculature of the wing: four steps.
She too said, “Hah!” but not in a laugh, only trying to get her breath, which kept sticking in her throat; and she lowered her head a moment to stop her dizzy faintness. Then she went forward, past the talons and the long lipless mouth and the long yellow eye, and mounted the shoulder of the dragon. She took the man’s arm. He did not move, but surely he was not dead, for the dragon had brought him here and spoken to him. “Come on,” she said, and then seeing his face as she loosened the clenched grip of his left hand, “Come on, Ged. Come on....”
He raised his head a little. His eyes were open, but unseeing. She had to climb around him, scratching her legs on the hot, mailed hide of the dragon, and unclench his right hand from a horny knob at the base of the sword-thorn. She got him to take hold of her arms, and so could carry-drag him down those four strange stairs to earth.
He roused enough to try to hold on to her, but there was no strength in him. He sprawled off the dragon onto the rock like a sack unloaded, and lay there.
The dragon turned its immense head and in a completely animal gesture nosed and sniffed at the mans body.
It lifted its head, and its wings too half lifted with a vast, metallic sound. It shifted its feet away from Ged, closer to the edge of the cliff. Turning back the head on the thorned neck, it stared once more directly at Tenar, and its voice like the dry roar of a kiln-fire spoke: “Thesse Kalessin.”
The sea wind whistled in the dragons half-open wi
“Thesse Tenar,” the woman said in a clear, shaking voice.
The dragon looked away, westward, over the sea. It twitched its long body with a clink and clash of iron scales, then abruptly opened its wings, crouched, and leapt straight out from the cliff onto the wind. The dragging tail scored the sandstone as it passed. The red wings beat down, lifted, and beat down, and already Kalessin was far from land, flying straight, flying west.
Tenar watched it till it was no larger than a wild goose or a gull. The air was cold. When the dragon had been there it had been hot, furnace-hot, with the dragon’s inward fire. Tenar shivered. She sat down on the rock beside Ged and began to cry. She hid her face in her arms and wept aloud. “What can I do?” she cried. “What can I do now?”
Presently she wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve, put back her hair with both hands, and turned to the man who lay beside her. He lay so still, so easy on the bare rock, as if he might lie there forever.
Tenar sighed. There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.
She could not carry him. She would have to get help. That meant leaving him alone. It seemed to her that he was too near the cliff’s edge. If he tried to get up he might fall, weak and dizzy as he would be. How could she move him? He did not rouse at all when she spoke and touched him. She took him under the shoulders and tried to pull him, and to her surprise succeeded; dead weight as he was, the weight was not much. Resolute, she dragged him ten or fifteen feet inland, off the bare rock shelf onto a bit of dirt, where dry bunchgrass gave some illusion of shelter. There she had to leave him. She could not run, for her legs shook and her breath still came in sobs. She walked as fast as she could to Ogion’s house, calling out as she approached it to Heather, Moss, and Therru.
The child appeared around the milking shed and stood, as her way was, obedient to Tenar’s call but not coming forward to greet or be greeted.
“Therru, run into town and ask anyone to come—anybody strong—There’s a man hurt on the cliff.”
Therru stood there. She had never gone alone into the village. She was frozen between obedience and fear. Tenar saw that and said, “Is Aunty Moss here? Is Heather? The three of us can carry him. Only, quick, quick, Therru!” She felt that if she let Ged lie unprotected there he would surely die. He would be gone when she came back—dead, fallen, taken by dragons. Anything could happen. She must hurry before it happened. Flint had died of a stroke in his fields and she had not been with him. He had died alone. The shepherd had found him lying by the gate. Ogion had died and she could not keep him from dying, she could not give him breath. Ged had come home to die and it was the end of everything, there was nothing left, nothing to be done, but she must do it. “Quick, Therru! Bring anyone!”
She started shakily towards the village herself, but saw old Moss hurrying across the pasture, stumping along with her thick hawthorn stick. “Did you call me, dearie?”
Moss’s presence was an immediate relief. She began to get her breath and be able to think. Moss wasted no time in questions, but hearing there was a man hurt who must be moved, got the heavy canvas mattress-cover that Tenar had been airing, and lugged it out to the end of the Overfell. She and Tenar rolled Ged onto it and were dragging this conveyance laboriously homeward when Heather came trotting along, followed by Therru and Sippy. Heather was young and strong, and with her help they could lift the canvas like a litter and carry the man to the house.
Tenar and Therru slept in the alcove in the west wall of the long single room. There was only Ogion’s bed at the far end, covered now with a heavy linen sheet. There they laid the man. Tenar put Ogion’s blanket over him, while Moss muttered charms around the bed, and Heather and Therru stood and stared.
“Let him be now,” said Tenar, leading them all to the front part of the house.
“Who is he?” Heather asked.
“What was he doing on the Overfell?” Moss asked.
“You know him, Moss. He was Ogion’s—Aihal’s prentice, once.”
The witch shook her head. “That was the lad from Ten Alders, dearie,” she said. “The one that’s Archmage in Roke, now.”
Tenar nodded.
“No, dearie,” said Moss. “This looks like him. But isn’t him. This man’s no mage. Not even a sorcerer.”
Heather looked from one to the other, entertained. She did not understand most things people said, but she liked to hear them say them.
“But I know him, Moss. It’s Sparrowhawk.” Saying the name, Ged’s use-name, released a tenderness in her, so that for the first time she thought and felt that this was he indeed, and that all the years since she had first seen him were their bond. She saw a light like a star in darkness, underground, long ago, and his face in the light. “I know him, Moss.” She smiled, and then smiled more broadly. “He’s the first man I ever saw,” she said.
Moss mumbled and shifted. She did not like to contradict “Mistress Goha,” but she was perfectly unconvinced. “There’s tricks, disguises, transformations, changes,” she said. “Better be careful, dearie. How did he get where you found him, away out there? Did any see him come through the village?”
“None of you—saw—?”
They stared at her. She tried to say “the dragon” and could not. Her lips and tongue would not form the word. But a word formed itself with them, making itself with her mouth and breath. “Kalessin,” she said.
Therru was staring at her. A wave of warmth, heat, seemed to flow from the child, as if she were in fever. She said nothing, but moved her lips as if repeating the name, and that fever heat burned around her.
“Tricks!” Moss said. “Now that our mage is gone there’ll be all kinds of tricksters coming round.”
“I came from Atuan to Havnor, from Havnor to Gont, with Sparrowhawk, in an open boat,” Tenar said drily. “You saw him when he brought me here, Moss. He wasn’t archmage then. But he was the same, the same man. Are there other scars like those?”
Confronted, the older woman became still, collecting herself. She glanced at Therru. “No,” she said. “But—”
“Do you think I wouldn’t know him?”
Moss twisted her mouth, frowned, rubbed one thumb with the other, looking at her hands. “There’s evil things in the world, mistress,” she said. “A thing that takes a man’s form and body, but his soul’s gone—eaten—”
“The gebbeth?”
Moss cringed at the word spoken openly. She nodded. “They do say, once the mage Sparrow-hawk came here, long ago, before you came with him. And a thing of darkness came with him—following him. Maybe it still does. Maybe—”
“The dragon who brought him here,” Tenar said, “called him by his true name. And I know that name.” Wrath at the witch’s obstinate suspicion rang in her voice..
Moss stood mute. Her silence was better argument than her words.
“Maybe the shadow on him is his death,” Tenar said. “Maybe he’s dying. I don’t know. If Ogion—”
At the thought of Ogion she was in tears again, thinking how Ged had come too late. She swallowed the tears and went to the woodbox for kindling for the fire. She gave Therru the kettle to fill, touching her face as she spoke to her. The seamed and slabby scars were hot to touch, but the child was not feverish. Tenar knelt to make the fire. Somebody in this fine household—a witch, a widow, a cripple, and a half-wit—had to do what must be done, and not frighten the child with weeping. But the dragon was gone, and was there nothing to come any more but death?
HE LAY LIKE THE DEAD BUT WAS NOT DEAD. Where had he been? What had he come through? That night, in firelight, Tenar took the stained, worn, sweat-stiffened clothes off him. She washed him and let him lie naked between the linen sheet and the blanket of soft, heavy goat’s-wool. Though a short, slight-built man, he had been compact, vigorous; now he was thin as if worn down to the bone, worn away, fragile. Even the scars that ridged his shoulder and the left side of his face from temple to jaw seemed lessened, silvery. And
I’m sick of mourning, Tenar thought. Sick of mourning, sick of grief. I will not grieve for him! Didn’t he come to me riding the dragon?
Once I meant to kill him, she thought. Now I’ll make him live, if I can. She looked at him then with a challenge in her eye, and no pity.
“Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged?”
Unhearing, unmoving, he slept. She was very tired. She bathed in the water she had heated to wash him with, and crept into bed beside the little, warm, silky silence that was Therru asleep. She slept, and her sleep opened out into a vast windy space hazy with rose and gold. She flew. Her voice called, “Kalessin!” A voice answered, calling from the gulfs of light.
When she woke, the birds were chirping in the fields and on the roof. Sitting up she saw the light of morning through the gnarled glass of the low window looking west. There was something in her, some seed or glimmer, too small to look at or think about, new. Therru was still asleep. Tenar sat by her looking out the small window at cloud and sunlight, thinking of her daughter Apple, trying to remember Apple as a baby. Only the faintest glimpse, vanishing as she turned to it—the small, fat body shaking with a laugh, the wispy, flying hair.... And the second baby, Spark he got called as a joke, because he’d been struck off Flint. She did not know his true name. He had been as sickly a child as Apple had been a sound one. Born early and very small, he had nearly died of the croup at two months, and for two years after that it had been like rearing a fledgling sparrow, you never knew if he would be alive in the morning. But he held on, the little spark wouldn’t go out. And growing, he became a wiry boy, endlessly active, driven; no use on the farm; no patience with animals, plants, people; using words for his needs only, never for pleasure and the give and take of love and knowledge.
Ogion had come by on his wanderings when Apple was thirteen and Spark eleven. Ogion had named Apple then, in the springs of the Kaheda at the valley’s head; beautiful she had walked in the green water, the woman-child, and he had given her her true name, Hayohe. He had stayed on at Oak Farm a day or two, and had asked the boy if he wanted to go wandering a little with him in the forests. Spark merely shook his head. “What would you do if you could?” the mage had asked him, and the boy said what he had never been able to say to father or mother: “Go to sea.” So after Beech gave him his true name, three years later, he shipped as a sailor aboard a merchantman trading from Valmouth to Oranéa and North Havnor. From time to time he would come to the farm, but not often and never for long, though at his father’s death it would be his property. He was white-skinned like Tenar, but grew tall like Flint, with a narrow face. He had not told his parents his true name. There might never be anyone he told it to. Tenar had not seen him for three years now. He might or might not know of his father’s death. He might be dead himself, drowned, but she thought not. He would carry that spark his life over the waters, through the storms.