Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
“And drink Andrades wine,” said the one who had identified the vintage, a bright-eyed, handsome man with a winning smile. She, playing her part, kept her head down. But as they took their leave and filed out, she knew that, seem what she might and be what she might, if they did not know now that she was Tenar of the Ring they would know it soon enough; and so would know that she herself knew the archmage and was indeed their way to him, if they were determined to seek him out.
When they were gone, she heaved a great sigh. Heather did so too, and then finally shut her mouth, which had hung open all the time they were there.
“I never,” she said, in a tone of deep, replete satisfaction, and went to see where the goats had got to.
Therru came out from the dark place behind the door, where she had barricaded herself from the strangers with Ogion’s staff and Tenar’s alder stick and her own hazel switch. She moved in the tight, sidling way she had mostly abandoned since they had been here, not looking up, the ruined half of her face bent down towards the shoulder.
Tenar went to her and knelt to hold her in her arms. “Therru,” she said, “they won’t hurt you. They mean no harm.”
The child would not look at her. She let Tenar hold her like a block of wood.
“If you say so, I won’t let them in the house again.”
After a while the child moved a little and asked in her hoarse, thick voice, “What will they do to Sparrowhawk?”
“Nothing,” Tenar said. “No harm! They come—they mean to do him honor.”
But she had begun to see what their attempt to do him honor would do to him—denying his loss, denying him his grief for what he had lost, forcing him to act the part of what he was no longer.
When she let the child go, Therru went to the closet and fetched out Ogion’s broom. She laboriously swept the floor where the men from Havnor had stood, sweeping away their footprints, sweeping the dust of their feet out the door, off the doorstep.
Watching her, Tenar made up her mind.
She went to the shelf where Ogion’s three great books stood, and rummaged there. She found several goose quills and a half-dried-up bottle of ink, but not a scrap of paper or parchment. She set her jaw, hating to do damage to anything so sacred as a book, and scored and tore out a thin strip of paper from the blank endsheet of the Book of Runes. She sat at the table and dipped the pen and wrote. Neither the ink nor the words came easy. She had scarcely written anything since she had sat at this same table a quarter of a century ago, with Ogion looking over her shoulder, teaching her the runes of
Hardic and the Great Runes of Power. She wrote:
go oak farm in midl valy to clerbrook say goha sent to look to garden & sheep
It took her nearly as long to read it over as it had to write it. By now Therru had finished her sweeping and was watching her, intent.
She added one word:
to-night
“Where’s Heather?” she asked the child, as she folded the paper on itself once and twice. “I want her to take this to Aunty Moss’s house.”
She longed to go herself, to see Sparrowhawk, but dared not be seen going, lest they were watching her to lead them to him.
“I’ll go,” Therru whispered.
Tenar looked at her sharply.
“You’ll have to go alone, Therru. Past the village.”
The child nodded.
“Give it only to him!”
She nodded again.
Tenar tucked the paper into the child’s pocket, held her, kissed her, let her go. Therru went, not crouching and sidling now but running freely, flying, Tenar thought, seeing her vanish in the evening light beyond the dark door-frame, flying like a bird, a dragon, a child, free.
THERRU WAS BACK SOON WITH Sparrowhawk’s reply: “He said he’ll leave tonight.”
Tenar heard this with satisfaction, relieved that he had accepted her plan, that he would get clear away from these messengers and messages he dreaded. It was not till she had fed Heather and Therru their frog-leg feast, and put Therru to bed and sung to her, and was sitting up alone without lamp or firelight, that her heart began to sink. He was gone. He was not strong, he was bewildered and uncertain, he needed friends; and she had sent him away from those who were and those who wished to be his friends. He was gone, and she must stay, to keep the hounds from his trail, to learn at least whether they stayed in Gont or sailed back to Havnor.
His panic and her obedience to it began to seem so unreasonable to her that she thought it equally unreasonable, improbable, that he would in fact go. He would use his wits and simply hide in Moss’s house, which was the last place in all Earthsea that a king would look for an archmage. It would be much better if he stayed there till the king’s men left. Then he could come back here to Ogion’s house, where he belonged. And it would go on as before, she looking after him until he had his strength back, and he giving her his dear companionship.
A shadow against the stars in the doorway: “Hsssst! Awake?” Aunty Moss came in. “Well, he’s off,” she said, conspiratorial, jubilant. “Went the old forest road. Says he’ll cut down to the Middle Valley way, along past Oak Springs, tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Tenar.
Bolder than usual, Moss sat down uninvited. “I gave him a loaf and a bit of cheese for the way.”
“Thank you, Moss. That was kind.”
“Mistress Goha.” Moss’s voice in the darkness took on the singsong resonance of her chanting and spellcasting. “There’s a thing I was wanting to say to you, dearie, without going beyond what I can know, for I know you’ve lived among great folks and been one of ’em yourself, and that seals my mouth when I think of it. And yet there’s things I know that you’ve had no way of knowing, for all the learning of the runes, and the Old Speech, and all you’ve learned from the wise, and in the foreign lands.”
“That’s so, Moss.”
“Aye, well, then. So when we talked about how witch knows witch, and power knows power, and I said—of him who’s gone now—that he was no mage now, whatever he had been, and still you would deny it—But I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Aye. I was.”
“He said so himself.”
“O’ course he did. He don’t lie nor say this is that and that’s this till you don’t know which end’s up, I’ll say that for him. He’s not one tries to drive the cart without the ox, either. But I’ll say flat out I’m glad he’s gone, for it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do any longer, being a different matter with him now, and all.”
Tenar had no idea what she was talking about, except for her image of trying to drive the cart without the ox. “I don’t know why he’s so afraid,” she said. “Well, I know in part, but I don’t understand it, why he feels such shame. But I know he thinks that he should have died. And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....”
Moss listened and nodded as at words of wisdom, but after a slight pause she said, “It’s a queer thing for an old man to be a boy of fifteen, no doubt!”
Tenar almost said, “What are you talking about, Moss?”—but something prevented her. She realized that she had been listening for Ged to come into the house from his roaming on the mountainside, that she was listening for the sound of his voice, that her body denied his absence. She glanced suddenly over at the witch, a shapeless lump of black perched on Ogion’s chair by the empty hearth.
“Ah!” she said, a great many thoughts suddenly coming into her mind all at once.
“That’s why,” she said. “That’s why I never—”
After a quite long silence, she said, “Do they—do wizards—is it a spell?”
“Surely, surely, dearie,” said Moss. “They witch ’emselves. Some’ll tell you they make a trade-off, like a marriage turned backward, with vows and all, and so ge
“The ones who brought me up did that, promising virginity.”
“Oh, aye, no men, you told me, and them yurnix. Terrible!
“But why, but why—why did I never think—”
The witch laughed aloud. “Because that’s the power of ’em, dearie. You don’t think! You can’t! And nor do they, once they’ve set their spell. How could they? Given their power? It wouldn’t do, would it, it wouldn’t do. You don’t get without you give as much. That’s true for all, surely. So they know that, the witch men, the men of power, they know that better than any. But then, you know, it’s an uneasy thing for a man not to be a man, no matter if he can call the sun down from the sky. And so they put it right out of mind, with their spells of binding. And truly so. Even in these bad times we’ve been having, with the spells going wrong and all, I haven’t yet heard of a wizard breaking those spells, seeking to use his power for his body’s lust. Even the worst would fear to. O’ course, there’s those will work illusions, but they only fool ’emselves. And there’s witch men of little account, witch-tinkers and the like, some of them’ll try their own spells of beguilement on country women, but for all I can see, those spells don’t amount to much. What it is, is the one power’s as great as the other, and each goes its own way. That’s how I see it.”
Tenar sat thinking, absorbed. At last she said, “They set themselves apart.”
“Aye. A wizard has to do that.”
“But you don’t.”
“Me? I’m only an old witchwoman, dearie.”
“How old?”
After a minute Moss’s voice in the darkness said, with a hint of laughter in it, “Old enough to keep out of trouble.”
“But you said... You haven’t been celibate.”
“What’s that, dearie?”
“Like the wizards.”
“Oh, no. No, no! Never was anything to look at, but there was a way I could look at them... not witching, you know, dearie, you know what I mean... there’s a way to look, and he’d come round, sure as a crow will caw, in a day or two or three he’d come around my place—‘I need a cure for my dog’s mange,’ ‘I need a tea for my sick granny,’—but I knew what it was they needed, and if I liked ’em well enough maybe they got it. And for love, for love—I’m not one o’ them, you know, though maybe some witches are, but they dishonor the art, I say. I do my art for pay but I take my pleasure for love, that’s what I say. Not that it’s all pleasure, all that. I was crazy for a man here for a long time, years, a good-looking man he was, but a hard, cold heart. He’s long dead. Father to that Townsend who’s come back here to live, you know him. Oh, I was so heartset on that man I did use my art, I spent many a charm on him, but ’twas all wasted. All for nothing. No blood in a turnip.... And I came up here to Re Albi in the first place when I was a girl because I was in trouble with a man in Gont Port. But I can’t talk of that, for they were rich, great folks. ‘Twas they had the power, not I! They didn’t want their son tangled with a common girl like me, foul slut they called me, and they’d have had me put out of the way, like killing a cat, if I hadn’t run off up here. But oh, I did like that lad, with his round, smooth arms and legs and his big, dark eyes, I can see him plain as plain after all these years....”
They sat a long while silent in the darkness.
“When you had a man, Moss, did you have to give up your power?”
“Not a bit of it,” the witch said, complacent.
“But you said you don’t get unless you give. Is it different, then, for men and for women?”
“What isn’t, dearie?”
“I don’t know,” Tenar said. “It seems to me we make up most of the differences, and then complain about ’em. I don’t see why the Art Magic, why power, should be different for a man witch and a woman witch. Unless the power itself is different. Or the art.”
“A man gives out, dearie. A woman takes in.”
Tenar sat silent but unsatisfied.
“Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs,” Moss said. “But it goes down deep. It’s all roots. It’s like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard’s power’s like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it’ll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble.” She gave her hen-chuckle, pleased with her comparison. “Well, then!” she said briskly. “So as I said, it’s maybe just as well he’s on his way and out o’ the way, lest people in the town begin to talk.”
“To talk?”
“You’re a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman’s wealth.”
“Her wealth,” Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: “Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value.…” She stood up, unable to sit still, stretching her back and arms. “Like the dragons who found caves, who built fortresses for their treasure, for their hoard, to be safe, to sleep on their treasure, to be their treasure. Take in, take in, and never give out!”
“You’ll know the value of a good reputation,” Moss said drily, “when you’ve lost it. ’Tisn’t everything. But it’s hard to fill the place of.”
“Would you give up being a witch to be respectable, Moss?”
“I don’t know,” Moss said after a while, thoughtfully. “I don’t know as I’d know how. I have the one gift, maybe, but not the other.”
Tenar went to her and took her hands. Surprised at the gesture, Moss got up, drawing away a little; but Tenar drew her forward and kissed her cheek.
The older woman put up one hand and timidly touched Tenar’s hair, one caress, as Ogion had used to do. Then she pulled away and muttered about having to go home, and started to leave, and asked at the door, “Or would you rather I stayed, with them foreigners about?”
“Go on,” Tenar said. “I’m used to foreigners.”
That night as she lay going to sleep she entered again into the vast gulfs of wind and light, but the light was smoky, red and orange-red and amber, as if the air itself were fire. In this element she was and was not; flying on the wind and being the wind, the blowing of the wind, the force that went free; and no voice called to her.
In the morning she sat on the doorstep brushing out her hair. She was not fair to blondness, like many Kargish people; her skin was pale, but her hair dark. It was still dark, hardly a thread of grey in it. She had washed it, using some of the water that was heating to wash clothes in, for she had decided the laundry would be her days work, Ged being gone, and her respectability secure. She dried her hair in the sun, brushing it. In the hot, windy morning, sparks followed the brush and crackled from the flying ends of her hair.
Therru came to stand behind her, watching. Tenar turned and saw her so intent she was almost trembling.
“What is it, birdlet?”
“The fire flying out,” the child said, with fear or exultation. “All over the sky!”
“Its just the sparks from my hair,” Tenar said, a little taken aback. Therru was smiling, and she did not know if she had ever seen the child smile before. Therru reached out both her hands, the whole one and the burned, as if to touch and follow the flight of something around Tenar’s loose, floating hair. “The fires, all flying out,” she repeated, and she laughed.
At that moment Tenar first asked herself how Therru saw her—saw the world—and knew she did not know: that she could not know what one saw with an eye that had been burned away. And Ogion’s words, They will fear her, returned to her; but she felt no fear of the child. Instead, she brushed her hair again, vigorously, so the sparks would fly, and once again she heard the little husky laugh of delight.
She washed the sheets, the dishcloths, her shifts and spare dress, and Therru’s dresses, and laid them out (after making sure the goats were in the fenced pasture) in the mead
Therru had been growing. She was still very small and thin for her age, which must be about eight, but in the last couple of months, with her injuries healed at last and free of pain, she had begun to run about more and to eat more. She was fast outgrowing her clothes, hand-me-downs from Lark’s youngest, a girl of five.
Tenar thought she might walk into the village and visit with Weaver Fan and see if he might have an end or two of cloth to give in exchange for the swill she had been sending for his pigs. She would like to sew something for Therru. And she would like to visit with old Fan, too. Ogion’s death and Ged’s illness had kept her from the village and the people she had known there. They had pulled her away, as ever, from what she knew, what she knew how to do, the world she had chosen to live in—a world not of kings and queens, great powers and dominions, high arts and journeys and adventures (she thought as she made sure Therru was with Heather, and set off into town), but of common people doing common things, such as marrying, and bringing up children, and farming, and sewing, and doing the wash. She thought this with a kind of vengefulness, as if she were thinking it at Ged, now no doubt halfway to Middle Valley. She imagined him on the road, near the dell where she and Therru had slept. She imagined the slight, ashen-haired man going along alone and silently, with half a loaf of the witch’s bread in his pocket, and a load of misery in his heart.
“It’s time you found out, maybe,” she thought to him. “Time you learned that you didn’t learn everything on Roke!” As she harangued him thus in her mind, another image came into it: she saw near Ged one of the men who had stood waiting for her and Therru on that road. Involuntarily she said, “Ged, be careful!”—fearing for him, for he did not carry even a stick. It was not the big fellow with hairy lips that she saw, but another of them, a youngish man with a leather cap, the one who had stared hard at Therru.