The ordinary village witch, like Moss, lived on a few words of the True Speech handed down as great treasures from older witches on bought at high cost from sorcerers, and a supply of common spells of finding and mending, much meaningless ritual and mystery-making and jibberish, a solid experiential training in midwifery, bonesetting, and curing animal and human ailments, a good knowledge of herbs mixed with a mess of superstitions-all this built up on whatever native gift she might have of healing, chanting, changing, or spellcasting. Such a mixture might be a good one or a bad one. Some witches were fierce, bitter women, ready to do harm and knowing no reason not to do harm. Most were midwives and healers with a few love potions, fertility charms, and potency spells on the side, and a good deal of quiet cynicism about them. A few, having wisdom though no learning, used their gift purely for good, though they could not tell, as any prentice wizard could, the reason for what they did, and prate of the Balance and the Way of Power to justify their action or abstention. “I follow my heart,” one of these women had said to Tenar when she was Ogion’s ward and pupil. “Lord Ogion is a great mage. He does you great honor, teaching you. But look and see, child, if all he’s taught you isn’t finally to follow your heart.”
Tenar had thought even then that the wise woman was right, and yet not altogether night; there was something left out of that. And she still thought so.
Watching Moss with Therru now, she thought Moss was following her heart, but it was a dark, wild, queer heart, like a crow, going its own ways on its own errands. And she thought that Moss might be drawn to Therru not only by kindness but by Therru’s hurt, by the harm that had been done her: by violence, by fire.
Nothing Therru did or said, however, showed that she was learning anything from Aunty Moss except where the lark nested and the blueberries grew and how to make cat’s cradles one-handed. Thernu’s right hand had been so eaten by fire that it had healed into a kind of club, the thumb usable only as a pincer, like a crab’s claw. But Aunty Moss had an amazing set of cat’s cradles for four fingers and a thumb, and rhymes to go with the figures-
Churn churn cherry all!
Burn burn bury all.’
Come, dragon, come!
-and the string would form four triangles that flicked into a square. . . . Therru never sang aloud, but Tenar heard her whispering the chant under her breath as she made the figures, alone, sitting on the doorstep of the mage’s house.
And, Tenar thought, what bond linked her, herself, to the child, beyond pity, beyond mere duty to the helpless? Lark would have kept her if Tenar had not taken her. But Tenar had taken her without ever asking herself why. Had she been following hen heart? Ogion had asked nothing about the child, but he had said, “They will fear her.” And Tenar had replied, “They do,” and truly. Maybe she herself feared the child, as she feared cruelty, and rape, and fire. Was fear the bond that held her?
“Goha,” Therru said, sitting on her heels under the peach tree, looking at the place in the hard summer dirt where she had planted the peach stone, “what are dragons?”
“Great creatures,” Tenar said, “like lizards, but longer than a ship-bigger than a house. With wings, like birds. They breathe out fire.”
“Do they come here?”
“No,” Tenar said.
Therru asked no more.
“Has Aunty Moss been telling you about dragons?”
Therru shook her head. “You did,” she said.
“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 dank, 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 oven the new planting.