Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

“You aren’t being fair,” Goha said to Tenar.

“Fair!” said Tenar. “Did he play fair?”

“Yes,” said Goha. “He did. Or tried to”.

“Well, then, he can play fair with the goats he’s herding; it’s nothing to me,” said Tenar, trudging homeward in the wind and the first, sparse, cold rain.

“Snow tonight, maybe,” said her tenant Tiff, meeting her on the road beside the meadows of the Kaheda.

“Snow so soon? I hope not.”

“Freeze, anyway, for sure.”

And it froze when the sun was down: rain puddles and watering troughs skimming over, then opaqued with ice; the reeds by the Kaheda stilled, bound in ice; the wind itself stilled as if frozen, unable to move.

Beside the fire-a sweeter fire than Ivy’s, for the wood was that of an old apple that had been taken down in the orchard last spring-Tenar and Therru sat to spin and talk after supper was cleared away.

“Tell the story about the cat ghosts,’” Therru said in her husky voice as she started the wheel to spin a mass of dark, silky goat’s-wool into fleecefell yarn.

“That’s a summer story.”

Therru cocked her head.

“In winter the stories should be the great stories. In winter you learn the Creation of E`a, so that you can sing it at the Long Dance when summer comes. In winter you learn the Winter Carol and the Deed of the Young King, and at the Festival of Sunreturn, when the sun turns north to bring the spring, you can sing them.”

“I can’t sing,” the girl whispered.

Tenar was winding spun yarn off the distaff into a ball, her hands deft and rhythmic.

“Not only the voice sings,” she said. “The mind sings. The prettiest voice in the world’s no good if the mind doesn’t know the songs.” She untied the last bit of yarn, which had been the first spun. “You have strength, Therru, and strength that is ignorant is dangerous.”

“Like the ones who wouldn’t learn,” Therru said. “The wild ones.” Tenar did not know what she meant, and looked her question. “The ones that stayed in the west,” Therru said.

“Ah-the dragons-in the song of the Woman of Kemay. Yes. Exactly. So: which will we start with-how the islands were raised from the sea, or how King Morred drove back the Black Ships?” “

“The islands,” Therru whispered. Tenar had rather hoped she would choose the Deed of the Young King, for she saw Lebannen’s face as Morred’s; but the child’s choice was the right one. “Very well,” she said. She glanced up at Ogion’s great Lore-books on the mantel, encouraging her­self that if she forgot, she could find the words there; and drew breath; and began.

By her bedtime Therru knew how Segoy had raised the first of the islands from the depths of Time. Instead of singing to her, Tenar sat on the bed after tucking her in, and they recited together, softly, the first stanza of the song of the Making.

Tenar carried the little oil lamp back to the kitchen, listening to the absolute silence. The frost had bound the world, locked it. No star showed. Blackness pressed at the single window of the kitchen. Cold lay on the stone floors.

She went back to the fire, for she was not sleepy yet. The great words of the song had stirred her spirit, and there was still anger and unrest in her from her talk with Ivy. She took the poker to rouse up a little flame from the backlog. As she struck the log, there was an echo of the sound in the back of the house.

She straightened up and stood listening.

Again: a soft, dull thump or thud-outside the house-at the dairy window?

The poker still in her hand, Tenar went down the dark hall to the door that gave on the cool-room. Beyond the cool-room was the dairy. The house was built against a low hill, and both those rooms ran back into the hill like cellars, though on a level with the rest of the house. The cool-room had only air-vents; the dairy had a door and a window, low and wide like the kitchen window, in its one outside wall. Standing at the cool-room door, she could hear that window being pried or jimmied, and men’s voices whispering.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *