“I can only say it.”
He nodded and waited, his face rather stern. The child said:
The making from the unmaking,
The ending from the beginning,
Who shall know surely?
What we know is the doorway between them that we enter departing.
Among all beings ever returning, the eldest, the Doorkeeper, Segoy.. . .
The child’s voice was like a metal brush drawn across metal, like dry leaves, like the hiss of fire burning. She spoke to the end of the first stanza:
Then from the foam bright E`a broke.
Ged nodded brief, firm approval. “Good,” he said.
“Last night, ” Tenar said. “Last night she learned it. It seems a year ago.”
“I can learn more,” said Therru.
“You will,” Ged told her.
“Now finish cleaning the squash, please,” said Tenar, and the child obeyed.
“What shall I do?” ‘ Ged asked. Tenar paused, looking at him.
“I need that kettle filled and heated.”
He nodded, and took the kettle to the pump. They made and ate their supper and cleared it away. “Say the Making again as far as you know it,” Ged said to Therru, at the hearth, “and we’ll go on from there.”
She said the second stanza once with him, once with Tenar, once by herself.
“Bed,” said Tenar.
“You didn’t tell Sparrowhawk about the king.”
“You tell him,” ‘ Tenar said, amused at this pretext for delay.
Therru turned to Ged. Her face, scarred and whole, seeing and blind, was intent, fiery. “The king came in a ship. He had a sword. He gave me the bone dolphin. His ship was flying, but I was sick, because Handy touched me. But the king touched me there and the mark went away. She showed her round, thin arm. Tenar stared. She had forgotten the mark.
“Some day I want to fly to where he lives,” Therru told Ged. He nodded. “I will do that,’ ‘ she said. “Do you know him?”
“Yes. I know him. I went on a long journey with him.”
“Where?”
“To where the sun doesn’t rise and the stars don’t set. And back from that place.”
“Did you fly?”
He shook his head. “I can only walk,” he said.
The child pondered, and then as if satisfied said, “Good night,” and went off to her room. Tenar followed her; but Therru did not want to be sung to sleep. “I can say the Making in the dark,” she said. “Both stanzas.”
Tenar came back to the kitchen and sat down again across the hearth from Ged.
“How she’s changing!” she said. “I can’t keep up with her. I’m old to be bringing up a child. And she . . . She obeys me, but only because she wants to.”
“It’s the only justification for obedience,” Ged observed. “But when she does take it into her head to disobey me, what can I do? There’s a wildness in her. Sometimes she’s my Therru, sometimes she’s something else, out of reach. I asked Ivy if she’d think of training her. Beech suggested it. Ivy said no. ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I’m afraid of her!’ she said. . . . But you’re not afraid of her. Nor she of you. You and Lebannen are the only men she’s let touch her. I let that-that Handy-I can’t talk about it. Oh, I’m tired! I don’t understand anything
Ged laid a knot on the fire to burn small and slow, and they both watched the leap and flutter of the flames.
“I’d like you to stay here, Ged,” she said. “If you like.” He did not answer at once. She said, “Maybe you’re going on to Havnor-”
“No, no. I have nowhere to go. I was looking for work.”
“Well, there’s plenty to be done here. Clearbrook won’t admit it, but his arthritis has about finished him for anything but gardening. I’ve been wanting help ever since I came back. I could have told the old blockhead what I thought of him for sending you off up the mountain that way, but it’s no use. He wouldn’t listen.”
“It was a good thing for me,” Ged said. “It was the time I needed.”
“You were herding sheep?”