The little girl was taken from room to room, from temple to temple. In one place salt was placed upon her tongue; in another she knelt facing west while her hair was cut short and washed with oil and scented vinegar; in another she lay face down on a slab of black marble behind an altar while shrill voices sang a lament for the dead. Neither she nor any of the priestesses ate food or drank water all that day. As the evening star set, the little girl was put to bed, naked between sheepskin rugs, in a room she had never slept in before. It was in a house that had been locked for years, unlocked only that day. The room was higher than it was long, and had no windows. There was a dead smell in it, still and stale. The silent women left her there in the dark.
She held still, lying just as they had put her. Her eyes were wide open. She lay so for a long time.
She saw light shake on the high wall. Someone came quietly along the corridor, shielding a rushlight so it showed no more light than a firefly. A husky whisper: “Ho, are you there, Tenar?”
The child did not reply.
A head poked in the doorway, a strange head, hairless as a peeled potato, and of the same yellowish color. The eyes were like potato-eyes, brown and tiny. The nose was dwarfed by great, fiat slabs of cheek, and the mouth was a lipless slit. The child stared unmoving at this face. Her eyes were large, dark, and fixed.
“Ho, Tenar, my little honeycomb, there you are!” The voice was husky, high as a woman’s voice but not a woman’s voice. “I shouldn’t be here, I belong outside the door, on the porch, that’s where I go. But I had to see how my little Tenar is, after all the long day of it, eh, how’s my poor little honeycomb?”
He moved towards her, noiseless and burly, and put out his hand as if to smooth back her hair.
“I am not Tenar any more,” the child said, staring up at him. His hand stopped; he did not touch her.
“No,” he said, after a moment, whispering. “I know. I know. Now you’re the little Eaten One. But I…”
She said nothing.
“It was a hard day for a little one,” the man said, shuffling, the tiny light flickering in his big yellow hand.
“You should not be in this House, Manan.”
“No. No. I know. I shouldn’t be in this House. Well, good night, little one… Good night.”
The child said nothing. Manan slowly turned around and went away. The glimmer died from the high cell walls. The little girl, who had no name any more but Arha, the Eaten One, lay on her back looking steadily at the dark.
The Wall Around the Place
As she grew older she lost all remembrance of her mother, without knowing she had lost it. She belonged here, at the Place of the Tombs; she had always belonged here. Only sometimes in the long evenings of July as she watched the western mountains, dry and lion-colored in the afterglow of sunset, she would think of a fire that had burned on a hearth, long ago, with the same clear yellow light. And with this came a memory of being held, which was strange, for here she was seldom even touched; and the memory of a pleasant smell, the fragrance of hair freshly washed and rinsed in sage-scented water, fair long hair, the color of sunset and firelight. That was all she had left.
She knew more than she remembered, of course, for she had been told the whole story. When she was seven or eight years old, and first beginning to wonder who indeed this person called “Arha” was, she had gone to her guardian, the Warden Manan, and said, “Tell me how I was chosen, Manan.”
“Oh, you know all that, little one.”
And indeed she did; the tall, dry-voiced priestess Thar had told her till she knew the words by heart, and she recited them: “Yes, I know. At the death of the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, the ceremonies of burial and purification are completed within one month by the moon’s calendar. After this certain of the Priestesses and Wardens of the Place of the Tombs go forth across the desert, among the towns and villages of Atuan, seeking and asking. They seek the girl-child who was born on the night of the Priestess’ death. When they find such a child, they wait and they watch. The child must be sound of body and of mind, and as it grows it must not suffer from rickets nor the smallpox nor any deformity, nor become blind. If it reaches the age of five years unblemished, then it is known that the body of the child is indeed the new body of the Priestess who died. And the child is made known to the Godking in Awabath, and brought here to her Temple and instructed for a year. And at the year’s end she is taken to the Hall of the Throne and her name is given back to those who are her Masters, the Nameless Ones: for she is the nameless one, the Priestess Ever Reborn.”