Ursula Le Guin - Gifts

“Mother, I can’t.”

“It is silly to be afraid, Orrec. It’s foolish. You’ll never hurt me. I know that. Wear it outside if you have to, but not in here with me. I want to see your eyes, my son!

“Mother, I can’t.” That was all I could say I had to say it again and again, for she cajoled and persuaded. She had not seen Hamneda’s death; she had never gone out along the Ashbrook to see that ghastly, blasted hillside. I thought of asking her to go there, but could not. I would not answer her arguments.

At last she spoke to me with real bitterness. “This is ignorant superstition, Orrec,” she said. “I am ashamed of you. I thought I had taught you better. Do you think a rag around your eyes will keep you from doing evil, if there’s evil in your heart? And if there’s good in your heart, how will you do good now? ‘Will you stop the wind with a wall of grasses, or the tide by telling it to stay?’” In her despair she returned to the liturgies of Bendraman that she had learned as a child in her father’s house.

And when I still held firm, she said, “Shall I burn the book I made you, then? It’s no use to you now. You don’t want it. You’ve closed your eyes—you’ve closed your mind.”

That made me cry out—“It’s not forever, Mother!” I did not like to speak or think of any term to my blindness, of a day when I might see again: I dared not imagine it, because I could not imagine what would allow it, and feared false hope. But her threat, and her pain, wrung it out of me.

“How long, then?”

“I don’t know. Until I learn—” But I didn’t know what to say. How was I to learn to use a gift I couldn’t use? Hadn’t I been trying to, all my life?

“You’ve learned all your father could teach you,” she said. “Learned it only too well.” She stood up then and left me without another word. I heard the soft swish as she threw her shawl over her shoulders, and her steps going out of the hall.

She was not of the unyielding temper that could hold such anger long. That night as we said goodnight I could hear in her voice her sweet rueful smile as she whispered, “I won’t burn your book, dear son. Or your blindfold.” And from then on she did not plead and made no more protest, but took my blindness as a fact and helped me as she could.

The best way I found to be blind was to try to act as if I could see: not to creep and feel my way about, but to step out, knock my face against the wall if I met a wall, and fall if I fell. I learned my ways about the house and yards and kept to them, but used them freely, going outdoors as often as I could. I saddled and bridled good Roanie, who was patient with my fumbling as she had been patient with it when I was five, and mounted her and let her take me where she thought best. Once in the saddle and out of the echoes of the walls of the stable yard, there was nothing to guide me at all; I might be on the hillsides or the highlands or the moon for all I knew. But Roanie knew where we were, and also knew I was not the thoughtless, fearless rider I had been. She looked after me, and brought me home.

“I want to go to Roddmant,” I said, after my eyes had been sealed a halfmonth or longer. “I want to ask Gry to give me a dog.” I had to get up my determination to say that, for poor Hamneda and the horrible thing I had made of him were in my mind as if branded into it. But the thought of having a dog to aid my blindness had come to me the night before, and I knew it was a good one. And I longed to talk with Gry.

“A dog,” Canoc said with surprise, but Melle understood at once, and said, “That’s a good idea. I’ll ride—” I knew she had been about to say she would ride to Roddmant on my errand (though she was not much of a horsewoman, and timid even with Roanie), but what she said was, “I’ll ride with you, if you like.”

“Can we go tomorrow?”

“Put it off a little while,” Canoc said. “It’s time we were making ready to go to Drummant.”

In all that had befallen me, I had utterly forgotten about Brantor Ogge and his invitation. The reminder was most unwelcome. “I can’t go now!” I said.

“You can,” my father said.

“Why should he? Why should we?” my mother demanded.

“I’ve said what’s at stake.” Canoc’s voice was hard. “A chance of truce, if not of friendship. And the offer, maybe, of a betrothal.”

“But Drum won’t want to betroth his granddaughter to Orrec now!”

“Will he not? When he knows Orrec can kill at a glance? That his gift is so strong he must seal his eyes to spare his enemies? Oh, he’ll be glad to ask and glad to get what we choose to give! Don’t you see that?”

I had never heard that tone of harsh, fiercetriumph in my father’s voice. It shook me strangely It woke me.

For the first time I realised that my blindfold made me not only vulnerable, but threatening. My power was so great that it could not be released, must be restrained. If I unsealed my eyes… I myself was, like Caddard’s staff, a weapon.

And I also understood in that moment why so many of the people of the house and the domain treated me as they had done since my eyes were sealed, speaking to me with an uneasy respect instead of the old easy fellowship, falling silent as I came near, creeping past me as if they hoped I couldn’t hear them. I thought they shunned and despised me because I was blind. It hadn’t occurred to me that they feared me because they knew why I was blind.

Indeed, as I was to learn, the tale had grown in the telling, and I had the grisly credit of all kinds of feats. I had destroyed a whole pack of wild dogs, bursting them open like bladders. I had cleared the venomous snakes out of all Caspromant merely by sweeping my eyes over the hills. I had glanced at old Ubbro’s cottage, and that same night the old man had fallen paralysed and lost the power of speech, and it was not a punishment but only the wild gift striking without reason. When I had gone looking for the missing white heifers, the instant I saw them, I had destroyed them, against my own will. And so in fear of this random and terrible power I had blinded myself—or Canoc had blinded me—though others said no, only sealed his eyes with a blindfold. If anybody disbelieved these tales, they took him to see the ruined hillside above the Ashbrook, the dead tree, the little broken bones of voles and moles and mice on the waste ground there, the burst boulders and shattered stones.

I didn’t know these stories then, but it had dawned on me that I had a new power, which lay not in acts but words—in reputation.

“We’ll go to Drummant,” my father said. “It’s time. Day after tomorrow. If we set off early we can be there by nightfall. Take your red gown, Melle. I want Drum to see the gift he gave me.”

“Oh, dear,” my mother said. “How long must we stay?”

“Five or six days, I suppose.”

“Oh, dear, dear. What can I take the brantor’s wife? I must have some guest-present for her.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“It is,” said my mother.

“Well, a basket of something from the kitchen?”

“Pah,” said my mother. “There’s nothing this time of year.”

“A basket of chicks,” I suggested. Mother had taken me into the poultry yard that morning to let me handle a brood of newly hatched chicks, putting them into my hands, cheeping, warm, weightless, downy, prickly.

“That’s it,” she said.

And when we set off two days later early in the morning, she had a basket full of cheeping on her saddlebow. I wore my new kilt and coat, my man’s coat.

Because I must ride Roanie, she was on Greylag, who was a completely trusty horse, though his height and size scared her. My father rode the colt. He had given much of Branty’s training to me and Alloc, but when you saw him ride Branty, you saw that he and the colt were made for each other, handsome, nervous, proud, and rash. I wished I could see him, that morning. I longed to see him. But I sat good Roanie and let her carry me forward into the dark.