Ursula Le Guin - Gifts

I gave the roan colt to Alloc. I rode Branty now, for in that rush down the hill Greylag had strained his leg past repair, and he was out to grass now in the home paddock with Roanie. I went out to them every day or so with a panful of oats. They were glad to be together, and I often found them standing as horses do, close side by side, nose to flank, their tails twitching the May flies away. I liked to see them so.

Coaly ran with me whether I was afoot or on horseback, set free of her leash.

After a death it is the custom in the Uplands for there to be no selling or division of property, no marriages, no great undertakings or changes made, for a half year. Things go on as they were, as nearly as can be, throughout that time, and after that whatever settlements must be made are made. It is not a bad custom. In the matter of making peace with Drummant I had to act; otherwise I did not.

Alloc took my father’s place in overseeing the domain, and I took Allocs place as his assistant. He did not see it so; he thought he was assisting the brantor’s son. But he was the one who knew what had to be done and how to do it. I had done nothing for three years, and had been a child before that. Alloc knew the people, the land, the animals. I did not.

Gry did not ride to Caspromant now. I rode to Roddmant two or three times a halfmonth and sat with her and Ternoc, and Parn if she was there. Ternoc would greet me each time with a close, hard embrace, calling me son. He had loved and admired Canoc and grieved for him sorely and tried to put me in his place. Parn was restless and sparing with words as ever. Gry and I seldom spoke to each other alone; she was gentle and taciturn. Now and then we rode out, she on Star and I on Branty, and let our young horses have a run on the hills.

It was a fine summer and a good harvest. Come mid-October the crops were in. I rode to Roddmant and asked if Gry would ride with me. She came out and saddled up her pretty, dancing mare, and we rode up the glen in the golden sunlight.

At the waterfall pool, we let the horses graze on the banks where the grass was still lush and green. We sat on the rocks by the water in the sunlight. The branches of black willows nodded and nodded in the wind of the falling water. The three-note bird was silent.

“It’s soon to marry, Gry,” I said. “But I don’t see what else we can do.”

“No,” said she, agreeing.

“Do you want to stay here?”

“At Roddmant?”

“Or Caspromant.”

After a time she said, “Where else?”

“Well, what I thought is this. There is no brantor of Caspromant. Alloc is the man to manage the domain. He might join it to Roddmant and come under your father’s protection. I think that would suit them both. Allocs to marry Rab next month. They should have the Stone House at Caspromant. Maybe they’ll have a son with the gift…”

“If the domains were joined, you could live here with us,” Gry said.

“I could.”

“Do you want to?”

“Do you want me to?”

She was silent.

“What would we do here?”

“What we do now,” she said, after a while.

“Would you be willing to go away?”

It was harder to say aloud than I had expected. It sounded stranger, spoken, than it did thought.

“Away?”

“Into the Lowlands.”

She said nothing. She looked out over the dappled, shining water of the pool, looking far past it.

“Emmon took the spoons, but maybe he spoke the truth. What we can do is useless here, but down there, maybe…”

“What we can do,” she repeated.

“We each have a gift, Gry.”

She glanced at me. She nodded, a deep, slow nod.

“It may be that I also have a grandfather or grandmother in the city of Derris Water.”

She stared at me with wide eyes then. That had never entered her head. She laughed with surprise. “Why, you do! And you’d walk in, out of the blue, and say, ‘Here I am, your grandson the witch!’ Oh, Orrec. How strange that is!”

“They might find it so.” I took out the little opal that I wore on its chain round my neck and showed it to her. “I have this, though. And all she told me… I’d like to go there.”

“Would you?” Her eyes had begun to shine. She thought for a while and said, “You think we could make a living? The way Emmon said? We’d have to.”

“Well, we could try.”

“If we couldn’t, we’d be among strangers, strange people.”

That is a great fear among Uplanders: to be among strangers. But where is it not?

“You’ll train their colts, I’ll tell them poetry. If we don’t like them, we can move on. If we don’t like them at all, we can come back home.”

“We might go as far as the ocean shore,” Gry said, looking now very far away through the sunlight and the nodding willows. Then she whistled three notes; and the bird answered.

IT WAS IN APRIL that we left, and I will leave our story there, on the south road down through the hills, a young man on a tall red horse, and a young woman on a bright bay mare, and a black dog running before them, and following peacefully along behind them the most beautiful cow in the world. For that was the wedding gift of my domain to me, the Silver Cow. Not a very practical one, it seemed, until Parn reminded us that we would need money and could sell her for a good price in Dunet, where they might still remember the white cattle of Caspromant. “Maybe they’ll remember what they gave Canoc, too,” I said, and Gry said, “Then they’ll know you’re the gift’s gift.”

URSULA K. LE GUIN is the author of several dozen books for adults, teens, and children. Her fiction publications include eleven volumes of short stories, twelve children’s books, and nineteen novels, including the six books that make up the Earthsea Cycle. Among the honors her writing for young readers has received are a National Book Award, a Newbery Honor for The Tombs of Atuan (from the Earthsea Cycle), and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her lifetime contribution to young adult readers. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and can be visited at www.ursulakleguin.com.

The Telling

Changing Planes

THE EARTHSEA CYCLE

A Wizard of Earthsea

The Tombs of Atuan

The Farthest Shore

Tehanu

Tales from Earthsea

The Other Wind

Jacket illustration copyright © 2004 by Cliff Nielsen Jacket design by Vaughn Andrews