Ursula Le Guin - Gifts

“The wind moved it,” my father said. His voice was mild, with a smile in it. He stood differently, stretched his shoulders. “Wait a while. You’re not six yet.”

“You do it, Father,” I said, staring at the clot of horsehair, excited and angry, vindictive. “You unmake it!”

I scarcely saw him move or heard his breath. The tangled thing on the floor uncurled in a puff of dust, and nothing lay there but a few long, reddish-cream hairs.

“The power will come to you,” Canoc said. “The gift is strong in our lineage. But in Caddard it was strongest. Sit down here. You’re old enough to know his story.”

I sat perched on the step stool. My father stood in the doorway of the stall, a thin, straight, dark man, bare-legged in his heavy black Uplander kilt and coat, his eyes dark and bright through the mask of stable dirt on his face. His hands were filthy too, but they were strong, fine hands, steady, without restlessness. His voice was quiet. His will was strong.

He told me the story of Blind Caddard.

“Caddard showed his gift earlier than any son of our lineage, or any but the greatest families of the Carrantages. At three, he’d gaze at his toys and they’d fall to pieces, and he could untie a knot with a look. At four, he used his power against a dog that leapt on him and frightened him, and destroyed it. As I destroyed that rat.

He paused for my nod of acknowledgment.

“The servants were afraid of him, and his mother said, ‘While his will is a child’s will, he is a danger to us all, even to me.’ She was a woman of our lineage; she and her husband Orrec were cousins. He heeded her warning. They tied a bandage around the child’s eyes for three years, so that he couldn’t use the power of the eye. All that time they taught and trained him. As I teach you and train you. He learned well. His reward for perfect obedience was to see again. And he was careful using his great gift only in practice, on things of no use or value.

“Only twice in his youth did he show his power. Once, when the Brantor of Drummant had been raiding cattle from one domain and another, they invited him to Caspromant and let him see Caddard, who was a boy of twelve then, unmake a flight of wild geese. With one glance and gesture he dropped them from the sky. He did this smilingly, as if to entertain their visitor. ‘A keen eye,’ Drum said. And he stole none of our cattle.

“Then when Caddard was seventeen a war party came down from the Carrantages led by the Brantor of Tibromant. They were after men and women to work new fields they’d cleared. Our people came running here to the Stone House for protection, fearing to be taken under the rein, made to follow that brantor and die toiling for him with no will but his left to them. Caddard’s father Orrec hoped to withstand the raid here in the Stone House, but Caddard, not telling him what he planned, went out alone. Keeping to the edge of the forest, he spied out one highlander and then another, and as he saw them he unmade them.”

I saw the rat. The soft sack of skin.

“He let the other highlanders find those bodies. Then carrying the parley flag he came out on the hillside, facing the Long Cairn, alone.

He called to the raiders, ‘I have done this across a mile of distance, and farther.’ He called to them over the valley, as they stood up there behind the great rocks of the Cairn, ‘The rocks do not hide you from me.’ And he destroyed a standing stone of the Cairn. The Brantor of Tibromant had taken shelter behind it. It shattered and fell into chips and dust. ‘My eye is strong,’ Caddard said.

“He waited for them to answer. Tibro said, ‘Your eye is strong, Caspro.’ Caddard said, ‘Do you come here seeking servants?’ The other said, ‘We need men, yes.’ Caddard said, ‘I will give you two of our people to work for you, but as servants, not under the rein.’ The brantor said, ‘You are generous. We will take your gift and keep your terms.’ Caddard came back here to the house and called out two young serfs from different farms of our domain. He took them to the highlanders and gave them over to them. Then he said to Tibro, ‘Go back to your highlands now, and I will not follow.’

“They went, and since that day they have never come raiding from the Carrantages as far west as our domain.

“So Caddard Strong-Eye was the talk of all the Uplands.”

He stopped to let me think about what I’d heard, After a while I looked up at him to see if I could ask a question. It seemed to be all right, so I asked what I wanted to know—“Did the young men from our domain want to go to Tibromant?”

“No,” my father said. “And Caddard didn’t want to send them to serve another master, or lose their labor here. But if power is shown, a gift must be offered. That is important. Remember it. Tell me what I said.”

“It’s important, if you show your power, to offer a gift too.

My father nodded approval. “The gift’s gift,” he said, low and dry.

“So, then, a while after that, old Orrec went with his wife and some of his people to our high farms, leaving the Stone House to his son Caddard, who was the brantor now. And the domain prospered. We ran a thousand sheep in those days, they say, on the Stony Hills. And our white oxen were famous. Men came up from Dunet and Danner, back then, to bargain for our cattle. Caddard married a woman of the Barres of Drummant, Semedan, in a great wedding. Drum had wanted her for his own son, but Semedan refused him, for all his wealth, and married Caddard. People came to that wedding from all the domains of the west.”

Canoc paused. He slapped the roan mare’s rump as she switched her snarled tail at him. She shuffled, nudging against me, wanting me to get back to combing the tangles out of her.

“Semedan had the gift of her lineage. She went on the hunt with Caddard and called the deer and elk and wild swine to him. They had a daughter, Assal, and a son, Canoc. And all went well. But after some years there came a bad winter and a cold dry summer, with little grass for the flocks. Crops failed. A plague came among our white cattle. All the finest stock died in a single season. There was sickness among the people of the domain too. Semedan bore a dead child and was ill for a long time after. The drought went on a year, another year. Everything went badly. But Caddard could do nothing. These were not matters in his power. So he lived in rage.”

I watched my father’s face. Grief, dismay, anger swept over it as he told of them. His bright eyes saw only what he told.

“Our misfortune made the people of Drummant grow insolent, and they came raiding and thieving here. They stole a good horse from our west pastures. Caddard went after the horse thieves and found them halfway home to Drummant. In his heat and fury he did not control his power, but destroyed them all, six men. One of them was a nephew of the Brantor of Drummant. Drum could not ask bloodright, for the men had been thieving, they had the stolen horse with them. But it left a greater hatred between our domains.

“After that, people went in fear of Caddard’s temper. When a dog disobeyed him, he unmade it. If he missed his shot hunting, he’d destroy all the thickets that hid the game, leaving them black and ruined. A shepherd spoke some insolence to him, up on the high pastures, and in his anger Caddard withered the man’s arm and hand. Children ran from his shadow, now.

“Bad times breed quarrels. Caddard bade his wife come call to the hunt for him. She refused, saying she was not well. He ordered her, ‘Come. I must hunt, there is no meat in the house.’ She said, ‘Go hunt, then. I will not come.’ And she turned away, with a serving maid she was fond of, a girl of twelve who helped her with her children. Then in a rage of anger Caddard came in front of them, saying, ‘Do what I say!’—and with eye, hand, breath, and will, he struck the girl. She sank down there, destroyed, unmade.