Ursula Le Guin - Tehanu The Last Book of Earthsea

In which case it would not help much if Therru became the properest farm-lassie in Gont. Not even prosperity would diminish the visible brand of what had been done to her. So Beech had thought of her being a witch, accepting, making use, of the brand. Was that what Ogion had meant, when he said “Not Roke” - when he said “They will fear her”? Was that all?

One day when a managed chance brought them together in the village street, Tenar said to Ivy, “There’s a question I want to ask you, Mistress Ivy. A matter of your profession. “

The witch eyed her. She had a scathing eye.

“My profession, is it?”

Tenar nodded, steady.

“Come on, then,” Ivy said with a shrug, leading off down Mill Lane to her little house.

It was not a den of infamy and chickens, like Moss’s house, but it was a witch-house, the beams hung thick with dried and drying herbs, the fire banked under grey ash with one tiny coal winking like a red eye, a lithe, fat, black cat with one white mustache sleeping up on a shelf, and everywhere a profusion of little boxes, pots, ewers, trays, and stoppered bottles, all aromatic, pungent or sweet or strange.

“What can I do for you, Mistress Goha?” Ivy asked, very dry, when they were inside.

“Tell me, if you will, if you think my ward, Therru, has any gift for your art-any power in her.”

“She? Of course!” said the witch.

Tenar was a bit floored by the prompt and contemptuous answer. “Well,”’ she said. “Beech seemed to think so.”

“A blind bat in a cave could see it,” said Ivy. “Is that all?”

“No. I want your advice. When I’ve asked my question, you can tell me the price of the answer. Fair?”

“Fair.”

“Should I prentice Therru for a witch, when she’s a bit older?”’

Ivy was silent for a minute, deciding on her fee, Tenar thought. Instead, she answered the question. “I would not take her,” “ she said.

“Why?”

“I’d be afraid to,’” the witch answered, with a sudden fierce stare at Tenar.

“Afraid? Of what?”

“Of her! What is she?’”

“A child. An ill-used child!”

“That’s not all she is.”

Dark anger came into Tenar and she said, “Must a prentice witch be a virgin, then?”

Ivy stared. She said after a moment, “I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?’”

“I mean I don’t know what she is. I mean when she looks at me with that one eye seeing and one eye blind I don’t know what she sees. I see you go about with her like she was any child, and I think, What are they? What’s the strength of that woman, for she’s not a fool, to hold a fire by the hand, to spin thread with the whirlwind? They say, mistress, that you lived as a child yourself with the Old Ones, the Dark Ones, the Ones Underfoot, and that you were queen and servant of those powers. Maybe that’s why you’re not afraid of this one. What power she is, I don’t know, I don’t say. But it’s beyond my teaching, I know that-or Beech’s, or any witch or wizard I ever knew! I’ll give you my advice, mistress, free and feeless. It’s this: Beware. Beware her, the day she finds her strength! That’s all.”

“I thank you, Mistress Ivy,” Tenar said with all the formality of the Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and went out of the warm room into the thin, biting wind of the end of autumn.

She was still angry. Nobody would help her, she thought. She knew the job was beyond her, they didn’t have to tell her that-but none of them would help her. Ogion had died, and old Moss ranted, and Ivy warned, and Beech kept clear, and Ged-the one who might really have helped- Ged ran away. Ran off like a whipped dog, and never sent sign or word to her, never gave a thought to her or Therru, but only to his own precious shame. That was his child, his nurseling. That was all he cared about. He had never cared or thought about her, only about power-her power, his power, how he could use it, how he could make more power of it. Putting the broken Ring together, making the Rune, putting a king on the throne. And when his power was gone, still it was all he could think about: that it was gone, lost, leaving him only himself, his shame, his emptiness.

"You aren’t being fair," Goha said to Tenar.

"Fair!" said Tenar. "Did he play fair?"

"Yes," said Goha. "He did. Or tried to".

"Well, then, he can play fair with the goats he’s herding; it’s nothing to me," said Tenar, trudging homeward in the wind and the first, sparse, cold rain.

“Snow tonight, maybe,” said her tenant Tiff, meeting her on the road beside the meadows of the Kaheda.

“Snow so soon? I hope not.”

“Freeze, anyway, for sure.”

And it froze when the sun was down: rain puddles and watering troughs skimming over, then opaqued with ice; the reeds by the Kaheda stilled, bound in ice; the wind itself stilled as if frozen, unable to move.

Beside the fire-a sweeter fire than Ivy’s, for the wood was that of an old apple that had been taken down in the orchard last spring-Tenar and Therru sat to spin and talk after supper was cleared away.

“Tell the story about the cat ghosts,’” Therru said in her husky voice as she started the wheel to spin a mass of dark, silky goat’s-wool into fleecefell yarn.

“That’s a summer story."

Therru cocked her head.

“In winter the stories should be the great stories. In winter you learn the Creation of E`a, so that you can sing it at the Long Dance when summer comes. In winter you learn the Winter Carol and the Deed of the Young King, and at the Festival of Sunreturn, when the sun turns north to bring the spring, you can sing them.”

“I can’t sing,” the girl whispered.

Tenar was winding spun yarn off the distaff into a ball, her hands deft and rhythmic.

“Not only the voice sings,” she said. “The mind sings. The prettiest voice in the world’s no good if the mind doesn’t know the songs.” She untied the last bit of yarn, which had been the first spun. “You have strength, Therru, and strength that is ignorant is dangerous.”

“Like the ones who wouldn’t learn,” Therru said. “The wild ones.” Tenar did not know what she meant, and looked her question. “The ones that stayed in the west,” Therru said.

“Ah-the dragons-in the song of the Woman of Kemay. Yes. Exactly. So: which will we start with-how the islands were raised from the sea, or how King Morred drove back the Black Ships?" “

“The islands,” Therru whispered. Tenar had rather hoped she would choose the Deed of the Young King, for she saw Lebannen’s face as Morred’s; but the child’s choice was the right one. “Very well,” she said. She glanced up at Ogion’s great Lore-books on the mantel, encouraging herself that if she forgot, she could find the words there; and drew breath; and began.

By her bedtime Therru knew how Segoy had raised the first of the islands from the depths of Time. Instead of singing to her, Tenar sat on the bed after tucking her in, and they recited together, softly, the first stanza of the song of the Making.

Tenar carried the little oil lamp back to the kitchen, listening to the absolute silence. The frost had bound the world, locked it. No star showed. Blackness pressed at the single window of the kitchen. Cold lay on the stone floors.

She went back to the fire, for she was not sleepy yet. The great words of the song had stirred her spirit, and there was still anger and unrest in her from her talk with Ivy. She took the poker to rouse up a little flame from the backlog. As she struck the log, there was an echo of the sound in the back of the house.

She straightened up and stood listening.

Again: a soft, dull thump or thud-outside the house-at the dairy window?