Ursula Le Guin - Tehanu The Last Book of Earthsea

shepherd’s knit watch cap pulled down; his face was lined and weathered, his hair long and iron-grey. He smelled like woodsmoke, and frost, and sheep. He was shivering, his whole body shaking. “Get by the fire,” she said again. “Put wood on it.”

He did so. Tenar filled the kettle and swung it out on its iron arm over the blaze.

There was blood on her skirt, and she used an end of linen soaked in cold water to clean it. She gave the cloth to Ged to clean the blood off his hands. “What do you mean, she said, “you came with them but they didn’t know it?”

“I was coming down. From the mountain. On the road from the springs of the Kaheda. “ He spoke in a flat voice as if out of breath, and his shivering made his speech slur. “Heard men behind me, and I went aside. Into the woods. Didn’t feel like talking. I don’t know. Something about them. I was afraid of them.”

She nodded impatiently and sat down across the hearth from him, leaning forward to listen, her hands clenched tight in her lap. Her damp skirt was cold against her legs.

“I heard one of them say ‘Oak Farm’ as they went by. After that I followed them. One of them kept talking. About the child.”

“What did he say?”

He was silent. He said finally, “That he was going to get her back. Punish her, he said. And get back at you. For stealing her, he said. He said-” He stopped.

“That he’d punish me, too."

“They all talked. About, about that.”

“That one isn’t Handy.” She nodded toward the man on the floor. “Is it the. . . " . . . “

“He said she was his.” Ged looked at the man too, and back at the fire. “He’s dying. We should get help.”

“He won’t die,” Tenar said. “I’ll send for Ivy in the morning. The others are still out there-how many of them?”

“Two.”

“If he dies he dies, if he lives he lives. Neither of us is going out.” She got to her feet, in a spasm of fear. “Did you bring in the pitchfork, Ged!" “

He pointed to it, the four long tines shining as it leaned against the wall beside the door.

She sat down in the hearthseat again, but now she was shaking, trembling from head to foot, as he had done. He reached across the hearth to touch her arm. “It’s all right,” he said.

“What if they’re still out there?”

“They ran.”

“They could come back.”

“Two against two? And we’ve got the pitchfork.”

She lowered her voice to a bare whisper to say, in terror, “The pruning hook and the scythes are in the barn lean-to.”

He shook his head. “They ran. They saw-him-and you in the door.”

“What did you do?”

“He came at me. So I came at him.”

“I mean, before. On the road.”

“They got cold, walking. It started to rain, and they got cold, and started talking about coming here. Before that it was only this one, talking about the child and you, about teaching-teaching lessons-” His voice dried up. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

“So am I. The kettle’s not boiling yet. Go on.

He took breath and tried to tell his story coherently. “The other two didn’t listen to him much. Heard it all before, maybe. They were in a hurry to get on. To get to Valmouth. As if they were running from somebody. Getting away. But it got cold, and he went on about Oak Farm, and the one with the cap said, ‘Well, why not just go there and spend the night with-" “ .

“With the widow, yes.”

Ged put his face in his hands. She waited.

He looked into the fire, and went on steadily. “Then I lost them for a while. The road came out level into the valley, and I couldn’t follow along the way I’d been doing, in the woods, just behind them. I had to go aside, through the fields, keeping out of their sight. I don’t know the country here, only the road. I was afraid if I cut across the fields I’d get lost, miss the house. And it was getting dark. I thought I’d missed the house, overshot it. I came back to the road, and almost ran into them-at the turn there. They’d seen the old man go by. They decided to wait till it was dark and they were sure nobody else was coming. They waited in the barn. I stayed outside. Just through the wall from them.”

“You must be frozen,” Tenar said dully.

“It was cold.” He held his hands to the fire as if the thought of it had chilled him again. “I found the pitchfork by the lean-to door. They went around to the back of the house when they came out. I could have come to the front door then to warn you, it’s what I should have done, but all I could think of was to take them by surprise-I thought it was my only advantage, chance. . . . I thought the house would be locked and they’d have to break in. But then I heard them going in, at the back, there. I went in-into the dairy-after them. I only just got out, when they came to the locked door.” He gave a kind of laugh. “They went right by me in the dark. I could have tripped them. . . . One of them had a flint and steel, he’d burn a little tinder when they wanted to see a lock. They came around front. I heard you putting up the shutters; I knew you’d heard them. They talked about smashing the window they’d seen you at. Then the one with the cap saw the window-that window-” He nodded toward the kitchen window, with its deep, broad inner sill. “He said, ‘Get me a rock, I’ll smash that right open,’ and they came to where he was, and they were about to hoist him up to the sill. So I let out a yell, and he dropped down, and one of them-this one-came running right at me.

“Ah, ah," “ gasped the man lying on the floor, as if telling Ged’s tale for him. Ged got up and bent over him.

“He’s dying, I think.”

“No, he’s not,” Tenar said. She could not stop shaking entirely, but it was only an inward tremor now. The kettle was singing. She made a pot of tea, and laid her hands on the thick pottery sides of the teapot while it steeped. She poured out two cups, then a third, into which she put a little cold water. “It’s too hot to drink,” she told Ged, “hold it a minute first. I’ll see if this’ll go into him.” She sat down on the floor by the man’s head, lifted it on one arm, put the cup of cooled tea to his mouth, pushed the rim between the bared teeth. The warm stuff ran into his mouth; he swallowed. “He won’t die,” she said. “The floor’s like ice. Help me move him nearer the fire.”

Ged started to take the rug from a bench that ran along the wall between the chimney and the hall. “Don’t use that, it’s a good piece of weaving,” Tenar said, and she went to the closet and brought out a worn-out felt cloak, which she spread out as a bed for the man. They hauled the inert body onto it, lapped it over him. The soaked red spots on the bandages had grown no larger.

Tenar stood up, and stood motionless.

“Therru,” she said.

Ged looked round, but the child was not there. Tenar went hurriedly out of the room.

The children’s room, the child’s room, was perfectly dark and quiet. She felt her way to the bed, and laid her hand on the warm curve of the blanket over Therru’s shoulder.

“Therru?”

The child’s breathing was peaceful. She had not waked. Tenar could feel the heat of her body, like a radiance in the cold room.

As she went out, Tenar ran her hand across the chest of drawers and touched cold metal: the poker she had laid down when she closed the shutters. She brought it back to the kitchen, stepped over the man’s body, and hung the poker on its hook on the chimney. She stood looking down at the fire.

“I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “What should I have done? Run out-right away-shouted, and run to Clear-brook and Shandy. They wouldn’t have had time to hurt Therru.”