Ursula Le Guin - Tehanu The Last Book of Earthsea

Another group came out to Oak Farm from the village, wanting to hear Goha’s story and tell her their part in the great capture of the murderers, and look at the pitchfork and compare its four long tines to the three bloody spots on the bandages of the man called Hake, and talk it all over again. Tenar was glad to see the evening come, and call Therru in, and shut the door.

She raised her hand to latch it. She lowered her hand and forced herself to turn from it, leaving it unlocked.

“Sparrowhawk’s in your room,” Therru informed her, coming back to the kitchen with eggs from the cool-room.

“I meant to tell you he was here-I’m sorry.

“I know him,” Therru said, washing her face and hands in the pantry. And when Ged came in, heavy-eyed and unkempt, she went straight to him and put up her arms.

“Therru,” he said, and took her up and held her. She clung to him briefly, then broke free.

“I know the beginning part of the Creation," she told him. “Will you sing it to me?” Again glancing at Tenar for permission, he sat down in his place at the hearth.

“I can only say it.”

He nodded and waited, his face rather stern. The child said:

The making from the unmaking,

The ending from the beginning,

Who shall know surely?

What we know is the doorway between them

that we enter departing.

Among all beings ever returning,

the eldest, the Doorkeeper, Segoy.. . .

The child’s voice was like a metal brush drawn across metal, like dry leaves, like the hiss of fire burning. She spoke to the end of the first stanza:

Then from the foam bright E`a broke.

Ged nodded brief, firm approval. “Good,” he said.

“Last night, ” Tenar said. “Last night she learned it. It seems a year ago."

“I can learn more,” said Therru.

“You will," Ged told her.

“Now finish cleaning the squash, please,” said Tenar, and the child obeyed.

“What shall I do?" ‘ Ged asked. Tenar paused, looking at him.

“I need that kettle filled and heated.”

He nodded, and took the kettle to the pump. They made and ate their supper and cleared it away. “Say the Making again as far as you know it,” Ged said to Therru, at the hearth, “and we’ll go on from there.”

She said the second stanza once with him, once with Tenar, once by herself.

“Bed,” said Tenar.

“You didn’t tell Sparrowhawk about the king.”

“You tell him," ‘ Tenar said, amused at this pretext for delay.

Therru turned to Ged. Her face, scarred and whole, seeing and blind, was intent, fiery. “The king came in a ship. He had a sword. He gave me the bone dolphin. His ship was flying, but I was sick, because Handy touched me. But the king touched me there and the mark went away. She showed her round, thin arm. Tenar stared. She had forgotten the mark.

“Some day I want to fly to where he lives,” Therru told Ged. He nodded. “I will do that,’ ‘ she said. “Do you know him?”

“Yes. I know him. I went on a long journey with him.”

“Where?”

“To where the sun doesn’t rise and the stars don’t set. And back from that place.”

“Did you fly?”

He shook his head. “I can only walk,” he said.

The child pondered, and then as if satisfied said, “Good night,” and went off to her room. Tenar followed her; but Therru did not want to be sung to sleep. “I can say the Making in the dark,” she said. “Both stanzas.”

Tenar came back to the kitchen and sat down again across the hearth from Ged.

“How she’s changing!” she said. “I can’t keep up with her. I’m old to be bringing up a child. And she . . . She obeys me, but only because she wants to.”

“It’s the only justification for obedience,” Ged observed. “But when she does take it into her head to disobey me, what can I do? There’s a wildness in her. Sometimes she’s my Therru, sometimes she’s something else, out of reach. I asked Ivy if she’d think of training her. Beech suggested it. Ivy said no. ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I’m afraid of her!’ she said. . . . But you’re not afraid of her. Nor she of you. You and Lebannen are the only men she’s let touch her. I let that-that Handy-I can’t talk about it. Oh, I’m tired! I don’t understand anything

Ged laid a knot on the fire to burn small and slow, and they both watched the leap and flutter of the flames.

“I’d like you to stay here, Ged,” she said. “If you like.” He did not answer at once. She said, “Maybe you’re going on to Havnor-”

“No, no. I have nowhere to go. I was looking for work.”

“Well, there’s plenty to be done here. Clearbrook won’t admit it, but his arthritis has about finished him for anything but gardening. I’ve been wanting help ever since I came back. I could have told the old blockhead what I thought of him for sending you off up the mountain that way, but it’s no use. He wouldn’t listen.”

“It was a good thing for me,” Ged said. “It was the time I needed.”

“You were herding sheep?”

“Goats. Right up at the top of the grazings. A boy they had took sick, and Serry took me on, sent me up there the first day. They keep ‘em up there high and late, so the underwool grows thick. This last month I had the mountain pretty much to myself. Serry sent me up that coat and some supplies, and said to keep the herd up as high as I could as long as I could. So I did. It was fine, up there.”

“Lonely,” she said.

He nodded, half smiling.

“You always have been alone.”

“Yes, I have.”

She said nothing. He looked at her.

“I’d like to work here,” he said.

“That’s settled, then," ‘ she said. After a while she added, “For the winter, anyway."

The frost was harder tonight. Their world was perfectly silent except for the whisper of the fire. The silence was like a presence between them. She lifted her head and looked at him.

“Well,” she said, “which bed shall I sleep in, Ged? The child’s, or yours?”

He drew breath. He spoke low. “Mine, if you will.”

“I will.”

The silence held him. She could see the effort he made to break from it. “If you’ll be patient with me,” he said.

“I have been patient with you for twenty-five years,” she said. She looked at him and began to laugh. “Come-come on, my dear-Better late than never! I’m only an old woman. . . . Nothing is wasted, nothing is ever wasted. You taught me that.” She stood up, and he stood; she put out her hands, and he took them. They embraced, and their embrace became close. They held each other so fiercely, so dearly, that they stopped knowing anything but each other. It did not matter which bed they meant to sleep in. They lay that night on the hearthstones, and there she taught Ged the mystery that the wisest man could not teach him.

He built up the fire once, and fetched the good weaving off the bench. Tenar made no objection this time. Her cloak and his sheepskin coat were their blankets.

They woke again at dawn. A faint silvery light lay on the dark, half-leafless branches of the oaks outside the window. Tenar stretched out full length to feel his warmth against her. After a while she murmured, “He was lying here. Hake. Right under us." . . .

Ged made a small noise of protest.

“Now you’re a man indeed,” she said. “Stuck another man full of holes, first, and lain with a woman, second. That’s the proper order, I suppose.

“Hush,” he murmured, turning to her, laying his head on her shoulder. “Don’t.”

“I will, Ged. Poor man! There’s no mercy in me, only justice. I wasn’t trained to mercy. Love is the only grace I have. Oh, Ged, don’t fear me! You were a man when I first saw you! It’s not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.”