Ursula LeGuin: The Other Wind

Meoni, with the harper, who was playing for a wedding there. A woman sought him out in their lodging, a young woman, not trained as a witch; but she had a gift, she said, the same as his, and wanted him to teach her. And indeed she had a greater gift than his. Though she knew not a word of the Old Speech, she could put a smashed jug back together or mend a frayed-out rope just with the movements of her hands and a wordless song she sang under her breath, and she had healed broken limbs of animals and people, which Alder had never dared try to do.

So rather than his teaching her, they put their skills together and taught each other more than either had ever known. She came back to Elini and lived with Alder's mother Blackberry, who taught her various useful appearances and effects and ways of impressing customers, if not much actual witch knowledge. Lily was her name; and Lily and Alder worked together there and in all the hill towns nearby, as their reputation grew.

"And I came to love her," Alder said. His voice had changed when he began to speak of her, losing its hesitancy, growing urgent and musical.

"Her hair was dark, but with a shining of red gold in it," he said.

There was no way he could hide his love from her, and she knew it and returned it. Whether she was a witch now or not, she said she did not care; she said the two of them were born to be together, in their work and in their life; she loved him and would be married to him.

So they were married, and lived in very great happiness for a year, and half a second year.

"Nothing was wrong at all until the time came for the child to be born," Alder said. "But it was late, and then very late. The midwives tried to bring on the birth with herbs and spells, but it was as if the child would not let her bear it. It would not be separated from her. It would not be born. And it was not born. It took her with it."

After a while he said, "We had great joy."

"I see that."

"And my sorrow was in that degree."

The old man nodded.

"I could bear it," Alder said. "You know how it is. There was not much reason to be living that I could see, but I could bear it."

"Yes."

"But in the winter. Two months after her death. There was a dream came to me. She was in the dream."

‘Tell it.

"I stood on a hillside. Along the top of the hill and running down the slope was a wall, low, like a boundary wall between sheep pastures. She was standing across the wall from me, below it. It was darker there."

Sparrowhawk nodded once. His face had gone rock hard.

"She was calling to me. I heard her voice saying my name, and I went to her. I knew she was dead, I knew it in the dream, but I was glad to go. I couldn't see her clear, and I went to her to see her, to be with her. And she reached out across the wall. It was no higher than my heart. I had thought she might have the child with her, but she did not. She was reaching her hands out to me, and so I reached out to her, and we took each others hands."

"You touched?"

"I wanted to go to her, but I could not cross the wall. My legs would not move. I tried to draw her to me, and she wanted to come, it seemed as if she could, but the wall was there between us. We couldn't get over it. So she leaned across to me and kissed my mouth and said my name. And she said, 'Set me free!'

"I thought if I called her by her true name maybe I could free her, bring her across that wall, and I said, 'Come with me, Mevre!' But she said, 'That's not my name, Hara, that's not my name any more.' And she let go my hands, though I tried to hold her. She cried, 'Set me free, Hara!' But she was going down into the dark. It was all dark down that hillside below the wall. I called her name and her use-name and all the dear names I had had for her, but she went on away. So then I woke."

Sparrowhawk gazed long and keenly at his visitor. "You gave me your name, Hara," he said.

Alder looked a little stunned, and took a couple of long breaths, but he looked up with desolate courage. "Who could I better trust it with?" he said.

Sparrowhawk thanked him gravely. "I will try to deserve your trust," he said. "Tell me, do you know what that place is—that wall?"

"I did not know it then. Now I know you have crossed it."

"Yes. I've been on that hill. And crossed the wall, by the power and art I used to have. And I've gone down to the cities of the dead, and spoken to men I had known living, and sometimes they answered me. But Hara, you are the first man I ever knew or heard of, among all the great mages in the lore of Roke or Paln or the Enlades, who ever touched, ho ever kissed his love across that wall."

Alder sat with his head bowed and his hands clenched.

"Will you tell me: what was her touch like? Were her hands warm? Was she cold air and shadow, or like a living woman? Forgive my questions."

"I wish I could answer them, my lord. On Roke the summoner asked the same. But I can't answer truly. My longing for her was so great, I wished so much—it could be I wished her to be as she was in life. But I don't know. In dream not all things are clear."

"In dream, no. But I never heard of any man coming to the wall in dream. It is a place a wizard may seek to come to, if he must, if he's learned the way and has the power. But without the knowledge and the power, only the dying can—"

And then he broke off, remembering his dream of the night before.

"I took it for a dream," Alder said. "It troubled me, but I cherished it. It was like a harrow on my heart's ground to think of it, and yet I held to that pain, held it close to me. I wanted it. I hoped to dream again."

"Did you?"

"Yes. I dreamed again."

He looked unseeing into the blue gulf of air and ocean west of where they sat. Low and faint across the tranquil sea lay the sunlit hills of Kameber. Behind them the sun was breaking bright over the mountains northern shoulder.

"It was nine days after the first dream. I was in that same place, but high up on the hill. I saw the wall below me across the slope. And I ran down the hill, calling out her name, sure of seeing her. There was someone there. But when I came close, I saw it wasn't Lily. It was a man, and he was stooping at the wall, as if he was repairing it. I said to him, 'Where is she, where is Lily?' He didn't answer or look up. I saw what he was doing. He wasn't working to mend the wall but to unbuild it, prying with his fingers at a great stone. The stone never moved, and he said, 'Help me, Hara!' Then I saw that it was my teacher, Gannet, who named me. He has been dead these five years. He kept prying and straining at the stone with his fingers, and said my name again—'Help me, set me free.' And he stood up and reached out to me across the wall, as she had done, and caught my hand. But his hand burned, with fire or with cold, I don't know, but the touch of it burned me so that I pulled away, and the pain and fear of it woke me from the dream."

He held his hand out as he spoke, showing a darkness on the back and palm like an old

bruise.

"I've learned not to let them touch me," he said in a low voice.

Ged looked at Alder's mouth. There was a darkening across his lips too.

"Hara, you've been in mortal danger," he said, also softly.

"There is more."

Forcing his voice against silence, Alder went on with his story.

The next night when he slept again he found himself on that dim hill and saw the wall that dropped down from the hilltop across the slope. He went down towards it, hoping to find his wife there. "I didn't care if she couldn't cross it, if I couldn't, so long as I could see her and talk to her," he said. But if she was there he never saw her among all the others: for as he came closer to the wall he saw a crowd of shadowy people on the other side, some clear and some dim, some he seemed to know and others he did not know, and all of them reached out their hands to him as he approached and called him by his name: "Hara! let us come with you! Hara, set us free!"