Tehanu (27 page)
“Ah. I knew.... Set me free, dearie!”
“I have to wait,” the child said. “Till they come.”
The witch lay easier, breathing without pain. “Till who come, dearie?” she whispered.
“My people.”
The witch’s big, cold hand lay like a bundle of sticks in hers. She held it firmly. It was as dark now outside the hut as inside it. Hatha, who was called Moss, slept; and presently the child, sitting on the floor beside her cot, with a hen perched nearby, slept also.
Men came when the light came. He said, “Up, Bitch! Up!” She got to her hands and knees. He laughed, saying, “All the way up! You’re a clever
bitch, you can walk on your hind legs, can’t you? That’s it. Pretend to be human! We have a way to go now. Come!” The strap was still around her neck, and he jerked it. She followed him.
“Here, you lead her,” he said, and now it was that one, the one she loved, but she did not know his name any more, who held the strap.
They all came out of the dark place. Stone yawned to let them pass and ground together behind them.
He was always close beside her and the one who held the strap. Others came behind, three or four men.
The fields were grey with dew. The mountain was dark against a pale sky. Birds were beginning to sing in the orchards and hedgerows, louder and louder.
They came to the edge of the world and walked along it for a while until they came to where the ground was only rock and the edge was very narrow. There was a line in the rock, and she looked at that.
“He can push her,” he said. “And then the hawk can fly, all by himself.”
He unfastened the strap from around her neck.
“Go stand at the edge,” he said. She followed the mark in the stone out to the edge. The sea was below her, nothing else. The air was out beyond her.
“Now, Sparrowhawk will give her a push,” he
said. “But first, maybe she wants to say something. She has so much to say. Women always do. Isn’t there anything you’d like to say to us, Lady Tenar?”
She could not speak, but she pointed to the sky above the sea.
“Albatross,” he said.
She laughed aloud.
In the gulfs of light, from the doorway of the sky, the dragon flew, fire trailing behind the coiling, mailed body. Tenar spoke then.
“Kalessin!” she cried, and then turned, seizing Ged’s arm, pulling him down to the rock, as the roar of fire went over them, the rattle of mail and the hiss of wind in upraised wings, the clash of the talons like scytheblades on the rock.
The wind blew from the sea. A tiny thistle growing in a cleft in the rock near her hand nodded and nodded in the wind from the sea.
Ged was beside her. They were crouched side by side, the sea behind them and the dragon before them.
It looked at them sidelong from one long, yellow eye.
Ged spoke in a hoarse, shaking voice, in the dragon’s language. Tenar understood the words, which were only, “Our thanks, Eldest.”
Looking at Tenar, Kalessin spoke, in the huge voice like a broom of metal dragged across a gong:
“Aro Tehanu?”
“The child,” Tenar said—“Therru!” She got to
her feet to run, to seek her child. She saw her coming along the ledge of rock between the mountain and the sea, toward the dragon.
“Don’t run, Therru!” she cried, but the child had seen her and was running, running straight to her. They clung to each other.
The dragon turned its enormous, rust-dark head to watch them with both eyes. The nostril pits, big as kettles, were bright with fire, and wisps of smoke curled from them. The heat of the dragons body beat through the cold sea wind.
“Tehanu,” the dragon said.
The child turned to look at it.
“Kalessin,” she said.
Then Ged, who had remained kneeling, stood up, though shakily, catching Tenar’s arm to steady himself. He laughed. “Now I know who called thee, Eldest!” he said.
“I did,” the child said. “I did not know what else to do, Segoy.”
She still looked at the dragon, and she spoke in the language of the dragons, the words of the Making.
“It was well, child,” the dragon said. “I have sought thee long.”
“Shall we go there now?” the child asked. “Where the others are, on the other wind?”
“Would you leave these?”
“No,” said the child. “Can they not come?”
“They cannot come. Their life is here.”
“I will stay with them,” she said, with a little catch of breath.
Kalessin turned aside to give that immense furnace-blast of laughter or contempt or delight or anger—“Hah!” Then, looking again at the child, “It is well. Thou hast work to do here.”
“I know,” the child said.
“I will come back for thee,” Kalessin said, “in time.” And, to Ged and Tenar, “I give you my child, as you will give me yours.”
“In time,” Tenar said.
Kalessin’s great head bowed very slightly, and the long, sword-toothed mouth curled up at the corner.
Ged and Tenar drew aside with Therru as the dragon turned, dragging its armor across the ledge, placing its taloned feet carefully, gathering its black haunches like a cat, till it sprang aloft. The vaned wings shot up crimson in the new light, the spurred tail rang hissing on the rock, and it flew, it was gone—a gull, a swallow, a thought.
Where it had been lay scorched rags of cloth and leather, and other things.
“Come away,” Ged said.
But the woman and the child stood and looked at those things.
“They are bone people,” Therru said. She turned away then and set off. She went ahead of the man and woman along the narrow path.
“Her native tongue,” Ged said. “Her mother tongue.”
“Tehanu,” said Tenar. “Her name is Tehanu.”
“She has been given it by the giver of names.”
“She has been Tehanu since the beginning. Always, she has been Tehanu.”
“Come on!” the child said, looking back at them. “Aunty Moss is sick.”
They were able to move Moss out into the light and air, to wash her sores, and to burn the foul linens of her bed, while Therru brought clean bedding from Ogion’s house. She also brought Heather the goatgirl back with her. With Heather’s help they got the old woman comfortable in her bed, with her chickens; and Heather promised to come back with something for them to eat.
“Someone must go down to Gont Port,” Ged said, “for the wizard there. To look after Moss; she can be healed. And to go to the manor house. The old man will die now. The grandson might live, if the house is made clean....” He had sat down on the doorstep of Moss’s house. He leaned his head back against the doorjamb, in the sunlight, and closed his eyes. “Why do we do what we do?” he said.
Tenar was washing her face and hands and arms in a basin of clear water she had drawn from the pump. She looked round when she was done. Utterly spent, Ged had fallen asleep, his face a little upturned to the morning light. She sat down beside him on the doorstep and laid her head against his
shoulder. Are we spared? she thought. How is it we are spared?
She looked down at Ged’s hand, relaxed and open on the earthen step. She thought of the thistle that nodded in the wind, and of the taloned foot of the dragon with its scales of red and gold. She was half-asleep when the child sat down beside her.
“Tehanu,” she murmured.
“The little tree died,” the child said.
After a while Tenar’s weary, sleepy mind understood, and woke up enough to make a reply. “Are there peaches on the old tree?”
They spoke low, not to waken the sleeping man.
“Only little green ones.”
“They’ll ripen, after the Long Dance. Soon now.”
“Can we plant one?”
“More than one, if you like. Is the house all right?”
“It’s empty.”
“Shall we live there?” She roused a little more, and put her arm around the child. “I have money,” she said, “enough to buy a herd of goats, and Turby’s winter-pasture, if it’s still for sale. Ged knows where to take them up the mountain, summers.... I wonder if the wool we combed is still there?” So saying, she thought, We left the books, Ogion’s books! On the mantel at Oak Farm—for Spark, poor boy, he can’t read a word of them!
But it did not seem to matter. There were new things to be learned, no doubt. And she could send
somebody for the books, if Ged wanted them. And for her spinning wheel. Or she could go down herself, come autumn, and see her son, and visit with Lark, and stay a while with Apple. They would have to replant Ogion’s garden right away if they wanted any vegetables of their own this summer. She thought of the rows of beans and the scent of the bean flowers. She thought of the small window that looked west. “I think we can live there,” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
URSULA K. LE GUIN is one of the most distinguished fantasy and science fiction writers of all time. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Nebula, Hugo, National Book, and Newbery Honor awards. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
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