Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  He was kneeling now by the black thing on the path.

  “I killed him, I think,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, stood up. There was no sign or sound of the other men.

  “Where are they?”

  “Ran. Give me a hand, Tenar.”

  She held the knife in one hand. With the other she took hold of the arm of the man that lay huddled up on the path. Ged took him under the shoulder and they dragged him up the step and into the house. He lay on the stone floor of the kitchen, and blood ran out of his chest and belly like water from a pitcher. His upper lip was drawn back from his teeth, and only the whites of his eyes showed.

  “Lock the door,” Ged said, and she locked the door.

  “Linens in the press,” she said, and he got a sheet and tore it for bandages, which she bound round and round the mans belly and breast, into which three of the four tines of the pitchfork had driven full force, making three ragged springs of blood that dripped and squirted as Ged supported the man’s torso so that she could wrap the bandages.

  “What are you doing here? Did you come with them?”

  “Yes. But they didn’t know it. That’s about all you can do, Tenar.” He let the man’s body sag down, and sat back, breathing hard, wiping his face with the back of his bloody hand. “I think I killed him,” he said again.

  “Maybe you did.” Tenar watched the bright red spots spread slowly on the heavy linen that wrapped the man’s thin, hairy chest and belly. She stood up, and swayed, very dizzy. “Get by the fire,” she said. “You must be perishing.”

  She did not know how she had known him in the dark outside. By his voice, maybe. He wore a bulky shepherd’s winter coat of cut fleece with the leather side out, and a 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. Bur 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. Hel
p 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 Clearbrook and Shandy. They wouldn’t have had time to hurt Therru.”

  “They would have been in the house with her, and you outside it, with the old man and woman. Or they could have picked her up and gone clear away with her. You did what you could. What you did was right. Timed right. The light from the house, and you coming out with the knife, and me there—they could see the pitchfork then—and him down. So they ran.”

  “Those that could,” said Tenar. She turned and stirred the man’s leg a little with the toe of her shoe, as if he were an object she was a little curious about, a little repelled by, like a dead viper. “You did the right thing,” she said.

  “I don’t think he even saw it. He ran right onto it. It was like—” He did not say what it was like. He said, “Drink your tea,” and poured himself more from the pot keeping warm on the hearthbricks. “It’s good. Sit down,” he said, and she did so.

  “When I was a boy,” he said after a time, “the Kargs raided my village. They had lances—long, with feathers tied to the shaft—”

  She nodded. “Warriors of the God-Brothers,” she said.

  “I made a... a fog-spell. To confuse them. But they came on, some of them. I saw one of them run right onto a pitchfork—like him. Only it went clear through him. Below the waist.”

  “You hit a rib,” Tenar said.

  He nodded.

  “It was the only mistake you made,” she said. Her teeth were chattering now. She drank her tea. “Ged,” she said, “what if they come back?”

  “They won’t.”

  “They could set fire to the house.”

  “This house?” He looked around at the stone walls.

  “The haybarn—”

  “They won’t be back,” he said, doggedly.

  “No.”

  They held their cups with care, warming their hands on them.

  “She slept through it.”

  “It’s well she did.”

  “But she’ll see him—here—in the morning—”

  They stared at each other.

  “If I’d killed him—if he’d die!” Ged said with rage. “I could drag him out and bury him—”

  “Do it.”

  He merely shook his head angrily.

  “What does it matter, why, why can’t we do it!” Tenar demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “As soon as it gets light—”

  “I’ll get him out of the house. Wheelbarrow. The old man can help me.”

  “He can’t lift anything any more. I’ll help you.”

  “However I can do it, I’ll cart him off to the village. There’s a healer of some kind there?”

  “A witch, Ivy.”

  She felt all at once abysmally, infinitely weary. She could scarcely hold the cup in her hand.

  “There’s more tea,” she said, thick-tongued.

  He poured himself another cupful.

  The fire danced in her eyes. The flames swam, flared up, sank away, brightened again against the sooty stone, against the dark sky, against the pale sky, the gulfs of evening, the depths of air and light beyond the world. Flames of yellow, orange, orange-red, red tongues of flame, flame-tongues, the words she could not speak.

  “Tenar.”

  “We call the star Tehanu,” she said.

  “Tenar, my dear. Come on. Come with me.”

  They were not at the fire. They were in the dark—in the dark hall. The dark passage. They had been there before, leading each other, following each other, in the darkness underneath the earth.

  “This is the way,” she said.

  SHE WAS WAKING, NOT WANTING to waken. Faint grey shone at the window in thin slits through the shutters. Why was the window shuttered? She got up hurriedly and went down the hall to the kitchen. No one sat by the fire, no one lay on the floor. There was no sign of anyone, anything. Except the teapot and three cups on the counter.

  Therru got up about sunrise, and they breakfasted as usual; clearing up, the girl asked, “What happened?” She lifted a corner of wet linen from the soaking-tub in the pantry. The water in the tub was veined and clouded with brownish red.

  “Oh, my period came on early,” Tenar said, startled at the lie as she spoke it.

  Therru stood a moment motionless, her nostrils flared and her head still, like an animal getting a scent. Then she dropped the sheeting back into the water, and went out to feed the chickens.

  Tenar felt ill; her bones ached. The weather was still cold, and she stayed indoors as much as she could. She tried to keep Therru in, but when the sun came out with a keen, bright wind, Therru wanted to be out in it.

  “Stay with Shandy in the orchard,” Tenar said.

  Therru said nothing as she slipped out.

  The burned and deformed side of her face was made rigid by the destruction of muscles and the thickness of the scar-surface, but as the scars got older and as Tenar learned by long usage not to look away from it as deformity but to see it as face, it had expressions of its own. When Therru was frightened, the burned and darkened side “closed in,” as Tenar thought, drawing together, hardening. When she was excited or intent, even the blind eye socket seemed to gaze, and the scars reddened and were hot to touch. Now, as she went out, there was a queer look to her, as if her face were not human at all, an animal, some strange horny-skinned wild creature with one bright eye, silent, escaping.

  And Tenar knew that as she had lied to her for the first time, Therru for the first time was going to disobey her. The first but not the last time.

  She sat down at the fireside with a weary sigh, and did nothing at all for a while.

  A rap at the door: Clearbrook and Ged—no, Hawk she must call him—Hawk standing on the doorstep. Old Clearbrook was full of talk and importance, Ged dark and quiet and bulky in his grimy sheepskin coat. “Come in,” she said. “Have some tea. What’s the news?”

  “Tried to get away, down to Valmouth, but the men from Kahedanan, the bailies, come down and ’twas in Cherry’s outhouse they found ’em,” Clearbrook announced, waving his fist.

  “He escaped?” Horror caught at her.

  “The other two,” Ged said. “Not him.”

  “See, they found the body up in the old shambles on Round Hill, all beat to pieces like, up in the old shambles there, by Kahedanan, so ten, twelve of ’em ’pointed theirselves bailies then and there and come after them. And there was a search all through the villages last night, and this morning before ’twas hardly light they found ’em hiding out in Cherry’s outhouse. Half-froze they was.”

  “He’s dead, then?” she asked, bewildered.

  Ged had shucked off the heavy coat and was now sitting on the cane-bottom chair by the
door to undo his leather gaiters. “He’s alive,” he said in his quiet voice. “Ivy has him. I took him in this morning on the muck-cart. There were people out on the road before daylight, hunting for all three of them. They’d killed a woman, up in the hills.”

  “What woman?” Tenar whispered.

  Her eyes were on Ged’s. He nodded slightly.

  Clearbrook wanted the story to be his, and took it up loudly: “I talked with some o’ them from up there and they told me they’d all four of ’em been traipsing and camping and vagranting about near Kahedanan, and the woman would come into the village to beg, all beat about and burns and bruises all over her. They’d send her in, the men would, see, like that to beg, and then she’d go back to ’em, and she told people if she went back with nothing they’d beat her more, so they said why go back? But if she didn’t they’d come after her, she said, see, and she’d always go with ’em. But then they finally went too far and beat her to death, and they took and left her body in the old shambles there where there’s still some o’ the stink left, you know, maybe thinking that was hiding what they done. And they came away then, down here, just last night. And why didn’t you shout and call last night, Goha? Hawk says they was right here, sneaking about the house, when he come on ’em. I surely would have heard, or Shandy would, her ears might be sharper than mine. Did you tell her yet?”

  Tenar shook her head.

  “I’ll just go tell her,” said the old man, delighted to be first with the news, and he clumped off across the yard. He turned back halfway. “Never would have picked you as useful with a pitchfork!” he shouted to Ged, and slapped his thigh, laughing, and went on.

  Ged slipped off the heavy gaiters, took off his muddy shoes and set them on the doorstep, and came over to the fire in his stocking feet. Trousers and jerkin and shirt of homespun wool: a Gontish goatherd, with a canny face, a hawk nose, and clear, dark eyes.

  “There’ll be people out soon,” he said. “To tell you all about it, and hear what happened here again. They’ve got the two that ran off shut up now in a wine cellar with no wine in it, and fifteen or twenty men guarding them, and twenty or thirty boys trying to get a peek....” He yawned, shook his shoulders and arms to loosen them, and with a glance at Tenar asked permission to sit down at the fire.