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    Tehanu: Book Four
    Tehanu: Book Four
    Tehanu: Book Four
    Ebook280 pages4 hours

    Tehanu: Book Four

    By Ursula K. Le Guin

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The Nebula and Locus Award–winning fourth novel in the renowned Earthsea series from Ursula K. LeGuin gets a beautiful new repackage.

    In this fourth novel in the Earthsea series, we rejoin the young priestess the Tenar and powerful wizard Ged. Years before, they had helped each other at a time of darkness and danger. Together, they shared an adventure like no other. Tenar has since embraced the simple pleasures of an ordinary life, while Ged mourns the powers lost to him through no choice of his own.
         Now the two must join forces again and help another in need—the physically, emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed….
         With millions of copies sold worldwide, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere, alongside the works of such beloved authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Now the full Earthsea collection—A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind—is available with a fresh, modern look that will endear it both to loyal fans and new legions of readers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateJun 20, 2008
    ISBN9781439106891
    Tehanu: Book Four
    Author

    Ursula K. Le Guin

    Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

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    Reviews for Tehanu

    4/5

    1,326 ratings38 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Much darker then the earlier books in the series but also full of hope.

      By darker I mean dark, a little girl is raped, beaten and thrown into a fire. Ged the powerful archmage is powerless and broken, Tenar is cursed can't speak nor even think. But some light shines through. The king comes seeking Ged and saves Tenar and Tehanu, Ged saves Tenar and Tehanu stabbing a robber with a pitch fork. Tehanu saves Ged and Tenar by calling her father the dragon Kalessin
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed the The Tombs of Atuan, but had very little interest in the other two preceding books of the Earthsea series. I've read a few other books by Ursula K. Le Guin, outside the Earthsea series, and they're not among my favorites. So the depth and care of Tehanu, the exploration of perspectives not previously explored, the bringing of the real into the fantasy space, was a true surprise for me. I found this to be an intense, meaningful work.
    • 4/5
      Made the farthest shore worth reading
    • 3/5
      An interesting book overall. It didn't help me that it had been 30 years since I read the previous book in the series. Some of the philosophizing that Ms. Le Guin chose to write for her characters was frankly incomprehensible to me. But I thought the final part of the story was well put together and created a clean ending for the characters.
    • 4/5
      This is another fantasy book that’s about the characters and their personal journey. The magical elements don’t really come into play until the end of the book. I really enjoyed revisiting Tenar’s life as an adult, moreso even than Ged. Yes, Ged is the hero of the trilogy, but he kind of lost some charm in the last book.What I found interesting is that Ged began his journey as a student of magic and eventually became Archmage, but is now brought low, feeling helpless and useless after the events of the third book. Tenar began her journey as a nameless girl, The Eaten One, and then had a moment of fame after Ged brought her to Havnor. In this book we learned she married a farmer, settled down, and had a couple kids. Now we find she’s windowed, her kids are grown and gone and she’s caring for a young girl, Therru.I feel like there’s a lot happening in this book, but it’s sort of lowkey. Things heat up at the end though – so if you enjoyed the flow of the first book, I think you’ll enjoy this too. I really loved the relationship between Tenar and Therru and I’d read so many more books about those two. Especially after the ending! If, like me, you were a little bummed by the third book, I think Tehanu will bring you back into the magic of Earthsea.
    • 2/5
      This book didn't really get me - which may have been because I never read the first three books of the series. (I think it nowhere said that this was not a standalone.) I actually only finished it because I started using 'Kalessin' as a nickname. It wasn't a bad book, just one that did not touch me.
    • 4/5
      While I found the theme of women's power & role in life and the fear some men have of powerful women interesting and relevant, the writing in this 4th Earthsea book was not as skillful as in the earlier books. Many of Le Guin's ideas were put to the reader in a heavy handed manner with too much repetition. In general, I am a fan of her writing so that I felt let down in this one; readers who are unfamiliar with her work outside the Earthsea series might not feel the same.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I enjoyed the first three Earthsea books - fun adventure stories with thoughtful philosophical explorations woven through. But this book is something different. This is Le Guin at the height of her power, weaving together the mundane and the miraculous. This book is a revelation and a delight. I feel lucky that I saved it for so long, and got to read it for the first time now. I look forward to returning to it again and again, until it becomes a familiar friend.
    • 4/5
      yummy little tale
    • 4/5
      gre
    • 3/5
      I find a heaviness in this story, full of disappointment and unkindness toward women. There are moments of peace and joy, and it ends well. Le Guin’s ideas about magic and dragons and true names have some fascination, but sometimes I feel like the story is glossing over the details, so that I am not completely present with what is happening. I wish somehow for the story to become more in focus.
    • 5/5
      This was an interesting addition to the first three earthsea books. I absolutely loved the exploration of the afterlife and the different cultures. I highly recommend it, especially because it demonstrates a lot of growth from the author.
    • 4/5
      well that ending was sudden
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent "see the world through someone else's eyes" book. There will be parts that might be distasteful but that's how parts of people's lives are. Another person's opinions might not be correct but they exist nevertheless. I found the afterward really interesting. The way the author talked about writing the book made it sound like a process of discovery instead of creation.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Twenty-five years ago, Tenar was a young priestess serving in the quite sinister Tombs of Atuan, and Ged was a powerful wizard. They escaped from the Tombs together--and then they parted company. Tenar chose the unmagical life of a farmer's wife, and Ged went on to become Archmage of Roke.Now Tenar is a widow,who has taken in a child, Therru, badly maimed by fire. Ged is no longer a wizard at all; he poured out all his power in defeating a major threat to the world of Earthsea. Tenar takes Therru with her when the wizard of Gont, Ogion, who taught both Ged, and, for a time Tenar, sends word that he is dying, and asks her to come. This is the start of another great change in the direction of Tenar's life.Both Ged and Ogion had seen power in Tenar, wanted her trained. Tenar chose to live a normal, unmagical life as a farmer's wife. When Ogion meets Therru, he tells Tenar to teach her. "Teach her everything."When Ogion dies, Tenar is in no immediate hurry to return to the farm in her own village. Therru is starting to relax a bit, open up. The local village witch, Auntie Moss, is becoming a reliable if sometimes difficult friend. There was a brief confrontation with the local lord's wizard, Aspen, but that seems to pass quickly. Then the Archmage Sparrowhawk, true name Ged, arrives. He's no longer the Archmage; he's no longer a mage. And by "arrive," I mean, is delivered by a dragon--a dragon who speaks to Tenar and tells her his name.Ged wishes she would just let him die; she nurses him back to health. Because they stay on, in the village and in Ogion's cottage, there's time for one of the men who inflicted Therru's terrible injuries to arrive and see the girl. There's time for Aspen to decide he really resents Tenar's reputation as a woman with real power. There's time for royal messengers hoping to summon Ged back to the king's city for his coronation to arrive--but Tenar gets word just in time to let Ged get out of Ogion's village and off to Tenar's, where he will seek work at Tenar's farm.Yet the real meat of this story is a look at the underdogs of Earthsea society--the women who are not supposed to have any power more than that of a village witch, the ordinary working people, those who don't have the power of magic, or violence, or wealth. These are the people we didn't see much of in the earlier Earthsea books; they're at the center of the story here. And Ged, once so arrogant in his younger years, is now one of them. This is Le Guin doing what some writers never manage to do, looking at what she overlooked in an older, much-loved, but necessarily imperfect work.I loved the Earthsea trilogy; I love Tehanu.Recommended.I bought this audiobook.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The fourth book of the Earthsea series. This book brings the first three stories together nicely as we again meet Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan and Arren (now Lebannen) from The Farthest Shore. The story overlaps with The Farthest Shore and then they coalesce when Ged arrives back in Gont and we discover what happens to him after his return from his greatest battle where he lost his powers.The book successfully wraps up the three stories as well as telling the compelling new story of Therru, a small child who has been the subject of the cruellest of abuse and been left scarred, both physically and mentally.I loved the ending!
    • 3/5
      Le Guin's books are a little more difficult to read despite the thinness of the novel. It is a little more difficult because her characters do not follow traditional paths where characters succeed triumphantly or the plot that good wins so clearly. But it is a thinking book. One that makes you pause and question the issues the characters are wrestling with.

      I have to admit, I cannot help but always want Ged to succeed because he's the protagonist and I love him. It was difficult seeing him struggle with losing his powers. It was difficult reading about Tenar ragin at his supposed selfishness and shame. But no matter how difficult it is to read, I liked it. It's not like a typical scifi action fantasy book where characters can power up and always be strong. Rather, this book shows strength in the absence of power.

      This is a book written beyond its time for women. The way Tenar struggles with a woman's freedom and the reasoning behind a woman's fear is just heart wrenching. The musings of ethics and of philosophy are refreshing. So often in more modern books, the ethics or philosophical ideas in a book have a distinctly religious spin - and depending on the authors tone and stance, can sometimes be a severe detriment to my enjoyment of the book. But hers are about strength and fear and character behind one's appearance. About reputation Nd the difference between a man and a woman. It is refreshing.

      I was a little disappointed in the plot. This book was more of an extended aftermath or epilogue to the trilogy, showing us what happened to the remaining characters and how they dealt with all of the events. But throw in a new, mysterious girl ward and twenty pages of a villain and you kinda get a plot. I don't hate it, but it don't think this book is worth more than three stars because of it.

      Three stars. Lackluster plot with beautiful character writing and lovely thought provoking dialogue.
      Recommended for those who already know this author's style.
    • 3/5
      I like this book overall, although LeGuin becomes very explicitly feminist and there is a little, um, interesting bit at the end. But overall, a very satisfactory finish to the Earthsea series.
    • 3/5
      This book is probably my least favourite of the series. It's so much less about adventure and so much more about domesticity, which is strange coming from Tenar and Ged. Such ordinary thoughts and fears, after all the high and mighty adventure! Even the confrontation at the end of the book feels like a placeholder, more because those things will not leave Ged alone than because it's actually still a part of his life.

      There are parts of this book I like a lot. Ged and Tenar's love scenes are worth reading, because they do fit together and I did have to wonder whether no wizards ever had sex and how there could be mages born without wizards having kids. The little glimpse of Arren was nice, and the discussion of the role of women in this world was interesting. Women had so little place in the first book, and not much in the third...

      Perhaps that is something I like this book less for, though. From high adventure to keeping house, yes, but also from a philosophical but still mostly adventurous story to one about the role of women. It's an interesting topic, and almost necessary after what little part the women have in other books, but this doesn't exactly fit into what I originally expected from the world. Unexpectedness isn't a bad thing, of course.

      The other thing is that this book just doesn't taste as nice. There aren't so many beautiful images. With the everyday lives come everyday images.
    • 5/5
      4th book in the Earthsea trilogy. A masterpiece, of course. What Le Guin isn't? This one gives us a clearer picture of Ged as an old man, and so much more besides.
    • 4/5
      Le Guin's political and philosophical messages are a bit too obvious here and not quite as well intergrated into the story as they are in the others in the cycle.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant concept, brilliant writing, brilliant characters. Le Guin writes a fantasy novel about the everyday, domestic female world that the first three Earthsea books have overlooked, essentially providing a feminist critique of her own world. And she does this without being preachy or boring. More fantasy novels like this need to be written.
    • 2/5
      Quite slow and the climax I was expecting didn't really happen. Not sure what this book was meant to be about.
      Seems there were some feminism ideas or at least gender specific roles being examined, the nature of identity. Not as much Earthsea magic though!
    • 5/5
      Well, I forgot to take notes on this one. I guess I got drawn in to its spell. I remember LeGuin’s feminist voice showed through strongly in places, but it seemed to quickly dissolve into the voice of the heroine, Tenar. There is a sense of great power and great deeds hiding in the shadows, but the story is told from the perspective of the powerless, the old, the plain folk, the abused, and the middle-aged farmer’s widow. But the magic is still there, as is of course, a dragon.
    • 5/5
      I have read this book over and over for years now, trying to understand it, as I do with all of LeGuin's books. I love the fact that they are not easily mastered but must be meditated on again and again for greater understanding each time. I think this was the book that first made me start to understand the particular problems that women face, and to grow in compassion and understanding for women who have suffered from abuse. More recently I have been struck by the exploration of kinds of power: the power that Therru inspires by her damaged body, being the incarnation of evidoing as its victim but seen somehow to be a perpetrator; the power that Tenar has and doesn't have as a respectable widow, but with a past as an important person in a world she rejected; Ged's bitter coming to terms with his loss of power, and what it means to act when he no longer has the infinite possibility that enabled his good actions of the past. I would not suggest reading this without the first three in the series, but if you have read those, be prepared that this is a very different kind of book, just as rewarding, but not in the pattern you'd expect from the previous ones.
    • 5/5
      To begin with, Tehanu seems to come from a very different Earthsea, but once it gets into its swing, it's just as magical.
    • 3/5
      Tehanu is the 4th in the Earthsea books. Of the four original novels, it is my least favorite. It shouldn't be but certain elements made it so. As a story it fits in extremely well with the other books in the series, but I felt it suffered more than a bit from a preachiness to it. I enjoyed the novel a lot but felt it would have been a better book if we weren't constantly told how bad women had it in the world of Earthsea. Near the end when a bad wizard forces Tenar to crawl and delights in kicking her breasts I said "enough!". Although Earthsea has certainly been seen as a world with troubles, we had no reason to be "treated" to this display of abuse, nor much of the screed and abuse that preceeded it. There was simply no good reason for Le Guin to incorporate this stuff in her story. It also was rather unsettling how damaged Ged was throughout almost the entire book.
    • 4/5
      Tehanu returns us to the world of Earthsea, to the time after the The Farthest Shore and The Tombs of Atuan. Tenar has grown older, had a family, and is now a widower when she received an urgentl from Sparrowhawk's former mentor Ogion, the mage that took her in when she first came to the area. As she journeys to her cottage we are introduced to the little girl Therru, marked by horrible tragedy and evil.While at Ogion's cottage, Sparrowhawk returns to Tenar, but he returns scarred and damaged, missing part of himself. Tenar, Sparrowhawk, and little Therru make a life journey together to put the pieces of themselves back together and bring the work back to a better place.This book was a fantastic read. it gave me what I've always wanted at the end of a series....just one more book. A book to show me how they ended up, what their family was like, and who would continue on after them. Tenar and Ged (also called Sparrowhawk), reunited after many years, are still the same characters I had grown to love in the earlier books. Only this time they are wiser, and will need to use all of their wisdom to help little Therru. Therru drew my sympathy from the start, and I admired her spirit and her tenacity to overcome her difficulties. This was a great addition to the Earthsea Cycle.4/5
    • 4/5
      Even while reading the book and now while thinking back, I'm almost surprised that I liked it so much. Of the first three Earthsea books, I did not much like Ged and Tenar's first meeting - it seemed so slow and mental - not enough action for me. Yet this revisiting of the pair later in life held my interest though it again did not have much action. It is more a romance and a bit of feminist romp as Tenar thinks back on her life and how different Ged is from her deceased husband.So maybe it isn't all about the action...I thoroughly enjoyed this look at the pair as they have aged and hearing the story from Tenar's point of view and through her thoughts. And, with a bit of a cliffhanger, I'm looking forward to finishing out the cycle soon.
    • 4/5
      Tehanu was one of the first book (with EarthSea) that my father gave me to read as a child. I loved the story, the magic in the lives of them and the strange child named Tehanu. It's a tale of hardships and love.

    Book preview

    Tehanu - Ursula K. Le Guin

    CHAPTER 1

    A BAD THING

    AFTER FARMER FLINT OF THE Middle Valley died, his widow stayed on at the farmhouse. Her son had gone to sea and her daughter had married a merchant of Valmouth, so she lived alone at Oak Farm. People said she had been some kind of great person in the foreign land she came from, and indeed the mage Ogion used to stop by Oak Farm to see her; but that didn’t count for much, since Ogion visited all sorts of nobodies.

    She had a foreign name, but Flint had called her Goha, which is what they call a little white web-spinning spider on Gont. That name fit well enough, she being white-skinned and small and a good spinner of goat’s-wool and sheep-fleece. So now she was Flint’s widow, Goha, mistress of a flock of sheep and the land to pasture them, four fields, an orchard of pears, two tenants’ cottages, the old stone farmhouse under the oaks, and the family graveyard over the hill where Flint lay, earth in his earth.

    I’ve generally lived near tombstones, she said to her daughter.

    Oh, Mother, come live in town with us! said Apple, but the widow would not leave her solitude.

    Maybe later, when there are babies and you’ll need a hand, she said, looking with pleasure at her grey-eyed daughter. But not now. You don’t need me. And I like it here.

    When Apple had gone back to her young husband, the widow closed the door and stood on the stone-flagged floor of the kitchen of the farmhouse. It was dusk, but she did not light the lamp, thinking of her own husband lighting the lamp: the hands, the spark, the intent, dark face in the catching glow. The house was silent.

    I used to live in a silent house, alone, she thought. I will do so again. She lighted the lamp.

    In a late afternoon of the first hot weather, the widow’s old friend Lark came out from the village, hurrying along the dusty lane. Goha, she said, seeing her weeding in the bean patch, Goha, it’s a bad thing. It’s a very bad thing. Can you come?

    Yes, the widow said. What would the bad thing be?

    Lark caught her breath. She was a heavy, plain, middle-aged woman, whose name did not fit her body anymore. But once she had been a slight and pretty girl, and she had befriended Goha, paying no attention to the villagers who gossiped about that white-faced Kargish witch Flint had brought home; and friends they had been ever since.

    A burned child, she said.

    Whose?

    Tramps’.

    Goha went to shut the farmhouse door, and they set off along the lane, Lark talking as they went. She was short of breath and sweating. Tiny seeds of the heavy grasses that lined the lane stuck to her cheeks and forehead, and she brushed at them as she talked. They’ve been camped in the river meadows all the month. A man, passed himself off as a tinker, but he’s a thief, and a woman with him. And another man, younger, hanging around with them most of the time. Not working, any of ’em. Filching and begging and living off the woman. Boys from downriver were bringing them farmstuff to get at her. You know how it is now, that kind of thing. And gangs on the roads and coming by farms. If I were you, I’d lock my door, these days. So this one, this younger fellow, comes into the village, and I was out in front of our house, and he says, ‘The child’s not well.’ I’d barely seen a child with them, a little ferret of a thing, slipped out of sight so quick I wasn’t sure it was there at all. So I said, ‘Not well? A fever?’ And the fellow says, ‘She hurt herself, lighting the fire,’ and then before I’d got myself ready to go with him he’d made off. Gone. And when I went out there by the river, the other pair was gone too. Cleared out. Nobody. All their traps and trash gone too. There was just their campfire, still smoldering, and just by it—partly in it—on the ground—

    Lark stopped talking for several steps. She looked straight ahead, not at Goha.

    They hadn’t even put a blanket over her, she said.

    She strode on.

    She’d been pushed into the fire while it was burning, she said. She swallowed, and brushed at the sticking seeds on her hot face. I’d say maybe she fell, but if she’d been awake she’d have tried to save herself. They beat her and thought they’d killed her, I guess, and wanted to hide what they’d done to her, so they—

    She stopped again, went on again.

    Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he pulled her out. He came to get help for her, after all. It must have been the father. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Who’s to know? Who’s to care? Who’s to care for the child? Why do we do what we do?

    Goha asked in a low voice, Will she live?

    She might, Lark said. She might well live.

    After a while, as they neared the village, she said, I don’t know why I had to come to you. Ivy’s there. There’s nothing to be done.

    I could go to Valmouth, for Beech.

    Nothing he could do. It’s beyond… beyond help. I got her warm. Ivy’s given her a potion and a sleeping charm. I carried her home. She must be six or seven but she didn’t weigh what a two-year-old would. She never really waked. But she makes a sort of gasping…. I know there isn’t anything you can do. But I wanted you.

    I want to come, Goha said. But before they entered Lark’s house, she shut her eyes and held her breath a moment in dread.

    Lark’s children had been sent outdoors, and the house was silent. The child lay unconscious on Lark’s bed. The village witch, Ivy, had smeared an ointment of witch hazel and heal-all on the lesser burns, but had not touched the right side of the face and head and the right hand, which had been charred to the bone. She had drawn the rune Pirr above the bed, and left it at that.

    Can you do anything? Lark asked in a whisper.

    Goha stood looking down at the burned child. Her hands were still. She shook her head.

    You learned healing, up on the mountain, didn’t you? Pain and shame and rage spoke through Lark, begging for relief.

    Even Ogion couldn’t heal this, the widow said.

    Lark turned away, biting her lip, and wept. Goha held her, stroking her grey hair. They held each other.

    The witch Ivy came in from the kitchen, scowling at the sight of Goha. Though the widow cast no charms and worked no spells, it was said that when she first came to Gont she had lived at Re Albi as a ward of the mage, and that she knew the Archmage of Roke, and no doubt had foreign and uncanny powers. Jealous of her prerogative, the witch went to the bed and busied herself beside it, making a mound of something in a dish and setting it afire so that it smoked and reeked while she muttered a curing charm over and over. The rank herbal smoke made the burned child cough and half rouse, flinching and shuddering. She began to make a gasping noise, quick, short, scraping breaths. Her one eye seemed to look up at Goha.

    Goha stepped forward and took the child’s left hand in hers. She spoke in her own language. I served them and I left them, she said. I will not let them have you.

    The child stared at her or at nothing, trying to breathe, and trying again to breathe, and trying again to breathe.

    CHAPTER 2

    GOING TO THE FALCON’S NEST

    IT WAS MORE THAN A year later, in the hot and spacious days after the Long Dance, that a messenger came down the road from the north to Middle Valley asking for the widow Goha. People in the village put him on the path, and he came to Oak Farm late in the afternoon. He was a sharp-faced, quick-eyed man. He looked at Goha and at the sheep in the fold beyond her and said, Fine lambs. The Mage of Re Albi sends for you.

    He sent you? Goha inquired, disbelieving and amused. Ogion, when he wanted her, had quicker and finer messengers: an eagle calling, or only his own voice saying her name quietly—Will you come?

    The man nodded. He’s sick, he said. Will you be selling off any of the ewe lambs?

    I might. You can talk to the shepherd if you like. Over by the fence there. Do you want supper? You can stay the night here if you want, but I’ll be on my way.

    Tonight?

    This time there was no amusement in her look of mild scorn. I won’t be waiting about, she said. She spoke for a minute with the old shepherd, Clearbrook, and then turned away, going up to the house built into the hillside by the oak grove. The messenger followed her.

    In the stone-floored kitchen, a child whom he looked at once and quickly looked away from served him milk, bread, cheese, and green onions, and then went off, never saying a word. She reappeared beside the woman, both shod for travel and carrying light leather packs. The messenger followed them out, and the widow locked the farmhouse door. They all set off together, he on his business, for the message from Ogion had been a mere favor added to the serious matter of buying a breeding ram for the Lord of Re Albi; and the woman and the burned child bade him farewell where the lane turned off to the village. They went on up the road he had come down, northward and then west into the foothills of Gont Mountain.

    They walked until the long summer twilight began to darken. They left the narrow road then and made camp in a dell down by a stream that ran quick and quiet, reflecting the pale evening sky between thickets of scrub willow. Goha made a bed of dry grass and willow leaves, hidden among the thickets like a hare’s form, and rolled the child up in a blanket on it. Now, she said, you’re a cocoon. In the morning you’ll be a butterfly and hatch out. She lighted no fire, but lay in her cloak beside the child and watched the stars shine one by one and listened to what the stream said quietly, until she slept.

    When they woke in the cold before the dawn, she made a small fire and heated a pan of water to make oatmeal gruel for the child and herself. The little ruined butterfly came shivering from her cocoon, and Goha cooled the pan in the dewy grass so that the child could hold it and drink from it. The east was brightening above the high, dark shoulder of the mountain when they set off again.

    They walked all day at the pace of a child who tired easily. The woman’s heart yearned to make haste, but she walked slowly. She was not able to carry the child any long distance, and so to make the way easier for her she told her stories.

    We’re going to see a man, an old man, called Ogion, she told her as they trudged along the narrow road that wound upward through the forests. He’s a wise man, and a wizard. Do you know what a wizard is, Therru?

    If the child had had a name, she did not know it or would not say it. Goha called her Therru.

    She shook her head.

    Well, neither do I, said the woman. But I know what they can do. When I was young—older than you, but young—Ogion was my father, the way I’m your mother now. He looked after me and tried to teach me what I needed to know. He stayed with me when he’d rather have been wandering by himself. He liked to walk, all along these roads like we’re doing now, and in the forests, in the wild places. He went everywhere on the mountain, looking at things, listening. He always listened, so they called him the Silent. But he used to talk to me. He told me stories. Not only the great stories everybody learns, the heroes and the kings and the things that happened long ago and far away, but stories only he knew. She walked on a way before she went on. "I’ll tell you one of those stories now.

    "One of the things wizards can do is turn into something else—take another form. Shape-changing, they call it. An ordinary sorcerer can make himself look like somebody else, or like an animal, just so you don’t know for a minute what you’re seeing—as if he’d put on a mask. But the wizards and mages can do more than that. They can be the mask, they can truly change into another being. So a wizard, if he wanted to cross the sea and had no boat, might turn himself into a gull and fly across. But he has to be careful. If he stays a bird, he begins to think what a bird thinks and forget what a man thinks, and he might fly off and be a gull and never a man again. So they say there was a great wizard once who liked to turn himself into a bear, and did it too often, and became a bear, and killed his own little son; and they had to hunt him down and kill him. But Ogion used to joke about it, too. Once when the mice got into his pantry and ruined the cheese, he caught one with a tiny mousetrap spell, and he held the mouse up like this and looked it in the eye and said, ‘I told you not to play mouse!’ And for a minute I thought he meant it….

    "Well, this story is about something like shape-changing, but Ogion said it was beyond all shape-changing he knew, because it was about being two things, two beings, at once, and in the same form, and he said that this is beyond the power of wizards. But he met with it in a little village around on the northwest coast of Gont, a place called Kemay. There was a woman there, an old fisherwoman, not a witch, not learned; but she made songs. That’s how Ogion came to hear of her. He was wandering there, the way he did, going along the coast, listening; and he heard somebody singing, mending a net or caulking a boat and singing as they worked:

    Farther west than west

    beyond the land

    my people are dancing

    on the other wind.

    "It was the tune and the words both that Ogion heard, and he had never heard them before, so he asked where the song came from. And from one answer to another, he went along to where somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s one of the songs of the Woman of Kemay.’ So he went on along to Kemay, the little fishing port where the woman lived, and he found her house down by the harbor. And he knocked on the door with his mage’s staff. And she came and opened the door.

    "Now you know, you remember when we talked about names, how children have child-names, and everybody has a use-name, and maybe a nickname too. Different people may call you differently. You’re my Therru, but maybe you’ll have a Hardic use-name when you get older. But also, when you come into your womanhood, you will, if all be rightly done, be given your true name. It will be given you by one of true power, a wizard or a mage, because that is their power, their art—naming. And that’s the name you’ll maybe never tell another person, because your own self is in your true name. It is your strength, your power; but to another it is risk and burden, only to be given in utmost need and trust. But a great mage, knowing all names, may know it without your telling him.

    "So Ogion, who is a great mage, stood at the door of the little house there by the seawall, and the old woman opened the door. Then Ogion stepped back, and he held up his oak staff, and put up his hand, too, like this, as if trying to protect himself from the heat of a fire, and in his amazement and fear he said her true name aloud—‘Dragon!’

    "In that first moment, he told me, it was no woman he saw at all in the doorway, but a blaze and glory of fire, and a glitter of gold scales and talons, and the great eyes of a dragon. They say you must not look into a dragon’s eyes.

    "Then that was gone, and he saw no dragon, but an old woman standing there in the doorway, a bit stooped, a tall old fisherwoman with big hands. She looked at him as he did at her. And she said, ‘Come in, Lord Ogion.’

    So he went in. She served him fish soup, and they ate, and then they talked by her fire. He thought that she must be a shape-changer, but he didn’t know, you see, whether she was a woman who could change herself into a dragon, or a dragon who could change itself into a woman. So he asked her at last, ‘Are you woman or dragon?’ And she didn’t say, but she said, ‘I’ll sing you a story I know.’

    Therru had a little stone in her shoe. They stopped to get that out, and went on, very slowly, for the road was climbing steeply between cut banks of stone overhung by thickets where the cicadas sang in the summer heat.

    "So this is the story she sang to him, to Ogion.

    "When Segoy raised the islands of the world from the sea in the beginning of time, the dragons were the first born of the land and the wind blowing over the land. So the Song of the Creation tells. But her song told also that then, in the beginning, dragon and human were all one. They were all one people, one race, winged, and speaking the True Language.

    "They were beautiful, and strong, and wise, and free.

    "But in time nothing can be without becoming. So among the dragon-people some became more and more in love with flight and wildness, and would have less and less to do with the works of making, or with study and learning, or with houses and cities. They wanted only to fly farther and farther, hunting and eating their kill, ignorant and uncaring, seeking more freedom and more.

    "Others of the dragon-people came to care little for flight, but gathered up treasure, wealth, things made, things learned. They built houses, strongholds to keep their treasures in, so they could pass all they gained to their children, ever seeking more increase and more. And they came to fear the wild ones, who might come flying and destroy all their dear hoard, burn it up in a blast of flame out of mere carelessness and ferocity.

    "The wild ones feared nothing. They learned nothing. Because they were ignorant and fearless, they could not save themselves when the flightless ones trapped them as animals and killed them. But other wild ones would come flying and set the beautiful houses afire, and destroy, and kill. Those that were strongest, wild or wise, were those who killed each other first.

    "Those who were most afraid, they hid from the fighting, and when there was no more hiding they ran from it. They used their skills of making and made boats and sailed east, away from the western isles where the great winged ones made war among the ruined towers.

    "So those who had been both dragon and human changed, becoming two peoples—the dragons, always fewer and wilder, scattered by their endless, mindless greed and anger, in the far islands of the Western Reach; and the human folk, always more numerous in their rich towns and cities, filling up the Inner Isles and all the south and east. But among them there were some who saved the learning of the dragons—the True Language of the Making—and these are now the wizards.

    "But also, the song said, there are those among us who know they once were dragons, and among the dragons there are some who know their kinship with us. And these say that when the one people were becoming two, some of them, still both human and dragon, still winged, went not east but west, on over the Open Sea, till they came to the other side of the world. There they live in peace, great winged beings both wild and wise, with human mind and dragon heart. And so she sang,

    Farther west than west

    beyond the land

    my people are dancing

    on the other wind.

    "So that was the story told in the song of the Woman of Kemay, and it ended with those words.

    "Then Ogion said to her, ‘When I first saw you I saw your true being. This woman who sits across the hearth from me is no more than the dress she wears.’

    "But she shook her head and laughed, and all she would say was, ‘If only it were that simple!’

    So then after a while Ogion came back to Re Albi. And when he told me the story, he said to me, ‘Ever since that day, I have wondered if anyone, man or dragon, has been farther west than west; and who we are, and where our wholeness lies.’… Are you getting hungry, Therru? There’s a good sitting place, it looks like, up there where the road turns. Maybe from there we’ll be able to see Gont Port, away down at the foot of the mountain. It’s a big city, even bigger than Valmouth. We’ll sit down when we get to the turn, and rest a bit.

    From the high corner of the road they could indeed look down the vast slopes of forest and rocky meadow to the town on its bay, and see the crags that guarded the entrance to the bay, and the boats on the dark water like wood chips or water beetles. Far ahead on their road and still somewhat above it, a cliff jutted out from the mountainside: the Overfell, on which was the village of Re Albi, the Falcon’s Nest.

    Therru made no complaints, but when presently Goha said, Well, shall we go on? the child, sitting there between the road and the gulfs of sky and

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