Tehanu: Chapters 1–3

Not working, any of ’em. Filching and begging and living off the woman.

There was just their campfire, still smoldering, and just by it—partly in it—on the ground—

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.

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.

This time there was no amusement in her look of mild scorn. “I won’t be waiting about,” she said.

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.

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.

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.

“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 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...

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.

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.

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.

Goha took out her knife and cut a strong shoot of hazel for the child, and then seeing an alder fallen above the road, broke off a branch of it and trimmed it to make herself a stout, light stick.

They set off again, and the child trudged along, beguiled by raisins.

Young men behaved like strangers among their own people, abusing hospitality, stealing, selling what they stole.

Some of the young women ran off to join the gangs of thieves and poachers. Often they came home within the year, sullen, bruised, and pregnant.

And among village sorcerers and witches there was rumor of matters of their profession going amiss: charms that had always cured did not cure; spells of finding found nothing, or the wrong thing; love potions drove men into frenzies not of desire but of murderous jealousy.

He was a shrewd and modest man, who had come to help Ivy do what little could be done to lessen the pain and scarring of Therru’s burns.

He had glanced at her, somewhat timidly, yet with his clear, shrewd look.

“Out of my way!” she said, raising her alder stick as if it were a wizard’s staff—“I have business with Ogion!” She strode between the men and straight on, Therru trotting beside her. The men, mistaking effrontery for witchery, stood still.

Another, a man in a leather cap and jerkin, stood staring for a moment while the others slouched on their way.

His face looked sick and stricken, yet he seemed to be turning to follow the woman and child, when the hairy-lipped man called to him, “Come on, Handy!” and he obeyed.

She bedded down the child on the cot in the western alcove.

She went and sat down beside Ogion’s pallet, cross-legged on the floor.

She heated milk, and ate bread she found in Ogion’s larder, and came back to sit by him.

Moss, the village witch, fingered the alder stick and the hazel switch by the door and peered in hopefully, but not even she ventured to come in, and Ogion growled from his pallet, “Send ’em away! Send ’em all away!”

Therru came around the house and watched solemnly as Ogion and Tenar went, step by step, and stopping every five or six steps for Ogion to gasp, across the tangled meadow toward the woods that climbed steep up the mountainside from the inner side of the cliff-top.

For a long time he could not move or speak, and his heart, pounding and faltering, shook his body.

“Over,” he whispered with exultation. “All changed!—Changed, Tenar! Wait—wait here, for—”

The mansion house of the Lord of Re Albi stood on an outcrop of rocks on the mountainside above the Overfell.

Early in the morning, long before the sun had cleared the mountain, the wizard in the service of that lord came down through the village; and very soon after, another wizard came toiling up the steep road from Gont Port, having set out in darkness.

Aunty Moss was a dour creature, unmarried, like most witches, and unwashed, with greying hair tied in curious charm-knots, and eyes red-rimmed from herb-smoke.

“Wait, wait,” said Gont Port, with a patting gesture, trying to calm Re Albi’s indignation, and still gazing at Tenar.

They stood over him, alive and full of power, offering no friendship, only contempt, rivalry, anger.

Tenar looked at them, and do what she would, the incredulity on the older man’s face, the contempt on the others, brought out an answering disrespect in her.

To her consternation she saw from their expressions that in fact they had not heard the name, Ogion’s true name; they had not paid attention to her.