Tales from Earthsea: "The Bones of the Earth"

by Ursula K. Le Guin
In this fifth book of The Earthsea Cycle, five separate stories show more of the magical land, from when the school for wizards was first established to how the villagers deal with love, sickness, and natural disasters.

Here are links to our lists for the tales in the collection: The Finder, Darkrose and Diamond, The Bones of the Earth, On the High Marsh, Dragonfly
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. ail
    cause physical suffering to and make sick or indisposed
    There was no cure for what ailed him.
  2. jaded
    exhausted
    The mites were bothering her, and she looked scruffy and jaded.
  3. eaves
    the overhang at the lower edge of a roof
    He said a few words against mites, told himself to remember to clean out the nest box as soon as the chicks hatched, and went on to the poultry yard, where Brown Bucca and Grey and Leggings and Candor and the King huddled under the eaves making soft, shrewish remarks about rain.
  4. shrew
    a scolding nagging bad-tempered woman
    He said a few words against mites, told himself to remember to clean out the nest box as soon as the chicks hatched, and went on to the poultry yard, where Brown Bucca and Grey and Leggings and Candor and the King huddled under the eaves making soft, shrewish remarks about rain.
  5. squelch
    walk through mud or swampy land
    He fed them and squelched back to the house with three warm eggs. When he was a child he had liked to walk in mud.
  6. notion
    an odd or fanciful or capricious idea
    When he’d had a dirt floor it hadn’t mattered, but now he had a wooden floor, like a lord or a merchant or an archmage. To keep the cold and damp out of his bones. Not his own notion. Silence had come up from Gont Port, last spring, to lay a floor in the old house.
  7. thoroughly
    in an exhaustive manner
    To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.
  8. querulous
    habitually complaining
    “Who’s to lay this floor?” he said, now merely querulous.
  9. gingerly
    in a manner marked by extreme care or delicacy
    He walked in gingerly. The wood was so smooth it seemed soft to the bare sole.
  10. warp
    yarn arranged lengthways on a loom
    Or do I have to get me a carpet now? A fleecefell, on a golden warp?
  11. pallet
    a mattress filled with straw or a pad made of quilts
    You can sleep in the nook under the west window. There’s an old pallet in the woodhouse.
  12. prospector
    someone who explores an area for mineral deposits
    He had quarreled with his own father, a sorcerer- prospector, over his choice of Ard as his teacher.
  13. bedizen
    decorate tastelessly
    He had seen poor men pay witches a year’s earnings for the promise of a healthy boy, and a rich man touch his gold- bedizened baby’s face and whisper, adoring, “My immortality!”
  14. thwart
    hinder or prevent, as an effort, plan, or desire
    He had seen men beat their sons, bully and humiliate them, spite and thwart them, hating the death they saw in them.
  15. reconciliation
    the reestablishment of cordial relations
    And seeing it, Dulse knew why he had never sought reconciliation with his father.
  16. obstinacy
    resolute adherence to your own ideas or desires
    Then, stammering, guilty at his ingratitude and incredulous at his obstinacy—“Master, I would stay, but my work is on Gont. I wish it was here, with you—”
  17. deign
    do something that one considers to be below one's dignity
    “If you’d deigned to tell him your intentions, he might have sent a message to me.”
  18. stricken
    affected by something overwhelming
    Silence looked stricken. “Was he your friend?”
  19. earnest
    characterized by a firm, sincere belief in one's opinions
    “If you ask me to, I’ll talk,” the young man said, so earnest, so willing to deny his whole nature at Dulse’s request that the wizard had to laugh.
  20. emanation
    something that is emitted or radiated
    He had been trying to reweave one of the Acastan Spells, much broken and made powerless by the Emanations of Fundaur centuries ago.
  21. imbecility
    a stupid mistake
    The necessity of not swearing had been a burden to him in his youth, and for thirty years the imbecility of prentices, clients, cows, and chickens had tried him sorely.
  22. toil
    productive work, especially physical work done for wages
    Together they finally worked it out, a long toil.
  23. sole
    the underside of the foot
    He stepped down from the doorstep onto the dirt so that he could feel the ground with the nerves of his soles, but the mud slimed and fouled any messages the dirt had for him.
  24. larder
    a small storeroom for storing foods or wines
    He put the eggs in the larder, ate an apple quickly because he was hungry, and took up his staff.
  25. forage
    collect or look around for, as food
    But the chickens would have to forage if he stayed away.
  26. disconsolate
    sad beyond comforting; incapable of being soothed
    Though the rain was no more than a misty drizzle now, they stayed hunched up under the henhouse eaves, disconsolate.
  27. invocation
    an incantation used in conjuring or summoning
    And Ard’s long arms stretched out and upward in the invocation of what Dulse would know later was a great spell of Transforming.
  28. awry
    away from the correct or expected course
    Ard spoke the words of the spell awry, as teachers of wizardry must do lest the spell operate.
  29. irrevocable
    incapable of being retracted
    “But you can’t undo this!” he said aloud.
    Ard nodded. “It is irrevocable.”
    Dulse knew no transformation that was irrevocable, no spell that could not be unsaid, except the Word of Unbinding, which is spoken only once.
  30. bequeath
    leave or give, especially by will after one's death
    He let the terrible spell sink down in his mind and be hidden and layered over with a thousand useful or beautiful or enlightening mageries and charms, all the lore and rules of Roke, all the wisdom of the books Ard had bequeathed him.
  31. crude
    devoid of any qualifications or disguise or adornment
    Crude, monstrous, useless, it lay in the dark of his mind for sixty years, like the cornerstone of an earlier, forgotten house down in the cellar of a mansion full of lights and treasures and children.
  32. boggy
    (of soil) soft and watery
    It was small, half mud and reeds, with one vague, boggy path to the water, and no tracks on that but goat hoofs.
  33. bleat
    cry plaintively like a sheep or goat
    No wind. No birdcall. No distant lowing or bleating or call of voice.
  34. slog
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud
    He slogged back up the path through the reeds till he reached dry ground and coarse grass, and heard the buzz of midges and crickets.
  35. distraught
    deeply agitated especially from emotion
    He was so distraught that when he made up his mind to call Silence he could not think of the opening of the spell, which he had known for sixty years; then when he thought he had it, he began to speak a Summoning instead, and the spell had begun to work before he realised what he was doing and stopped and undid it word by word.
  36. preamble
    a preliminary introduction, as to a statute or constitution
    “I think what we have to do,” he said without preamble, “is try to hold the fault from slipping much. You at the Gates and me at the inner end, in the Mountain. Working together, you know. We might be able to. I can feel it building up, can you?”
  37. intolerable
    incapable of being put up with
    He was more and more distracted by whatever it was he sensed in the earth or air, and through him Ogion too felt that gathering, intolerable tension.
  38. bewilderment
    confusion resulting from failure to understand
    There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation.
  39. modesty
    freedom from vanity or conceit
    “My teacher was with me, and his teacher with him,” Ogion said when they praised him. “I could hold the Gate open because he held the Mountain still.” They praised his modesty and did not listen to him.
  40. thrive
    grow vigorously
    The last beans had got big and coarse on the vines; the cabbages were thriving.
Created on Tue Oct 11 16:26:25 EDT 2022 (updated Tue Aug 22 13:03:45 EDT 2023)

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