“It’s too late,” she said, turning back to the kitchen. “Failed, failed.” She could feel the lines in her face, stiff, beside the mouth, between the eyes. “You can water a stone,” she said, “but it won’t grow.”
“You have to start when they’re young and tender,” Ged said. “Like me.”
This time she couldn’t laugh.
They came back to the house from the day’s work and saw a man talking with Spark at the front gate.
“That’s the fellow from Re Albi, isn’t it?” said Ged, whose eyes were very good.
“Come along, Therru,” Tenar said, for the child had stopped short. “What fellow?” She was rather nearsighted, and squinted across the yard. “Oh, it’s what’s his name, the sheep-dealer. Townsend. What’s he back here for, the carrion crow!”
Her mood all day had been fierce, and Ged and Therru wisely said nothing.
She went to the men at the gate.
“Did you come about the ewe lambs, Townsend? You’re a year late; but there’s some of this year’s yet in the fold.”
“So the master’s been telling me,” said Townsend.
“Has he,” said Tenar.
Spark’s face went darker than ever at her tone.
“I won’t interrupt you and the master, then,” said she, and was turning away when Townsend spoke: “I’ve got a message for you, Goha.“
“Third time’s the charm.”
“The old witch, you know, old Moss, she’s in a bad way. She said, since I was coming down to Middle Valley, she said, ‘Tell Mistress Goha I’d like to see her before I die, if there’s a chance of her coming." “
Crow, carrion crow, Tenar thought, looking with hatred at the bearer of bad news.
“She’s ill?”
“Sick to death,” Townsend said, with a kind of smirk that might be intended for sympathy. “Took sick in the winter, and she’s failing fast, and so she said to tell you she wants bad to see you, before she dies.”
“Thank you for bringing the message,” Tenar said soberly, and turned to go to the house. Townsend went on with Spark to the sheepfolds.
As they prepared dinner, Tenar said to Ged and Therru, “I must go."
“Of course,” Ged said. “The three of us, if you like.”
“Would you?” For the first time that day her face lightened, the storm cloud lifted. “Oh,” she said, “that’s-that’s good-I didn’t want to ask, I thought maybe- Therru, would you like to go back to the little house, Ogion’s house, for a while?”
Therru stood still to think. “I could see my peach tree,” she said.
“Yes, and Heather-and Sippy-and Moss-poor Moss! Oh, I have longed, I have longed to go back up there, but it didn’t seem right, There was the farm to run-and all-”
It seemed to her that there was some other reason she had not gone back, had not let herself think of going back, had not even known till now that she yearned to go; but whatever the reason was it slipped away like a shadow, a word forgotten. “Has anyone looked after Moss, I wonder, did anyone send for a healer. She’s the only healer on the Oveffell, but there’s people down in Gont Port who could help her, surely. Oh, poor Moss! I want to go- It’s too late, but tomorrow, tomorrow early. And the master can make his own breakfast!”
“He’ll learn,” said Ged.
“No, he won’t. He’ll find some fool woman to do it for him. Ah!” She looked around the kitchen, her face bright and fierce. “I hate to leave her the twenty years I’ve scoured that table. I hope she appreciates it!”
Spark brought Townsend in for supper, but the sheep-dealer would not stay the night, though he was of course offered a bed in common hospitality. It would have been one of their beds, and Tenar did not like the thought. She was glad to see him go off to his hosts in the village in the blue twilight of the spring evening.
“We’ll be off to Re Albi first thing tomorrow, son,” she said to Spark. “Hawk and Therru and I.”
He looked a little frightened.
“Just go off like that?”
“So you went; so you came,” said his mother. “Now look here, Spark: this is your father’s money-box. There’s seven ivory pieces in it, and those credit counters from old Bridgeman, but he’ll never pay, he hasn’t got anything to pay with. These four Andradean pieces Flint got from selling sheepskins to the ship’s outfitter in Valmouth four years running, back when you were a boy. These three Haynorian ones are what Tholy paid us for the High Creek farm. I had your father buy that farm, and I helped him clear it and sell it. I’ll take those three pieces, for I’ve earned them. The rest, and the farm, is yours. You’re the master.”
The tall, thin young man stood there with his gaze on the money-box.
“Take it all. I don’t want it,” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t need it. But I thank you, my son. Keep the four pieces. When you marry, call them my gift to your wife.”
She put the box away in the place behind the big plate on the top shelf of the dresser, where Flint had always kept it. “Therru, get your things ready now, because we’ll go very early.”
“When are you coming back?” Spark asked, and the tone of his voice made Tenar think of the restless, frail child he had been. But she said only, “I don’t know, my dear. If you need me, I’ll come.
She busied herself getting out their travel shoes and packs. “Spark,” she said, “you can do something for me.”
He had sat down in the hearthseat, looking uncertain and morose. “What?”
“Go down to Valmouth, soon, and see your sister. And tell her that I’ve gone back to the Overfell. Tell her, if she wants me, just send word.”
He nodded. He watched Ged, who had already packed his few belongings with the neatness and dispatch of one who had traveled much, and was now putting up the dishes to leave the kitchen in good order. That done, he sat down opposite Spark to run a new cord through the eyelets of his pack to close it at the top.
“There’s a knot they use for that,” Spark said. “Sailor’s knot.”
Ged silently handed the pack across the hearth, and watched as Spark silently demonstrated the knot.
“Slips up, see,” he said, and Ged nodded.
They left the farm in the dark and cold of the morning. Sunlight comes late to the western side of Gont Mountain, and only walking kept them warm till at last the sun got round the great mass of the south peak and shone on their backs.
Therru was twice the walker she had been the summer before, but it was still a two days’ journey for them. Along in the afternoon, Tenar asked, “Shall we try to get on to Oak Springs today? There’s a sort of inn. We had a cup of milk there, remember, Therru?”
Ged was looking up the mountainside with a faraway expression. “There’s a place I know
“Fine,” said Tenar.
A little before they came to the high corner of the road from which Gont Port could first be seen, Ged turned aside from the road into the forest that covered the steep slopes above it. The westering sun sent slanting red-gold rays into the darkness between the trunks and under the branches. They climbed half a mile or so, on no path Tenar could see, and came out on a little step or shelf of the mountainside, a meadow sheltered from the wind by the cliffs behind it and the trees about it. From there one could see the heights of’the mountain to the north, and between the tops of great firs there was one clear view of the western sea. It was entirely silent there except when the wind breathed in the firs. One mountain lark sang long and sweet, away up in the sunlight, before dropping to her nest in the untrodden grass.
The three of them ate their bread and cheese. They watched darkness rise up the mountain from the sea. They made their bed of cloaks and slept, Therru next to Tenar next to Ged, In the deep night Tenar woke. An owl was calling nearby, a sweet repeated note like a bell, and far off up the mountain its mate replied like the ghost of a bell. Tenar thought, “I’ll watch the stars set in the sea,” but she fell asleep again at once in peace of heart.
She woke in the grey morning to see Ged sitting up beside her, his cloak pulled round his shoulders, looking out through the gap westward. His dark face was quite still, full of silence, as she had seen it once long ago on the beach of Atuan. His eyes were not downcast, as then; he looked into the illimitable west. Looking with him she saw the day coming, the glory of rose and gold reflected clear across the sky.
He turned to her, and she said to him, “I have loved you since I first saw you."
“Life-giver,” he said and leaned forward, kissing her breast and mouth. She held him a moment. They got up, and waked Therru, and went on their way; but as they entered the trees Tenar looked back once at the little meadow as if charging it to keep faith with her happiness there.
The first day of the journey their goal had been journeying. This day they would come to Re Albi. So Tenar’s mind was much on Aunty Moss, wondering what had befallen her and whether she was indeed dying. But as the day and the way went on her mind would not hold to the thought of Moss, or any thought. She was tired. She did not like walking this way again to death. They passed Oak Springs, and went down into the gorge, and started up again. By the last long uphill stretch to the Overfell, her legs were hard to lift, and her mind was stupid and confused, fastening upon one word or image until it became meaningless-the dish-cupboard in Ogion’s house, or the words bone dolphin, which came into her head from seeing Therru’s grass bag of toys, and repeated themselves endlessly.