Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page A

of the Sea?” she said. “I can never swim so far.” But she took off her shoes and was walking into the sea to swim, when she heard a cloppity, clop, and over the sand came a great white ox with silver horns. “Come,” says the ox, “climb up, I’ll carry you.” So she climbed on the ox’s back and held its horns, and into the water they went, and the ox swam till they came to the far island.
    The rocks of the island were steep as walls and smooth as glass. “How shall I come to the Well of the Sea?” she said. “I can never climb so high.” But she reached up to try to climb the rocks. A grey goose greater than an eagle came flying down to her. “Come,” says the grey goose, “climb up, I’ll carry you.” So she got up between its wings, and it bore her up to the peak of the island. And there was a deep well of clear water. She dipped her cup in it. And the grey goose bore her back across the sea, while the white ox swam after.
    But when the grey goose set foot upon the sand, he stood up a man, a tall, fine young man. And the strips of her skirt hung from his right arm.
    “I am the baron of the sea,” he said, “and I would marry you.”
    “First I must carry the water to my mother,” the girl said.
    So he and she both mounted the white ox, and they rode back to the village. Her mother lay there in death’s hand. But she swallowed one drop of the water, and raised her head. Another drop, and she sat up. Another drop, and she stood up. Another drop, and she danced.
    “It is the sweetest water of all the world,” she said. Then she and her youngest daughter and the baron of the sea rode away on the white ox to his palace of silver, where he and the girl were married, and the widow danced at the wedding.
    “But the ants,” Gry whispered.
    “Oh, the ants,” said my mother. “So, were the ants ungrateful? No! For they came to the wedding too, all crawling along as fast as they could go, and they brought with them a golden ring, which had lain a hundred years under the ground in their ant hill, and with that ring the young man and the youngest daughter were married!”
    “Last time,” said Gry.
    “Last time?”
    “Last time, you said…you said the ants went and ate all the cakes and sweet things at the older sisters’ wedding.”
    “They did. They did that, too. Ants can do a great many things, and they’re everywhere at once,” my mother said earnestly, and then broke into laughter, and we all laughed, because she had forgotten the ants.
    Gry’s question, “What is a book?” had made my mother think about some matters that had been neglected or ignored in the Stone House. Nobody at Caspromant could read or write, and we counted sheep with a notched stick. It was no shame to us, but it was to her. I don’t know if she ever dreamed of going back home for a visit, or of people of her family coming to the Uplands; it was most unlikely that either should happen; but what about the children? What if her son were to go down into the rest of the world, untaught, as ignorant as a beggar of the city streets? Her pride would not endure it.
    There were no books in the Uplands, so she made them. She glazed fine linen squares and stretched them between rollers. She made ink of oak galls, pens of goose quills. She wrote out a primer for us and taught us to read it. She taught us to write, first with sticks in the dust, then with quills on stretched linen, holding our breath, scratching and spattering horribly. She washed the pale ink out, and we could write again. Gry found it all very hard, and kept to it only through her love for my mother. I found it the easiest thing in the world.
    “Write me a book!” I demanded, and so Melle wrote down the life of Raniu for me. She took her charge seriously. Given her education, she felt that if I had only one book, it should be a holy history. She remembered some of the phrases and language of the History of the Acts and Miracles of Lord Raniu, and told the