The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page B

this is Master Alder.”
    “Mastalder,” she whispered, quieting suddenly as she included Alder in her consciousness. She shrank, drew into herself, looked down at her feet.
    She had no leather boots on. Her bare legs were coated from the knee down with smooth, brown, drying mud. Her skirts were bunched, caught up into the waistband.
    “You’ve been frogging, have you, Heather?”
    She nodded vacantly.
    “I’ll go tell Aunty,” she said, beginning in a whisper and ending with a bellow, and bolted back the way she had come.
    “She’s a good soul,” Sparrowhawk said. “She used to help my wife. She lives with our witch now and helps her. I don’t think you’ll object to entering a witch’s house?”
    “Never in the world, my lord.”
    “Many do. Nobles and common folk, wizards and sorcerers.”
    “Lily my wife was a witch.”
    Sparrowhawk bowed his head and walked in silence for a while. “How did she learn of her gift, Alder?”
    “It was born in her. As a child she’d make a torn branch grow on the tree again, and other children brought her their broken toys to mend. But when her father saw her do that he would strike her hands. Her family were considerable persons in their town. Respectable persons,” Alder said in his even, gentle voice. “They didn’t want her consorting with witches. Since it would keep her from marriage with a respectable man. So she kept all her study to herself. And the witches of her town would have nothing to do with her, even when she sought to learn from them, for they were afraid of her father, you see. Then a rich man came to court her, for she was beautiful, as I told you, my lord. More beautiful than I could say. And her father told her she was to be married. She ran away that night. She lived by herself, wandering, for some years. A witch here and there took her in, but she kept herself by her skill.”
    “It’s not a big island, Taon.”
    “Her father wouldn’t seek her. He said no tinker witch was his daughter.”
    Again Sparrowhawk bowed his head. “So she heard of you, and came to you.”
    “But she taught me more than I could teach her,” Alder said earnestly. “It was a great gift she had.”
    “I believe it.”
    They had come to a little house or big hut, set down in a dell, with witch hazel and broom in tangles about it, and a goat on the roof, and a flock of white-speckled black hens squawking away, and a lazy little sheepdog bitch standing up and thinking about barking and thinking better of it and waving her tail.
    Sparrowhawk went to the low doorway, stooping to look in. “There you are, Aunty!” he said. “I’ve brought you a visitor. Alder, a man of sorcery from the Isle of Taon. His craft is mending, and he’s a master, I can tell you, for I just watched him put back together Tenar’s green pitcher, you know the one, that I like a clumsy old fool dropped and broke to pieces the other day.”
    He entered the hut, and Alder followed him. An old woman sat in a cushioned chair near the doorway where she could look out into the sunlight. Feathers stuck out of her wispy white hair. A speckled hen was settled in her lap. She smiled at Sparrowhawk with enchanting sweetness and nodded politely to the visitor. The hen woke, cackled, and departed.
    “This is Moss,” said Sparrowhawk, “a witch of many skills, the greatest of which is kindness.”
    So, Alder imagined, might the Archmage of Roke have introduced a great wizard to a great lady. He bowed. The old woman ducked her head and laughed a little.
    She made a circling motion with her left hand, looking a query at Sparrowhawk.
    “Tenar? Tehanu?” he said. “Still in Havnor with the king, so far as I know. They’ll be having a fine time there, seeing all the sights of the great city and the palaces.”
    “I made us crowns,” Heather shouted, bouncing out of the odorous, dark jumble farther inside the house. “Like kings and queens. See?” She preened the chicken feathers that stuck out of