Gifts aotws-1

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “That they do,” my father said. He spoke pleasantly, though his face was as hard as the stone in his hand.

  “One of these lads is yours, eh?” Ogge said, surveying Alloc and me. The insult was subtle. He certainly knew that Canoc’s son was a boy, not a man of twenty. The implication was that there was no way to tell a Caspro son from a Caspro serf, or so we three took it.

  “He is,” my father said, and did not name or introduce or even look at me.

  “Now that our lands border,” said Ogge, “I’ve had it in mind to come invite you and your lady to visit us at Drummant. If I rode by your house in a day or two, you’d be there?”

  “I will,” Canoc said. “You are welcome to come.”

  “Good, good. I’ll be by.” Ogge raised his hand in a careless, genial salute, wheeled his mare standing, and led his little troop off at a canter along the wall.

  “Ah,” said Alloc with a sigh, “that’s a sweet little yellow mare.” He was as thorough a horseman as my father; the two of them longed and schemed to improve our stable. “If we could put Branty to her in a year or two, what a colt that might be!”

  “And what a price it would carry,” Canoc said harshly.

  He was tense and often sullen from that day on. He told my mother to make ready for Ogge’s visit, and of course she did so. Then they waited. Canoc did not go far from the Stone House, not wanting her to have to receive Ogge alone. It was half a month before he came.

  He brought the same retinue with him, men of his and other lineages of his domain; no women. My father in his stiff pride took that, too, as an insult. He did not let it pass. “I am sorry your wife did not ride with you,” he said. Ogge then made apologies and excuses, saying his wife was much burdened with household cares and had been in ill health.

  “But she looks forward to welcoming you to Drummant,” he said, turning to Melle. “In the old days there was far more riding about and visiting from domain to domain. We’ve let our old Upland customs of cordiality lapse. It’s a different matter down in the cities, no doubt, where you have neighbors all about you thick as crows on carrion, as they say.”

  “Very different,” my mother said meekly, eclipsed by his loud voice and big looming body, which seemed always to contain a repressed threat.

  “And this would be your lad I saw the other day,” he said, suddenly turning on me. “Caddard, is it?”

  “Orrec,” my mother said, since I was voiceless, though I managed a duck of the head.

  “Well, look up, Orrec, let me see your face,” the big voice said. “Afraid of the Drum eye, are you?” He laughed again.

  My heart was beating at the top of my chest hard enough to choke me, but I made myself hold my head up and look into the big face that hung over me. Ogge’s eyes were barely visible under heavy, drooping lids. From those creases and pouches they stared out steady and empty as a snakes eyes.

  “And you’ve shown your gift, I hear.” He glanced at my father.

  Alloc of course had told everybody on our domain about the adder, and it is amazing how fast word travels from place to place in the Uplands, where it seems that nobody speaks to anybody but their closest kin and not often to them.

  “He has,” Canoc said, looking at me not at Ogge.

  “So it ran true, in spite of everything,” Ogge said, in such a warm, congratulatory tone that I could not believe he intended the blatant insult to my mother. “The undoing, now—that’s a power I’d like to see! We have only women of the Caspro line at Drummant, as you know. They carry the gift, of course, but can’t show it. Maybe young Orrec here will give us a demonstration. Would you like that, lad?” The big voice was genial, pressing. Refusal was not possible. I said nothing, but in courtesy had to make some response. I nodded.

  “Good, then we’ll round up some serpents for you before you come, eh? Or you can clear some of the rats and kittens out of our old barn if you like. I’m glad to know the gift runs true”—this to my father with the same booming geniality—“for I’ve had a thought concerning a granddaughter of mine, my youngest son’s daughter, which we might talk about when you come to Drummant.” He rose. “Now you’ve seen I’m not so much an ogre as maybe you’ve been told”—this to my mother—“you’ll do us the honor of a visit, will you, in May, when the roads are dry?”

  “With pleasure, sir,” Melle said, rising also, and she bowed her head above her hands crossed at the fingertips, a Lowland gesture of polite respect, entirely foreign to us.

  Ogge stared at her. It was as if the gesture had made her visible to him. Before that he had not really looked at any of us. She stood there respectful and aloof. Her beauty was unlike that of any Upland woman, a fineness of bone, a quickness, a subtle vigor. I saw his big face change, growing heavy with emotions I could not read—amazement, envy, hunger, hate?

  He called to his companions, who had been gathered around the table my mother had set for them. They went out to their horses in the courtyard, and all went jangling off. My mother looked at the ruins of the feast. “They ate well,” she said, with a hostess’s pride, but also ruefully, for there was nothing left at all for us of the delicacies she had, with much care and work, provided.

  “Like crows on carrion,” Canoc quoted very drily.

  She gave a little laugh. “He’s not a diplomat,” she said.

  “I don’t know what he is. Or why he came.”

  “It seems he came about Orrec.”

  My father glanced at me, but I stood planted there, determined to hear.

  “Maybe,” he said, clearly trying to defer the discussion at least until I should not be there to hear it.

  My mother had no such scruples. “Was he talking of a betrothal?”

  “The girl would be of the right age.”

  “Orrec’s not fourteen!”

  “She’d be a little younger. Twelve or thirteen. But a Caspro through her mother, you see.”

  “Two children betrothed to marry?”

  “It is nothing uncommon,” Canoc said, his tone getting stiff. “It would be troth only. There’d be no marriage for years.”

  “It’s far too young for any kind of arrangement.”

  “It can be best to have these things secure and known. A great deal rides on a marriage.”

  “I won’t hear of it,” she said quietly, shaking her head. Her tone was not defiant at all, but she did not often declare opposition, and it may have driven my father, tense as he was, farther than he would otherwise have gone.

  “I don’t know what Drum wants, but if he proposes a betrothal, it’s a generous offer, and one we must consider. There is no other girl of the true Caspro lineage in the west.” Canoc looked at me, and I could not help but think of how he looked at colts and fillies, with that thoughtful, appraising gaze, seeing what might come of it. Then he turned away and said, “I only wonder why he should propose it. Maybe he means it as a compensation.”

  Melle stared.

  I had to think it out. Did he mean compensation for the three women he might have married to keep his lineage true, the women Ogge had snatched away, driving him, in defiance, to go and get himself a bride who was of no lineage at all?

  My mother went red, redder than I had ever seen her, so that the clear brown of her skin was dark as a winter sunset. She said carefully, “Have you been expecting—compensation?”

  Canoc could be as dense as stone. “It would be just,” he said. “It could mend some fences.” He paced down the room. “Daredan wasn’t an old woman. Not too old to bear Sebb Drum this daughter.” He paced back to us and stood looking down, pondering. “We must consider the offer, if he makes it. Drum is an evil enemy. He might be a good friend. If it’s friendship he offers, I must take it. And the chance for Orrec is better than I could hope.”

  Melle said nothing. She had stated her opposition, and there was nothing else to say. If the practice of betrothing children was new and distasteful to her, the principle of making a good marriage for one’s child, the use of marr
iage for financial and social advantage, was perfectly familiar to her. And in these matters of the amity and enmity between domains and the maintenance of a lineage, she was the foreigner, the outsider, who must trust my father’s knowledge and judgment.

  But I had some ideas of my own, and with my mother there, on my side, I spoke out. “But if I got betrothed to that girl at Drummant,” I said, “what about Gry?”

  Canoc and Melle both turned and looked at me.

  “What about Gry?” Canoc said, with an uncharacteristic pretense of stupidity.

  “If Gry and I wanted to get betrothed.”

  “You’re far too young!” my mother burst out, and then saw where that took her.

  My father stood silent for some while. “Ternoc and I have talked of this,” he said, speaking doggedly, heavily, sentence by sentence. “Gry is of a great line, and strong in her gift. Her mother wishes her to be betrothed to Annren Barre of Cordemant, to keep the lineage true. Nothing has been decided. But this girl at Drummant is of our line, Orrec. That’s a matter of very great weight to me, to you, to our people. It’s a chance we cannot throw away. Drum is our neighbor now, and kinship is a way to friendship.”

  “We and Roddmant have always been friends,” I said, standing my ground.

  “I don’t discount that.” He stood gazing at the despoiled table, undecided for all his decisive speech. “Let it be for now,” he said at last. “Drum may have meant nothing at all. He blows hot and cold at once. We’ll go there in May and know better what’s at stake. It may be I misunderstood him.”

  “He is a coarse man, but he seemed to mean to be friendly,” Melle said. “Coarse” was as harsh a word as she used of anyone. It meant she disliked him very much. But she was uncomfortable with distrust, which did not come naturally to her. By seeing goodwill where there was none, often enough she had created it. The people of the household worked with and for her with willing hearts; the sullenest farmers spoke to her cordially, and tight-mouthed old serf women would confide their sorrows to her as to a sister.

  I couldn’t wait to go see Gry and talk with her about the visit. I had been kept close to the house while we waited on Ogge’s whim, but usually I was free to go where I pleased, once the work was done; so in the afternoon of the next day, I told my mother I was riding over to Roddmant. She looked at me with her clear eyes, and I blushed, but she said nothing. I asked my father if I could take the red colt. I felt an unusual assurance as I spoke to him. He had seen me show the gift of our lineage, and heard me spoken of as a potential bridegroom. It didn’t surprise me when he said I could ride the colt, without reminding me to keep him from shying at cattle and to walk him after I let him run, as he would have reminded me when I was a boy of thirteen, instead of a man of thirteen.

  ♦ 7 ♦

  I set off, like any man, full of cares and self-importance. The colt Branty had lovely, springy gaits. On the open slopes of Long Meadows, his canter was a dipping flow like a bird’s flight. He ignored the staring cattle; he behaved perfectly, as if he too respected my new authority. I was pleased with both of us as we came, still at a canter, to the Stone House of Roddmant. A girl ran in to tell Gry I had come, while I walked Branty slowly round the courtyard to cool him off. He was such a tall, grand-looking horse, he made the person with him feel grand and admirable too. I strutted like a peacock as Gry came running across the yard to greet us with delight. The colt of course responded to her gift: he looked at her with great interest, ears forward, took a step towards her, bowed his head a little, and pushed his big forehead up against hers. She received the salutation gravely, rubbed his topknot, blew gently into his nostrils, and talked to him with the soft noises she called creature talk. To me she said nothing, but her smile was bright.

  “When he’s cooled off, let’s go to the waterfall,” I said, and so when Branty had been established in a stall in the stable with a bit of hay and a handful of oats, Gry and I set off up the glen. A mile or so up the mill creek the two feeders came together in a dark, narrow cleft, and leapt down from boulder to boulder to a deep pool. Cool, ceaseless wind from the falling water kept the wild azalea and black willow bushes nodding. Among them a little bird that sang a three-note song was always hidden, and an ouzel nested by the lower pool. As soon as we got there we went wading, and then ducked under the falls, and climbed the rocks, and swam and scrambled and shouted, and finally clambered up to a high, broad ledge that jutted into the sunlight. There we stretched out to get dry. It was a day of early spring, not very warm, and the water had been icy, but we were like otters, never really feeling the cold.

  We had no name for that ledge, but it had been our talking place for years now.

  For a while we lay and panted and soaked up the sunlight. But I was full of what I had to say, and soon enough began to say it. “Brantor Ogge Drum called on us yesterday,” I informed Gry.

  “I saw him once,” she said. “When Mother took me on a hunt there. He looks like he’d swallowed a barrel.”

  “He’s a powerful man,” I said stuffily. I wanted her to recognise Ogge’s grandeur, so that she would give me due credit for sacrificing my chance to become his son-in-law. But after all, I hadn’t yet told her about that. Now that it was time to tell her, I found it difficult.

  We lay on our bellies on the warm, smooth rock, like two skinny lizards. Our heads were close together so that we could speak quietly, as Gry liked to do. She was not secretive, and could yell like a wildcat, but she liked talk to be soft.

  “He invited us to Drummant in May.”

  No response.

  “He said he wanted me to meet his granddaughter. She’s a Caspro through her mother.” I heard the echo of my father’s voice in mine.

  Gry made an indistinct sound and said nothing for a long time. Her eyes were shut. Her damp hair was tangled over the side of her face that I could see; the other side was pillowed on the rock. I thought she was going to sleep.

  “Are you going to?” she murmured.

  “Meet his granddaughter? Of course.”

  “Be betrothed” she said, still with her eyes shut.

  “No!” I said, indignant but uncertain.

  “Are you sure?”

  After a pause I said, “Yes,” with less indignation, but no more certainty

  “Mother wants to betroth me,” Gry said. She turned her head so that she was looking straight before her, with her chin resting on the stone.

  “To Annren Barre of Cordemant,” I said, pleased with myself for knowing this. It did not please Gry. She hated to know that anyone talked about her. She wanted to live invisibly, like the bird in the black willows. She said nothing at all, and I felt foolish. I said by way of apology, “My father and your father have talked about it.” Still she said nothing. She had asked me, why shouldn’t I ask her? But it was hard to. Finally I forced myself. “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know,” she muttered through closed teeth, her chin on the stone, her gaze straight ahead.

  A fine reward, I thought, for my saying no so staunchly to her question. I was ready to give up Drum’s granddaughter for Gry, but Gry wasn’t willing to give up this Annren Barre for me? That hurt me sorely. I broke out, “I always thought—” Then I stopped.

  “So did I,” Gry murmured. And after a while, so softly her words were almost lost in the noise of the falls, “I told Mother I wouldn’t be betrothed till I was fifteen. To anybody. Father agreed. She’s angry.”

  She suddenly turned over onto her back and lay gazing up into the sky. I did the same. Our hands were close, lying on the rock, but did not touch.

  “When you’re fifteen,” I said.

  “When we’re fifteen,” she said.

  That was all we said for a long time.

  I lay in the sun and felt happiness like the sunlight shining through me, like the strength of the rock under me.

  “Call the bird,” I murmured.

  She whistled three notes, and from the nodding thickets below us came the swe
et, prompt reply. After a minute the bird called again, but Gry did not answer.

  She could have called the bird to her hand, to perch on her finger, but she did not. When she began to come into her full power, last year, we used to play all kinds of games with her gift. She would have me wait in a clearing in the woods, not knowing what I was to see, watching with the hunter’s strained alertness, till all at once, always startling me, a doe and her fawns would be standing at the edge of the clearing. Or I’d smell fox and look all about till I saw the fox sitting in the grass not six feet from me, demure as a house cat, his tail curled elegantly round his paws. Once I smelled some rank odor that made the hair stand up on my head and arms, and saw a brown bear come across the clearing, heavy-footed, soft-footed, without a glance at me, and vanish into the forest. Gry would slip into the clearing presently, smiling shyly— “Did you like that?” In the case of the bear, I admitted that I thought one was enough. She said only, “He lives on the west spur of Mount Airn. He followed the Spate down here, fishing.”

  She could call a hawk down off the wind, or bring the trout of the waterfall pool up to leap in air. She could guide a swarm of bees wherever the beekeeper wanted them. Once, in a mischievous mood, she kept a cloud of gnats pursuing a shepherd all across the bog-lands below Red Cairn. Hidden up in the cairn, watching the poor fellow’s swats and starts and windmilling arms and mad rushes to escape, we snorted and wept with heartless laughter.

  But we had been children then.

  Now, as we lay side by side gazing up at the bright sky and the sprays of restless leaves that nodded across it, the warm rock under us and the warm sun on us, through my peaceful happiness crept the thought that I had come with more than one thing to tell Gry. We had spoken of betrothals. But neither I nor she had said anything about my coming into my power.

  That was more than half a month ago now. I had not seen Gry in all that time, first because I had been going out with my father and Alloc to mend the sheep fences, and then because we had had to wait at home for Ogge’s visit. If Ogge had heard about the adder, surely Gry had. Yet she had said nothing. And I had said nothing.