The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Let her be eaten!”

The tune was on three notes only, and the word that was repeated over and over was a word so old it had lost its meaning, like a signpost still standing when the road is gone.

The dark seemed to press like wet felt upon the open eyes.

her whisper ran out into the hollow blackness and frayed into threads of sound as fine as spiderweb that clung to the hearing for a long time.

A bit of starlight shone in between tiles of the roof; or the snow came sifting down, fine and cold as those ancient silks that fell to nothing at hand’s touch.

What was hardest for her to think, perhaps, was that she was looking at a stranger.

For we need peace sorely in the world.

The glory of the sky touched his dusty hair, and turned the thistle gold for a little while.

listened to the sea, a few yards below the cave mouth, crashing and sucking and booming on the rocks, and the thunder of it down the beach eastward for miles. Over and over and over it made the same sounds, yet never quite the same. It never rested. On all the shores of all the lands in all the world, it heaved itself in these unresting waves, and never ceased, and never was still. The desert, the mountains: they stood still. They did not cry out forever in a great, dull voice. The sea spoke forever, but its language was foreign to her.

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

All her life she had looked into the dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There was no roof. It went on out beyond the stars. No earthly Powers moved it. It had been before light, and would be after. It had been before life, and would be after. It went on beyond evil.

Most novels about falling in love don’t tell about the marriage, and most novels about growing up don’t tell about the grown-up.

Be that as it may, when I wrote the book, it took more imagination than I had to create a girl character who, offered great power, could accept it as her right and due. Such a situation didn’t then seem plausible to me.

Ged was offered both kinds of power. Tenar was offered only one.

Because to me, fantasy isn’t wishful thinking, but a way of reflecting, and reflecting on reality.