The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Her tone was always jeering, his answers direct and plain, as if he took her questions in good faith.

They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped.

To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out.

And all doing of magic, all wizardry, hangs still upon the knowledge—the relearning, the remembering—of that true and ancient language of the Making.

But what a wizard spends his life at is finding out the names of things, and finding out how to find out the names of things.”

“To be reborn one must die, Tenar. It is not so hard as it looks from the other side.”

“Alone, no one wins freedom.

“Hospitality,” he said, “kindness to a stranger, that’s a very large thing.

I go where I am sent. I follow my calling. It has not yet let me stay in any land for long. Do you see that? I do what I must do. Where I go, I must go alone. So long as you need me, I’ll be with you in Havnor. And if you ever need me again, call me. I will come. I would come from my grave if you called me, Tenar! But I cannot stay with you.”

And Tenar 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. She did not understand.

My imagination wouldn’t provide a scenario where she could, because my heart told me incontrovertibly that neither gender could go far without the other.