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There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.
“Dearie, there’s misery enough without going looking for it.”
everywhere Ged had lived, it was without women; so he did the “women’s work” and thought nothing about it. It would be a pity, she thought, if he did think about it, if he started fearing that his dignity hung by a dishcloth.
Who are we? What is it to be a man? Before he had his name, before he had knowledge, before he had power, the hawk was in him, and the man, and the mage, and more—he was what we cannot name. And so are we all.”
She was silent, trying to remember what it was like to have been powerful, to be the Eaten One, the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and then to lose that, throw it away, become only Tenar, only herself. She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless. But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame.
He rose at once. “Lady Tenar, you say you fled from one enemy and found another; but I came seeking a friend, and found another.” She smiled at his wit and kindness. What a nice boy he is, she thought.
Her heart yearned to him. He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it.
She obeys me, but only because she wants to.” “It’s the only justification for obedience,” Ged observed.
Oh, Ged, don’t fear me! You were a man when I first saw you! It’s not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.”
But my soul can’t live in that narrow place—this for that, tooth for tooth, death for life. . . . There is a freedom beyond that. Beyond payment, retribution, redemption—beyond all the bargains and the balances, there is freedom.” “The doorway between them,” he said softly.
So Flint had answered her questions for twenty years, denying her right to ask them by never answering yes or no, maintaining a freedom based on her ignorance; a poor, narrow sort of freedom, she thought.
