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Tenar knew that as she had lied to her for the first time, Therru for the first time was going to disobey her. The first but not the last time.
In the end, her disobedience will save them all.
He sat leaning forward a bit, his arms on his knees, as Flint had used to sit, gazing into the fire. They were very alike and entirely unlike, as unlike as a buried stone and a soaring bird.
She found that their company revived her, carried her away from the constant presence of last night’s terror, little by little, till she could begin to look back on it as something that had happened, not something that was happening, that must always be happening to her.
Great description of PTSD
What could you do but lock the doors? But it’s like we’re all our lives locking the doors. It’s the house we live in.”
“Fear,” she said. “What are we so afraid of? Why do we let ’em tell us we’re afraid? What is it they’re afraid of?” She picked up the stocking she had been darning, turned it in her hands, was silent awhile; finally she said, “What are they afraid of us for?”
The child’s voice was like a metal brush drawn across metal, like dry leaves, like the hiss of fire burning.
Wow! Earlier, Kalessin's voice had been "like a metal broom drawn across a gong", but she is still young.
“To where the sun doesn’t rise and the stars don’t set. And back from that place.”
Such a lovely, poetic way to say it
She obeys me, but only because she wants to.” “It’s the only justification for obedience,” Ged observed.
They lay that night on the hearthstones, and there she taught Ged the mystery that the wisest man could not teach him.
Very sweet, human scene
“Now you’re a man indeed,” she said. “Stuck another man full of holes, first, and lain with a woman, second. That’s the proper order, I suppose.”
There’s no mercy in me, only justice. I wasn’t trained to mercy. Love is the only grace I have. 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.”
which led to his taking her into his arms again, and the conversation was not continued in words.
“Hawk” had won their approval with one jab of a pitchfork.
were a little different in quality; there was a size to him, she thought, not height or girth, certainly, but soul and mind.
“It’s all perfectly possible. It just seems so convenient.” Knowing she did not disbelieve him, he lay back and waited. “It’s the kind of thing that happens to a wizard,” she said.
Much like Handy is continually drawn to / happens to come across Therru.
You didn’t make it happen. You didn’t cause it. It wasn’t because of your ‘power.’ It happened to you. Because of your—emptiness.”
Potentiality
They lay in shadow, but it seemed as if the ceiling were a mere veil between them and endless, silver, tranquil depths of light.
What an image
“They do not learn,” he said. “They are.”
Dragons do not learn. They magic is in their being. Therru learns human things, but not magic ... Because it is already part of her being.
If women had power, what would men be but women who can’t bear children? And what would women be but men who can?”
There's a lot packed into that sentence
‘Why are men afraid of women?’” “If your strength is only the other’s weakness, you live in fear,” Ged said.
Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force.” “As children trust their parents,” he said.
"if power were trust ...
“even trust corrupts. The men on Roke trust themselves and one another. Their power is pure, nothing taints its purity, and so they take that purity for wisdom. They cannot imagine doing wrong.”
... “Maybe they need some women there to point that possibility out to them,”
What man am I mourning? Ged the Archmage? Why is Hawk the goatherd sick with grief and shame for him?
“All the greatness of men is founded on shame, made out of it. So Hawk the goatherd wept for Ged the Archmage. And looked after the goats, also, as well as a boy his age could be expected to do.”
As if his life were paused when he went to Roke.
Then the swallows came from the isles under the sun, from the South Reach, where the star Gobardon shines in the constellation of Ending; but all the swallows’ talk with one another was about beginning.
Wow!
CHAPTER 13 THE MASTER
the king’s ships harrying the harriers, driving well-established pirates to ruin, confiscating their ships and fortunes.
Yay!
Ged said with love and pride, “All that a king can do, he will do well.”
Ah, Lebannen, Ged's foster son
wizardly men, who went here and there, seeming to do little and say less.
Sheriffs, tax collectors, nobles, wizards: forces of the king's order
“Then they should look in the manor house of Re Albi!” but her tongue stumbled on the words.
“Crew’s broke up. King’s men took her over.” “But—it wasn’t a pirate ship—” “No.” “Then why—?” “Said the captain was running some goods they wanted,” he said, unwillingly.
Hmmm
“So who’s been running the farm?” he asked. “What’s that to you, son?” she asked him, gently but dryly. “It’s mine,” he said, in a rather similar tone.
Cold. The inner logic of patriarchy passing over the deserving for the continuation of the male line.
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,
truly believed they were managing it all, and shared their belief with him.
The men don't see the work done, only the power, the "who's in charge"
“My turn,” she said to Ged, bitterly, in the starlit darkness of their room. “My turn to lose what I was proudest of.” “What have you lost?” “My son. The son I did not bring up to be a man. I failed. I failed him.”
Parents have only themselves to blame for their child's shortcomings.
“Frightened, I think,” Ged said. “Not wicked. And it is his farm.”
“You can water a stone,” she said, “but it won’t grow.” “You have to start when they’re young and tender,” Ged said. “Like me.” This time she couldn’t laugh.
“I hate to leave her the twenty years I’ve scoured that table. I hope she appreciates it!”
had your father buy that farm, and I helped him clear it and sell it. I’ll take those three pieces, for I’ve earned them. The rest, and the farm, is yours. You’re the master.”
Taking what is hers by right. Low-money economy when every coin has a story.
but as they entered the trees Tenar looked back once at the little meadow as if charging it to keep faith with her happiness there.
To the left were the roofs of Re Albi slanting down toward the cliff’s edge. To the right the road went up to the manor house. “This way,” Tenar said. “No,” the child said, pointing left, to the village. “This way,” Tenar repeated, and set off on the right-hand way.
Aspen's spell pulls her, but Therru's stubborn disobedience saves the day.
You thought you were safe, I suppose, with your king on the throne, and my master, our master, destroyed. You thought you’d had your will, and destroyed the promise of eternal life, didn’t you?”
Aspen's like Cob, servant of deathlessness
this year I’ve been gathering others to me, men who know the true power. From Roke, some of them, from right under the noses of the schoolmasters. And from Havnor,
Other voices said words, but she did not understand words anymore.
So disturbing
CHAPTER 14 TEHANU
The one called Aspen, whose name was Erisen, and whom she saw as a forked and writhing darkness, had bound her mother and father, with a thong through her tongue and a thong through his heart,
We finally see how Therru sees the world
She looked into the west with the other eye, and called with the other voice the name she had heard in her mother’s dream.
Her "other" eye. Her "other" voice. The "other" wind. Great description of magic as a part of the world, not something foreign to it.
“Aunty Moss?” she said, in the voice she had for these people.
She has different voices because she lives in different worlds
The witch lay easier, breathing without pain.
Therru knows true names, like a mage, and just speaking them weakens the curse
She could not speak, but she pointed to the sky above the sea. “Albatross,” he said.
That was her first thought of the dragon, as well
