The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition by Ursula K. le Guin

Author:Ursula K. le Guin [Guin, Ursula K. le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07CRN8NNG
Goodreads: 40024818
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2018-10-24T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

HOME

Most of the people of Valmouth came down to the docks to see the ship from Havnor, when they heard that the King was aboard, the new king, the young king that the new songs were about. They didn’t know the new songs yet, but they knew the old ones, and old Relli came with his harp and sang a piece of the Deed of Morred, for a king of Earthsea would be the heir of Morred for certain. Presently the King himself came on deck, as young and tall and handsome as could be, and with him a mage of Roke, and a woman and a little girl in old cloaks not much better than beggars, but he treated them as if they were a queen and a princess, so maybe that’s what they were. “Maybe it’s his mother,” said Shinny, trying to see over the heads of the men in front of her, and then her friend Apple clutched her arm and said in a kind of whispered shriek, “It is—it’s Mother!”

“Whose mother?” said Shinny, and Apple said, “Mine. And that’s Therru.” But she did not push forward in the crowd, even when an officer of the ship came ashore to invite old Relli aboard to play for the King. She waited with the others. She saw the King receive the notables of Valmouth, and heard Relli sing for him. She watched him bid his guests farewell, for the ship was going to stand out to sea again, people said, before night fell, and be on her way home to Havnor. The last to come across the gangplank were Therru and Tenar. To each the King gave the formal embrace, laying cheek to cheek, kneeling to embrace Therru. “Ah!” said the crowd on the dock. The sun was setting in a mist of gold, laying a great gold track across the bay, as the two came down the railed gangplank. Tenar lugged a heavy pack and bag; Therru’s face was bent down and hidden by her hair. The gangplank was run in, and the sailors leapt to the rigging, and the officers shouted, and the ship Dolphin turned on her way. Then Apple made her way through the crowd at last.

“Hello, Mother,” she said, and Tenar said, “Hello, Daughter.” They kissed, and Apple picked up Therru and said, “How you’ve grown! You’re twice the girl you were. Come on, come on home with me.”

But Apple was a little shy with her mother, that evening, in the pleasant house of her young merchant husband. She gazed at her several times with a thoughtful, almost a wary look. “It never meant a thing to me, you know, Mother,” she said at the door of Tenar’s bedroom—“all that—the Rune of Peace—and you bringing the Ring to Havnor. It was just like one of the songs. A thousand years ago! But it really was you, wasn’t it?”

“It was a girl from Atuan,” Tenar said. “A thousand years ago. I think I could sleep for a thousand years, just now.

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