Gifts

♦ 8 ♦

After that nothing could be the same between my father and me, because now there lay between us his demand and my refusal. But his manner to me did not change. He did not return to the matter for several days. When he did it was not to command but to ask almost casually, one afternoon when we were riding back from our eastern boundary: “Are you ready to try your power now?”

But my determination had grown up round me like a wall, a stone tower-keep in which I was protected from his demands, his questions, my own questions. I answered at once: “No.”

My flat certainty must have taken him aback. He said nothing in reply. He said nothing to me as we rode on home. He said nothing to me the rest of that day. He looked tired and stern. My mother saw that, and probably guessed the cause.

The next morning she asked me to come up to her room on the pretext of fitting the coat she was making for me. While she had me standing with my arms stuck out like a straw doll and was going round me on her knees taking out basting stitches and marking buttonholes, she said through the pins in her mouth, “Your father’s worried.”

I scowled and said nothing.

She took the pins out of her mouth and sat back on her heels. “He says he doesn’t know why Brantor Ogge acted as he did. Inviting himself here, and inviting us there, and dropping hints about his granddaughter, and all. He says there’s never been any friendship between Drum and Caspro. I said, ‘Well, better late than never.’ But he just shakes his head. It worries him.”

This was not what I’d expected, and it drew me from my self-absorption. I didn’t know what to say but sought for something wise and reassuring. “Maybe it’s because our domains border now,” was the best I could come up with.

“I think that’s what worries him,” Melle said. She replaced one pin between her lips and set another in the hem of the jacket. It was a man’s coat of black felt, my first.

“So,” she said, removing the pin from her mouth and sitting back again to judge the fit, “I’ll be very glad when this visit’s over with!”

I felt guilt weigh me down, as if the black coat were made of lead.

“Mother,” I said, “he wants me to practice the gift, the undoing, and I don’t want to, and it makes him angry.”

“I know,” she said. She went on adjusting the hang of the jacket, and then stopped and looked at me, up at me, because she was kneeling and I standing. “That’s something I can’t help either of you with. You see that, don’t you, Orrec? I don’t understand it. I can’t meddle in it. I can’t come between you and your father, either. It’s hard, when I see you both unhappy. All I can say to you is, it’s for you, for all of us, that he asks this of you. He wouldn’t ask it if it were wrong. You know that.”

She had to take his part and his side, of course. It was right, and just, but also it was unfair, unfair to me, that all the power should be on his side, all the right, all the reasons, that even she had to be on his side—leaving me alone, a stupid, stubborn boy, unable to use my power, claim my right, or speak my reasons. Because I saw that unfairness, I would not even try to speak. I drew away, into my furious shame, my stone tower, and stood mute inside it.

“Is it because you don’t want to harm creatures that you don’t want to use your power, Orrec?” she asked, quite timidly. Even with me she was timid, humble before this uncanny gift she knew so little of.

But I would not answer her question. I did not nod or shrug or speak. She glanced into my face, then looked back at her work and finished it in silence. She slipped the half-made jacket off my shoulders, held me briefly to her, kissed my cheek, and let me go.

Twice after that, Canoc asked me if I would try my gift. Twice I silently refused. The third time he did not ask, but said, “Orrec, you must obey me now.”

I stood silent. We were not far from the house, but no one else was around. He never tested or shamed me before other people.

“Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

I stood silent.

He faced me, close to me, his eyes blazing, so much pain and passion in his voice that it struck me like the lash of a whip: “Are you afraid of your power or afraid you don’t have the power?”

I caught my breath and cried out, “I am not afraid!”

“Then use your gift! Now! Strike anything!” He flung out his right hand. His left was clenched and held to his side.

“No!” I said, shaking and shivering, holding both my clenched hands to my chest, ducking my head because I could not stand the blaze of his eyes.

I heard him turn and go. His steps went down the path and into the courtyard of the house. I did not look up. I stood staring and staring at a little clump of broom just leafing out in the April sunlight. I stared at it and thought of it black, dead, withered, but I did not lift my hand, or use my voice or my will. I only stared at it and saw it green, alive, indifferent.

After that he did not ask me again to use my power. Everything went on as usual. He spoke to me much as usual. He did not smile or laugh, and I could not look into his face.

I went to see Gry when I could, riding Roanie because I didn’t want to ask if I could ride the colt. A hound bitch at Roddmant had whelped a monstrous litter of pups, fourteen of them; they were well past the weaning stage, but still very funny and foolish, and we played with them a good deal. I was making much of one of them when Ternoc stopped by to watch us. “Here, take the pup,” he said, “take it home with you. We could use a few less, to be sure, and Canoc said he might be wanting a hound or two. That’s a likely young dog, I’d say.” He was the prettiest of the lot, pure black and tan. I was delighted.

“Take Biggie,” Gry said. “He’s a lot smarter.”

“But I like this one. He’s always kissing me.” The puppy obliged, washing my face quite thoroughly.

“Kissie,” Gry said, without enthusiasm.

“No, he’s not Kissie! He’s…” I sought a heroic name and found it.

“He’s Hamneda.”

Gry looked dubious and uneasy, but she never argued. So I carried the long-legged black-and-tan puppy home in a basket on the saddle, and for a little while he was my solace and playmate. But of course I should have heeded Gry, who knew her dogs as no one else could know them. Hamneda was hopelessly backward and excitable. He not only pissed on the floor like any puppy, but soiled anywhere and everywhere, so that he soon had to be forbidden the house; he hurt himself, got between the horses’ feet, killed our best stable mouser and her kittens, bit the gardener and the cook’s little boy, and exasperated everyone with the meaningless, shrill barking and whining he kept up day and night, which grew even worse when he was shut up to keep him out of trouble. He could not learn to do, or not do, anything at all. I was sick to death of him after a halfmonth. I wished I was rid of him, but was ashamed to admit, even to myself, my disloyalty to the hapless, brainless dog.

Alloc and I were to ride with my father one morning up to the high pastures to check on the spring calving there. As usual my father rode Greylag, but this time he told Alloc to take Roanie while I rode the colt. That was a dubious privilege, this morning. Branty was in a vile temper. He tossed his head, he held his breath, he kicked out and tried to bite, he bucked when I mounted, he sidled and backed and embarrassed me in every way. Just as I thought I had him under control, Hamneda burst out from somewhere and came leaping straight at the colt, yapping, a broken leash flailing all about him. I yelled at the dog as Branty reared right up, unseating me. I managed not to fall, and to regain my seat, and to rein the scared colt in, all in a wild flurry. When Branty finally stood still, I looked for the dog and saw a heap of black and tan on the courtyard pavement.

“What happened?” I said.

My father, sitting his horse, looked at me. “Do you not know?”

I stared at Hamneda. I thought Branty must have trampled him. But there was no blood. He lay boneless, shapeless. One long black-and-tan leg lay like limp rope. I swung off the horse, but I could not go nearer that thing lying on the pavement.

I stared up at my father and cried out, “Did you have to kill him?”

“Was it I?” Canoc said, in a voice that turned me cold.

“Ah, Orrec, it was you,” said Alloc, bringing Roanie over closer—“sure enough, you flung out your hand, you were saving the horse from the fool of a dog!”

“I did not!” I said. “I did—I did not kill him!”

“Do you know whether you did or not?” Canoc said, almost jeering, it seemed.

“It was just as when you destroyed the adder, sure enough,” Alloc said. “A quick eye!” But his voice was a little uneasy or unhappy.

People had come into the courtyard from the house and outside, hearing the commotion, and stood staring. The horses fretted, wanting to stand away from the dead dog. Branty, whom I held close at the bridle, was shivering and sweating, and so was I. All at once I turned away and vomited, but I did not let go the reins. When I had wiped my mouth and got my breath, I led Branty to the mounting stone and got back up in the saddle. I could barely speak, but I said, “Are we going?”

And we rode on up to the high pastures, in silence all the way.

That evening I asked where they had buried the dog. I went to the place, out past the midden, and stood there. I could not grieve much for poor Hamneda, but there was a terrible grief in me. When I started back to the house in the late dusk, my father was on the path.

“I’m sorry about your dog, Orrec,” he said in his grave, quiet voice.

I nodded.

“Tell me this: did you will to destroy him?”

“No,” I said, but I did not speak with entire certainty, because nothing was clear or certain to me any more. I had hated the dog for his idiocy, for scaring the colt, but I had not wanted to kill him for it, had I?

“Yet you did.”

“Without meaning to?”

“You didn’t know you were using your gift?”

“No!”

He had turned to walk with me, and we went on towards the house in silence. The spring twilight was sweet and cold. The evening star hung near the young moon in the west.

“Am I like Caddard?” I asked in a whisper.

He took a long time to answer. “You must try to learn the use of the gift, to control it,” he said.

“But I can’t. Nothing happens when I try to use it, Father! I’ve tried and tried— It’s only when I don’t try— when it’s something like the adder—or today—and it doesn’t seem like I do anything—it just happens—”

The words all came at once, the stones of my tower-keep clattering down around me.

Canoc did not reply except with a little sound of compunction. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder as we walked. As we came to the gate, he said, “There is what they call the wild gift.”

“Wild?”

“A gift not controlled by the will.”

“Is it dangerous?”

He nodded.

“What do—what do you do about it?”

“Have patience,” he said, and again his hand was on my shoulder for a moment. “Take courage, Orrec. We’ll find out what we must do.”

It was a relief to know my father was not angry with me, and to be free of that furious resistance to him in myself; but what he had said was frightening enough to leave me little comfort that night. When in the morning he summoned me to go with him, I came readily. If there was something I could do, I would do it.

He was silent and stern that morning. I thought it was all to do with me, of course, but he said as we walked towards the Ashbrook vale: “Dorec came this morning. He says two of the white heifers are missing.”

The heifers were of the old Rodd stock, three beautiful creatures, for which Canoc had traded a big piece of good woodland on our border with Roddmant. He was hoping to build up a herd of those cattle again at Caspromant. The three had been pastured this last month in a bit of fat grassland at the south edge of the domain, near the sheep grazings. A serf woman and her son whose cottage was near that pasture kept an eye on them along with the five or six milch cows she kept there.

“Did they find a break in the fences?” I asked.

He shook his head.

The heifers were the most valuable thing we had, aside from Greylag, Roanie, and Branty, and the land itself.

The loss of two of them would be a hard blow to Canoc’s hopes.

“Are we going to go look for them?”

He nodded. “Today.”

“They might have got up onto the Sheer—”

“Not by themselves,” he said.

“Do you think…” I did not go on. If the heifers had been stolen, there were all too many likely thieves. The likeliest, in that part of the domain, would be Drum or some of his people. But speculation about cattle thieving was a risky thing. Murderous feuds had been started over a careless word, not even an accusation. Though my father and I were alone, the habit of discretion in these matters was strong. We said nothing more.

We came to the same spot we had stopped at days ago, when I first defied him. He said, “Will you—” and stopped, completing his question with an almost pleading look at me. I nodded.

I looked about. The hillside rose gently up, grassy and stony, hiding the higher slopes above it. A little ash tree had got a foothold near the path and was struggling to grow there by itself, spindly and dwarfed, but putting out its leaf buds bravely. I looked away from it. There was an ant hill by the path ahead of us. It was early morning yet, and the big, reddish-black ants were still boiling in and out of the opening at the top, forming lines, hurrying along on their business. It was a large hill, a mound of bare clay standing a foot tall. I had seen the ruins of such insect cities and could imagine the tunnels underground, the complex galleries and passages, the dark architecture. In that instant, not giving myself time to think, I stretched out my left hand and stared at the ant hill and the breath burst from my lips in a sharp sound as I struck with all my will to unmake, undo, destroy it.

I saw the green grass in the sunlight, the dwarf ash tree, the bare brown ant hill, the reddish-black ants hurrying in and out of its narrow mouth, going and coming in straggling columns through the grass and across the path.

My father was standing behind me. I did not turn around. I heard his silence. I could not bear it.

In a passion of frustration, I shut my eyes tight, wishing I need never see this place again, the ants, the grass, the path, the sunlight—

I opened my eyes and saw the grass curl and turn black, the ants stop and shrivel up into nothing, their hill collapsing into dusty caverns. The ground seemed to writhe and boil before me up the hillside with a cracking, splitting rattle, and something that stood before me shuddered and twisted and turned black. My left hand was still out stiff, pointing before me. I clenched it, brought both hands up over my face.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I shouted.

My father’s hands were on my shoulders. He held me against him.

“There,” he said, “there. It’s done, Orrec. It’s done.” I could feel that he was shaking, as I was, and his breath came short.

When I took my hands away from my eyes, I turned my head away at once, terrified by what I saw. Half the hillside before us was as if a whirlwind of fire had swept across it—ruined, withered—a litter of split pebbles on dead ground. The ash tree was a split black stump.

I turned around and hid my face against my father’s chest. “I thought it was you, I thought it was you standing there!”

“What is it, son?” He was very gentle, keeping his hands on me as he would with a scared foal, talking quietly.

“I would have killed you!—But I didn’t, I didn’t mean to! I didn’t do it! I did it but I didn’t will it! What can I do!”

“Listen, listen, Orrec. Don’t be afraid. I won’t ask you again—”

“But it’s no use! I can’t control it! I can’t do it when I want to do it and then when I don’t want to do it I do! I don’t dare look at you! I don’t dare look at anything! What if I—what if I—” But I couldn’t go on. I sank right down on the ground paralysed by terror and despair.

Canoc sat down on the dirt of the path beside me and let me recover myself by myself.

I sat up at last. I said, “I am like Caddard.”

It was a statement and a question.

“Maybe—” my father said, “maybe like Caddard was as a child. Not as he was when he killed his wife. He was mad then. But as a young child, it was his gift that was wild. It wasn’t under his control.”

I said, “They blindfolded him till he learned how to control it. You could blindfold me.”

After I said it, it seemed a crazy thing, and I wanted it unsaid. But I raised my head and looked at the hillside in front of me, a broad swathe of dead grass and withered shrubs, dust and shattered stones, a formless ruin. Any living thing that had been there was dead. All the delicate, coherent, complex shapes of the things that had been there were destroyed. The ash tree was a hideous, branchless stump. I had done that and not known I was doing it. I had not willed to do it, yet I had done it. I had been angry…

I shut my eyes once more. “It would be best,” I said.

Perhaps there was some hope in me that my father would have a different, a better plan. But, after a long time, and in a low voice as if ashamed that it was all he could say, he said, “Maybe for a while.”