Work Text:
Ogion was not looking to take another apprentice.
Then again, he had thought that last time as well. And that time he had taken Ged, and he had not regretted it--apprentices often choose you, and not you them. So when Ged came to him with the girl from Atuan, he said yes. Where else was she to go? She had not wanted Havnor, and no wonder. She would certainly not be welcome on Roke.
All the same, he sighed inwardly. There went his peace and quiet, and his time alone with the fir trees. At least she was a girl; he would not have to teach her to cook.
So Ged left, and he said to her what he had said to young Ged, and asked her to be silent. She was. She drew within herself, self-contained and controlled.
Clearly that was a lesson she had already learned elsewhere. Perhaps he had been selfish, Ogion thought, not thinking what she needed, assuming she was like the young people he had taught before. What could he teach her, then?
Well, she could not really cook. So he taught her that.
And she needed speech, not silence. Ged had begun to teach her Hardic, and Ogion continued his work.
"The dragon-tongue?" she asked, in broken Hardic still. "Ged told me..."
But Hardic must come first--she had to live in this land. Ogion named the things around them for her. Door, fir, sun, chicken, earth. Hand, foot, hair, mouth, eyes. He listened to her repeat them, hearing the words anew in her foreign accent. He asked her to narrate her day: "I am sweeping the floor," or "the hens have laid two new eggs," with many pauses where he helped her find the words. To think he would encourage an apprentice to talk, Ogion thought wryly. But she came along quickly, the words coming easier day by day.
Ged had called her a light, needing a place to burn in peace for a time. Ogion could see her light, though he could not see what her place would be, after this. Tenar, her name was. She would not stay with him for ever, he thought.
The people of Re Albi stared when they saw her. They said nothing to him, of course, but he could see them looking. They had seen Kargish people before during raids, some of them, but they did not know what to do with a young Kargish girl. Still, they respected him, and he had taken her into his house.
One day, he took her with him to Moss's house. The wind was blowing, buffeting the island in great gusts off the sea; the maple leaves were mostly on the ground already, returning to earth. It was dusk, but Ogion knew the path, and Tenar followed quietly in his footsteps.
"Oh, there she is, your new hatchling," Moss said. The room inside smelled of smoke and dried mint, hanging in the windows, and something darker, earthier.
"Hardly a hatchling," Ogion said. "She has brought the Ring of Peace back to Havnor."
"Have you, then," Moss said to Tenar. "Come over to the fire, it's a cold night. Miss your Kargish lands, do you?"
Tenar sat down by the fire, a slim figure with white skin and black hair. "I don't know," she finally said.
"Not so easy to know, I suppose. Me, I've lived here all my life." Moss handed her a bowl of hazelnuts. "Help me shell them, and you can eat while you're shelling."
Tenar did. From that day, she had one more friend, and slowly, slowly, became part of the life of the village.
Winter passed, and spring came. Tenar was impatient for planting.
"It's too wet still," Ogion said, poking the vegetable plot. They were eating barley soup more often than not now, but the first spring onions were poking up their heads from the ground, and they ate them raw, greedy for green stuff. "And too cold. What did you grow, in Atuan?"
"It was not wet. Or cold. No, that's not true; it was cold in the winter." Her face went distant. "We grew...I don't know the name, in Hardic. Small grains." She made a movement as if pouring grains from a hand. "And onions, and cabbage. And apples. Some food was brought to us, too, as offerings."
She was silent then, and Ogion did not press her. She had not spoken much of Atuan before, and Ged had told him little.
They sat together that night by the fire, for the nights were still cold. "On Gont. Do you have..." Tenar made a gesture; it could have meant anything. "Under the earth."
"Do we have your Nameless Ones?" Ogion asked, naming without a name. A log fell over in the fire, and sparks rose. Outside in the darkness, spring rain fell.
She shivered a little, then met his eyes steadily. "Yes."
"All islands are different," Ogion said. "Different people live on them. The words are different, the rocks, the plants, the earth. Yet they all meet at the root."
Tenar nodded. "Yes."
"I do not know your Nameless Ones, though I've read of them. Would you tell me?"
She did. She told him of the priestess, reborn again and again, and eaten each time. She told of the knife dance, showed him her scars from the learning. She told of the dark underground places, of Those who lived there and Their overwhelming presence. The labyrinth, the counted steps, the treasure. The offerings.
"That was an evil thing I did," she said, turning up her young face to him. "The offerings."
"It was. But were you the one who did it? Only you can know that."
She smiled a little. "You speak like a wizard. Like Ged. Though he would have said more."
"I was his teacher."
"And you are my teacher, now." She smiled briefly at him, then stared into the fire for a while. "It was hard to be the one who broke the chain. All those Arhas, down the years. I'm very glad I ran away, but now that Thar is dead and I'm gone, there will be no one who knows the way to the Painted Room. It was a part of me for so long. I don't think it even exists anymore."
Ogion held his tongue. Her words did not seem to need an answer, only a listening ear.
"And now Kossil has all the power. That is all she cares about. And the Nameless Ones...they have no power over me any more. I have not felt them since I came here. It has lightened my heart." She looked at him suddenly, as if thinking he might reproach her, then said, "I took your paring knife and danced the knife dance up on the cliffs in the autumn."
"I hope you did not drop it on the rocks and blunt it," Ogion said dryly.
She looked taken aback, then smiled. "I haven't dropped the knife in a ceremony since I was nine. I enjoyed the dancing, but I felt nothing." Tenar looked thoughtful. "But then, I don't think I would have done it if I had expected to feel anything."
"We do not have your Nameless Ones," Ogion said. "But our roots go deep, too. I will tell you the story of Heleth, my master, and how he stopped the earthquake."
Tenar's face sharpened into focus during the telling, the way it did when she was learning something. He had seen her memorize lists of words that way with very few repetitions.
"You have seen Gont Port." Ogion held his hands to show the two headlands, the town between them. "There is a fault in the earth there. I lived down in the port in those days, working and doing. And then he called me one day and told me of the danger. I had felt nothing, too busy with the surface of things. But he had felt the tension deep in the earth."
The fire had burned down to glowing coals, and the room was dark.
"He called on the earth and the cliffs," Ogion finished the story, "He held fast with them. And he stayed with them."
They were both silent for a space. Finally Tenar said, "If he could go into the darkness to save lives...if that is what your dark places are like, then I will gladly stay here."
"Nummuke," Ogion said. "That is the deep earth and the stones and the cliffs of the island of Gont, in the dragon-tongue."
"Nummuke," Tenar repeated, the word tinged by the accent of Atuan in her mouth. "Thank you."