Gifts Page 8

  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."

  9

  Neither of us was ready to do what we had spoken of doing or even to think about it yet. There was the matter of the heifers, strayed or stolen. Of course I wanted to ride with him to look for them, and he wanted me with him. So we went back to the Stone House and mounted, along with Alloc and a couple of other young men, and were off without another word about what had happened beside the Ashbrook.

  But all that long day from time to time I would look at the green vales, the willows along the streams, the heather in blossom and the early yellow broom flowers, and up to the blue and brown of the great hills, scanning for the heifers, but at the same time afraid of looking, afraid of staring too hard, of seeing the grass blacken and the trees wither in an invisible flame. Then I would look away, look down, clench my left hand to my side, close my eyes a moment, try to think of nothing, see nothing.

  It was a weary day, fruitless. The old woman who had been charged with guarding the heifers was so terrified of Canoc's anger that she couldn't say anything that made sense. Her son, who should have been watching over them in the pasture near Drummant land, had been up on the mountain hunting hares. We found no break in the fences where the cattle might have got through, but they were old stone fences with palings along the top which could have been easily pulled out and replaced by thieves covering their tracks. Or the heifers, still young and adventurous, might have simply wandered off up one of the glens and be peacefully grazing away somewhere on the vast, folded slopes of the East Sheer. But in that case, it was odd that one of them had stayed behind. Cattle follow one another. The one pretty young cow left, shut up now, too late, in the barnyard, mooed mournfully from time to time, calling her friends.

  Alloc and his cousin Dorec and the old woman's son were left to search the high slopes, while my father and I rode home a roundabout way that took us clear up along our border with Drummant, keeping an eye out for white cattle all the way. Now, as I rode, whenever we were on high ground I stretched my gaze westward looking for the heifers, and thought what it would be like not to be able to do that: not to be able to look: to see only blackness no matter how I looked. What good would I be then? In
stead of helping my father, I would be a burden to him. That thought was hard. I began thinking of things that I would not be able to do, and from that began thinking of things that I would not be able to see, thinking of them one by one: this hill, that tree. The round grey crest of Mount Airn. The cloud over it. The twilight gathering round the Stone House as we rode down the glen towards it. Dim yellow light in a window. Roanie's ears in front of me, turning and flicking. Branty's dark, bright eye under his red forelock. My mother's face. The little opal she wore on a silver chain. I saw and thought of each separate thing, each time with a sharp piercing pain, because all those little pangs, though they were endless, were still easier to bear than the single immense pain of realising that I must not see anything, that I must see nothing, that I must be blind.

  We were both very tired, and I thought perhaps we'd go on saying nothing at least for one more night, that Canoc would put it off till morning (and what would morning mean, when I could not see the light above the hills?). But after our supper, eaten in weary silence, he said to my mother that we must talk, and we went up to her tower room, where a fire was laid. It had been a bright day but a cool one, the windy end of April, and the night was cold. The warmth of the fire was very pleasant on my legs and face. I will feel that when I can't see it, I thought.

  My father and mother were speaking of the lost heifers. I gazed into the fire as it caught and flared, and the weary peacefulness that had taken hold of me for a minute slipped away. Little by little my heart filled up with an immense anger at the injustice of what had befallen me. I would not bear it, I would not endure it. I would not blind myself because my father feared me! The fire leapt up along a dry branch, crackling and sparking, and I caught my breath, turning towards them, towards him.

  He sat in the wooden chair. My mother sat on the cross-legged stool she liked, beside him; her hand lay on his, on his knee. Their faces in the firelight were shadowed, tender, mysterious. My left hand was raised, pointing at him, trembling. I saw that, and I saw the ash tree on the hillside above the brook writhe and its branches blacken, and I clapped both my hands up over my eyes, hard, pressing hard, so I could not see, so I could not see anything but the blurs of color in blackness that you see when you press hard on your eyes.

  "What is it, Orrec?" My mother's voice.

  "Tell her, Father!"

  Hesitantly, laboriously, he began to tell her what had happened. He did not tell it in order, or clearly, and I grew impatient with his clumsiness. "Say what happened to Hamneda, tell what happened by the Ashbrook!" I commanded, pressing my hands to my eyes, closing them tighter, as the awful anger swept through me again. Why couldn't he just say it? He mixed it up and began again and seemed unable to come to the point, to say what it all led to. My mother barely spoke, trying to make sense of all this confusion and distress. "But this wild gift—?" she asked finally, and when Canoc hesitated again, I broke in:

  "What it means is, I have the power of unmaking but I haven't any power over it. I can't use it when I want to and then I do use it when I don't want to. I could kill you both if I looked at you right now."

  There was a silence, and then she said, resisting, indignant,

  "But surely—"

  "No," my father said. "Orrec is telling the truth."

  "But you've trained him, taught him, for years, ever since he was a baby!"

  Her protests only sharpened my pain and rage. "It wasn't any use," I said. "I'm like the dog. Hamneda. He couldn't learn. He was useless. And dangerous. The best thing to do was kill him."

  "Orrec!"

  "The power itself," Canoc said, "not Orrec, but his power—his gift.

  He can't use it, and it may use him. It's dangerous, as he says. To him, to us, to everyone. In time he'll learn to control it. It is a great gift, he's young, in time... But for now, for now it has to be taken from him."

  "How?" Mother's voice was a thread.

  "A blindfold."

  "A blindfold!"

  "The sealed eye has no power."

  "But a blindfold— You mean, when he's outside the house— When he's with other people—"

  "No," Canoc said, and I said, "No. All the time. Until I know I'm not going to hurt somebody or kill somebody without even knowing I'm doing it till it's done, till they're dead, till they're lying there like a bag of meat. I won't do that again. Ever again. Ever." I sat there by the hearth with my hands pressed to my eyes, hunched up, sick, sick and dizzy in that blackness. "Seal my eyes now," I said. "Do it now."

  If Melle protested and Canoc insisted further, I don't remember. I only remember my own agony. And the relief at last, when my father came to me where I sat crouching there by the hearth, and gently took my hands down from my face, slipped a cloth over my eyes, and tied it at the back of my head. It was black, I saw it before he tied it on me, the last thing I saw: firelight, and a strip of black cloth in my father's hands.

  Then I had darkness.

  And I felt the warmth of the unseen fire, as I had imagined I would.

  My mother was crying, quietly, trying not to let me hear her cry; but the blind have keen ears. I had no desire to weep. I had shed enough tears. I was very tired. Their voices murmured. The fire crackled softly.

  Through the warm darkness I heard my mother say, "He's falling asleep," and I was.

  My father must have carried me to my bed like a little child.

  When I woke it was dark, and I sat up to see if there was any hint of dawn over the hills out my window, and could not see the window, and wondered if heavy clouds had come in and hidden the stars. Then I heard the birds singing for sunrise, and put my hands up to the blindfold.

  * * *

  IT'S A QUEER business, making oneself blind. I had asked Canoc what the will was, what it meant to will something. Now I learned what it meant.

  To cheat, to look, one glance, only a glance—the temptations of course were endless. Every step, every act that was now so immensely difficult and complicated and awkward could become easy and natural so easily and naturally. Just lift the blindfold, just for a moment, just from one eye, just take one peek....

  I did not lift the blindfold, but it did slip several times, and my eyes would dazzle with all the brightness of the world's day before I could close them. We learned to lay soft patches over the eyelids before tying the cloth round my head; then it did not need to be tied so painfully tight. And I was safe from sight.

  That is how I felt: safe. Learning to be blind was a queer business, yes, and a hard one, but I kept to it. The more impatient I was with the helplessness and dreariness of being sightless and the more I raged against the blindfold, the more I feared to lift it. It saved me from the horror of destroying what I did not mean to destroy. While I wore it, I could not kill what I loved. I remembered what my fear and anger had done. I remembered the moment when I thought I had destroyed my father. If I could not learn to use my power, I could learn how not to use it.

  That was what I willed to do, because only so could my will act. Only in this bondage could I have any freedom.

  On the first day of my blindness, I groped my way down to the entrance hall of the Stone House and felt along the wall till my hands found Blind Caddard's staff. I had not looked at it for years. My childish game of touching it because I wasn't supposed to touch it had been half my life ago. But I remembered where it was, and I knew I had a right to it now.

  It was too tall for me and awkwardly heavy, but I liked the worn, silken feeling of the place where I grasped it, a little higher than I would naturally have reached. I stuck it out, swept it across the floor, knocked the end of it against the wall. It guided me back across the hall. After that I often carried it when I went outside. Inside the house I did better using my hands to feel my way. Outdoors, the staff gave me a certain reassurance. It was a weapon. If I was threatened, I could strike with it. Not strike with the hideous power of my gift, but a straight blow, simple retaliation and defense. Sightless, I felt forever vulnerable, knowing that an
ybody could make a fool of me or hurt me. The heavy stick in my hand made up for that, a little.

  At first my mother was not the comfort to me she had always been. It was to my father that I turned for unwavering approval and support. Mother could not approve, could not believe that what I was doing was right and necessary. To her it was monstrous, the result of monstrous, unnatural powers or beliefs. "You can take off the blindfold when you're with me, Orrec," she said.

  "Mother, I can't."

  "It is silly to be afraid, Orrec. It's foolish. You'll never hurt me. I know that. Wear it outside if you have to, but not in here with me. I want to see your eyes, my son!

  "Mother, I can't." That was all I could say I had to say it again and again, for she cajoled and persuaded. She had not seen Hamneda's death; she had never gone out along the Ashbrook to see that ghastly, blasted hillside. I thought of asking her to go there, but could not. I would not answer her arguments.

  At last she spoke to me with real bitterness. "This is ignorant superstition, Orrec," she said. "I am ashamed of you. I thought I had taught you better. Do you think a rag around your eyes will keep you from doing evil, if there's evil in your heart? And if there's good in your heart, how will you do good now? 'Will you stop the wind with a wall of grasses, or the tide by telling it to stay?'" In her despair she returned to the liturgies of Bendraman that she had learned as a child in her father's house.

  And when I still held firm, she said, "Shall I burn the book I made you, then? It's no use to you now. You don't want it. You've closed your eyes—you've closed your mind."

  That made me cry out—"It's not forever, Mother!" I did not like to speak or think of any term to my blindness, of a day when I might see again: I dared not imagine it, because I could not imagine what would allow it, and feared false hope. But her threat, and her pain, wrung it out of me.