Free Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

creature talk. To me she said nothing, but her smile was bright.
    “When he’s cooled off, let’s go to the waterfall,” I said, and so when Branty had been established in a stall in the stable with a bit of hay and a handful of oats, Gry and I set off up the glen. A mile or so up the mill creek the two feeders came together in a dark, narrow cleft, and leapt down from boulder to boulder to a deep pool. Cool, ceaseless wind from the falling water kept the wild azalea and black willow bushes nodding. Among them a little bird that sang a three-note song was always hidden, and an ouzel nested by the lower pool. As soon as we got there we went wading, and then ducked under the falls, and climbed the rocks, and swam and scrambled and shouted, and finally clambered up to a high, broad ledge that jutted into the sunlight. There we stretched out to get dry. It was a day of early spring, not very warm and the water had been icy, but we were like otters, never really feeling the cold.
    We had no name for that ledge, but it had been our talking place for years now.
    For a while we lay and panted and soaked up the sunlight. But I was full of what I had to say, and soon enough began to say it. “Brantor Ogge Drum called on us yesterday,” I informed Gry.
    “I saw him once,” she said. “When Mother took me on a hunt there. He looks like he’d swallowed a barrel.”
    “He’s a powerful man,” I said stuffily. I wanted her to recognise Ogge’s grandeur, so that she would give me due credit for sacrificing my chance to become his son-in-law. But after all, I hadn’t yet told her about that. Now that it was time to tell her, I found it difficult.
    We lay on our bellies on the warm, smooth rock, like two skinny lizards. Our heads were close together so that we could speak quietly, as Gry liked to do. She was not secretive, and could yell like a wildcat, but she liked talk to be soft.
    “He invited us to Drummant in May.”
    No response.
    “He said he wanted me to meet his granddaughter. She’s a Caspro through her mother.” I heard the echo of my father’s voice in mine.
    Gry made an indistinct sound and said nothing for a long time. Her eyes were shut. Her damp hair was tangled over the side of her face that I could see; the other side was pillowed on the rock. I thought she was going to sleep.
    “Are you going to?” she murmured.
    “Meet his granddaughter? Of course.”
    “Be betrothed,” she said, still with her eyes shut.
    “No!” I said, indignant but uncertain.
    “Are you sure?”
    After a pause I said, “Yes,” with less indignation, but no more certainty.
    “Mother wants to betroth me,” Gry said. She turned her head so that she was looking straight before her, with her chin resting on the stone.
    “To Annren Barre of Cordemant,” I said, pleased with myself for knowing this. It did not please Gry. She hated to know that anyone talked about her. She wanted to live invisibly, like the bird in the black willows. She said nothing at all, and I felt foolish. I said by way of apology, “My father and your father have talked about it.” Still she said nothing. She had asked me, why shouldn’t I ask her? But it was hard to. Finally I forced myself. “Are you going to?”
    “I don’t know,” she muttered through closed teeth, her chin on the stone, her gaze straight ahead.
    A fine reward, I thought, for my saying no so staunchly to her question. I was ready to give up Drums granddaughter for Gry, but Gry wasn’t willing to give up this Annren Barre for me? That hurt me sorely. I broke out, “I always thought—”Then I stopped.
    “So did I,” Gry murmured. And after a while, so softly her words were almost lost in the noise of the falls, “I told Mother I wouldn’t be betrothed till I was fifteen. To anybody. Father agreed. She’s angry.”
    She suddenly turned over onto her back and lay gazing up into the sky. I did the same. Our hands were close, lying on the rock, but did not touch.
    “When