Free Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin Page B

you’re fifteen,” I said.
    “When we’re fifteen,” she said.
    That was all we said for a long time.
    I lay in the sun and felt happiness like the sunlight shining through me, like the strength of the rock under me.
    “Call the bird,” I murmured.
    She whistled three notes, and from the nodding thickets below us came the sweet, prompt reply. After a minute the bird called again, but Gry did not answer.
    She could have called the bird to her hand, to perch on her finger, but she did not. When she began to come into her full power, last year, we used to play all kinds of games with her gift. She would have me wait in a clearing in the woods, not knowing what I was to see, watching with the hunters strained alertness, till all at once, always startling me, a doe and her fawns would be standing at the edge of the clearing. Or I’d smell fox and look all about till I saw the fox sitting in the grass not six feet from me, demure as a house cat, his tail curled elegantly round his paws. Once I smelled some rank odor that made the hair stand up on my head and arms, and saw a brown bear come across the clearing, heavy-footed, soft-footed, without a glance at me, and vanish into the forest. Gry would slip into the clearing presently, smiling shyly—“Did you like that?” In the case of the bear, I admitted that I thought one was enough. She said only, “He lives on the west spur of Mount Airn. He followed the Spate down here, fishing.”
    She could call a hawk down off the wind, or bring the trout of the waterfall pool up to leap in air. She could guide a swarm of bees wherever the beekeeper wanted them. Once, in a mischievous mood, she kept a cloud of gnats pursuing a shepherd all across the boglands below Red Cairn. Hidden up in the cairn, watching the poor fellows swats and starts and windmilling arms and mad rushes to escape, we snorted and wept with heartless laughter.
    But we had been children then.
    Now, as we lay side by side gazing up at the bright sky and the sprays of restless leaves that nodded across it, the warm rock under us and the warm sun on us, through my peaceful happiness crept the thought that I had come with more than one thing to tell Gry. We had spoken of betrothals. But neither I nor she had said anything about my coming into my power.
    That was more than half a month ago now. I had not seen Gry in all that time, first because I had been going out with my father and Alloc to mend the sheep fences, and then because we had had to wait at home for Ogge’s visit. If Ogge had heard about the adder, surely Gry had. Yet she had said nothing. And I had said nothing.
    She was waiting for me to speak, I thought. And then I thought maybe she was waiting for me to show my power. To display it, as she had done so simply and easily, whistling to the bird. But I can’t, I thought, all the warmth draining out of me, my peacefulness lost. I can’t do it. At once I got angry, demanding, Why do I have to do it? Why do I have to kill something, ruin it, destroy it? Why is that my gift? I won’t, I won’t do it!—But all you have to do is untie a knot, a colder voice said in me. Have Gry tie a hard knot in a bit of ribbon, and then undo it with a glance. Anyone with the gift can do that. Alloc can do that—And the angry voice repeated, I won’t, I don’t want to, I won’t!
    I sat up and put my head in my hands.
    Gry sat up beside me. She scratched at a nearly healed scab on her thin brown leg, and spread out her thin brown toes fanwise for a minute. I was deep in my own sudden fear and anger, yet was aware that she wanted to say something, that she was bringing herself to speak.
    “I went with Mother to Cordemant last time,” she said.
    “You saw him then.”
    “Who?”
    “That Annren.”
    “Oh, I’ve seen him before,” she said, utterly dismissing that subject. “It was for a big hunt. Elk. They wanted us to bring the herd that comes down the Renny from Airnside. They had six crossbowmen. Mother