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 anybody 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.
“How long, then?”
“I don’t know. Until I learn—” But I didn’t know what to say. How was I to learn to use a gift I couldn’t use? Hadn’t I been trying to, all my life?
“You’ve learned all your father could teach you,” she said. “Learned it only too well.” She stood up then and left me without another word. I heard the soft swish as she threw her shawl over her shoulders, and her steps going out of the hall.
She was not of the unyielding temper that could hold such anger long. That night as we said goodnight I could hear in her voice her sweet rueful smile as she whispered, “I won’t burn your book, dear son. Or your blindfold.” And from then on she did not plead and made no more protest, but took my blindness as a fact and helped me as she could.
The best way I found to be blind was to try to act as if I could see: not to creep and feel my way about, but to step out, knock my face against the wall if I met a wall, and fall if I fell. I learned my ways about the house and yards and kept to them, but used them freely, going outdoors as often as I could. I saddled and bridled good Roanie, who was patient with my fumbling as she had been patient with it when I was five, and mounted her and let her take me where she thought best. Once in the saddle and out of the echoes of the walls of the stable yard, there was nothing to guide me at all; I might be on the hillsides or the highlands or the moon for all I knew. But Roanie knew where we were, and also knew I was not the thoughtless, fearless rider I had been. She looked after me, and brought me home.
“I want to go to Roddmant,” I said, after my eyes had been sealed a halfmonth or longer. “I want to ask Gry to give me a dog.” I had to get up my determination to say that, for poor Hamneda and the horrible thing I had made of him were in my mind as if branded into it. But the thought of having a dog to aid my blindness had come to me the night before, and I knew it was a good one. And I longed to talk with Gry.
“A dog,” Canoc said with surprise, but Melle understood at once, and said, “That’s a good idea. I’ll ride—” I
