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 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.