Scattered among poor desolate farms the clans of the Uplands possess gifts. Wondrous gifts: the ability—with a glance a gesture a word—to summon animals bring forth fire move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb chain a mind inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another. Two young people friends since childhood decide not to use their gifts. One a girl refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other a boy wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill. In this beautifully crafted story Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the proud cruelty of power of how hard it is to grow up and of how much harder still it is to find in the world's darkness gifts of light.
