West Hand

The West Hand is one of the Hands, a pair of lonely islands in the East Reach of Earthsea, known for their steep, forested cliffs and isolated villages. It lies far from the Archipelago, in waters where the Kargad Empire's influence is felt, and its people are poor, rough, and shy, speaking the Hardic tongue but living a life of subsistence fishing and farming. The island's geography is marked by a deep, narrow inlet that ends in a high, blank wall of rock, a dark trap where Ged, in his pursuit of the shadow, finds himself cornered and forced into a desperate physical struggle.

Ged's Arrival and Recovery

After the shadow tricked him onto the rocks of a nameless isle, Ged sailed southward, following the bond that now linked them. He came to the West Hand on a day when storm-clouds were gathering from the north, and he cared little what welcome he got as long as he could find water, fire's warmth, and sleep. The villagers, though awed by a wizard's staff and wary of a strange face, were hospitable to one who came alone over sea before a storm. They gave him meat and drink, the comfort of firelight and human voices, and, best of all, hot water to wash the cold and salt from him, and a bed where he could sleep. He spent three days there, recovering himself and making ready a boat built not of spells and sea-wrack but of sound wood, with a stout mast and sail of her own, so that he might sail easily and sleep when he needed.

Building Lookfar and Helping the Villagers

Ged reinforced the boat's wood with deep-in-woven charms, for he thought he might go far in that vessel. The old man who owned her, for fear and wonder of his wizardry, would have given the boat to Ged, but Ged paid him for it in sorcerers' kind, healing his eyes of the cataracts that were blinding him. The old man, rejoicing, said they had called the boat Sanderling, but told Ged to call her Lookfar and paint eyes aside her prow, so that his thanks would look out of that blind wood and keep him from rock and reef. Other works Ged also did in those days, as his power came back into him. These were such people as he had known as a boy in the Northward Vale of Gont, though poorer even than those, and he knew their bitter wants without having to ask. He laid charms of heal and ward on children who were lame or sickly, and spells of increase on the villagers' scrawny flocks of goats and sheep; he set the rune Simn on their spindles and looms, the boat's oars and tools of bronze and stone, that these might do their work well; and the rune Pirr he wrote on the rooftrees of the huts, which protects the house and its folk from fire, wind, and madness.

The Third Confrontation with the Shadow

Before leaving, Ged sailed into the island's narrow, dark inlet, a place of high cliffs and deep silence, where the shadow had fled. There, in the dead end of the inlet, he turned upon the shadow and seized it with his living hands, but there was nothing he could hold—only darkness, air. The shadow shuddered away from him and fled, formless, down the water towards the bright gate between the cliffs. This third meeting forged between them a bond that had no breaking-point; Ged knew now that his task was never to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun. He sailed out from between the dark cliffs, and on the sea was broad, bright morning, with a fair wind blowing from the north.

Departure and Significance

Ged stayed one more day in the village to teach their young chanter the Deed of Morred and the Havnorian Lay, for very seldom did any Archipelagan ship touch at the Hands, and the villagers craved to hear of heroes. But he was not free, and the next morning he set sail, going straight south over the wide seas of the Reach, for southward the shadow had gone. The West Hand thus served as a crucial waypoint where Ged, after his shipwreck and near-defeat, regained his strength, performed acts of humble wizardry, and faced the shadow for the third time, emerging with a new, unbreakable bond that would lead him to the final confrontation on the Open Sea.