Many of you may not be familiar with this - though all should be. On the isle of Roke, in the archipelago of
Earthsea, there is a Forest called the Immanent Grove. This is a Forest that no Forestal can think upon without unrestrainable joy! Following are a few things that have been written about these most wonderous trees!
"If the Grove were cut, all wizardry would fail. The roots of those trees are the roots of knowledge. The patterns the shadows of their leaves make in the sunlight write the words Segoy spoke in the Making."
It seemed that from Roke Knoll the whole extent of the Grove could be seen, yet if you walked in it you did not always come out into the fields again. You walked on under the trees. In the inner Grove they were all of one kind, which grew nowhere else, yet had no name in Hardic but "tree." In the Old Speech, Ember said, each of those trees had its own name. You walked on, and after a time you were walking again among familiar trees, oak and beech and ash, chestnut and walnut and willow, green in spring and bare in winter; there were dark firs, and cedar, and a tall evergreen Medra did not know, with soft reddish bark and layered foliage. You walked on, and the way through the trees was never twice the same. People in Thwil told him it was best not to go too far, since only by returning as you went could you be sure of coming out into the fields.
"How far does the forest go?" Medra asked, and Ember said, "As far as the mind goes."
The leaves of the trees spoke, she said, and the shadows could be read. "I am learning to read them," she said.
So for half a month or more of the hot days of summer, Irian slept in the Otter's House, which was a peaceful one, and ate what the Master Patterner brought her in his basket - eggs, cheese, greens, fruit, smoked mutton - and went with him every afternoon into the grove of high trees, where the paths seemed never to be quite where she remembered them, and often led on far beyond what seemed the confines of the wood.
...
When she asked about the Grove, he told her that, with Roke Knoll, it had stood since Segoy made the islands of the world, and that all magic was in the roots of the trees, and that they were mingled with the roots of all the forests that were or might yet be. "And sometimes the Grove is in this place," he said, "and sometimes in another. But it is always."
Unlike the Forests of the Land, the Immanent Grove has never been threatened, so there has been no need for a Forestal. But centuries ago, a woman began to learn what the trees were saying. She understood the trees more than any wood have imagined a human could. Since then, there has been a succession of humans living there, each taught by the previous. They are called Master Patterners, and they learn meaning and intent from the trees. The last Patterner came to the Grove in this way:
"The Patterner isn't a Northerner, he's a Karg. Like my wife. He was a warrior of Karego-At. The only man I know of who ever came from those lands to Roke. The Kargs have no wizards. They distrust all sorcery. But they've kept more knowledge of the Old Powers of the Earth than we have. This man, Azver, when he was young, he heard some tale of the Immanent Grove, and it came to him that the center of all the earth's powers must be there. So he left his gods and his native tongue behind him and made his way to Roke. He stood on our doorstep and said, 'Teach me to live in that forest!' And we taught him, till he began to teach us...So he became our Master Patterner. He's not a gentle man, but he is to be trusted."
The equivalent of the Immanent Grove in the Earth of the Land is, of course,
Elemesnedene. It may not be a Forest (though there are forests there), but there is kinship. Consider the following conversation:
"Where are we going?"
"Going?" replied Daphin lightly. "We are not 'going' at all. We merely walk." When Linden stared at her, she continued, "This is Elemesnedene itself. Here there is no other 'where' to which we might go."
Deliberately, Linden exaggerated her surface incomprehension. "There has to be. We're moving. My friends are somewhere else. How will we get back to them? How will we find that Elohimfest Chant mentioned?"
"Ah, Sun-Sage," Daphin chuckled. Her laugh sounded like a moonrise in this place which had neither moon nor sun. "In Elemesnedene all ways are one. We will meet with your companions when that meeting has ripened. And there will be no need to seek the place of the Elohimfest. It will be held at the center, and in Elemesnedene all places are the center. We walk from the center to the center, and where we now walk is also the center."
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Mongo like Tehanu! But it is different from the trilogy, in it's own way, 4 reasons I can't disclose w/o spoiling...
