That went without saying, and Sparrowhawk asked nothing on that score but he asked about Alder's training. A witch's child, then, had a mother or two mothers, but no father. Far more often two of them lived their lives together, and that was called witch-marriage or she-troth. Though seldom celibate, witches seldom kept company more than a night or two with any man, and it was a rare thing for a witch to marry a man. She made a living, and trained her son as well as she could, and saved enough to prentice him to the sorcerer who gave him his true name. Blackberry learned spells and could do the most ordinary kind of witchery she had no real gift for it, but she had a way about her that was almost as good as the gift itself. Many women and men with such a blemish or difference about them become witches or sorcerers perforce, "marked for it," people say. She had a birthmark, a red stain from the right eyebrow and ear clear down over her shoulder. Elini, however, is just a market town in the hills, with no music about it, Alder said and his mother was a poor woman, though not, as he put it, hungry poor. The best harps in Earthsea are made on Taon, and there are schools of music there, and many famous singers of the Lays and Deeds were born or learned their art there. Excerpt from The Other Wind Chapter 1 Sparrowhawk asks his visitor, Alder, about himself.
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