“This unfinished story was written in 1963, in a notebook directly following the first draft of the short story ‘The Rule of Names.’ In both stories, I was approaching Earthsea light-heartedly, without knowing what I was getting into at all. And I wouldn’t find out until I returned to the Archipelago in 1968 to write A Wizard of Earthsea.”
Read Le Guin’s first and final drafts in Issue 7, available now.
Accompanying image by Yvette Gellis. Oil, Earth, Fire, Wind and Water, 2017. Oil, acrylic, graphite, and canvas on canvas; triptych; 83 x 51 1/2 inches. Linked from ARTFIX Daily.
