Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  The people laughed a little, and the darkest one said in a high, soft voice, “Bedding.”

  They looked behind them then, and went away quickly and quietly. Somebody else was there. I felt one little chill of fear. At first I couldn’t see the person clearly in that twilight of the crawl-space; then I saw it was Tarweed.

  “You never ride horses any more, Flicker,” he said.

  “Riding is for the young, Tarweed,” I said.

  “Are you old?”

  “Nearly forty years old.”

  “And you don’t miss riding?”

  He was teasing me, as people had teased me once about being in love with the roan horse.

  “No, I don’t miss that.”

  “What do you miss?”

  “My child that died.”

  “Why should you miss him?”

  “He is dead.”

  “So am I,” said Tarweed. And so he was. He had died five years ago.

  So I knew then what it was I missed, what I wanted. It was only not to be shut into the House of Earth. I did not have to go in and out the doors, if only I could see those who did. There was Tarweed, and he laughed a little, like the mice.

  He did not say anything more, but watched me in the shadows. When I was done with the work, he was gone. When I left the barn I saw the barn owl high up on a rafter, sleeping.

  I went home to Milk’s household. I told her at supper about Tarweed and the mice.

  She listened, and began to cry a little. She was weak since the stroke and her fierceness sometimes turned to tears. She said, “You were always ahead of me, going ahead of me!”

  I had never known that she envied me. It made me sad to know it, and yet I wanted to laugh at the way we waste our feelings. “Somebody has to open the door!” I said. I showed her the people who were coming into the room, the kind of people I used to see when I was a young child. I knew they were indeed my kin, but I did not know who they were. I asked Milk, “Who are they?”

  She was bewildered at first, and could not see well, and complained. The people began to speak, and she to answer. Sometimes they spoke this language and sometimes I did not understand what they said; but she answered them eagerly.

  When she grew tired, they went away quietly, and I helped her to bed. As she began to go to sleep I saw a little child come and lie down beside her. She put her arms around it. Every night after that until Milk died in the winter the child came to her bed to sleep.

  Once I spoke of it, saying, “Your daughter.” Milk looked at me with that whipping look in her one good eye. She said, “Not my daughter. Yours.”

  So I keep that house now with the daughter I never bore, the child of my first love, and with others of my family. Sometimes when I sweep the floor of that house I see the dust in a shaft of sunlight, dancing in curves and spirals, flickering.

  NOTES:

  vetulou

  A game a little like polo, played on horseback, with an openwork wicker ball scooped and thrown by long-handled wicker scoops; see the section “Playing” in the Back of the Book.

  sevai

  Sevai means sheathed. It was a congenital degenerative condition, affecting the motor nerves and eventually involving the sympathetic nervous system. Evidently related to residual ancient industrial toxins in soil and water, in some regions of the planet it was not very common; in others it was. In the Valley as many as one in four human conceptions was stillborn due to sevai, and animals were similarly affected. As Flicker says, the later the condition declared itself the slower and milder its progress, but always tending inexorably towards incapacity, blindness, paralysis, and death.

  scholar

  Ayash means both teacher and student, learner and learned person, as does our word scholar. The scholars of a heyimas were women and men with a religious or intellectual bent; they kept that House.

  …living in both Towns…

  An unusual image for the two Arms of the World, the Five Houses of Earth and the Four Houses of Sky.

  SOME BRIEF VALLEY TEXTS

  OWL, COYOTE, SOUL.

  From the Library in Wakwaha.

  Owl was flying in darkness. Its wings made no sound. There was no sound. Owl said itself to itself: “hu, hu, hu, hu.” Owl hears itself; that makes sound be; sound comes into time then, four times.

  Sound circles out on the waters of darkness, the airs of darkness, gyring outward from the open mouth of the owl. Like scum and broken twigs and wings of insects on pond water, things come to be, pushed by the circles moving outward. Near the owl’s mouth the sound is strong and things move quickly and firmly and are distinct and strong. Moving outward the circles grow large and weak, and things out there are slow and mixed and broken. But the owl flew on and went flying on, listening, hunting. One is not all, nor once always. Owl is not all, but only owl.

  Coyote was going along in the darkness very sad, lonesome. There was nothing to eat in the darkness, nothing to see, no way. Coyote sat down in the darkness and howled: “yau, yau, yau, yau, yau.” Coyote hears herself; that makes death be; death comes into time then, five times.

  Death shines. Death makes shining. Death makes brightness in water, brightness in air, brightness in being. Near Coyote’s heart the shining is strong and things grow strong and warm and take fire. Farther outward things are burnt, weak, dim, and cold. Coyote went on and goes along, hunting live things, eating dead things. Coyote is not life or death, but only coyote.

  Soul singing and shining goes outward towards the cold and dark. Soul silent and cold comes inward to the shining, to the singing at the fire. Owl flies without sound; coyote goes in darkness; soul listens and holds still.

  Kesh Music Notation

  PERSON AND SELF.

  An offering by Old Jackrabbit of Telina-na to his heyimas, the Serpentine.

  They say in the Grass singing: The universe is, and all there is is inside that house of houses.

  Well, is the universe then a person? We speak as if to a person, saying, “Heya!” to a stone, saying to the sun rising, “Heya! Holy! I greet you!” We cry out as if to a person when alone in the wilderness we cry, “Bless me as I bless you, help me in my weakness!” Whom do we greet? Whom do we bless? Who helps?

  Maybe in all things there is one person, one spirit whom we greet in the rock and the sun and trust in all things to bless and help. Maybe the oneness of the universe manifests that one spirit and the oneness of each being of the many kinds is a sign or symbol of that one person. Maybe so. People who say it is so call that person the self of all selves or the other of all others, the one eternal, the god. The lazyminded may say that inside the rock a spirit lives, inside· the sun a fiery person lives, but these say that in the universe the god lives as a human lives in a house or a coyote in the wilderness, having made it, keeping it in order. These people believe. They are not lazyminded.

  Some other people are better at thinking than at believing, and they wonder and ask who it is that we greet, that we bless, that we ask for blessing. Is it the rock itself, the sun itself, all things in themselves? Maybe so. After all, we live in this house which makes itself and keeps itself. Why should a soul be afraid in its own house? There are no strangers. The walls are life, the doors are death; we go in and out at our work.

  I think it is one another whom we greet, and bless, and help. It is one another whom we eat. We are gatherer and gathered. Building and unbuilding, we make and are unmade; giving birth and killing, we take hands and let go. Thinking human people and other animals, the plants, the rocks and stars, all the beings that think or are thought, that are seen or see, that hold or are held, all of us are beings of the Nine Houses of Being, dancing the same dance. It is with my voice that the blue rock speaks, and the word I speak is the name of the blue rock. It is with my voice that the universe speaks, and the word I hear it speak when I listen is myself. Being is praise. I do not know what there is to believe.

  So I think that, frightened, I will trust; weak, I will bless; suffering, I wil
l live. I think it is this way: having asked for help, I will be silent, listening. I will serve no person, and lock no door. So I think I will live in the Valley as best I can, and so die here, coming in the open door.

  A LIST OF THINGS THAT WILL BE NEEDED FOUR DAYS FROM NOW.

  Found on a scrap of husk-paper in a pasture near the heyimas of Ounmalin.

  Very prickly round objects such as certain seedpods.

  Some pieces of broken red unglazed pottery.

  Fine copper wire rolled around a wooden spool.

  Artificial or found cylindrical objects with at least one flared end, not pierced.

  Writing or markings of ink on thick paper.

  Small disks that reflect light.

  Chia seeds, or dead ants.

  A young donkey.

  Rain.

  CROWS, GEESE, ROCKS.

  Some remarks made by an old man of the Serpentine of Kastoha·na, Walnut of Bridge End House, in conversation with the Editor, and recorded with his permission.

  You can tell by the way crows walk that they’re in touch with things you need to know. But they don’t want to tell them.

  When you see geese walking you’d think they didn’t know anything, wouldn’t you? But when you see them flying, or when you listen to them on the water in their flocks and towns, talking, and they still keep talking all the time they fly—they talk as much as people do, and know more about the other side of the hills—when you see them flying, that writing, then you wish you could read it!

  Not all rocks are equally sensitive. Most basalt doesn’t pay attention. It isn’t listening. It’s still thinking about the fire in the dark, perhaps. Serpentine rock is always sensitive. It’s from both the water and the fire, it moved and flowed through other rocks to come to the air, and it’s always on the point of breaking up, coming apart, turning into dirt. Serpentine listens, and speaks. Flint is a strange rock. It stays locked up. Sandstone is a rock for the hands, they understand one another. We don’t have limestone here in the Valley; the Finders bring pieces of it in. What I have seen of it is mortal and intellectual—it is a rock made out of lives. They say that where the land is made of limestone the rivers run through it in caves underground and don’t come out into the shining. That would be strange. I’d like to see such caves. Granite from the Range of Light is a community of rocks, very beautiful and powerful. When the mica is in it, glittering, like light on the sea, that is a wonderful thing. Obsidian is glass, of course, and so are pumice and the ashrock from around Ama Kulkun. They have the character of glass, the edge and flow, and they hold light. They are dangerous rocks.

  In general, rocks aren’t living in the same way or at the same pace that we are. But you can find a rock, maybe a big boulder, maybe a little agate in a streambed, and by looking carefully at it, touching it or holding it, listening to it, or by a little talking and singing, a small ceremony, or being still and quiet with it, you can enter into the rock’s soul to some extent and the rock can enter into yours, if it’s disposed to. Most rocks live a long time. They’ve lived a long time before we pass them, and they’ll live a long time after. Some of them are very old, grandchildren of the coming to be of the earth and sun. If there were nothing else to be known from them that would be enough, their long age of being. But there is much other knowledge in rocks, there are things that can be understood only with the help of rocks. They will help people who handle and study and work with them with pleasure and respect, with mindfulness.

  THE BLACK BEETLE SOUL.

  From the Library of the Black Adobe Lodge in Sinshan.

  There are the souls that most people have heard about, and that superstitious people will tell you about, talking away; but the more the mind seeks to know certainly about the souls, the harder it gets to say anything about them at all. It is hard to know a soul; it is the knower knowing knowing. Images are knowledge of the soul. Words are images of images. The deepest of the souls has this image: it smells of the underground, and is like a beetle, a mole, or a dark worm. Sometimes it is called the black beetle soul, or the dark string, or the death soul. It is not a shadow or image of the body, any more than the body alive or dead is an image of it. It eats shit and shits food. While other souls and their body are awake it usually sleeps, and it is waking up while they go to sleep; they pass each other then, but do not turn their heads. While the body is dying, the death-soul is coming alive. It is what forgets. It makes mistakes, accidents, and many dreams. They say it inhabits the basements of the Nine Houses. It receives its body very tenderly at death and takes it into the dark. When rain falls on the ashes of the cremated body, the death soul may come up into the air. It is blind, and immensely wealthy. If you go down into its dwelling-places you will be given much. The problem is how to carry it back with you. When you speak to the deep soul you must shut your eyes; when you leave it you may not look back. When rain falls on a fire the death souls come into the air, darkening the air. The time they come is at the beginning of the rainy season, when the nights grow long and there is smoke in the air, the time when the house Rejoining is built. A vest or coat of moleskin is worn by people of the Black Adobe Lodge when they sing or teach or dream. A black string may be tied around the dancer’s arm or heart or head. A beetle may show them the way. There is no way to know this soul. It is the inmost. A person dies to it.

  PRAISING THE OAKS.

  A teaching rubric from the Serpentine heyimas in Sinshan.

  Five oaks, the Roundhead with the long acorn on the seaward slopes, the Furrowbark of our chaparral, the greybarked Longcup, the Great Oak of the mountains, the Tanners’ Oak with buckeye blossom and acorn seed, they keep their leaves in the rainy season.

  Four oaks, the Blueleaf that wants dry earth at its root, the lobeleafed Finewood of the hills, the blackbarked Redleaf of the high hills, and the Valley Oak, great-girthed, shady, praised by scriveners, that lives by the waters and on sunlit hills, they lose their leaves in the rainy season.

  These are the nine noble and pleasant oaks, vigorous trees, sweet in the male and the female flower, towns of many birds and small animal and insect people, giving much shade, giving much food, great wealthy ones worthy of praise.

  WORDS/BIRDS.

  A Madrone Lodge text.

  What works for words may not work for things, and to say that because two sayings that contradict each other cannot both be true is not to say that opposites do not exist. The word is not the thing; word and thing have each their own way. It is true that a town is made of stone, clay, and wood; it is true that a town is made of people. These words do not deny each other at all. It is true that a bird’s way and the wind blowing make a feather fall; it is true that finding that feather in my way I understand that it has fallen for me. Those words deny each other in part. It is true that everything that is must be as it is, and that nothing is but the play of illusion upon the void; it is true that everything is and it is true that nothing is. These words deny each other wholly. The world of our life is the weaving that holds them together while holding them apart. The world is the bridge between the walls of a canyon, the banks of a river in an abyss, and words are the birds that fly across and across. They cannot be in two places at the same time. But they can cross and come back. It takes all one’s life long to cross the bridge to the other side. But the birds fly back and forth across the canyon, singing and speaking from one side to the other.

  THE CATS HERE DON’T CARE.

  Some sayings, wise saws, and small stones from the Valley.

  Why are you making the house so clean?

  Because there’s going to be an earthquake.

  If there was only one of anything, it would be the end of the world.

  Judgment is poverty.

  When I’m afraid I listen to the silence of the fieldmouse.

  When I’m fearless I listen to the silence of the mousing cat.

  If you don’t teach machines and horses to do what you want in their way they’ll teach you to do what they want in you
r way.

  To go again where you have gone: Increase. To go backwards: Danger. Better to come round.

  Multitude, Diversity, Quantity, Exuberance.

  Rarity; Purity, Quality, Chastity.

  Nothing can make water better.

  More than is needed is life.

  The Valley is the House of Earth and the Left-Hand Way. The Mountain is the hinge of the heyiya-if. To enter upon the Right-Hand Way one goes up on the Mountain, and from it into the House of Sky, and looking back one sees the Valley as the dead see it.

  To be singleminded is to be unmindful. Mindfulness is keeping many different things in mind and observing their relations and proportions.

  To conquer is to be careless. Carefulness is holding oneself and one’s acts in appropriate relation and proportion to the many other beings and intentions.

  To take is to be joyless. Joyfulness is accepting the given, which cannot be earned by mindfulness nor deserved by carefulness.

  The great hunter: one arrow in his quiver, one thought in his head.

  Cats may be green somewhere else, but the cats here don’t care.