Coming of Age in Karhide

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  more than anything else. She was angry and ashamed that she could not go andtry to comfort Sut and that nobody else did. "It is not human," she said. "Itis pure animal behavior. Nothing could be clearer evidence that this is abroken culture -- not a society, but the remains of one. A terrible, anappalling poverty." I don't know if Dnemi's death would have changed hermind. Dnemi was dying for a long time, of kidney failure I think; she turned akind of dark orange color, jaundice. While she could get around, nobody helpedher. When she didn't come out of her house for a day or two, the women wouldsend the children in with water and a little food and firewood. It went on so through the winter; then one morning little Rashi told his mother Aunt Dnemiwas "staring." Several of the women went to Dnemi's house, and entered it forthe first and last time. They sent for all the girls in the singing circle, sothat we could learn what to do. We took turns sitting by the body or in theporch of the house, singing soft songs, child-songs, giving the soul a day anda night to leave the body and the house; then the older women wrapped the bodyin the bedding, strapped it on a kind of litter, and set off with it towardthe barren lands. There it would be given back, under a rock cairn or insideone of the ruins of the ancient city. "Those are the lands of the dead," Sadnesaid. "What dies stays there." Hah settled down in that house a year later. When her baby began to be born she asked Didsu to help her, and Hyuru and Istayed in the porch and watched, so that we could learn. It was a wonderfulthing to see, and quite altered the course of my thinking, and Hyuru's too. Hyuru said, "I'd like to do that!" I said nothing, but thought, So do I, butnot for a long time, because once you have a child you're never alone. And though it is of the others, of relationships, that I write, the heart ofmy life has been my being alone. I think there is no way to write about beingalone. To write is to tell something to somebody, to communicate to others. CP, as Steadiness would say. Solitude is non-communication, the absence ofothers, the presence of a self sufficient to itself. A woman's solitude in the auntring is, of course, based firmly on the presence of others at a littledistance. It is a contingent, and therefore human, solitude. The settled menare connected as stringently to the women, though not to one another; thesettlement is an integral though distant element of the auntring. Even ascouting woman is part of the society -- a moving part, connecting the settledparts. Only the isolation of a woman or man who chooses to live outside thesettlements is absolute. They are outside the network altogether. There areworlds where such persons are called saints, holy people. Since isolation is asure way to prevent magic, on my world the assumption is that they aresorcerors, outcast by others or by their own will, their conscience. I knew I was strong with magic, how could I help it? and I began to long to get away. It would be so much easier and safer to be alone. But at the same time, andincreasingly, I wanted to know something about the great harmless magic, the spells cast between men and women. I preferred foraging to gardening, andwas out on the hills a good deal; and these days, instead of keeping away fromthe man's-houses, I wandered by them, and looked at them, and looked at themen if they were outside. The men looked back. Downriver Lame Man's long, shining hair was getting a little white in it now, but when he sat singing hislong, long songs I found myself sitting down and listening, as if my legs hadlost their bones. He was very handsome. So was the man I remembered as a boynamed Tret in the auntring, when I was little, Behyu's son. He had come backfrom the boygroup and from wandering, and had built a house and made a finegarden in the valley of Red Stone Creek. He had a big nose and big eyes, longarms and legs, long hands; he moved very quietly, almost like Arrem doing theuntrance. I went often to pick lowberries in Red Stone Creek valley. He came along the path and spoke. "You were Borny's sister," he said. He had a lowvoice, quiet. "He's dead," I said. Red Stone Man nodded. "That's his knife." In my world, I had never talked with a man. I felt extremely strange. I kept picking berries. "You're picking green ones," Red Stone Man said. His soft, smiling voice made my legs lose their bones again. "I think nobody'stouched you," he said. "I'd touch you gently. I think about it, about you,

  ever since you came by here early in the summer. Look, here's a bush full ofripe ones. Those are green. Come over here." I came closer to him, to thebush of ripe berries. When I was on the ship, Arrem told me that manylanguages have a single word for sexual desire and the bond between mother andchild and the bond between soulmates and the feeling for one's home andworship of the sacred; they are all called love. There is no word that greatin my language. Maybe my mother is right, and human greatness perished in myworld with the people of the Before Time, leaving only small, poor, brokenthings and thoughts. In my language, love is many different words. I learnedone of them with Red Stone Man. We sang it together to each other. We made a brush house on a little cove of the creek, and neglected our gardens, butgathered many, many sweet berries. Mother had put a lifetime's worth ofnonconceptives in the little medicine kit. She had no faith in Sorovianherbals. I did, and they worked. But when a year or so later, in the GoldenTime, I decided to go out scouting, I thought I might go places where theright herbs were scarce; and so I stuck the little noncon jewel on the back ofmy left earlobe. Then I wished I hadn't, because it seemed like witchcraft. Then I told myself I was being superstitious; the noncon wasn't any morewitchcraft than the herbs were, it just worked longer. I had promised mymother in my soul that I would never be superstitious. The skin grew over thenoncon, and I took my soulbag and Borny's knife and the medicine kit, and setoff across the world. I had told Hyuru and Red Stone Man I would be leaving. Hyuru and I sang and talked together all one night down by the fiver. RedStone Man said in his soft voice, "Why do you want to go?" and I said, "To getaway from your magic, sorcerer," which was true in part. If I kept going tohim I might always go to him. I wanted to give my soul and body a larger worldto be in. Now to tell of my scouting years is more difficult than ever. CP! Awoman scouting is entirely alone, unless she chooses to ask a settled man forsex, or camps in an auntring for a while to sing and listen with the singingcircle. If she goes anywhere near the territory of a boygroup, she is indanger; and if she comes on a rogue she is in danger; and if she hurts herselfor gets into polluted country, she is in danger. She has no responsibilityexcept to herself, and so much freedom is very dangerous. In my fight earlobewas the tiny communicator; every forty days, as I had promised, I sent asignal to the ship that meant "all well." If I wanted to leave, I would sendanother signal. I could have called for the lander to rescue me from a badsituation, but though I was in bad situations a couple of times I neverthought of using it. My signal was the mere fulfillment of a promise tomy mother and her people, the network I was no longer part of, ameaningless communication. Life in the auntring, or for a settled man, isrepetitive, as I said; and so it can be dull. Nothing new happens. The mindalways wants new happenings. So for the young soul there is wandering andscouting, travel, danger, change. But of course travel and danger and changehave their own dullness. It is finally always the same otherness over again; another hill, another fiver, another man, another day. The feet begin to turnin a long, long circle. The body begins to think of what it learned back home, when it learned to be still. To be aware. To be aware of the grain of dustbeneath the sole of the foot, and the skin of the sole of the foot, and thetouch and scent of the air on the cheek, and the fall and motion of the lightacross the air, and the color of the grass on the high hill across the fiver, and the thoughts of the body, of the soul, the shimmer and ripple of colorsand sounds in the clear darkness of the depths, endlessly moving, endlesslychanging, endlessly new. So at last I came back home. I had been gone aboutfour years. Hyuru had moved into my old house when she left her mother'shouse. She had not gone scouting, but had taken to going to Red Stone CreekValley; and she was pregnant. I was glad to see her living there. The onlyhouse empty was an old half-ruined one too close to Hedimi's. I decided tomake a new house. I dug out the circle as deep as my chest; the digging tookmost of the summer. I cut the sticks, braced and wove them, and then daubedthe framework so
lidly with mud inside and out. I remembered when I had done

  that with my mother long long ago, and how she had said, "That's right. That'sgood." I left the roof open, and the hot sun of late summer baked the mud intoclay. Before the rains came, I thatched the house with reeds, a triplethatching, for I'd had enough of being wet all winter. My auntring was more astring than a ring stretching along the north bank of the river for aboutthree kilos; my house lengthened the string a good bit, upstream from all theothers. I could just see the smoke from Hyuru's fireplace. I dug it into asunny slope with good drainage. It is still a good house. I settled down. Some of my time went to gathering and gardening and mending and all the dull, repetitive actions of primitive life, and some went to singing and thinkingthe songs and stories I had learned here at home and while scouting and thethings I had learned on the ship, also. Soon enough I found why women are gladto have children come to listen to them, for songs and stories are meant to beheard, listened to. "Listen!" I would say to the children. The children of theauntring came and went, like the little fish in the river, one or two or fiveof them, little ones, big ones. When they came, I sang or told storiesto them. When they left, I went on in silence. Sometimes I joined thesinging circle to give what I had learned traveling to the older girls. Andthat was all I did; except that I worked, always, to be aware of all Idid. By solitude the soul escapes from doing or suffering magic; it escapesfrom dullness, from boredom, by being aware. Nothing is boring if you areaware of it. It may be irritating but it is not boring. If it is pleasant thepleasure will not fail so long as you are aware of it. Being aware is thehardest work the soul can do, I think. I helped Hyuru have her baby, a girl, and played with the baby. Then after a couple of years I took the noncon outof my left earlobe. Since it left a little hole, I made the hole go all theway through with a burnt needle, and when it healed I hung in it a tiny jewelI had found in a rain when I was scouting. I had seen a man on the ship with ajewel hung in his ear that way. I wore it when I went out foraging. I keptclear of Red Stone Valley. The man there behaved as if he had a claim on me, aright to me. I liked him still, but I did not like that smell of magic abouthim, his imagination of power over me. I went up into the hills, northward. Apair of young men had settled in old North House about the time Icame home. Often boys got through boygroup by pairing, and often they stayedpaired when they left the Territory. It helped their chances of survival. Someof them were sexually paired, others weren't; some stayed paired, othersdidn't. One of this pair had gone off with another man last summer. The onethat stayed wasn't a handsome man, but I had noticed him. He had a kind ofsolidness I liked. His body and hands were short and strong. I had courted hima little, but he was very shy. This day, a day in the Silver Time when themist lay on the river, he saw the jewel swinging in my ear, and his eyeswidened. "It's pretty, isn't it?" I said. He nodded. "I wore it to make youlook at me," I said. He was so shy that I finally said, "If you only like sexwith men, you know, just tell me." I really was not sure. "Oh, no," he said, "no. No." He stammered and then bolted back down the path. But he looked back; and I followed him slowly, still not certain whether he wanted me or wanted tobe rid of me. He waited for me in front of a little house in a grove ofredroot, a lovely little bower, all leaves outside, so that you would walkwithin arm's length of it and not see it. Inside he had laid sweet grass, deepand dry and soft, smelling of summer. I went in, crawling because the door wasvery low, and sat in the summer-smelling grass. He stood outside. "Come in," Isaid, and he came in very slowly. "I made it for you," he said. "Now make a child for me," I said. And we did that; maybe that day, maybe another. Now I will tell you why after all these years I called the ship, not knowing even ifit was still there in the space between the planets, asking for the lander tomeet me in the barren land. When my daughter was born, that was my heart'sdesire and the fulfillment of my soul. When my son was born, last year, I knewthere is no fulfillment. He will grow toward manhood, and go, and fight andendure, and live or die as a man must. My daughter, whose name is Yedneke, Leaf, like my mother, will grow to womanhood and go or stay as she chooses. I

  URSULA K. LEGUIN

  THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD

  TAZU WAS HAVING A TANTRUM, because he was three. After the birthday of the world, tomorrow, he would be four and would not have tantrums.

  He had left off screaming and kicking and was turning blue from holding his breath. He lay on the ground stiff as a corpse, but when Haghag stepped over him as if he wasn't there, he tried to bite her foot.

  "This is an animal or a baby," Haghag said, "not a person." She glanced may-I-speak-to-you and I glanced yes. "Which does God's daughter think it is," she asked, "an animal or a baby?"

  "An animal. Babies suck, animals bite," I said. All the servants of God laughed and tittered, except the new barbarian, Ruaway, who never smiled. Haghag said, "God's daughter must be right. Maybe somebody ought to put the animal outside. An animal shouldn't be in the holy house."

  Maybe," Haghag said, looking him over. "This doesn't look so much like an animal now. Do you think this might be God's son?" she asked the holy women and men, and they all nodded their bodies, except the wild one, who stared and said nothing.

  "I am, I am God's son!" Tazu shouted. "Not a baby! Arzi is the baby!" Then he burst into tears and ran to me, and I hugged him and began crying because he was crying. We cried till Haghag took us both on her lap and said it was time to stop crying, because God Herself was coming. So we stopped, and the bodyservants wiped the tears and snot from our faces and combed our hair, and Lady Clouds brought our gold hats, which we put on to see God Herself.

  She came with her mother, who used to be God Herself a long time ago, and the new baby, Arzi, on a big pillow carried by the idiot. The idiot was a son of God too. There were seven of us: Omimo, who was fourteen and had gone to live with the army, then the idiot, who was twelve, and had a big round head and small eyes and liked to play with Tazu and the baby, then Goiz, and another Goiz, who were called that because they had died and were in the ash-house where they ate spirit food, then me and Tazu, who would get married and be God, and then Babam Arzi, Lord Seven. I was important because I was the only daughter of God. If Tazu died I could marry Arzi, but if I died everything would be bad and

  I told her what words I had learned to read and write.

  "Very good," God said. "And what have you to ask, daughter?"

  "I have nothing to ask, I thank you, Lady Mother," I said. Then I remembered I did have a question, but it was too late.

  "And you, Tazu? What have you learned this day?"

  "I tried to bite Haghag"

  "Did you learn that was a good thing to do, or a bad thing?"

  "Bad," Tazu said, but he smiled, and so did God, and Haghag laughed.

  "And what have you to ask, son?"

  "Can I have a new bath maid because Kig washes my head too hard?"

  "If you have a new bath maid where will Kig go?"

  "This is her house. What if you asked Kig to wash your head more gently?"

  Tazu looked unhappy, but God said, "Ask her, son." Tazu mumbled something to Kig, who dropped on her knees and thumbed her forehead. But she grinned the whole time. Her fearlessness made me envious. I whispered to Haghag, "If I forgot a question to ask can I ask if I can ask it?"

  "Maybe," said Haghag, and thumbed her forehead to God for permission to speak, and when God nodded, Haghag said, "The daughter of God asks if she may ask a question."

  "Better to do a thing at the time for doing it," God said, "but you may ask, daughter."

  I rushed into the question, forgetting to thank her. "I wanted to know why I can't marry Tazu and Omimo both, because they're both my brothers."

  Everybody looked at God, and seeing her smile a little, they all laughed, some of them loudly. My ears burned and my heart thumped.

  "Do you want to marry all your brothers, child?"

  "Is Tazu not enough?"

  Again they all laughed, especially the men. I saw Ruaway star
ing at us as if she thought we were all crazy.

  "Yes, Lady Mother, but Omimo is older and bigger."

  Now the laughter was even louder, but I had stopped caring, since God was not displeased. She looked at me thoughtfully and said, "Understand, my daughter. Our eldest son will be a soldier. That's his road. He'll serve God, fighting barbarians and rebels. The day he was born, a tidal wave destroyed the towns of the outer coast. So his name is Babam Omimo, Lord Drowning. Disaster serves God, but is not God."

  I knew that was the end of the answer, and thumbed my forehead. I kept thinking about it after God left. It explained many things. All the same, even if he had been born with a bad omen, Omimo was handsome, and nearly a man, and Tazu was a baby that had tantrums. I was glad it would be a long time till we were married.

  I remember that birthday because of the question I asked. I remember another birthday because of Ruaway. It must have been a year or two later. I ran into the water room to piss and saw her hunched up next to the water tank, almost hidden.

  "You tore your clothes," I said.

  When she didn't answer, I lost patience and shouted, "Answer me! Why don't you talk?"

  "Have mercy," Ruaway whispered so low I had to guess what she said.

  "You talk all wrong when you do talk. What's wrong with you? Are they animals where you come from? You talk like an animal, brr-grr, grr-gra! Are you an idiot?"

  When Ruaway said nothing, I pushed her with my foot. She looked up then and I saw not fear but killing in her eyes. That made me like her better. I hated people who were afraid of me. "Talk!" I said. "Nobody can hurt you. God the Father put his penis in you when he was conquering your country, so you're a holy woman. Lady Clouds told me. So what are you hiding for?"