Ursula K Le Guin

by Powers (2007) (lit)

  I never asked him why he'd taken me in and kept me alive. It didn't occur to me as a question. I never asked him any questions but one. I asked where Guard came from.

  "Sheepdog bitch," he said. "Had her litter up over there east on the rocky slopes. I seen the pups playing. Thought they was wolves, went over there with my knife to dig 'em out and cut their throats. I just got to the den and the bitch come round the hill, and she was going to go for me, but I says hey now, hey there, mother, I'll kill a wolf but never hurt a dog, will I? And she shows her teeth" —he showed his brown teeth in a grinning snarl— "and goes into the den. And so I go back and back, and we get to know each other, and she brings the pups out, and I watch 'em play. And this one and I got on. So he come away with me. I go back there sometimes. She's got a litter there now."

  He never asked me any questions at all.

  If he had, I would have had no answers. When I found myself remembering anything, I turned away from it to whatever was under my eyes and in my hands and lived in that only. I had none of the rememberings, the visions I used to have. If I dreamed in sleep, I did not remember the dreams when I woke.

  The light in the mornings was more golden, the days ending sooner, the nights growing cool. The Master of Cugamand, sitting across a small fire from me in the hearth room of his cave, slid a whole troutlet off the stick into his mouth, chewed a while, swallowed, wiped his hands on his naked, dirt-caked chest, and said, "Cold here in winter. You'd be dead of it."

  I said nothing. He knew what he was talking about.

  "You go on."

  After a long time I said, "Nowhere to go, Cuga."

  "Oh yes. Oh yes. The woods, that's where you go." He nodded towards the north. "The woods. Daneran. The big forest. No end to it they

  say. And no slave takers there. Oh no. No slave takers. Just the men of the woods. That's where to go."

  "No roof," I said, and put another bit of bark on the fire.

  "Oh yes. Oh yes. They live soft there. Roofs and walls and all. Beds and coats and all. They know me, I know them. We don't trouble each other. They know me. They keep away." He scowled and went off into one of his mutterings, Keep away, keep out. . .

  Next morning he shook me awake early. On the flat stone in front of the cave entrance he had set out my brown blanket, the silk purse swollen with money, a filthy fur cape he had given me a while ago, and a packet of dried meat. "Come on," he said.

  I stood still. His face went watchful and grim.

  "Keep this for me," I said, holding out the silk purse.

  He chewed his lip.

  "Don't want to be killed for it, eh?" he said finally, and I nodded. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe they would. Thieves, cheats. . . I don't want this stuff. Where'd I keep it from thieves?" "In your salt box," I said.

  He glared. "Where's that?" he snapped, fiercely suspicious.

  I shrugged again. "I don't know. I never found it. Nobody could."

  That made him laugh, slowly, opening his mouth wide. "I know," he

  said. "I know! All right."

  The heavy, stained, discolored purse was swallowed up in his big hand. He went back into the cave with it and was gone some while. He came out and nodded at me. "Come on," he said. And he set off at his loping walk that seemed slow but ate up the miles.

  I was fit again, and could keep up with him all day, though by evening I was weary and footsore.

  At the last stream we came to he told me to drink deep. We crossed it, climbed a long slope, and halted on the top of the hill, the last of the hills. From it the land fell slowly away into vast forest, treetops going

  on and on into blue dimness, no end to them. The sun had not set, but the shadows were long,

  Cuga was busy immediately; he gathered wood and built a fire, a large one, using green wood, not dry. The smoke went curling up into the clear sky. "All right," he said. "They'll come." And he turned to go back as we had come.

  "Wait," I said.

  He stopped, impatient. "Just wait," he said. "They'll be here." "I'll come back, Cuga."

  He shook his head angrily and went off, striding through the dry grass, holding his body in a slight crouch. In a minute he was out of sight through the trees under the crest of the hill. Over the dark tree-tops the sunset flamed.

  I slept alone by the fire on the hilltop that night, wrapped in my blanket and the fur cape. The smoky stink of the fur was pleasant to me. I had been healed in that stink.

  I waked again and again in the night. Once I built up the fire, as a signal, not for warmth. Towards morning I dreamed: I was sleeping in Sentas, in the fortress of dreams. The others were there with me. I heard their soft voices murmuring in the dark. One of the girls laughed. . . I woke and remembered the dream. I clung to it, trying to stay in it. But I was thirsty, thirst had waked me. Telling myself I'd go look for water at the foot of the hill as soon as it was light, I lay waiting for the light.

  We never slept in Sentas, I thought. We always slept out near the farmhouse, under the trees. We always saw the stars through the leaves. We talked about going out to Sentas to sleep but we never did.

  Four of them were around me before I saw one of them. I was barely awake. I had sat up, on the open hillside by the dead fire, alone. They were around me, without movement, out of the grass, out of the dim grey air of early dawn. I looked from one to the next and sat still.

  They were armed, not like soldiers but with short bows and long knives. Two carried five-foot staffs. They looked grim.

  One of them finally spoke in a soft, hoarse voice, almost a whisper.

  "Fire out?"

  I nodded.

  He went and kicked at the few half-burnt sticks left, trampled them carefully, felt them with his hands. I got up to help him bury the cold cinders.

  "Come on then," he said. I bundled up my blanket and the last scraps of dried meat to carry. I wore the cape of rabbit and squirrel skins for warmth.

  "Stinks," said one of the men.

  "Reeks," said another. "Bad as old Cuga."

  "He brought me here," I said.

  "Cuga?"

  "You was with him?" "All summer."

  One stared, one spat, one shrugged; the fourth, the one who had spoken first, motioned with his head and led us down the long hill towards the forest.

  I knelt to drink from the stream at the foot of the hill. The hoarse-voiced leader nudged me with his staff while I was still drinking thirstily. "Thats enough, you'll be pissing all day," he said. I scrambled up and followed them across the stream and under the dark eaves of the trees.

  He led us all the way. We moved hastily through the woods, often at a trot, until mid-morning, when we stopped in a small clearing. It smelled of stale blood. A pack of vultures flapped up heavily on great black wings from some remnants of guts and skulls. The carcasses of three deer had been butchered and hung, glittering with flies, high from a tree limb. The men brought them down and divided and roped them so each of us could carry a load of meat, and we set off again, but now at an easier pace. I was tormented with thirst and by the flies that kept swarming around us and our burdens. The load I carried was not well balanced, and my feet, sore from the long walk yesterday, blistered in my old shoes. The trail we followed was very slight and winding, seldom visible more than a few paces ahead among the big, dark trees, and often made difficult by tree roots. When we came at last to a stream crossing I went right down again on hands and knees to drink.

  The leader turned back to stir me up, saying, "Come on! You can drink when we get there!" But one of the other men was down with his face in the water too, and looked up to say, "Ah, let him drink, Brigin." The leader said nothing then, but waited for us.

  The water bathed my feet with wonderful coolness as we waded across the stream, but then as we went on the blisters grew worse, my wet shoes rubbing them, and I was hobbling with pain by the time we came to the forest camp. We cast down our burdens of venison in an open shed, and I could stand up straight at last and look around. />
  If I'd come there from where I used to live, it wouldn't have looked like anything at all— a few low huts, a few men, in a meadow where alders grew by a small stream, dark forest all around. But I came there from the lonesome wilderness. The sight of the buildings was strange

  and impressive to me, and the presence of other people even stranger and more frightening.

  Nobody paid any attention to me. I got up my courage and went to the stream under the alders, drank my fill at last, then took off my shoes and put my raw, burning, bloody feet in the water. It was warm in the meadow, the autumn sun still pouring into it. Presently I took off my clothes and got into the water entirely. I washed myself, then I washed my clothes as well as I could. They had been white. White clothing is worn by a girl in her betrothal ceremony, and by the dead, and by those who go to bury the dead. There was no telling what color my clothes had been. They were brown and grey, rag-color. I did not think about their whiteness. I laid them on the grass to dry and got back in the stream and put my head under water to wash my hair. When I came up I couldn't see, for my hair hung down over my eyes, it had grown so long. It was filthv and matted and I washed it again and again. When I came up from the last dip and scrubbing, a man was sitting beside my clothes on the stream bank, watching me.

  "It's an improvement," he said.

  He was the one who'd told the leader to let me drink.

  He was short and brown, with high, ruddy cheekbones and narrow, dark eyes; his hair was cut short to his head. He had an accent, a way of talking that came from somewhere else.

  I came up out of the water, dried myself as well as I could with the old brown blanket, and pulled on my wet tunic, seeking modesty, though there seemed to be only men around, and also seeking warmth. The sun had left the clearing though the sky was still bright. I shivered. But I didn't want to put the filthy fur cape on my hard-won cleanness.

  "Hey," he said, "hang on." He went off and came back with a tunic and some kind of garment I did not recognise. "They're dry, anyhow," he said, handing them to me.

  I shucked off my limp wet tunic and put on the one he gave me. It was brown linen, much worn, soft, long-sleeved. It felt warm and pleasant on my skin. I held up the other piece of clothing he had brought. It was black and made of some heavy, dense material; it must be a cape, I thought. I tried to put it on over my shoulders. I could not get it to fit.

  The man watched me for a little while and then he lay back on the stream bank and began to laugh. He laughed till his eyes disappeared entirely and his face turned dark red. He curled up over his knees and laughed till you could tell it hurt him, and though it wasn't a noisy laugh, some men heard and came over and looked at him and looked at me, and some of them began laughing too.

  "Oh," he said at last, wiping his eyes and sitting up. "Oh. That did me good. That's a kilt, young 'un. You wear it —" and he began to laugh again, and doubled up, and wheezed, and finally said, "You wear it on the other end."

  I looked at the thing, and saw it had a waistband, like trousers.

  "I'll do without," I said. "If you don't mind."

  "No," he said, wheezing. "I don't mind. Give it back, then."

  "Why would the kid want one of your fool skirts, Chamry?" one of the onlookers said. "Here, kid, I'll get you something decent." He came back with a pair of breeches that fit me well enough, though loosely. When I had. them on he said, "Keep em, they're too tight for my belly. So you came in with Brigin and them today? Joining up, are you?

  What'll we call you?"

  "Gavir Arca," I said.

  The man who had given me the kilt said, "That's your name." I looked at him, not understanding. "Do you want to use it?" he asked.

  I had done so little thinking for so long, my mind would not move quickly at all; it needed a lot of time. I said at last, "Gav."

  "Gav it is," said the man who had given me the kilt. "I'm Chamry Bern of Bernmant, and I use my name, for I'm so far from where I came that no one can track me by name or fame or any game."

  "He's from where the men wear skirts and the women piss standing," said one of the onlookers, and got some laughter from the others.

  "Lowlanders," said Chamry Bern, of them, not to them. "They know no better. Come on, you, Gav. You'd better take the oath, if that's what you came for, and get your share of dinner. I saw you carrying in your share of it and more."

  The god Luck is deaf in one ear, they say, the ear we pray to; he can't hear our prayers. What he hears, what he listens to, nobody knows. Denios the poet said he hears the wheels of the stars' great chariots turning on the roads of heaven. I know that while I was sunk far beneath any thought of prayer, with no hope, no trust in anything, no desire, Luck was always with me. I lived, though I took no care to survive. I came to no harm among strangers. I carried money and was not robbed. When I was alone and on the verge of death, an old mad hermit beat me back to life. And now Luck had sent me to these men, and one of them was Chamry Bern.

  Chamry went and whacked on a crowbar hung from a post of the largest hut. The signal brought men to gather around the porch of the hut. "Newcomer," he said. "Gav is his name. He says he's been living with Cuga the Ogre, which would explain the smell that came with him. And after a bath in our river he seeks to join our company. Right,

  Gav?"

  I nodded. I was intimidated by being the center of what seemed to me a great crowd of men —twenty or more —all looking me over. Most of them were young and had a trim, fit, hard look, like Brigin, the man who'd led me here, though there were several grey or bald heads and a couple of slack bellies.

  "Do you know who we are?" one of the bald heads demanded.

  I took a deep breath. "Are you the Barnavites?"

  That caused some scowling and some laughter. "Some of us used to be," the man said, "maybe. And what do you know of Barna's lot, boy?"

  I was younger than they were, but I didn't like being called kid and boy all the time. It put my back up.

  "I heard stories. That they lived in the forest as free men, neither masters or slaves, sharing fairly all they had,"

  "Well put," said Chamry. "All in a nutshell." Several men looked pleased and nodded.

  "Well enough, well enough," the bald man said, keeping up his dignity. Another man came up close to me; he looked very much like Bri-gin, and as I learned later they were brothers. His face was hard and handsome, his eyes clear and cold. He looked me over. "If you live with us you'll learn what fair sharing means," he said. "It means what we do, you do. It's one for all with us. If you think you can do whatever you like, you won't last here. If you don't share, you don't eat. If you're careless and bring danger on us, you're dead. We have rules. You'll take an oath to live with us and keep our rules. And if you break that oath, we'll hunt you down surer than any slave taker."

  Their faces were grim; they all nodded at what he said.

  "You think you can keep that oath?"

  "I can try," I said.

  "Try's not good enough."

  "I'll keep your oath," I said, my temper roused by his bullying. "We'll see," he said, turning away. "Get the stuff, Modla," The bald man and Brigin brought out of the hut a knife, a clay bowl, a deer antler, and some meal. I will not tell the ceremony, for those who go through it are sworn to secrecy, nor can I tell the words of the oath I took. They all swore that oath again with me. The rites and the oath-speaking brought them all together in fellow feeling, and when all was done and spoken several of them came to pound my back and tell me

  I'd borne the initiation well, and was a brave fellow, and welcome among them.

  Chamry Bern had come forward as my sponsor, and a young man called Venne as my hunting mate. They sat on either side of me at the celebration that followed. Meat had already been roasting on spits, but they added more to make a feast of it, and night had fallen by the time we sat to eat— on the ground, or on stumps and crude stools, around the red, dancing fires. I had no knife. Venne took me in to a chest of weapons and told me to ch
oose one. I took a light, keen blade in a leather sheath. With it I cut myself a chunk out of a sizzling, dripping, blackened, sweet-smelling haunch and sat down with it and ate like a starved animal. Somebody brought me a metal cup and poured something into it— beer or mead— sour and somewhat foamy. The men laughed louder as they drank, and shouted, and laughed again. My heart warmed to their good fellowship — the friendship of the Forest Brothers. For that was the name they called themselves, and had given me, since I was one of them.

  All around the firelit clearing was the night forest, utter darkness under the trees, high leaf crowns grey in the starlight for miles and miles.

  * * *

  If Chamry Bern hadn't taken a liking to me and if Venne hadn't taken me as his hunting partner I would have had a worse time of it that fall and winter than I did. As it was, I was often at the limit of my endurance. I'd lived wild with Cuga, but he'd looked after me, sheltered me, fed me, and that was in summer, too, when it's easy to live wild. Here my city softness, my lack of physical strength, my ignorance of the skills of survival, were nearly the death of me. Brigin and his brother Eter and several other men had been farm slaves, used to a hard life,

  tough, fearless, and resourceful, and to them I was a dead loss, a burden. Other men in the group, town-bred, had some patience with my wretched incompetence, and gave and taught me what I needed to get by. As with Cuga, my knack at fishing gave me a way to show I could try at least to be useful. I showed no promise at all in hunting, though Venne took me with him conscientiously and tried to train me with the short bow and in all the silent skills of the hunter.

  Venne was twenty or so; at fifteen he had run away from a vicious master in a town of the region of Casicar, and made his way to the forest— for everybody in Casicar, he said, knew about the Forest Brothers, and all the slaves dreamed of joining them. He enjoyed the life in the woods, seemed fully at home in it, and was one of the best hunters of our band; but I soon learned that he was restless. He didn't get on with Brigin and Eter. "Playing the masters," he said drily. And after a while, 'And they won't have women with us. . .Well, Barna's men have women, right? I think of joining them."