Ursula K Le Guin

by Powers (2007) (lit)

  Venne halted on the rocky, steep bank of a small stream to drink. I washed my face. My right ear and both cheeks were sore and swollen. A little owl wailed away off in the woods. The moon had just set.

  "Let's wait here till there's a bit of light," Venne said in his low voice, and we sat there in silence. He dozed. I wet my hand and laid the cool

  of it against my swollen ear and temples again and again. I looked into the darkness. I cannot say how my mind moved in that darkness, but as the trees and their leaves and the rocks of the stream bank and the movement of the water began mysteriously to take on being in the grey dim beginning of the light, I knew, with a certainty beyond decision, that I could not go back to Barna's house.

  The only emotion I felt was shame. For him, for myself. Again I had trusted, and again I had betrayed and been betrayed.

  Venne sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  "I'll go on," I said. "You don't have to come farther."

  "Well," he said, "my story is you gave me the slip, so I've got to spend all day pretending to look for you. And I want to get you on far enough they won't catch you."

  "They won't be looking for me."

  "Can't be sure of that."

  "Barna won't want me back."

  "He might want to finish knocking your brains out." Venne stood up and stretched. I looked up at him with a melancholy fondness, the slender, scarred, soft-voiced hunter who had always been a kind companion. I wished I could be certain he would not get into trouble with Barna for abetting my escape.

  "I'll go on west," I said. "You circle round and come back from the north, so if they do send out after me you can send them off the wrong way. Go on now so you have time to do that."

  He insisted on coming with me till he could get me on a path that would take me out of the Daneran Forest, to the west road, "I've seen you going in circles in the woods!" he said. And he gave me many instructions: not to light a fire till I was clear out of the woods, to remember that at this time of the year the sun set well south of west, and so on. He fretted that I had no food with me. As we went along, on no path at all but through fairly open oak woods, he kept looking at every

  hump and hillock in the ground, and eventually pounced on a heap of brush and trashwood, tore it open, and laid bare a wood rat's granary: a couple of handfuls of little wild walnuts and acorns. "Acorns'll give you the pip, but better than nothing," he said. "And over by the west road there's a big stand of sweet chestnuts. You might find some still on the trees. Keep an eye out. Once you're out of the forest, you'll have to beg or steal. But you've done that before, eh?"

  We came at last to the path he was looking for, a clear wood road that curved right off to the west. There I insisted that he turn back. It was late morning already. I was going to shake his hand, but he embraced me, hard, as Chamry had done. He muttered, "Luck go with you, Gav. I won't forget you. Or your stories. Luck go with you!"

  He turned away, and in a moment was gone among the shadows of the trees.

  That was a bleak moment.

  At this time yesterday I'd been at the food handout in Barna's house with a cheerful group of men and women, looking forward to reciting for Barna in the evening. . . Barna's scholar. Barna's pet. . .

  I sat down on the edge of the wood road and took stock of what I had. Shoes, trousers, shirt, and coat; the old ragged evil-smelling brown wool blanket, my fishing gear, a pocket full of nuts stolen from a wood rat, a good knife, and Caspro's Cosmologies.

  And all my life in Arcamand, and in the forest. Every book I had read, every person I had known, every mistake I had made— I brought that with me, this time. I will not run away from it, I said to myself. Never again. It comes with me. All of it.

  And where should I take it?

  The only answer I had was the road I was on. It would lead me to the Marshes. To where Sallo and I had been born. To the only people in the world I might belong to. I'll bring you back your stolen children, or

  one of them anyway, I said in my mind to the people of the Marshes, trying to be jaunty and resolute. I got up and set out walking west.

  * * *

  WHEN I WENT UP the riverbank away from Etra, I was a boy dressed in white mourning, going alone, a strange sight in itself; and people could tell that I was not in my right mind. That had protected me. The mad are holy. Now, walking along this lonely forest road, I was two years older and looked and dressed like what I was: a runaway. If I met people, my only protection from suspicion or from slave takers was in my own wits, and from Luck, who might be getting tired of looking after me.

  The road would bring me out on the west side of the Daneran Forest, and going on west or southwest I'd come to the Marshes. I didn't know what villages might be on my way; I was sure there were no towns of any size. I had seen the country where I now was, from far off, long ago, in the golden evening light, from the summit of the Ventine Hills. It had looked very empty. I remembered the great blurred shadow of the forest eastward, and the level, open lands stretching north. Sallo and I had gazed for a long time. Sotur asked us if we could remember the Marshes, and I spoke of my memory of the water and the reeds and the blue hill far off, but Sallo said we'd both been too young to remember anything. So that memory must be the other kind I used to have, a memory of what had not happened yet.

  It had been a long time since I had such a vision. When I left Etra I left my past behind me, and with it, the future. For a long time I'd lived in the moment only— until this past winter, with Diero, when I finally had the courage to look back, and take back again the gift and burden of all I'd lost. But the other, the visions and glimpses of time to come, it seemed I'd lost forever!

  Maybe it was living among the trees, I thought as I walked along the forest road. The infinite trunks and tangling, shadowing branches of the forest kept the eye from seeing far ahead in space or in time. Out in the open, in the level lands, between the blue water and blue sky, maybe I'd be able to look forward again, to see far. Hadn't Sallo told me long ago, sitting close beside me on the schoolroom bench, that that was a power I had from our people?

  "Don't talk about it," says her small, soft voice, warm in my ear. "Gavir, listen, truly, you mustn't talk about it to anybody."

  And I never had. Not among our captors, our masters in Arcamand, who had no such powers, who feared them and would not understand. Not among the escaped slaves in the forest, for there I had had no visions of the future, only Barna's dreams and plans of revolution and liberation. But if I could go among my own people, a free people, without masters or slaves, maybe I'd find others with such powers, and they could teach me how to bring back those visions, and learn the use of them.

  Such thoughts buoyed my spirits. I was in fact glad to be alone again at last. It seemed to me now that all the year I was with Barna, his great, jovial voice had filled my head, controlling my thoughts, ruling my judgment. The power of his being was in itself like a spell, leaving me only corners of my own being, where I hid in shadow. Now, as I walked away from him, my mind could range freely back over all my time in the Heart of the Forest, and with Brigin's band, and before that, with Cuga, the old mad hermit who had saved the mad boy from death by starvation. . .. But that thought brought me sharply back to the present moment. I hadn't eaten since last night. My stomach was beginning to call for dinner, and a pocket full of walnuts wasn't going to take me far. I decided I wouldn't eat any until I reached the end of the forest. There I'd have a wood-rat banquet and decide what to do next.

  It was still only mid-afternoon when the road came out through a thin stand of alders to meet another, larger road that ran north and south. There were cart ruts on it left from the last rains, many sheep tracks, and some horseshoe tracks, though it lay empty as far as I could see. Across it was open country, scrubby and nondescript, with a few stands of trees.

  I sat down behind a screen of bushes and solemnly cracked and ate ten of my walnuts. That left mi twenty-two, and nine acorns, which I kept only as a last resort, I got
up, faced left, and walked boldly down the road.

  My mind was busy with what I might tell any carter or drover or horseman who overtook me. I decided the one thing I had that might show me as something more than a runaway slave boy was the little book I carried in my pouch. I was a scholar's slave, sent from Asion to carry this book to a scholar in Etra, who was ill and wished to read it before he died, and had begged his friend in Asion to send it to him, with a boy who could read it to him, for his eyes were failing. . .I worked on the story diligently for miles. I was so lost in it I didn't even see the farm cart that turned from a side track into the road a little way behind me until the jingle of harness and the clop-clop of big hoofs woke me up. The horse's enormous, mild-eyed face was practically looking over my shoulder.

  "Howp," said the driver, a squat man with a wide face, looking me over with no expression at all on his face,

  I mumbled some kind of greeting,

  "Hop up," the man said more distinctly. "Good ways yet to the crossroads."

  I scrambled up onto the seat. He studied me some more. His eyes were remarkably small, like seeds in his big loaf of a face. "You'll be going to Shecha," he said, as an inarguable fact.

  I agreed with him. It seemed the best thing to do, "Don't see you folk much on the road no more," the driver said. And at that I realised that he had taken me for — that he had recognised me as — one of the Marsh people. I didn't need my complicated story. I wasn't a runaway but a native.

  It was just as well. This fellow might not have known what a book was.

  All the slow miles to the crossroads, through the late afternoon and the immense gold-and-purple sunset, he told me a tale about a farmer and his uncle and some hogs and a piece of land beside Rat Water and an injustice that had been done. I never understood any of it, but I could nod and grunt at the right moments, which was what he wanted. Always like talking with you folk," he said when he dropped me off at the crossroads. "Keep your counsel, you do. There's Shecha road."

  I thanked him and set off into the dusk. The side road led off southwest. If Shecha was a place of the Marsh people, I might as well go there.

  After a while I stopped and cracked all the rest of the walnuts between two stones, and ate them one by one as I went on, for my hunger had grown painful.

  Evening was darkening when I saw a glimmer o lights ahead. As I came closer, the shining of water reflected the last light in the sky. I came through a cow pasture to a tiny village on the shore of a lake. The houses were built up on stilts, and some stood right out over the water at the end of piers; there were boats docked, which I could not make out clearly. I was very tired and very hungry and the yellow glimmer of a lighted window was beautiful in the late dusk. I went to that house, climbed the wooden stairs to the narrow porch, and looked in the open door. It seemed to be an inn or beer house, windowless, with a low counter, but no furniture at all. Four or five men sat on a rug on the

  floor with clay cups in their hands. They all looked at me and then looked away so as not to stare.

  "Well, come in, boy," one said. They were dark-skinned, slight, short men, all of them. A woman behind the counter turned around, and I saw old Gammy, the piercing bright dark eyes, the eagle nose. "Where d'you come from?" she said.

  "The forest." My voice came out as a hoarse whisper. Nobody said anything. "I'm looking for my people."

  "Who are they then?" the woman asked. "Come in!" I came in, looking hangdog, no doubt. She slapped something on a plate and shoved it across the counter towards me,

  "I don't have money," I said.

  "Eat it," she said crossly. I took the plate and sat down with it on a seat by the unlighted hearth. It was a kind of cold fish fritter, I think, quite a large one, but it was gone before I knew what it was.

  "Who's your people, then?"

  "I don't know."

  "Makes it a bit hard to find 'em," one of the men suggested. They kept looking at me, not with a steady stare or with hostility, but covertly studying the new thing that had come their way. The instant disappearance of the fritter had caused some silent amusement.

  "Around here?" another man asked, rubbing his bald head.

  "I don't know. We were stolen— my sister and I. Slave raiders from Etra. South of here, maybe."

  "When was that?" the innkeeper asked in her sharp voice.

  "Fourteen or fifteen years ago."

  "He's a runaway slave, is he?" the oldest of the men murmured to the one next to him, uneasy.

  "So you was a little tad," said the innkeeper, filling a clay cup with something and bringing it to me. "What name had you?"

  "Gavir. My sister was Sallo."

  "No more than that?"

  I shook my head.

  "How'd you chance to be in the forest?" the bald man asked, mildly enough, but it was a hard question and he knew it. I hesitated a little and said, "I was lost."

  To my surprise, they accepted that as an answer, at least for the moment. I drank the cup of milk the woman had given me. It tasted sweet as honey.

  "What other names do you remember?" the woman asked.

  I shook my head. "I was one or two years old."

  "And your sister?

  "She was a year or two older."

  "And she's a slave in Etra?" She pronounced it "Ettera." "She's dead." I looked around at them, the dark, alert faces. "They killed her," I said. "That's why I ran away."

  "Ah, ah," said the bald man. "Ah, well... And how long ago was

  that?"

  "Two years ago."

  He nodded, exchanging glances with a couple of the others.

  "Here, give the boy something better than cow piss, Bia," said the oldest man, who had a toothless grin and looked a little simple. "I'll stand him a beer."

  "Milk's what he needs," said the innkeeper, pouring my cup full again. "If that was beer he'd be flat on his face."

  "Thank you, ma-io," I said, and drank the milk down gratefully.

  The honorific, I think, made her give a rasp of a laugh. "City tongue, but you're a Rassiu," she observed.

  "So they're not on your trail, so far as you know," the bald man asked me. "Your city masters, down there."

  T think they think I drowned," I said.

  He nodded.

  My weariness, the food filling my hunger, their wary kindness and cautious acceptance of me as what I was— and maybe my having to say that Sallo had been killed— it all worked on me to bring tears into my eyes. I stared at the ashes in the hearth as if a fire was burning there, trying to hide my weakness.

  "Looks like a southerner," one of the men murmured, and another, "I knew a Sallo Evo Danaha down at Crane Levels."

  "Gavir and Sallo are Sidoyu names," the bald man said. "I'm off to bed, Bia. I'll set off before dawn. Pack us up a dinner, eh? Come along south with me if you like, Gavir."

  The woman sent me upstairs after him to the common sleeping room of the inn. I lay down in my old blanket on a cot and fell asleep like a rock dropping into black water.

  The bald man shook me awake in the dark. "Coming?" he said, and I struggled up and got my gear and followed him. I had no idea where he was going or why or how, only that he was going south, and his invitation was my guidance.

  A tiny oil lamp burned in the room downstairs. The innkeeper, who stood behind the counter as if she had stood there all night long, handed him a large packet wrapped in something like oiled silk, took his quarter-bronze, and said, "Go with Me, Ammeda."

  "With Me," he said. I followed him out into the dark and down to the waterside. He went to a boat, which looked immense to me, tied up to a pier. He untied the rope and dropped down into the boat as casually as stepping down a stair. I clambered in more cautiously, but in a hurry, as it was already drifting from the pier. I crouched in the back end of the boat, and he came and went past me doing mysterious things in the dark. The gold spark of the inn doorway was already far behind us over the black water and fainter than the reflections of the stars. He had raised a
sail on the short mast in the middle of the boat, not much of a sail, but it took the slight wind and we moved steadily on. I began

  to get used to the strange sensation of walking while floating, and by the time there was some light in the sky I could move around well enough, if I hung on to things.

  The boat was narrow and quite long, decked, with a low rope rail all round; the whole middle of it was a long, low house.

  "Do you live on the boat?" I asked Ammeda, who had sat down in the stern by the tiller and was gazing off over the water at the growing light in the east.

  He nodded and said something like "Ao." After a while he remarked, "You fish." "I have some gear." "Saw that. Give it a try."

  I was glad to be of use. I got out my hooks and lines and the light pole that Chamry had taught me how to make in fitted sections. Am-meda offered no bait, and I had nothing but my acorns. I stuck the wormiest one on the barb of a hook, feeling foolish, and sat with my legs over the side trailing the line. To my surprise, I got a bite within a minute, and pulled up a handsome reddish fish.

  Ammeda gutted, split, and boned the fish with a wicked, delicate knife, sprinkled something from his pouch on it, and offered me half. I'd never eaten raw fish, but ate it without hesitation. It was delicate and sweet, and the spice he'd put on it was ground horseradish. The hot taste took me back to the forest, a year ago, digging horseradish roots with Chamry Bern.

  My other acorns wouldn't stay on the hook. Ammeda had kept the fish guts on a leaf of what looked like paper. He gave them to me as bait. I caught two more of the reddish fish, and we ate them the same way.

  "They eat their kind," he said. "Like men." "Looks like they'll eat anything," I said. "Like me."

  Always when I'm hungry, I crave the grain porridge of Arcamand, thick and nutty, seasoned with oil and dried olives, and I did then; but I was feeling very much better with a pound or two of fish in my belly. The sun had come up and was warming my back deliciously. Small waves slipped by the sides of the boat. Ahead of us and all around us was bright water, dotted here and there with low islands of reeds. I lay back on the deck and fell asleep.