Ursula K Le Guin

by Powers (2007) (lit)

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "We're on the boat, he's on foot."

  But that wasn't very reassuring, either. The barge went at the pace of the river, steered with a long sweep and rudder at the stern. It put into every town and village on the riverbank, taking on and putting off cargo and passengers. On its upriver journey it would be pulled by horses on the towpath by the river and would go even slower, the master told me. That was hard to believe. The Ambare, taking its course through great level plains, didn't exactly run; it wandered and meandered, it moseyed along, in places it oozed. Drovers used the towpath to move their cattle; sometimes we'd slowly come up to a herd of brown and brindle cows clopping along at a cow's pace, headed downstream like us, and it would take us a long, long time to draw ahead of them.

  The days on the water were sweet and dull and calm, but every time we drew into the wharf of a village my fear rose up again and I scanned every face on shore. Over and over I debated with myself whether it

  would be wiser to debark at some town on the eastern bank and make our way afoot to the Sensaly, avoiding all towns and villages. But though Melle was by now in much better shape than she'd been when I found her, she still couldn't walk far or fast. It seemed best to float, at least until we were within a day's journey of the Senssaly. The end of the barge journey at the rivermeet, was a town called Bemette, and that town I resolved at all costs to avoid. There was a ferry across the Sensa-ly there, the barge master told me, A ferry was what we needed, but that's where Hoby would be waiting for us. I only hoped he would not be waiting for us sooner than that. On horseback or by wagon or even walking hard, he could certainly outpace the barge and arrive before we did at any of the villages on the western bank.

  Pedri the barge master paid us little heed and didn't want his assistant to waste time talking to us. We were cargo, along with the boxes and bales and chickens and also, between village and village, the goats and grandmothers, and once a young colt who tried, the whole time he was on the barge, to commit suicide by drowning. Pedri and his assistant slept in the houseboat, taking watch and watch while the barge was afloat. We made our own meals, buying food at villages where we stopped, Melle made friends with the chickens, who were being sent all the way to Bemette; they were some kind of prize breeding stock with fancy tails and feathered legs, all hens. They were perfectly tame, and I bought Melle a bag of birdseed to entertain them with. She named them all, and would sit with them for hours.

  Sitting with her, I found their mild, continual conversation soothing. Only when a hawk circled up in the sky over the river, all the busy little cluckings and talkings stopped, and they huddled under their perches, hiding in their ruffled feathers, silent. "Don't worry, Reddy," Melle would soothe them. "It's all right, Little Pet. Don't worry, Snappy, It can't get you. I won't let it."

  Don't worry, Beaky.

  I read in my book. I said old poems to Melle, and she learned to recite The Bridge on the Nisas. We went on with the Chamhan,

  "I wish I was really your brother, Gav," she murmured to me one night on the dark river under the stars. I murmured back, "You really are my sister."

  We put ashore at a wharf on the eastern bank. Pedri and his hand were busy at once unloading hay bales. There was no town as such, but a kind of warehouse-barn and a couple of old cowboys guarding it. "How far is it to Bemette from here?" I asked one of them, and he said, "Two, three hours on a good horse."

  I went back aboard and told Melle to gather up her things. My pack was always ready, filled with all the food I could carry I'd paid the fare before we started. We slipped ashore, and as I passed Pedri I said, "We'll walk from here, our farm's just back that way," pointing southeast. He grunted and went on shifting bales. We walked away from the Ambare the way I'd pointed till we were out of sight, then turned left to bear northeast, towards the Sensaly. The country was very flat, mostly tall grass, with a few groves of trees, Melle walked along beside me stoutly. As she walked she muttered a soft litany, "Goodbye Snappy, goodbye Rosy, goodbye Gold-eye, goodbye Little Pet. . ."

  We walked on no path. The country did not change and there were no landmarks, except, very far off northward, a blue line that might be clouds or might be hills across the river. I had nothing but the sun to tell me the direction to go. It came on to evening. We stopped at a grove of trees to eat supper, then rolled up in our blankets and slept there. We had seen no sign of anyone following us, but I was certain that Hoby was on our track, that he might even be waiting for us. The dread of seeing him never left me, and filled my restless sleep. I was awake long before dawn. We set off in the twilight of morning, still heading, as well as I could steer us, northeast. The sun came up red and huge over the plains.

  The ground began to get boggy, and there were low places of marsh and reed. About midday we saw the Sensaly.

  It was wide — a big river. Not deep, I thought, for there were shoals and gravel bars out in midstream, and more than one channel; but from the shore you can't tell where the current quickens and has dug deep places in such a stream.

  "We'll go east along the river," I said to Melle and to myself, "We'll come to a ford. Or a ferry. Mesun is still a long way upriver from here, so we're going the right direction for sure, and when we can get across, we will."

  "All right," Melle said. "What's the river's name?" "Sensaly."

  "I'm glad rivers have names. Like people." She made a song of the name and I heard the thin little chant as we walked, Sen-sally, sen-sallee.., Going was hard in the willow thickets above the shore, and so we soon went down to walk on the river beach, wide floodplains of mud, gravel, and sand.

  We could be seen more easily there; but if he was on our track there was no way to hide. This was an open, desolate country. There were no signs of humankind. We saw only deer and a few wild cattle.

  When we stopped for Melle to rest I tried fishing, but had little luck, a few small perch. The river was very clear, and as far as I waded out in it, the current was not strong. I saw a couple of places I thought might be fordable, but there were tricky-looking bits on the far side; we went on.

  We walked so for three days. We had food for about two more and after that must live by fishing. It was evening, and Melle was tired. I was too. The sense of being pursued wore me down, and I had little sleep, waking again and again all night. I left her sitting on a sandy bit under a willow and went up the rise of the bank, scouting as always for

  a ford. I saw faint tracks coming down across the beach, ahead of us; indeed there looked to be a ford there in the wide, shoal-broken river.

  I looked back, and saw a single horseman coming along beside the water.

  I ran down to Melle and said, "Come," picking up my pack. She was frightened and bewildered, but took up her little blanket pack at once. I caught her hand and brought her along as fast as she could go to the track I had seen. Horses and wagons had crossed the river here. I led Melle into the water, saying to her, "When it gets deep I'll carry you."

  The way to go was plain at first, the clear water showing me the shallows between shoals. Out in the middle of the water I looked back once. The horseman had seen us. He was just riding into the river, the water splashing up about his horse's legs. It was Hoby. I saw his face, round, hard, and heavy, Torm's face, the Father's, the face of the slave owner and the slave. He was scowling, urging on his horse, shouting at me, words I could not hear.

  I saw all that in a glance and waded on, crosscurrent, pulling the child with me as best I could. When I saw she was getting out of her depth I said, "Climb up on my shoulders, Melle. Don't hold me by the throat, but hold tight." She obeyed.

  I knew where I was then. I had been in this river with this burden on my shoulders. I did not look around because I do not look around, I go forward, almost out of my depth, but still touching bottom, and there is the place that looks like the right way to go, straight up to the shore, but I don't go that way, the sand gives way beneath my foot. I must go to the right, and farther still to the right.
Then the current seizes me with sudden terrific power and I'm off my feet, trying to swim, and sinking, floundering, sinking— but I have foothold again, the child clinging to me hard, I can climb against that terrible current, fight my way up into the shallows, scramble gasping up among the willows

  whose roots are in the river, and from there, only from there, I can look back.

  The horse was struggling out in the deep current, riderless.

  I could see how all the force of the river gathered in that channel, just downstream from where we had found our way.

  Melle slipped down from my back and pressed up tight against me, shuddering. I held her close, but I could not move. I crouched staring at the river, at the horse being carried far down the river, swimming desperately. Now it began to find footing, I watched it make its way, plunging and slipping, back to the other shore. I scanned the water, the islets, the gravel bars, upriver and down, again and again. Sand, gravel, shining water.

  "Gav, Gav, Beaky," the child was sobbing, "come on. Come on. We have to go on. We have to get away." She tugged at my legs.

  "I think maybe we have," I tried to say, but I had no voice. I staggered after Melle for a few steps up into the willow grove, out of the water, onto dry land. There my legs gave way and I pitched down. I tried to tell Melle that I was all right, that it was all right, but I couldn't speak. I couldn't get air enough. I was in the water again, under the water. The water was clear and bright all round me, then clear and dark.

  * * *

  When I came to myself it was night, mild and overcast. The river ran black among its pale shoals and bars. The little damp hot bundle pressed against my side was Melle. I roused her, and we groped and crawled up through the thickets to a kind of hollow that seemed to offer shelter. I was too clumsy to make a fire. Everything in our packs was damp, but we took off our wet clothes, rubbed ourselves hard, and rolled up in our damp blankets. We huddled together again and fell asleep at once.

  My fear was gone. I had crossed the second river. I slept long and deep.

  We woke to sunlight. We spread out all our damp things to dry and ate damp stale bread there in the hollow among the willow thickets. Melle seemed to have taken no harm, but was silent and watchful. She said at last, "Don't we have to run away any more?"

  "I don't think so," I said. Before we ate, I had gone down to the shore and, concealed in the thickets, scanned the river and the snores for a long time. Reason told me I should fear, reason said that Hoby might well have swum across and be hiding near; but all the time unreason told me, You're safe; he's gone; the link is broken.

  Melle was watching me, with a child's trust. "We're in Urdile now," I said, "where there are no slaves. And no slave takers. And. . ." But I didn't know whether she'd even seen Hoby behind us in the river, and didn't know how to speak of him. 'And I think we're free," I said.

  She pondered this for a while.

  "Can I call you Gav again?"

  "My whole name is Gavir Aytana Sidoy," I said. "But I like Beaky."

  "Beaky and Squeaky," Melle murmured, looking down, with her small, half-circle smile. "Can I go on being Miv?"

  "It might be a good idea. If you want to."

  "Now are we going to see the great man in the city?"

  "Yes," I said. And so when our things had dried out we set off.

  Our journey to Mesun was easy enough, as indeed all our journey had been, but wonderfully freed from the dread that had dogged and darkened my way between the rivers. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got to Mesun, how we were to live; but to ask too many questions seemed ungrateful to Lord Luck and Lady Ennu. They'd been with us so far, they wouldn't leave us now. I sang Caspro's hymn to them under my breath as we walked.

  "You don't sing quite as well as some people," my companion remarked, with some diplomacy "I know I don't. You sing, then."

  She lifted up a sweet, unsteady little voice in a love song she'd heard in Barna's house. I thought of her beautiful sister, and wondered if Melle too would be beautiful. I found myself thinking, "Let her be spared that!" But surely that was a slave's thought. I must learn to think with a free mind.

  Urdile was a pleasant country of apple orchards and poplar-bordered roads, rising up slowly from the river to the blue hills I'd seen from far away. We walked, and sometimes got a lift on a cart, and bought food at village markets, or were offered milk by a farm woman who saw us pass and pitied the dusty child. I got scolded for dragging my little brother out to tramp the roads, but when my little brother clung to me and glared loyal defiance, the scolder would melt and offer us food or a hayloft to sleep in, after five days, returning towards the river, which had curved away from our road, we came to the city of Mesun.

  Built on steep hills right above the river, with roofs of slate and red tile, and towers, and several ornate bridges, Mesun was a city of stone, but it was not walled.

  That seemed strange to me. There were no gates, no guard towers, no guards. I saw no soldiers anywhere. We walked into a great city as into a village.

  The houses towered up three and four stories over streets full of people, carts, wagons, horses. The din and commotion and crowding seemed tremendous to us. Melle was holding my hand tightly, and I was glad of it. We passed a marketplace near the river that made Etra's market seem a very small affair. I thought the best thing to do was find some modest inn where we could put down our packs and clean ourselves up a bit, for we were a frowzy, filthy pair by now. As we went on

  past the market, looking for inn signs, I saw two young men come swinging down a steep street, wearing long, light, grey-brown cloaks and velvet caps that squashed out over the ears. They were exactly like a picture in a book in Everra's library: Two Scholars of the University of Mesun. They saw me staring at them, and one of them gave me a slight wink. I stepped forward and said, "Excuse me, would you tell us how to get to the University?"

  "Right up the hill, friend," the one who'd winked said. He looked at us curiously. I didn't know what to ask him. I finally said, "Are there lodging houses up there?" and he nodded: "The Quail's the cheapest." His friend said, "No, the Barking Dog," and the first one said, "All d e-pends on your taste in insects: fleas at the Quail, bugs at the Dog." And they went on down the street laughing.

  We climbed up the way they had come down. Before long the cobblestone way became steps. I saw that we were climbing around a great wall of stones. Mesun had been a fortified city, long ago, and this was the wall of the citadel. Over the wall loomed palaces of silver-grey stone with steep-pitched roofs and tall windows. The steps brought us up at last onto a little curving street lined with smaller houses, and Melle whispered, "There they are." They stood side by side, two inns, with their signs of the quail and the savagely barking dog. "Fleas or bedbugs?" I asked Melle, and she said, "Fleas." So we took lodgings at the Quail.

  We had a most welcome bath and gave what spare clothing we had to the sour-faced landlady to be cleaned. We were on the watch for fleas, but there seemed to be less than in most haylofts. After a scanty and not very good dinner, Melle was ready to go to bed. She had borne the journey well, but every day of it had taken her to about the limit of her small strength. The last couple of days she had had spells of tears and snappishness, like any tired child. I was pretty stretched myself, but I felt a nervous energy in me, here in the city, that would not let me

  rest. I asked Melle if she'd be worried if I went out for a while. She was lying holding her Ennu figure against her chest, her beloved poncho pulled up over the bedcover. "No," she said, "I won't worry, Beaky." But she looked a little sad and tremulous. I said, "Oh, maybe I won't go."

  "Go on," she said crossly. "Go awayl I am just going to sleep!" And she shut her eyes, frowning, her mouth pulled tight.

  "All right. I'll be back before dark."

  She ignored me, squeezing her eyes shut. I went out.

  As I came out into the street the same two young men were coming by, a bit out of breath from the climb up, and the one w
ho'd winked saw me. "Chose the fleas, eh?" he said. He had a pleasant smile and was openly curious about me. I took this second meeting as an omen or sign which I should follow. I said, "You're students of the University?"

  He stopped and nodded; his companion stopped less willingly.

  "I'd like to know how to become a student."

  "I thought that might be the case."

  "Can you tell me —at all —how I should— Whom I should ask — " "Nobody sent you here? A teacher, a scholar you worked with?" My heart sank. "No," I said.

  He cocked his head with its ridiculous but dashing velvet cap. "Come on to the Gross Tun and have a drink with us," he said, "I'm Sampater Yille, this is Gola Mederra. He's law, I'm letters."

  I said my name, and, "I was a slave in Etra."

  I had to say that before anything else, before they were shamed by finding they had offered their friendship to a slave.

  "In Etra? Were you there in the siege?" said Sampater, and Gola said, "Come on, I'm thirsty!"

  We drank beer at the Gross Tun, a crowded beer hall noisy with students, most of them about my age or a little older. Sampater and Go-la were principally interested in putting away as much beer as possible

  as fast as possible and in talking to everybody else at the beer hall, but they introduced me to everyone, and everyone gave me advice about where to go and whom to see about taking classes in letters at the University. When it turned out I knew not one of the famous teachers they mentioned, Sampater asked, "There was nobody you came here wanting to study with, then, a name you knew?" "Orrec Caspro."

  "Ha!" He stared at me, laughed, and raised his mug. "You're a poet,

  then!"

  "No, no. I only — " I didn't know what I was. I didn't know enough to know what I was, or wanted to do or be. I'd never felt so ignorant,

  Sampater drained his mug and cried, "One more round, on me, and I'll take you to his house "

  "No, I can't— "

  "Why not? He's not a professor, you know, he keeps no state. You don't have to approach him on your knees. We'll go right there, it's no distance."