Read Online Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ursula K. Le Guin
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was later. Now I had to understand what my house was built on.
But all I had to make understanding out of was that tale of a Night Mouth, that hateful image from the people I hated.
And Orrec Caspro's tale. A library, he had said. A great library. The greatest in the world. A place of learning, of the light of the mind.
I could not even look at the shadow end of the room. I wasn't ready yet for that, I had to gather my strength. I went to the table, the one I used to build houses under and pretend to be a bear cub in it's den. I set down the lamp and laid my hands palm down on the table, pressing them hard on the smooth wood, to feel it's smoothness, it's solidity. It was there.
There was a book on it.
The two of us always returned books to the shelves before we left the room, an old habit of order the Waylord had from his mother, who had been his teacher as he was mine. I didn't recognise this book. It didn't look old. It must be one of those that people had brought him secretly to be hidden away, to be saved from the
destruction of Atth. Occupied with learning all I could of the great makers of the past and the knowledge they had gathered, I had scarcely looked yet at the shelves that held those random, rescued, newer books. The Waylord must have set this one out for me while I went back to the market with Gry.
I opened it and saw it was printed, with the metal letters they use now in Bendraman and Urdile, which make it easy to make a thousand copies of a book. I read the title:
Chaos and Spirit: The Cosmogonies,
and under that the name Orrec Caspro, and under that the name of the printers, Berre and Holaven of Derris Water in Bendraman. On the next page were only the words,"Made in honor and dear remembrance of Melle Aulitta of Caspromant."
I sat down, facing the dark end of the room, for if I couldn't look at it neither could I turn my back on it. I drew the lamp closer to the book and began to read.
I woke there in the grey of early morning, the lamp dead, my head on the open book. I was chilled to the bone. My hands were so stiff I could barely write the letters on the air to leave the room.
I ran to the kitchen and all but crawled into the fireplace trying to get warm. Ista scolded and Sosta chattered but I didn't listen. The great words of the poem were running in my head like waves, like flights of pelicans over the waves. I couldn't hear or see or feel anything but them.
Ista was really worried about me. She gave me a cup of hot milk and said, "Drink this, you fool girl, what are you taking sick for now? With guests in the house? Drink it up!" I drank it and thanked her and went to my room, where I fell on the bed and slept like a stone till late in the morning.
I found Gry and her husband in the stableyard, with the lion and the horses and Gudit and Sosta. Sosta was neglecting her sewing to swoon around Caspro, Gudit was saddling the tall red horse, and Gry and Caspro were arguing. They weren't angry with each other, but they weren't in agreement. Lero was not in their hearts, as we say. "You can't possibly go there by yourself," Gry was saying, and he was saying, "You can't possibly go there with me," and it was not the first time either had said it.
He turned to me. For a moment I felt almost as swoony as Sosta, thinking that this was the man who had made the poem that I had read all night and that had remade my soul. That confusion went away at
once. This was Orrec Caspro all right, only not the poet Caspro but the man Orrec, a worried man arguing with his wife, a man who took everything terribly seriously, our guest, whom I liked. "You can tell us, Memer," he said. "People saw Gry in the marketplace yesterday, saw her with Shetar—hundreds of people—isn't that true.?"
"Of course it is," Gry said before I could speak. "But nobody saw inside the wagon! Did they, Memer?"
"Yes," I said to him, and "I don't think so," to her.
"So," she said, "your wife hid in the wagon in the marketplace, and now
But all I had to make understanding out of was that tale of a Night Mouth, that hateful image from the people I hated.
And Orrec Caspro's tale. A library, he had said. A great library. The greatest in the world. A place of learning, of the light of the mind.
I could not even look at the shadow end of the room. I wasn't ready yet for that, I had to gather my strength. I went to the table, the one I used to build houses under and pretend to be a bear cub in it's den. I set down the lamp and laid my hands palm down on the table, pressing them hard on the smooth wood, to feel it's smoothness, it's solidity. It was there.
There was a book on it.
The two of us always returned books to the shelves before we left the room, an old habit of order the Waylord had from his mother, who had been his teacher as he was mine. I didn't recognise this book. It didn't look old. It must be one of those that people had brought him secretly to be hidden away, to be saved from the
destruction of Atth. Occupied with learning all I could of the great makers of the past and the knowledge they had gathered, I had scarcely looked yet at the shelves that held those random, rescued, newer books. The Waylord must have set this one out for me while I went back to the market with Gry.
I opened it and saw it was printed, with the metal letters they use now in Bendraman and Urdile, which make it easy to make a thousand copies of a book. I read the title:
Chaos and Spirit: The Cosmogonies,
and under that the name Orrec Caspro, and under that the name of the printers, Berre and Holaven of Derris Water in Bendraman. On the next page were only the words,"Made in honor and dear remembrance of Melle Aulitta of Caspromant."
I sat down, facing the dark end of the room, for if I couldn't look at it neither could I turn my back on it. I drew the lamp closer to the book and began to read.
I woke there in the grey of early morning, the lamp dead, my head on the open book. I was chilled to the bone. My hands were so stiff I could barely write the letters on the air to leave the room.
I ran to the kitchen and all but crawled into the fireplace trying to get warm. Ista scolded and Sosta chattered but I didn't listen. The great words of the poem were running in my head like waves, like flights of pelicans over the waves. I couldn't hear or see or feel anything but them.
Ista was really worried about me. She gave me a cup of hot milk and said, "Drink this, you fool girl, what are you taking sick for now? With guests in the house? Drink it up!" I drank it and thanked her and went to my room, where I fell on the bed and slept like a stone till late in the morning.
I found Gry and her husband in the stableyard, with the lion and the horses and Gudit and Sosta. Sosta was neglecting her sewing to swoon around Caspro, Gudit was saddling the tall red horse, and Gry and Caspro were arguing. They weren't angry with each other, but they weren't in agreement. Lero was not in their hearts, as we say. "You can't possibly go there by yourself," Gry was saying, and he was saying, "You can't possibly go there with me," and it was not the first time either had said it.
He turned to me. For a moment I felt almost as swoony as Sosta, thinking that this was the man who had made the poem that I had read all night and that had remade my soul. That confusion went away at
once. This was Orrec Caspro all right, only not the poet Caspro but the man Orrec, a worried man arguing with his wife, a man who took everything terribly seriously, our guest, whom I liked. "You can tell us, Memer," he said. "People saw Gry in the marketplace yesterday, saw her with Shetar—hundreds of people—isn't that true.?"
"Of course it is," Gry said before I could speak. "But nobody saw inside the wagon! Did they, Memer?"
"Yes," I said to him, and "I don't think so," to her.
"So," she said, "your wife hid in the wagon in the marketplace, and now
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