Always Coming Home: Author's Expanded Edition by Ursula K. Le Guin

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin [Le Guin, Ursula K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2019-01-18T22:40:50+00:00

He looked at me.

The child patted his hand to get his attention and said, “I’m Ekwerkwe.”

“That is a good name,” he said. “You, Ayatyu, how is it with you?”

“I’m bored,” I said. “There’s nothing to read here.” I used our Valley word for read.

He looked at me again awhile. “Owl,” he said, in the Valley language, and smiled again. “Do you get enough to eat? You’re very thin.”

“My stomach can fast, but my mind is starving,” I said. “Father, we made half a journey together, once.”

He nodded his head very slightly. He watched the child for a while, and talked to the other people in the room, Condors and Daughters of his house and Retforok House. Presently he said to me, no one else hearing, “When they remember me, you might be remembered too.”

I saw that place in front of the Palace in his face, the stakes and the bloody pavement.

“After all, the child!” he said.

My heart gave a great leap, and I said, “You will come—?”

He shook his head and said, “Wait.”

Presently, when the Retforok people were making ready to leave, he said, “This night Ayatyu Bele will sleep here; I have not seen my grandchild for so long.”

The Retforok women were uneasy, and fussed; the eldest of them said, “Great Condor, the woman’s husband the Condor Retforok Dayat might be displeased, since he did not give permission for her to stay,” and another of them said, “It is only a granddaughter,” and another one, malicious, said, “The Great Condor Terter Abhao might ennoble Retforok House by visiting it sometimes.”

There is no way that men could make women into slaves and dependents if the women did not choose to be so. I had hated the Dayao men for always giving orders, but the women were more hateful for taking them. I felt as if all the anger of all my years in Sai was swelling up in me, and that I could no longer keep it back; but fortunately my father—always a good general—said, “Well, the Great Condor Retforok Dayat will not be displeased with the woman if she stays here a few hours longer. I will have her sent home after dinner tonight.” They could not argue much over that, and so they left me, and Esiryu with me. The moment they were gone my father sent for this man and that woman and made us ready to depart. In the little time we had, all he could do was send two men of his household with me and Ekwerkwe and Esiryu; he could not take us himself or send soldiers with us as he had hoped to do. I said, “Will they send men after us?” and he said, “Early in the morning I will go out with a patrol, and they will follow me, thinking I took you as I brought you.”

We had dressed as tyon, and were standing in the hallway of Terter House. I said to my father, “Will you come ever?”

He was holding the child in his arms.

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