Dangerous People by Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Where grass grows, go well, go easily.

Where grass grows, go well.

Kamedan knew the song. He did not sing with her, but listened to the song. She sang it very quietly and let her voice become fainter until the song became inaudible breath. After that they spoke no more, and Kamedan slept.

In the morning the little boy woke early and stared all around himself for a while, wondering. The only thing he saw that he knew was his father, sleeping beside the cot. Monkeyflower had never slept up on a cot with legs, and felt as if he might fall out of bed, but he liked the feeling. He lay still for a while, and then climbed down off the cot, stepped over his father’s legs, and went to the door of the room to look out. There was a woman he did not know curled up asleep in the porch there, so he went the other direction, to the inner door, into the second room. There he saw a lot of beautiful glass jars and bottles and containers of various colors and shapes, many ceramic bowls and holders, and several grinders with handles to turn. He turned all the handles he could reach, and then took down off the low shelves first one colored glass jar and then another, until he had a great many of them on the floor. There he began to arrange them. Some of them had something inside that made a noise when the jar was shaken. He shook all the jars. He opened one to see what was inside, and saw a grey, coarse powder, which he thought was sand. Another one had fine white sand in it. A blue glass jar had black water in it. A red glass jar had brown honey in it; that got onto his fingers, and he licked them. The honey tasted as bitter as oakgalls, but he was hungry, and finished licking his fingers. He was opening another bottle when he saw the woman stand in the doorway looking at him. He stopped doing anything and sat there amidst all the jars and bottles arranged around him. The black water had run out of the jar and soaked into the floor. Seeing that, he wanted to piss, and did not dare to.

Duhe said, “Well, well, well, well. Monkeyflower, you get to work early!” She came into the pharmacy. Monkeyflower sat very small.

“What’s this one?” Duhe said. She picked up the red jar. She looked at the child, took his hand, and sniffed it. “Sticky Monkeyflower, you are going to be constipated,” she said to him. “When you become a doctor you can use all these things. Until you become a doctor you’d better not. So let’s go outside.”

Monkeyflower let out a wail. He had pissed on the floor.

Duhe said, “O Spring of the Yellow River! Come on outside now!” He would not get up, so she picked him up and carried him out to the porch.

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