The Telling by Ursula K. LeGuin

Author:Ursula K. LeGuin [LeGuin, Ursula K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780441011230
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2003-07-29T05:00:00+00:00

Her throat ached. She struggled with tears of rage and outrage that wanted to be cried, here with this woman who could be her grandmother, who was her grandmother.

"It was my fault."

"No," Elyed said. "You did no wrong. Sotyu Ang did no wrong. There is no fault. Things are going badly. It's not possible always to do right when things are difficult."

Sutty stood silent. She looked around the small, high-ceilinged room, its red rug almost hidden by chairs and cushions; everything poor, clean; a bunch of paper flowers stuck in an ugly vase on the low table; the grandnephew gently rearranging floor cushions; the old, old woman lowering herself carefully, painfully onto a thin pillow near the table. On the table, a book. Old, worn, many times read.

"I think maybe, yoz Sutty, it was the other way round. Sotyu told us last summer that he thought a neighbor had informed the police about his herbary. Then you came, and nothing happened."

Sutty forced herself to understand what Elyed had said. "I was a safeguard?"

"I think so."

"Because they don't want me to see... what they do? But then why did they — now — ?"

Elyed drew her thin shoulders together. "They don't study patience," she said.

"Then I should stay here," Sutty said slowly, trying to under-ittnd. "I thought it would be better for you if I left."

"I think you might go to Silong."

Her mind was clouded. "To Silong?"

"The last umyazu is there."

Sutty said nothing, and after a while Elyed added, scrupulous of fact, "The last I know of. Maybe some are left in the east, in the Isles. But here in the west they say the Lap of Silong is the last. Many, many books have been sent there. For many years now. It must be a great library. Not like the Golden Mountain, not like the Red Umyazu, not like Atangen. But what has been saved, most of it is there."

She looked at Sutty, her head a little on one side, a small old bird, keen-eyed. She had completed her cautious journey down onto the cushion, and now arranged her black wool vest, a bird getting its feathers straight. "You want to learn the Telling, I know that. You should go there," she said. "Here, nothing much is here. Bits and pieces. What I have, what a few maz have. Not much. Always less. Go to Silong, daughter Sutty. Maybe you can find a partner. Be a maz. Eh?" Her face creased up in a sudden, tremendous smile, toothless and radiant. She jiggled gently with laughter.

"Go to Silong..."

Other people were coming in. Elyed put her hands in her lap and began to chant softly, "The two from one, the one from two..."

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