Ursula Le Guin - The Birthday of the World

“But it doesn’t mean anything,” I said.

“Not here.”

“Where does it mean anything?”

Ruaway said some more gra-gra and then said, “My people.”

“Your people are Teghs. They fight God and get beaten.”

“Maybe,” Ruaway said, sounding like Haghag. Her eyes looked into mine again, without killing in them but without fear. Nobody looked at me, except Haghag and Tazu and of course God. Everybody else put their forehead on their thumbs so I couldn’t tell what they were thinking. I wanted to keep Ruaway with me, but if I favored her, Kig and the others would torment and hurt her. I remembered that when Lord Festival began sleeping with Lady Pin, the men who had insulted Lady Pin became oily and sugary with her and the bodymaids stopped stealing her earrings. I said, “Sleep with me tonight,” to Ruaway.

She looked stupid.

“But wash first,” I said.

She still looked stupid.

“I don’t have a penis!” I said, impatient with her. “If we sleep together Kig will be afraid to touch you.”

After a while Ruaway reached out and took my hand and put her forehead against the back of it. It was like thumbing the forehead only it took two people to do it. I liked that. Ruaway’s hand was warm, and I could feel the feather of her eyelashes on my hand.

“Tonight,” I said. “You understand?” I had understood that Ruaway didn’t always understand. Ruaway nodded her body, and I ran off.

I knew nobody could stop me from doing anything, being God’s only daughter, but there was nothing I could do except what I was supposed to do, because everybody in the house of God knew everything I did. If sleeping with Ruaway was a thing I wasn’t supposed to do, I couldn’t do it. Haghag would tell me. I went to her and asked her.

Haghag scowled. “Why do you want that woman in your bed? She’s a dirty barbarian. She has lice. She can’t even talk.”

Haghag was saying yes. She was jealous. I came and stroked her hand and said, “When I’m God I’ll give you a room full of gold and jewels and dragon crests.”

“You are my gold and jewels, little holy daughter,” Haghag said.

Haghag was only a common person, but all the holy men and women in God’s house, relatives of God or people touched by God, had to do what Haghag said. The nurse of God’s children was always a common person, chosen by God Herself. Haghag had been chosen to be Omimo’s nurse when her own children were grown up, so when I first remember her she was quite old. She was always the same, with strong hands and a soft voice, saying, “Maybe.” She liked to laugh and eat. We were in her heart, and she was in mine. I thought I was her favorite, but when I told her so she said, “After Didi.” Didi is what the idiot called himself. I asked her why he was deepest in her heart and she said, “Because he’s foolish. And you because you’re wise,” she said, laughing at me because I was jealous of Lord Idiot.

So now I said, “You fill my heart,” and she, knowing it, said hmph.

I think I was eight that year. Ruaway had been thirteen when God the Father put his penis into her after killing her father and mother in the war with her people. That made her sacred, so she had to come live in God’s house. If she had conceived, the priests would have strangled her after she had the baby, and the baby would have been nursed by a common woman for two years and then brought back to God’s house and trained to be a holy woman, a servant of God. Most of the bodyservants were God’s bastards. Such people were holy, but had no title. Lords and ladies were God’s relations, descendants of the ancestors of God. God’s children were called lord and lady too, except the two who were betrothed. We were just called Tazu and Ze until we became God. My name is what the divine mother is called, the name of the sacred plant that feeds the people of God. Tazu means “great root,” because when he was being born our father drinking smoke in the childbirth rituals saw a big tree blown over by a storm, and its roots held thousands of jewels in their fingers.

When God saw things in the shrine or in sleep, with the eyes in the back of their head, they told the dream priests. The priests would ponder these sights and say whether the oracle foretold what would happen or told what should be done or not done. But never had the priests seen the same things God saw, together with God, until the birthday of the world that made me fourteen years old and Tazu eleven.

Now, in these years, when the sun stands still over Mount Kanaghadwa people still call it the birthday of the world and count themselves a year older, but they no longer know and do all the rituals and ceremonies, the dances and songs, the blessings; and there is no feasting in the streets, now.

All my life used to be rituals, ceremonies, dances, songs, blessings, lessons, feasts, and rules. I knew and I know now on which day of God’s year the first perfect ear of Ze is to be brought by an angel from the ancient field up by Wadana where God set the first seed of the Ze. I knew and know whose hand is to thresh it, and whose hand is to grind the grain, and whose lips are to taste the meal, at what hour, in what room of the house of God, with what priests officiating. There were a thousand rules, but they only seem complicated when I write them here. We knew them and followed them and only thought about them when we were learning them or when they were broken.

I had slept all these years with Ruaway in my bed. She was warm and comfortable. When she began to sleep with me I stopped having bad sights at night as I used to do, seeing huge white clouds whirling in the dark, and toothed mouths of animals, and strange faces that came and changed themselves. When Kig and the other ill-natured holy people saw Ruaway stay in my bedroom with me every night, they dared not lay a finger or a breath on her. Nobody was allowed to touch me except my family and Haghag and the bodyservants, unless I told them to. And after I was ten, the punishment for touching me was death. All the rules had their uses.

The feast after the birthday of the world used to go on for four days and nights. All the storehouses were open and people could take what they needed. The servants of God served out food and beer in the streets and squares of the city of God and every town and village of God’s country, and common people and holy people ate together. The lords and ladies and God’s sons went down into the streets to join the feast; only God and I did not. God came out on the balcony of the house to hear the histories and see the dances, and I came with them. Singing and dancing priests entertained everyone in the Glittering Square, and drumming priests, and story priests, and history priests. Priests were common people, but what they did was holy.

But before the feast, there were many days of rituals, and on the day itself, as the sun stopped above the right shoulder of Kanaghadwa, God Himself danced the Dance that Turns, to bring the year back round.

He wore a gold belt and the gold sun mask, and danced in front of our house on the Glittering Square, which is paved with stones full of mica that flash and sparkle in the sunlight. We children were on the long south balcony to see God dance.

Just as the dance was ending a cloud came across the sun as it stood still over the right shoulder of the mountain, one cloud in the clear blue summer sky. Everybody looked up as the light dimmed. The glittering died out of the stones. All the people in the city made a sound, “Oh,” drawing breath. God Himself did not look up, but his step faltered.

He made the last turns of the dance and went into the ash house, where all the Goïz are in the walls, with the bowls where their food is burned in front of each of them, full of ashes.