Ursula Le Guin - The Beginning Place

Irena pulled at his arm: she wanted him to stop. He stopped. She wanted him to sit down and share food with her. He was not hungry and could not stay there long, but it was pleasant to rest a little while. He got up, and they went on. Steep streams crossed the path now and then in the dark infolds of the canyons, and Hugh knelt to drink at each, for he was always thirsty, and the water roused him for a minute. He would look up and see the sky between the black jagged branches, and look beside him at the quiet, soft, severe face of the girl kneeling next to him at the stream’s edge; he would hear the sough of wind above and below them on the mountainside. He would be aware of these things, and perhaps of the small ferns and water plants beside his hands. Then he would get up and go on walking.

There was a place where the air was lighter, a stand of some round-leafed, pale-trunked trees. There the trail forked. One branch turned, going left and downhill; one went straight on.

“That one might go down to the south road,” Irena said, but he knew from her saying “that one” that it was not the right one.

“We should stay on this one.”

“It keeps going on. We must be going west by now. Maybe it just goes around the mountain and comes back out at the High Step. It just goes on and on.”

“It’s all right,” he said.

“I’m tired, Hugh.”

It was no time since, it was a long time since they had stopped to rest or eat. He wanted to go on, but he sat down and waited there at the fork of the trail under the pale trees while she ate. They went on. When they came to a stream, they drank, and went on.

The way went uphill now. Those were the only directions: right and left, uphill and downhill. The sense of the axis was long since lost, meaningless. There was no gate. The trail became very steep, zigzagging in and out of the ravines that scored the mountain’s bulk, always uphill.

“Hugh!”

The name he hated came from a great distance in the silence. The wind had ceased to blow. There was no sound anywhere. Be quiet, he thought with a dull stirring of anxiety, you must be quiet now. He stopped walking, unwillingly, and turned around. He did not see the girl at all for a while. She was far down the path behind him, down the long, dim, steep path under the crowding trees, her face a white patch. If he had gone on a few steps more they would have been out of sight of each other. That would be better. But he stood and waited. She came very slowly, she toiled up the slope, that was a word from books, toiling, working, it was hard work to walk this road. She was tired. He felt no tiredness, only when he stopped and had to stand still, as now, that was hard. If he could go on he could go on forever.

“You can’t just keep going,” she said in a breathless, harsh whisper when at last she had come up to him.

It was a great effort for him to speak. “It’s not much farther,” he said.

“What’s not?”

Don’t talk, he wanted to tell her. He managed to whisper it, “Don’t talk.” He turned to go on.

“Hugh, wait!”

The anguish of fear was in her whispered cry. He turned back to her. He did not know what to say to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “You wait here a while.”

“No,” she said, staring at him. “Not if you’re going on.” She started past him up the narrow trail with a kind of plunge forward, walking with a jerky, driven gait. He came behind her. The path turned, and climbed, and turned, under the dark firs, under the rock faces. They went round a corner that jutted out over immense, dim, dropping forests, and saw all the evening land beneath them darkening into the distant west. They did not pause but went on, entering under trees, into leaf and branch, into the mountain, under rock. To the right the walls of the summit buckled, overhanging. The trees among the scarred crags and boulders grew short and sere. There was rock underfoot now, and the path went level.

Irena’s heavy, jerky pace faltered. She stopped. She took a few steps and stopped again. As he came up beside her she whispered, “There.”

They faced a cliff wall, around which the trail passed on the outside, narrowing. Hugh went those few steps more, and turning the corner saw the inner curve of the cliff, a rock face overhung by half-leafless bushes. In the rock was the mouth of a cave. There it was, of course; this was the place. He stood gazing at it without fear or any emotion. He was here. At last. Again. He had been coming here all his life and had never left it in the beginning.

It only remained to walk the few steps down to the stony level ground before the cave, and go in. In the cave it was dark. Not twilight: darkness. From the beginning of time until the end.

He started forward.

She ran past him, the girl, pushing past him on the narrow path, running down and across the stony level to the cave mouth, but she did not enter. She stooped and picked up a stone and flung it straight into the dark mouth, screaming in a thin voice like a bird, “All right then, come out! Come out! Come out!”

“Get back,” Hugh said, coming beside her in three strides. Holding the sheath with his left hand he drew the sword with his right, for there was no other help. The cold breath sighed out of the cave, and from the cold dark, wakened, came the huge voice, the gobbling howl. And the face that was no face, slit and eyeless, was lunging out, thrusting blind and white, groping down upon him. Holding the sword grip in both hands Hugh pushed the sword upward into the white, wrinkled belly and dragged the blade down with all his strength. The whistling sob rose into a scream. In a gush of pale blood and glistening intestines the creature reared up writhing, pulling the sword out of his hands, and then crashed down on him, crushing him as he tried, too late, to throw himself aside into the clear.

It still moved. The jerking of the arms—small, like a lizard’s forelegs, against the mass of the body, but shaped like human arms and hands—was rhythmic, a reflex without intent. Human arms, a woman’s arms, and those were breasts, pointed like a sow’s teats, between the arms and lower down the belly, there where, as the pulsing spasm of the body went on, the wound was brought into view again, and again, and again, and the grip of the sword protruding from the wound. Irena, on hands and knees, crouched down lower and vomited on the rocks and dust. When she could raise herself up a little she began to crawl away, to get away from the dying creature and the reek of the opened belly. But Hugh was lying there under the thing and how could she leave him there? But he was dead too or dying and she was frightened, there was nothing she could do. She could not even stand up. She kept trembling and making a queer noise like “Ao, ao.” When she had crawled up close, under the twitching arms, so close that she could see the entrails sliding inside the wound, and Hugh on his back pinned under the huge wrinkled leg and body, she could not even get hold of him. She could not tug him out. She had to move the dragon thing, to try to push it off him. When she set her hands against the white wrinkled side she screamed aloud.

It was cold, a dead coldness. It was inert and stiff, the spasms running through it mechanically. She pushed, her head down and her eyes shut, weeping. It moved a little, rolled under her push, rolled slowly over onto its back, freeing Hugh’s body lying in a gush of slime and blood. The thin white forearms were now raised up into the air. Their twitching, fainter and faster, was in the corner of Irena’s vision as she crouched beside Hugh. He lay on his back, both legs bent to the side, his face masked, effaced with blood. She tried to clean the stuff off his face with her hands, to get his nostrils and mouth clear, for he was breathing, a gasping shallow breath at intervals; but he lay motionless and his face felt cold. The dragon thing had fallen on him and lain on him too long, chilled and stifled his life. He was broken. If she could get him out of this mess, the blood and the burst intestines and the white shuddering bulk she would not look at, if she could just get him somewhere else and get him clean and make a fire and get warm, both of them get warm. But she could not move him. If his back was injured she could kill him trying. She did not dare even move his legs, afraid they were broken.