Ursula Le Guin - The Beginning Place

“What shall I do?” she whimpered aloud, and felt her tongue dry and swollen in her mouth. She had been thirsty for a long time, for miles before they came to the cave, for hours while Hugh went on at that remorseless steady pace, never stopping, driven or drawn, and she could only stay with him because she knew that neither of them would ever get out of this country alone. And the way had gone higher and higher, and there had been no more streams, and they had come to the cave. But her mouth was like dry plaster, and there must be water somewhere. She sat back on her heels, looking with half-seeing eyes about the stony level in front of the dark gap of the cave mouth, the bare slopes and cliffs above, the treetops and rising ridges across the gorge. She would not look at the white thing, but the tremor of the forearms was always at the edge of her eye; it had almost ceased, a running shudder. She tried to wipe her hands on stones, for they were sticky and growing stiff with slime and blood. She heard the breath catch in Hugh’s throat. He moved his hands and coughed, a small, thin sound like a child. His lips worked, and presently he opened his eyes. There was no mind in them at first, but as she crouched beside him and said his name he looked at her, she saw his blue eyes, his soul alive.

“Can you move, Hugh? Can you sit up?”

The breath whistled in his chest.

“Wind ’ck’d out,” he said very faintly.

“It’s all right. You got knocked down. If you can move, we’ll be able to get a ways away. I can’t move you.”

“Fat,” he said. “Wait:”

He shut his eyes, then presently opened them, set his lips, and got himself propped up on both elbows, his head hanging over his chest. “Hang on,” he said to her or to himself. “That’s it,” she told him, holding his shoulder, “that’s the way.” He got up onto his knees with a lurch. There he stayed for a while. He showed no awareness of where he was, did not see the dead thing shivering beside him; he could go no further than his own body now. When he tried to stand up, Irena could help him, getting her shoulder under his arm as a crutch. He was very heavy, shambling, not seeing. She guided him in a staggering shuffle around the body of the dragon creature, across the level, into the thin trees that grew beside the cave wall. The trail went on there. Almost at once it turned sharply left and downward, descending so steeply that Hugh could not keep his feet. At least they had got past the cave. She was going to have him sit or lie down there on the trail while she went to find water, when she heard the sound of water running; and she thought then that all along she had heard that sound, while they were in the stony place in front of the cave. She got Hugh to shuffle on around the turn of the path. The trail ran down among high ferns. Above it water slipped in a clear film over boulders, crossed it, and vanished among ferns and moss down the mountainside. “Here,” she said. As soon as she ceased to support him Hugh went down onto his knees again, and then onto all fours. “Lie down,” she said, and he let himself slip down on his side among the ferns.

She drank and washed her hands and face in the little ceaseless, clear rilling, and gave Hugh water in her hands, a swallow at a time, the best she could do. She tried to get him to sit up so she could get his coat off. He did not cooperate. “It’s all covered with blood and, and tripe, Hugh, it smells—”

“I’m cold,” he said.

“I’ve got a blanket, a cloak. It’s dry, you’ll be warmer.”

His resistance was not conscious, and by persisting she got the leather coat off him. He cried out twice with pain as she tried to work it off his shoulders, so that she thought his shoulder was broken or dislocated, or his arm injured; but he said clearly enough, “It’s O.K.” All the front of his shirt was sticky, pale brownish-red; she got that off him too. She could see no injury on him. His shoulders, arms, and chest were heavy, smooth, and strong, very white in the dusk place among the ferns. She got him wrapped in the red cloak, and when she had washed out his shirt she used it to clean his face and throat and hands better; then rinsed it again, craving and healed by the water, the touch and cool and clarity of it. When she let him be, he lay with his eyes closed. His breathing was still shallow, but quiet. She sat with her hand on his, for his comfort and her own.

The immense gorge they overlooked was still. All the mountain was still, except for the small constant music of the spring.

It was a good place, this nook beside the path: the ferns, the boulders, the film and the glimmer of water, the steady dark branches of the firs. She looked up. The path had turned sharp round; they must be directly below the stony level and the cave mouth. The spring must rise beneath the floor of the cave. It came out here into the light. They were in front of the cave here, but on beyond it, past it. You never think of going on past the dragon, Irena thought. You only think about getting to it. But what happens afterwards?

She began to cry again, noiselessly, painlessly. The tears ran down her cheeks in a film like the spring water. She thought of the piteous, hideous arms, the pointed white breasts; she put her face in her arms and wept. I have passed the place of the dragon and I can’t go back. I have to go on. It was my home, the light in the window, the fire on the hearth, I was a child there, I was the daughter, but it’s gone. Now I’m only the dragon’s daughter and the king’s child, the one that has to go alone, go on, because there is no home behind me.

The water sang, small and fearless. She curled down at last to sleep, worn out. It was a damp place they were in: the touch of the ferns was chill, the ground moist. She could not get warm. There was nothing nearby to build a fire with and she felt too weary, having once half relaxed, to go gather wood and make a fire. Hugh lay fast asleep. He had turned partly onto his face and his arms were drawn in close for warmth. A corner of the red cloak had caught on the ferns and pulled free. She crawled in under it, back to back with Hugh. That was no good. She turned over and put her arm over his side under the fold of the cloak. That was warm, that was comfort. She fell asleep, like a stone falling.

Waking, she lay lapped in warmth some while, rocked in the mild rhythms of Hugh’s breathing and her own, entirely tranquil. Memories began to shape themselves, intruding like the angles and pebbles of the streambed; again she ran down the thin, steep way to the cave mouth, crying defiance, and again, and slipped on the rocks and fell—and sat up, struggling out of the folds of the red cloak. For a while she sat, still sleepy, and looked around at the ferns and the stream, the trees down the gorge, the bluish depths and far ridge lines, the uncolored sky. She crawled over to the stream and crouched to drink where the water rilled over a grey boulder’s curve, and washed her face and the back of her neck to clear her mind; then went along the path and off it among the trees to piss. When she came back, Hugh was sitting up huddled in the cloak, hunched over. His thick, rough, fair hair, stiff from her attempt to wash the blood out of it, stuck out from his head; the stubble on his jaw was thick; he looked heavy and haggard. When she asked him how he was it took him a long time to answer. “O.K,” he said. “Cold.”

She unwrapped bread and meat for them. She offered him his share, but he did not get his hand out from under the cloak to take it. He hunched up miserably. “Not now,” he said.

“Come on. You never ate…yesterday, whenever it was.”

“Not hungry.”

“Drink something anyhow.”

He nodded, but did not move to go drink at the stream. After a while he said, “Irena.”