Ursula Le Guin - The Beginning Place

“No. Ground’s too wet. Let’s go on.”

It was unnerving to step off the path deliberately, to choose pathlessness, as if you knew your way. At least the going was not hard at first. The trees on this side of the gorge were mostly big old hemlocks, without much underbrush between them, once they were up out of the streambed. The slopes were steep. Before long she wished her right leg could be taken up a couple of inches. But they were making good progress, and there was more light here.

The stream began to descend more steeply. Irena did not try to follow close to the water, but struck up to the spine of the ridge, where the walking was easier and the direction still the same as the flow of water. She had had some hope of seeing the way ahead from the ridgetop, but as always the trees grew too close. Had they been fools to leave the path? Maybe, but she was not turning back. All they could do was take their chance. She was hungry. It seemed too soon to stop, until she thought back to the place below the cave where they had slept—hours ago, way back up the mountain. She turned and said, “I’d like a break,” to Hugh, plugging along behind her. He halted promptly. He looked around and pointed out a level bit of ground between the roots of two great, shaggy trees, and they headed for it. He wore the red cloak, which made him look rather like a grandmother from behind, but stately in front view. They found convenient roots to sit on, and Irena unstrapped and unwrapped the packet of food. “I thought maybe we’d go light this time, and next time we stop eat more. Are you very hungry yet?”

“Not hungry at all.”

“Eat something, though.”

She set out portions that looked shamefully meager to her, put up the rest, and fell to. She thought she was chewing slowly and making it last, but it was gone at once, gone before he was half done. He did not even eat the bread. She looked at him uneasily. He was pale, but the haggard look was mostly unshaven beard. His expression was not strained. In fact he looked easy and contented, gazing off among the trees. Evidently feeling her gaze on him, he looked round at her. “You work, or go to school, or what?” he asked.

At first the question seemed crazy, senseless, she could not answer it, here lost on the dragon’s mountain. Then the impulse that had moved him asserted itself in her, and she saw nothing strange in what he asked. “I work. Mott and Zerming. I’m an errandperson.”

“A who?”

“An errandperson. They have all these affiliates and subsidiaries in town, and a whole lot of correspondence and memos and a lot of blueprints and stuff—they’re partly in engineering—and it pays them to use people to carry it around to the different offices instead of using the mail. It’s a pretty big outfit. But they’re still local and Mr. Zerming still pretty much runs it. He likes to use people who have their own car. But I get all my gas free.”

“That’s crazy,” he said approvingly. “So you drive around all the time?”

“Some of it’s easier to do on foot, the downtown offices. Or use the bus. Some days it’s all driving. It’s kind of weird. I like it because of being on my own and sort of doing it my own way. I hate doing things when somebody else says how to.”

“Trouble with most jobs.”

“The trouble with this one it’s really a kid’s job. Sort of unreal—you know. You never really do anything. Go and go and get nowhere.”

“What would you like to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t mind this one, you know, it’s all right. Just a job. But I guess what a person really does is different. Ought to be different. Like a farm. Or teaching. Or kids. But I’m not there. You have to have some real dirt and a tractor. Or get a teaching degree or a nursing degree or whatever.”

“You can go to night school at a community college,” he said meditatively. “And work daytime. Starting, anyhow. If…”

“That sounds like something you’ve thought about. Or would you have to go to a special college?”

“What for?”

“Library work, you said.”

He looked at her again, a slow look. “That’s right,” he said, and she knew beyond reason or question that she had recognised something that had been slighted, done something absolutely and permanently right. She did not know what it was, but the effect delighted her. “Crazy,” she said. “All those books. What would you do with them, anyhow?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Read them?”

His smile was purely good-natured. She laughed. Their eyes met, they both looked away. They were silent for a while.

“If I was just sure we were really going east, I would feel so good!…Are you feeling O.K. now?”

“I’m fine.”

He always spoke quietly, but she was aware of the resonance of his voice, muted; a beautiful singing voice, it might be.

“Sore as hell here,” he remarked with some surprise, exploring his left side with a gingerly touch.

“Let me see.”

“It’s all right.”

“Well, let’s see. I thought you moved kind of stiff on that side.”

He tried to pull up his shirt but could not raise his left arm. He unbuttoned the shirt. He was embarrassed, and she tried to act detached, doctorly. At the level of the elbow, on the edge of the ribcage, was a greenish-black spot the size of a coffee-can lid. “My God,” she said.

“What is it?” he asked, apprehensive; he could not see it clearly.

“A bruise, I guess.” She thought of the grip of the sword protruding from the belly of the white creature. Her own body tightened and shrank together at the thought. “From when the—when it fell on you.” All around the livid spot the skin was yellowish, and there were other bruises and discolored streaks running up towards the breastbone. “No wonder it feels sore,” she said. She felt the heat of the bruise on her fingertips before, very lightly, she touched it.

He caught her hand with his. She thought she had hurt him and looked up into his face. They did not move, she kneeling by him as he sat with one knee drawn up.

“You told me never touch you,” he said, his voice husky.

“That was before.”

His mouth had softened and slackened, his face was intent, profoundly serious, as she had seen it once before. She had seen on other men’s faces that same mask, that made them all alike, and had hidden her own face. Now unafraid, awed but curious, she watched him, and touched his mouth and the hollow of the temple by the eye as gently as she had touched the black bruise, wanting to know this pain and this desire. He held her to him, but awkwardly and timidly, until she put up both her arms, feeling herself go as soft and quick as water. Then he held her and mounted on her, overcoming; yet her strength held and contained his strength.

As he entered her, as she was entered, they came to climax together, and then lay together, mixed and melded, breast against breast and their breath mingled, until he rose in her again and she closed on him, the long pulse of joy enacting them.

He lay there, eyes shut and head turned aside, three-quarters naked, his jeans pulled down. She touched the long splendid line from hip to throat, looked at the peculiarly innocent, fair silky hair in the pit of his arm. “You’re cold,” she said, and managed to get the red cloak pulled over them as they lay. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his hands trying to describe that beauty in caresses, but without urgency, tenderly, sleepily. He lay with his face against her shoulder. Half asleep, she saw the unmoving leaves of the hemlocks against the quiet sky. The comfort they gave each other was very great, but it was all the comfort they had. The ground was rough. She felt shivering go through him as he slept. She drew away from him. He protested, saying her name, relapsing for a minute into sleep.