Ursula Le Guin - The Eye of the Heron

“A hundred kilometers to the foothills, maybe.”

“They’re big … .”

“Like the ones we saw in the north, over Lake Serene.”

“It may be the same range. It ran southeastward.”

“That plain is like the sea, it goes on and on.”

“It’s cold up here!”

“Let’s get down over the summit, out of the wind.”

Long after the high plains had sunk into gray, the keen small edge of sunlit ice burned there at the edge of vision in the east. It whitened and faded; the stars came out, thick in the windy blackness, all the constellations, all the bright cities that were not their home.

Wild bog-rice grew thick by the streams of the plateau; they lived on that during the eight days of their crossing. The Iron Hills shrank behind them, a wrinkled rusty line drawn down the west. The plain was alive with coneys, a longer-legged breed than those of the coastal forests; the riverbanks were pocked and hollowed with their warrens, and when the sun was out the coneys came out, and sat in the sun, and watched the people pass with tranquil, uninterested eyes.

“You’d have to be a fool to starve here,” Holdfast said, watching Italia lay her snares near a glittering, stony ford.

But they went on. The wind blew bitter on that high, open land, and there was no wood to build with, or to burn. They went on until the land began to swell, rising toward the foothills of the mountains, and they came to a big river, south-running, which Andre the map maker named the Grayrock. To cross it they must find a ford, which looked unlikely, or build rafts. Some were for crossing, putting that barrier too behind them. Others were for turning south again and going on along the west bank of the river. While they deliberated, they set up their first stopping-place camp. One of the men had hurt his foot in a fall, and there were several other minor injuries and troubles; their footgear needed mending; they were all weary, and needed a few days’ rest. They put up shelters of brushwood and thatchleaf, the first day. It was cold, with gathering clouds, though the bitter wind did not blow here. That night the first snow fell.

It seldom snowed at Songe Bay; never this early in the winter. They were no longer in the soft climate of the western coast. The coastal hills, the badlands, and the Iron Hills caught the rain that came in on the west winds off the sea; here it would be dryer, but colder.

The great range toward which they had been walking, the sharp heights of ice, had seldom been visible while they crossed the plain, snowclouds hiding all but the blue foothills. They were in those foothills now, a haven between the windy plain and the stormy peaks. They had entered a narrow stream valley which wound and widened till it opened out on the broad, deep gorge of the Grayrock. The valley floor was forested, mostly with ringtrees and a few thick stands of cottonwools, but there were many glades and clearings among the trees. The hills on the north side of the valley were steep and craggy, sheltering the valley and the lower, open, southern slopes. It was a pleasant place. They had all felt at ease there, putting up their shelters, the first day. But in the morning the glades were white, and under the ringtrees, though the bronze foliage had kept the light snow off, every stone and leaf of withered grass sparkled with thick frost. The people huddled up to the fires to thaw out before they could go gather more firewood.

“Brushwood shelters aren’t what we need in this kind of weather,” Andre said gloomily, rubbing his stiff, chapped hands. “Ow, ow, ow, I’m cold.”

“It’s clearing off,” Luz said, looking up through a broad gap in the trees, where their side-valley opened out into the river gorge; above the steep farther shore of the Grayrock, the Eastern Range glittered hugely, dark blue and white.

“For now. It’ll snow again.”

Andre looked frail, hunched there by the fire that burned almost invisible in the fresh morning sunlight: frail, cold, discouraged. Luz, much rested by the day without walking, felt a freshness of spirit like the morning light; she felt a great love for Andre, the patient, anxious man. She squatted down beside him by the fire, and patted his shoulder. “This is a good place, isn’t it,” she said.

He nodded, hunched up, still rubbing his sore, red hands.

“Andre.”

He grunted.

“Maybe we should be building cabins, not shelters.”

“Here?”

“It’s a good place … .”

He looked around at the high red trees, the stream rushing loudly down toward the Grayrock, the sunlit, open slopes to the south, the great blue heights eastward. “It’s all right,” he said grudgingly. “Plenty of wood and water, anyhow. Fish, coneys, we could last out the winter here.”

“Maybe we should? While there’s time to put up cabins?”

Hunched up, his arms hanging between his knees, Andre mechanically rubbed his hands. She watched him, her hand still on his shoulder.

“It would suit me,” he said at last.

“If we’ve come far enough …”

“We’ll have to get everybody together, agree … .” He looked at her; he put his arm up around her shoulders. They squatted side by side, linked, rocking a little on their heels, close to the quivering half-seen fire. “I’ve had enough running,” he said. “Have you?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know. I wonder …”

“What?”

Andre stared at the sunlit fire, his face, drawn and weatherbeaten, flushed by the heat.

“They say when you’re lost, really lost, you always go in a circle,” he said. “You come back to where you started from. Only you don’t always recognize it.”

“This isn’t the City,” Luz said. “Nor the Town.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Not ever,” she said, her brows drawn down straight and harsh. “This is a new place, Andre. A beginning place.”

“God willing.”

“I don’t know what God wants.” She put out her free hand and scratched up a little of the damp, half-frozen earth, and squeezed it in her palm. “That’s God,” she said, opening her hand on the half-molded sphere of black dirt. “That’s me. And you. And the others. And the mountains. We’re all … it’s all one circle.”

“You’ve lost me, Luz.”

“I don’t know what I’m talking about. I want to stay here, Andre.”

“Then I expect we will,” Andre said, and thumped her between the shoulders. “Would we ever have started, I wonder, if it hadn’t been for you?”

“Oh, don’t say that, Andre—”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“I have enough on my conscience without that. I have—If I—”

“This is a new place, Luz,” he said very gently. “The names are new here.” She saw there were tears in his eyes. “This is where we build the world,” he said, “out of mud.”

Eleven-year-old Asher came toward Luz, who was down on the bank of the Grayrock gathering freshwater mussels from the icy, weed-fringed rocks of a backwater. “Luz,” he said when he was near enough not to have to speak loudly. “Look.”

She was glad to straighten up and get her hands out of the bitter cold of the water. “What have you got there?”

“Look,” the boy said in a whisper, holding out his open hand. On the palm sat a little creature like a shadow-colored toad with wings. Three gold pinhead eyes stared unwinking, one at Asher, two at Luz.

“A wotsit.”

“I never saw one close up before.”

“He came to me. I was coming down here with the baskets, and he flew into one, and I put out my hand and he got onto it.”

“Would he come to me?”

“I don’t know. Hold out your hand.”

She put her hand beside Asher’s. The wotsit trembled and for a moment blurred into a mere vibration of fronds or feathers; then, with a hop or flight too quick for the eye to follow, it transferred itself to Luz’s palm, and she felt the grip of six warm, tiny, wiry feet.