Ursula Le Guin - The Eye of the Heron

“O you are beautiful,” she said softly to the creature, “you are beautiful. And I could kill you, but I couldn’t keep you, not even hold you … .”

“If you put them in a cage, they die,” the child said.

“I know,” Luz said.

The wotsit was now turning blue, the pure, azure blue of the sky between the peaks of the Eastern Range on days, like this day, of winter sunlight. The three gold pinhead eyes glittered. The wings, bright and translucent, shot out, startling Luz; her hand’s slight movement launched the little creature on its upward glide, out over the breadth of the river, eastward, like a fleck of mica on the wind.

She and Asher filled the baskets with the heavy, bearded, black mussel shells, and trudged back up the pathway to the settlement.

“Southwind!” Asher cried, tugging his heavy basket along, “Southwind! There’s wotsits here! One came to me!”

“Of course there are,” Southwind said, trotting down the path to help them with their load. “What a lot you got! Oh, Luz, your poor hands, come on, the cabin’s warm, Sasha brought a new load of wood in on the cart. Did you think there wouldn’t be wotsits here? We’re not that far from home!”

The cabins—nine so far, three more half-built—stood on the south bank of the stream where it widened out into a pool under the branches of a giant single ringtree. They took their water from the little falls at the head of the pool, bathed and washed at the foot of it where it narrowed before its long plunge down to the Grayrock. They called the settlement Heron, or Heron Pool, for the pair of gray creatures who lived on the farther shore of the stream, untroubled by the presence of the human beings, the smoke of their fires, the noise of their work, their coming and going, the sound of their voices. Elegant, long-legged, silent, the herons went about their own business of food gathering on the other side of the wide, dark pool; sometimes they paused in the shallows to gaze at the people with clear, quiet, colorless eyes. Sometimes, on still cold evenings before snow, they danced. As Luz and Southwind and the child turned aside toward their cabin, Luz saw the herons standing near the roots of the great tree, one poised to watch them, the other with its narrow head turned back as it gazed into the forest. “They’ll dance tonight,” she said, under her breath; and she stopped a moment, standing with her heavy load on the path, still as the herons; then went on.