Урсула Ле Гуин - Dangerous People

“I don’t think Hwette is ever going to be a Blood Clown,” Fefinum said, low-voiced, tragically important.

Shamsha held her tongue and nodded once.

“She’s been coming to Society meetings and learning the dances all summer, ever since the Moon. And of course she does everything right, but I just don’t think she has the vocation, the true run of it. And Shaio agrees with me. We talked about it today. Just Shaio and I—not with Hwette, of course. And she agrees with me.”

In Telina the Blood Lodge people call their singer of most authority “The Eye of the Ewe,” and that was what Shaio was called. The idea of that powerful, stern old woman meekly agreeing with Fefinum, bleating “oh yes!” like a baa-lamb, made Shamsha say, “Ah—!” But no more. She controlled herself and kept still.

“But—” Fefinum leaned forward, pointing the fingers of her right hand at Shamsha, all her toes spread out intensely—“what Hwette has is a much greater calling. I felt that all along. Even before she wanted to join the Blood Clowns.”

This was too much for Shamsha. “She only joined because you nagged her to.”

“I encouraged her. Of course I did. You have to start somewhere, and she was doing nothing, nothing at all.”

“Aside from the house and the gardens and bringing up Torip and helping bring up Bolekash and working at the heyimas, nothing at all,” Shamsha said, letting the ironic spirit flail away. But her daughter’s pompous earnestness only increased: “That’s nothing, mother. Nothing to what she could do, what she ought to be. You know that!”

Kamedan said, “Yes.”

Shamsha drew back into herself, wary as a snail. She set the big basket of shelled peas down off her lap onto the decking. “What do you mean, ought to be?”

“Shaio says she ought to be learning the great songs. That she has the gift, but isn’t giving it.” [25] Gift=badab, give=ambad; the two words in Kesh interplay and interlock to the extent that one implies the other; to have a gift is to give it, the gift is in the giving.

“Then it’s hers to give, not yours,” Shamsha said. This time the flail hit. Fefinum winced. Shamsha looked down and shut her eyes in disgust with herself and her daughter. She stood up, picking up the baskets one in each hand, the heavy peas and the empty pods, so that she stood like a scales. “I don’t know,” she said.

Fefinum started to speak again, but Shamsha went on: “I don’t understand spiritual business. I don’t go to the deep springs. I’m only an intellectual. But I will say, I think Hwette has enough responsibilities as it is. She hasn’t ever been herself entirely since the baby was born—” She stopped short.

Fefinum, no longer play-acting, whether her ambition was for her sister or for herself, said quickly but gently, “That’s just it. She’s never found who she needs to be. Isn’t it so, Kamedan?”

He said nothing, but nodded once, slightly.

“She’s twenty-five years old. With luck she has a considerable length of life in which to find herself,” Shamsha said. “Don’t hurry her. Let it happen.” She went indoors with the baskets, aware that she was running away, evading further confrontation. But how could she talk sensibly about Hwette until she had talked to Hwette about this second pregnancy? And it seemed to her that her last words were not merely conventional wisdom used in self-defense. In saying them she knew that Hwette did need to be let alone, and that her need was urgent.

She set the baskets down on the counter. Tai was at the stove and didn’t turn around. She went to Hwette and Kamedan’s room. The curtains were drawn making a warm golden darkness in the room. “Soubí, soubí,” Shamsha said at the door, “are you in here?” Hwette was sitting on the chest, her hands at her sides. She looked up. In the dusk Shamsha could not see if she was smiling or weeping or neither. Shamsha sat down on the chest beside her and put her arm around Hwette’s round, warm, delicate, vigorous body. They sat still for a while. “Oh, you, oh, you,” Shamsha whispered, as she had whispered to the new baby daughter. Hwette leaned comfortably against her, fitting into her arm. They were going back to being part of each other. Shamsha drew a deep, long breath. “Well!” she said, and then nothing more. Nothing needed saying or thinking for a while.

They heard Kamedan’s voice outside the window, talking to a neighbor on the northeast balcony.

Shamsha felt tension come into Hwette’s body or her own arm. They no longer sat in perfect ease. Words began to press at Shamsha’s tongue. She said at last, “I finally saw the flower, soubí.”

Hwette made a drowsy little uncomprehending sound.

“The chicory flower.”

Hwette stayed wordless and heavy against her. Shamsha wanted to ask a great many questions but said only, “Thank you for telling me.”

“What chicory flower?” Hwette whispered sleepily.

“This afternoon, soubí,” Shamsha said. The strangeness of Hwette’s question came to her slowly, bringing coldness.

“I was thinking about the book, you know, and I was so hot and stupid. The flower lay there in front of me for I don’t know how long before I saw it. It’s a wonder I didn’t just chop it into the salad without noticing.” Every word she spoke took her farther from trust and ease. Every word was true, but when she spoke it it became false.

“Somebody brought you a chicory flower?”

“You did, soubí.”

“I was at the heyimas. With the Blood Clowns. All afternoon.” Hwette sighed and straightened up, leaving the curve of the mother’s arm and body. She stretched out her arms into the growing dusk and sighed.

“Hwette, you were here.”

“How could I have been?” She asked the question as if she expected an answer.

Shamsha felt coldness in the center of her body. She asked, “Are you pregnant, Hwette?”

Hwette stood up quickly and lightly. “I don’t know, mamoubí, how can I tell? My bleedings are so irregular I can’t worry about them. So if I am I don’t know it. Have you been dreaming grandbabies, mamou?” Light as air she moved across the room, gathering up her loose hair and bringing it across her shoulder to braid it.

Shamsha sat cold and confused. “I don’t think I was dreaming,” she said.

Bolekash came running down the hall, calling, “Dinner is ready, Taibí says!”

Shamsha hurried back to the kitchen and looked over the littered counters and workblocks. There was no chicory plant lying there. But Tai had been working at the counters. She did not want to ask him if he had seen it. His slow mind would seize on the strange question and worry at it and he would talk about it. She’d look in the compost basket after dinner. It might be there. Why hadn’t she put it in water or taken it to her own room, done something appropriate with it, the message, the grandmother-word? Had she really left it lying there along with the parsley stems and trash? But she had cleaned the counter before she left the kitchen—she was sure she had. Had the chicory plant been there at all? Had Hwette been there? Was she asleep on her feet then? Now? She took her place at the dinner table. “Thank the food, Bolekash,” she said to her granddaughter, hearing her own stern voice.

Looking around at what was on the table, the child said, “Heya! Our praise to you, eggplants, onions, we already thanked the chicken. Our praise to you, tomatoes, nice green peas. What’s that? Chiles, herbs, rice, lemons, salad, heya hey heya! Shut up, Torip.”

“You didn’t thank the pies , you didn’t thank the pies !”

“I did too, they’re leftovers, I did yesterday.”

“But you ought to—”