Ursula Le Guin - Voices

All around me people were shouting and screaming, and I could only think of how to keep them from panicking the horse again. “Be quiet, be quiet,” I said foolishly to the shouting people. And as if they had heard me they began to back away, leaving a space of marble pavement empty behind the horse. In that white, sunlit space was the Ald officer, who had been thrown hard and was lying stunned, and a woman standing near him, and a lion.

The woman and the lion stood side by side. When they moved, the clear space of pavement moved with them. The crowd had gone almost silent.

I saw the top of some kind of carriage behind the woman and the lion. They turned towards it. The pavement appeared as if by magic in front of them as the crowd backed away. It was a little caravan wagon. The two horses hitched to it stood calmly, facing away from us. The woman opened the back door of the wagon, the lion leapt up into it, its tail disappearing in a lovely curve, and the woman latched the door. She came back at once, and the crowd backed away from her again, even without the lion.

She knelt by the Ald officer, who was sitting up looking dizzy. She spoke to him a little, and then stood up and came to me where I was standing, still holding the horse because I didn’t dare let it go. The crowd drew back with some pushing and shoving, which scared the horse again. It jerked against my grip on the bridle, and the market basket on my arm fell open and the fish and cheese and greens all flew out, which scared the horse worse, and I could not hold it—but the woman was there. She put her hand on the horse’s neck and said something to it. It shook its head, with a kind of grumble in its chest, and stood still.

She put out her hand and I gave her the reins. “Well done,” she said to me, “well done!” Then she said something else to the horse, close to its ear, softly, and blew a little of her breath into its nostrils. It sighed and drooped its head. I was frantically trying to pick up our food for the next two days before it was trampled on or stolen. Seeing me scrabbling on the pavement, the woman gave the horse a hard pat and bent down to help me. We tumbled the big fish and the greens into the basket, and somebody in the crowd tossed me the cheese.

“Thank you, good people of Ansul!” the woman said in a clear voice and a foreign accent. “He deserves a reward, this boy!” And to the officer, who was now standing up shakily on the other side of his horse, she said, “This boy caught your mare, Captain. It was my lion frightened her. I ask your pardon for that.”

“The lion, yes,” the Ald said, still dazed. He stared at her, and stared at me, and after a while dug into his belt pouch and held out something to me—a penny.

I was fastening the clasp on my basket. I ignored him and his penny.

“Oh, so generous, so generous,” people in the crowd murmured, and somebody crooned, “A fountain of riches!” The officer glared around at them all. He finally refocused on the woman who stood in front of him holding his horse’s reins.

“Get your hands off her!” he said. “You—woman—it was you had that animal—a lion—”

The woman tossed the reins at him, slapped the mare lightly, and slipped into the crowd. This time the people closed round her. In a moment I saw the roof of the wagon moving off.

I saw the wisdom of invisibility and ducked away into the old-clothes market while the officer was still trying to remount his mare.

The old-clothes vendor called High Hat had been watching the show, standing on her stool. She clambered down. “Used to horses, are you?” she said to me.

“No,” I said. “Was that a lion?”

“Whatever it is, it goes with that storyteller. And his wife. So they say. Stay to hear him. He’s the prime lord of storytellers, they say.”

“I have to get my fish home.”

“Ah. Fish don’t wait.” She fixed her fierce, mean little eyes on me. “Here,” she said, and flipped me something, which I caught by reflex. It was a penny. She had already turned away.

I thanked her. I left the penny in the hollow under Lero, where people leave god-gifts and poorer people find them. I still didn’t care if the guards saw me, because I knew they wouldn’t. I was just starting up West Street away from the market, past the high red arcades of the Customs, when I heard a clip-clop and the clatter of wheels. There along Customs Street came the two horses and the caravan wagon. The lion woman was perched on the driver’s seat.

“Lift?” she said, while the horses stopped.

I hesitated. I almost thanked her and said no. It was different, and nothing different ever happened, so I didn’t know how to do it. And I was not easy with strangers. I was not easy with people. But the day was blessed, and to turn away blessing is to do ill. I thanked her and climbed up onto the seat beside her.

It seemed very high.

“Where to?”

I pointed up West Street.

She seemed to do nothing, not shaking the reins or clucking her tongue as I had seen drivers do, but the horses set right off. The taller horse was a fine redbrown color, almost as red as the cover of Rostan, and the smaller one was bright brown with black legs and mane and tail and a bit of a white star on her forehead. They were bigger than the Ald horses, and more peaceable-looking. Their ears went back and forth, listening constantly; it was pleasant to watch that.

We went along some blocks without speaking. It was interesting to look down the canals, to see the bridges, the facades and windows of buildings from this height, and people walking along, the way people on horseback see them, looking down on them. I found it made me feel superior.

“The lion is—back there—in the wagon?” I asked at last.

“Halflion,” she said.

“From the Asudar desert!” When she said the word “halflion,” I remembered it and the picture from the Great History.

“Right,” she said, with a glance at me. “That’s probably why it spooked the mare. She knew what it was.”

“But you aren’t an Ald,” I said, suddenly fearing she was, even though she was dark-skinned and dark-eyed and couldn’t be.

“I’m from the Uplands.”

“In the far north!” I said, and then could have bitten my tongue in half.

She glanced at me sidelong and I waited for her to accuse me of reading books. But that was not what she had noticed.

“You aren’t a boy,” she said. “Oh, I am stupid.”

“No, I dress like a boy, because… “I stopped.

She nodded, meaning no need to explain.

“So how did you learn to handle horses?” she asked.

“I didn’t. I never touched a horse before.”

She whistled. She had a little, sweet whistle, like a small bird. “Well, then you have the knack, or the luck!”

Her smile was so pleasant I wanted to tell her that it was the luck, that Lero and Luck himself, the deaf god, were giving me a holy day, but I was afraid of saying too much.

“I thought you’d be able to take me to a good stable for these two, you see. I thought you were a stableboy. You were as quick and cool as any old hostler I ever saw.”

“Well, the horse just came at me.”

“It came to you,” she said.

We clip-clop-rattled on for another block. “We have a stable,” I said.

She laughed. “Aha!”

“I’d have to ask.”

“Of course.”

“There aren’t any horses in it. Or feed, or anything. Not since—not for years. It’s clean, though. There’s some straw. For the cats.” Every time I opened my mouth I talked too much. I clenched my teeth.

“You’re very kind. If it isn’t convenient, never mind. We can find a place. The fact is, the Gand has offered us the use of his stables. But I’d rather not be beholden to the Gand.” And she shot me a glance.