Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

So he went back into the city alone. He ran to their house, thinking she might have gone there. The whole house was burning, full of flame. He ran through the city shouting, “Creusa! Creusa!"—past the ruined buildings, and the fires, and the soldiers killing and looting. And then he saw her. She stood in front of him in the dark street. But she was taller than herself. And she said, “I will not go with you, nor will I be the slave of any Greek. The Earth Mother keeps me here. And you must go a long way for a long time, you must go, my sweet husband, until at last you come to the Western Land. There you will be a king and have a queen. No tears for me, but let your love guard our son!” And he tried to speak to her, and to take her in his arms—three times he tried, but it was like putting his arms around the wind, around a dream. She was gone into the shadow.

So he went back to the altar mound, where a great crowd of people had gathered now, fleeing the city, joining his house people. No Greeks had followed them out of the city, yet. He took his father up on his back again, and led them all up into the hills, where the shooting star had fallen. It was almost morning.

I remember that as the poet’s voice died away, a first bird piped up, thin and far off, though there was no light yet in the sky, and no voice answered. Here, too, it was almost morning. I looked where the shadow of the poet had been and there was nothing. I lay down in the fleeces and slept till the sun’s light, piercing and flashing through the dark trunks and thickets of the forest, woke me.

I was ravenously hungry, a wolf. I went straight to the woodcutter’s cottage, where Maruna was waiting for me. It was the old kind of house, one tall round room of stakes with a roof of boughs, all thatched with straw. The woodcutter was already gone to his work in the woods. I asked his wife for food. She had nothing but a scrape of spelt porridge and a cup of sour goat’s milk, which she was frightened to offer me because she thought such poor stuff would insult me and I’d be angry with her. I gobbled it up. Having nothing to give her, I kissed her. I thanked her for feeding the she-wolf. She laughed in bewilderment.

“I ate everything you have, what will you eat?” I asked, and she said comfortably, “Oh, he always brings a rabbit or some birds.”

“Perhaps I’ll wait,” I said, but my joke bewildered her again. No doubt she thought we always ate meat at the king’s house.

So I set off with Maruna. There was a great joy in me that morning. Maruna saw it and asked, “Was it a good night there?”

“Yes. I saw my kingdom,” I said. I did not know myself what I meant. “And I saw a great city fall, all burning. And a man came out of it with a man on his back. And he is coming here.”

She listened, believed me, asked nothing.

I could say that, I could talk that way to Maruna, my slave and sister, but not to anyone else.

All the way home I puzzled how I could win my way back to Albunea, soon, as soon as possible, and stay there more than one night. For I was quite certain that the poet would come back, but equally certain that he could not come back for long. His time with me was limited. He was on his way down to the shadow land, and it would not be a long journey for him.

I turned aside from our path and walked to the little river Prati, running shallow and bright on its stones. I was thirsty, and knelt to drink above the ford there, marked with the hooves of cattle. When I looked up from drinking, the ford made me think of the place I had stood in my dream six years before and seen the blood in the water, on the river Numicus. A dread and awe came into me. I stood, and opened my meal bag, and scattered salsamola on the stones.

I looked up at Maruna standing patiently on the riverbank, a tall girl my age, with a long, dark, soft Etruscan face. Tying up the meal bag I said, “Maruna, I need to go back to Albunea, soon. And maybe stay more than one night.”

She pondered for half a mile homeward before she said, “Not while King Turnus is here.”

“No.”

“But when he leaves… Will the king ask why you want to go?”

“Probably. And you can’t lie about sacred things.”

“You can be silent, though,” said Maruna.

“I am the king’s daughter,” I said, thinking how the poet had called me that. “I will do as I will do, and the king will nod his head.” I laughed out loud, and then I said, “Look, look, Maruna! There’s Silvia’s deer! What’s he doing so far from home?”

The big stag was walking on an open hillside just above a field where the new crops were coming up green. His white linen neckpiece was torn and dingy, but his antlers were splendid in their new velvet.

Maruna pointed a little way ahead of the stag: a slender doe was drifting along, nibbling a grass stem here and there, ignoring her follower entirely. “That’s what he’s doing so far from home.”

“Mating season or not. Just like Turnus,” I said, and laughed again. Nothing could keep my heart down that morning.

So with that courage in me I went to my father as soon as I got home, and greeted him, and said, “Father, when our guest has gone, may I go to Albunea again? Maruna will go with me, and anyone else you wish, if you think I need to be guarded. I wish to sleep there alone, more than one night.”

Latinus looked at me, a long look, affectionate, distant, judging. He was about to ask me a question, and then he did not. “I begrudge every night you are not under my roof, daughter. How much longer will I have you? But I trust you. Go to the sacred place when you will, stay as you must, return when you can.”

“I will,” I said, and thanked him, and he kissed my forehead. Then, because fathers must be stern, he said, “I expect you to be at the banquet tonight. And no sulking, no green swoons.”

“Then keep the African creature from me.”

“I will,” he said, and I saw perfectly well that he was thinking he wished he could keep the man who brought the African creature from me too; but he said nothing.

So I endured the rest of Turnus’ visit, meek and maidenly, even saying a word or two at table now and then. Turnus in fact paid very little attention to me. He did not need to. It was my father he must persuade. My mother, of course, was already wooed and won. The tricky bit for Turnus was to encourage her to adore him without offending my father, and to seek my father’s conversation and approval without letting her feel neglected. Turnus was a fierce, impetuous man, used to getting his way, not used to watching his tongue. He kept up his cautious courtesies pretty well, but sometimes I knew he was as desperate to get the banquet over as I was. It gave me a fellow feeling with him. As a cousin, I liked Turnus.

The animal from Africa had bitten my mother painfully, and then disappeared. Later on it was found that one of the hounds had got it, eaten its entrails, and left the rest lying by the house wall, where a pregnant weaving woman saw it, thought it was the corpse of a baby, went shrieking into labor, and bore a dead child. That was a creature of ill omen if ever I saw one.

I came again to the altar in Albunea in the evening of the Kalends of May. We had started late from home. By the time I had hung up the basket of food I brought with me on a tree branch to keep it from vermin, and blessed the altar place, and laid out the fleeces to sleep on, it was getting dark. Again I wished for a fire, for the cheer of it, but I had left the fire pot with Maruna. I sat and listened and watched the light die. The trees gathered and grew stronger in the dark. One owl called, from the right, far off. None answered.

In the great silence my heart went down, and farther down. What a fool I was to have come here. What did I remember of my last night here? I had had a dream about a man who was dying somewhere else, in some other time. Nothing to do with me. And for that I had come back here, with my silly basket of food.