Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Here are your precious balls, father-in-law,” they said. “You had better sew them back on where they belong. Your sons’ children are all girls, they don’t want them.”

  So the old man sewed the copper balls between his legs and went around with them. They made a clanking noise when he walked. He said, “When a true war general is born in this town, I will give him these.” But they were nothing, they were empty. When the old man died, they buried those copper balls with his ashes.

  [The third speaker:] That’s right, that’s right, and Coyote came and dug them up.

  [The second speaker:] That’s right, that’s right, and she wore them for earrings when she danced the Moon.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The original story about the war with the bears was evidently known to the adults present; the appreciation they showed by murmuring or laughter was for neat turns of phrase. The story about Dog also seemed to be an abridged version of a familiar tale. Whether the story told after the young children had gone to bed was a variation on a familiar theme, or entirely improvised, or something in between, I do not know; my impression was that the listeners did not know what was coming next, but collaborated in the invention and performance by their responses and laughter.

  Shahugoten

  As told by Little Bear Woman of Sinshan to the Editor.

  There was a Blue Clay family in Ounmalin who had a fish child. It was a girl and it was a fish. At one time she was more human, at another time more fish. She breathed both air and water, having lungs and gills. For a long time they kept her from the water, thinking she would get to be more human if she stayed in air. She could not walk well; her legs were weak and she could take only short steps. But once when she was a baby and they were working in the fields, they left her in the shade asleep, and she woke and crawled to the reservoir nearby. They came back, they looked, the basket was empty. The grandparents, the parents, everybody ran around looking for her. Her brother went up the bank of the reservoir and heard splashing. He looked over the water and saw his sister leaping like a trout. When the others came, she went underwater, and stayed under. They thought she had drowned. They all went into the water, churning up the mud. She hid at the bottom, in the mud and slime, but they found her at last, they saw her glimmering. When they brought her out of the water she gasped and twisted her body until she began breathing air again.

  After that they kept her shut in the house, or stayed close by her outdoors. Her older brother carried her about. He was the one who always stayed with her. She did not grow much, she was still very small for a girl when she became adolescent, and her brother could still carry her. She would ask him to take her to the River, and he would answer, “Wait a while, kekoshbi, wait a while yet.” He helped to herd the cattle of Ounmalin, and while he was herding he would take his sister down to the small creeks and shallow pools, and she would swim and play there. He would stay up on the bank, keeping watch. Then when she was stronger, when she was becoming adolescent and was learning the Blood Lodge songs, he would take her to the Obsidian heyimas and meet her when she came out, and in the evening then he would take her to the River, downstream from town, where it curves around Ounmalin Hill making deep pools. She would swim a long way, and he would wait for her. Every evening she swam farther, and he waited longer.

  He said, “Kekoshbi, kekoshbinye, they’re asking where we go in the evening, why we stay out with the herd so late.”

  She said, “Takoshbi, matakoshbi, I don’t like the songs they sing underground in the First House, the blood songs. I like the water songs they sing in our House. I don’t want to come back into the air, into the ground.”

  He said, “Don’t swim away!”

  She said, “I’ll try not to.”

  But one evening she swam downriver so far that she tasted the sea through her skin in the water. She came back, she swam back to her brother waiting by the deep pool under the hill. She said, “Matakoshbi, I have to go away. I tasted the blood in the River, f have to go on now.” They put their cheeks together. She slipped back into the water and swam away. The boy went home. He said, “She is gone, she swam to the sea.” People thought that he had left her in the River, that he was tired of carrying her and looking after her. They blamed him, saying, “Why did you let her get near the River? Why didn’t you keep her on land? Why didn’t you stay with her?” He was ashamed and bitterly grieved. When he was with the cattle in the fields and barns he wept with shame and loneliness. He talked to the fish in the River and the sea gulls that came up the Valley in wet weather: “If you see my sister, tell her to come home!”

  But it was a long time before she came home. He always walked down by the River in the evening. It was early in the rainy season, in the rain, near dark: he saw something white in the water under the bank of the deep pool. He heard a sound—oshh, osshhh—like sea waves. He went down through the willows. She was in the water there, in the shallows by the bank, very white, calling, “Takoshbi! Matakoshbi!” He tried to carry her out of the water, but she said, “Don’t! Don’t!” She was white and swollen. She gave birth there in the water, in the shallows under the bank: a child, a white child, not a fish but a white boy. The brother took him out of the water and wrapped him in his shirt. She saw that, then she arched up her body and died in the shallow water. People came by, they took the newborn child and his uncle home. They sang the songs for the death, and cremated the death next day in the burning place down by Sebbe. They put the ashes in the River, not in the earth. Shahugoten, Seaborn, the child was named. Some people of the Obsidian living in Ounmalin, people with whitish skin, are grandchildren of the daughter of Shahugoten.

  The Keeper

  Recited by Fletcher, librarian of the Serpentine of Ounmalin. This is an example of a “formal” recitation, the performance of a story, as distinct from informal or improvised story-telling. It is obviously a teaching story. It is considered to be true, or factual, although a Chumo version of the same general story begins, “Down across the Valley there in Tachas Touchas…”

  Up across the Valley there in that town, Chumo, there was a young woman living in the Third House, a scholar, still wearing undyed clothing; and she was the keeper there, the one who looked after things and put them away and took them out, all the things of the heyimas for the dances and the singing and teaching and giving. There were the vests, the costumes for the Summer dancers, the stones, the paintings on paper, cloth, and wood, the ranges of feathers, the caps, the musical instruments, the tongue-drums and the great wakwa drum, the dance-rattles of gourd and shell, deer hoof and clay, the writings, the books, the sweet and bitter herbs and dried flowers, the carvings and hehole-no of all kinds, the oils, the tools and instruments of making and repair, and all such valuable and honorable things, and their containers, and their wrappings, and the shelves, closets, and particular places where they were kept in order, clean, seemly, and beautiful; and she was the one who kept them. This was her gift, she did this well, taking pleasure in doing it. When any thing was needed she brought it from its place ready for use. When any thing was given she put it in the right place. When any thing was dirty or worn she cleaned and mended it, and when a thing wore out she put it to a different use. She went on doing this when she came inland and when she married and when she was a mother. It was her chief work, and nobody else did these things for that heyimas but her.

  One time a man made a carving in madrone wood, a thing of beauty, a hehole-no, to give to the House in which the madrone grows. He left it as a gift in the fifth angle of the great room. The keeper saw it after other people had gone home. She picked it up. She liked it, and kept holding it and looking at it, thinking, “This suits me; this is as if it were made for me. This is for me. I will keep this for a while.” She took it home to her household, into her room, and put it in her lidded basket, under other things. There it stayed. She did not often look at it, and did not use it.

  Another time a man made for the Serpentine a dancing vest of doeskin sewn with leaf emb
roidery, with ornaments of the long acorns copper-mounted. The keeper was taking it to the closets and chests of the heyimas, and she thought, “This looks as if it would fit me.” She tried it on, and kept wearing it as she worked there, thinking, “This fits me; this suits me. This was made for me. Maybe I’ll dance in it, next Summer. Somebody else might choose it before me. I’ll keep it till the Summer dancing.” She took it home and put it in the bottom of her clothes-chest. There it stayed. She did not wear it at the Summer dancing.

  Another time a family gave a lot of manzanita-berry powder to the heyimas. She set out some of it in the fifth angle; the rest she took home, thinking, “My son’s throat gets dry in the dust of the dry season, and he coughs so badly, he’ll be needing manzanita cider then. I’ll save this and use it when he needs it.” She put it in a glass jar with a stopper in the cellar of her house. There it stayed. She did not make cider of it in the dry season.

  Another time a woman gave a deer-legbone flute that had been a long time in the Second House, very old; many times it had played the four-note heya. The keeper put it with the other flutes of the Third House, but she kept going back and taking it out of the box, moving it on the shelf, thinking, “It doesn’t belong here; it is too old to play. Careless people play these flutes—children, musicians. This is too old and beautiful to treat like an ordinary flute.” She took it home and put it in her lidded basket. There it stayed. No one played it.

  Another time a man brought a piece of cornbread. He was very old and muddleheaded and the piece of bread was old too, hard and dry; he couldn’t chew it. He broke off the piece he had tried to bite off and dropped that, and put the rest in the fifth angle, saying, “Maybe some young person with strong jaws can eat that.” The keeper found it there. She dropped it to the floor and when she swept the great room of the heyimas she gathered the bread up with the dust, and took all she had swept up the ladder, and let it fall in the dirt by the roof of the heyimas.

  Bone Reed Flute

  That afternoon, that evening, she got sick. The next day she was very sick. She had terrible pains in her stomach, her hands, her anus, her teeth. They held a bringing-in for her, but she did not come with the singers. The doctors cared for her but nothing helped her; she was in more pain all the time, and swelling up, her hands and feet swelling, her belly and face swelling.

  A cousin of hers in her House who was a singing doctor came to care for her and sing to her. He watched her carefully as he sang. She groaned and did not listen. When the song was finished her cousin said, “Cousin, a song is its singing.”

  He went home. She thought about what he had said; she had heard that. She kept thinking about it. By now she was wasted away and swollen up, and doubled over with the pains in her belly. She wanted to vomit and could not, she wanted to shit and could not. She thought, “What am I dying for?” She thought about the things she had kept. She crawled over to her lidded basket and looked for the deer-bone flute and the madrone-wood carving. Nothing was in the bottom of the basket but some clods of dirt. She looked in her clothes-chest for the embroidered vest. Nothing was there under the other clothes but a dirty rag. She went down to the basement, to her shelves, looking for the cider powder. The jar had dirt in it, dust in it. She went to the heyimas, dragging herself, crawling, crying out, “Where is it? Where is it?” She crawled in the dirt around the outside of the heyimas, scraping in the dirt with her fingernails, crying, “Where is it?” People thought she had gone crazy. She found a piece of the cornbread, a crumb of it; maybe it was just a crumb of dirt and she thought it was the cornbread. She ate it. She lay still then. They took her home, and sang for her, and she listened to the singing. She got better; she got well. Other people looked after the things in the heyimas after that.

  Dried Mice

  A story told to a group of children on a rainy day in the Serpentine heyimas of Sinshan, by Kingsnake, a man in his seventies.

  Coyote had this child she got somewhere, not her own child; it was a human baby she stole somewhere. Maybe she saw a baby nobody was looking after, and said, “I’ll take that baby home with me.” So she did. Her own children played with it. She nursed it, it got fat on coyote milk. It got fatter than the coyote pups, they were all ribs and tail. But they didn’t care. They played with the human child, they jumped at it and it jumped at them, they nipped it and it nipped them, they all slept together in Coyote’s bed, in Coyote’s house. But the child was always cold there, not having any fur. It kept whimpering and shivering. Coyote said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Grow fur!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, what can I do?”

  “You ought to make a fire, that’s what people do when they’re cold.”

  “Oh! Good!” Coyote said, and she went right off to some place where human people lived. She waited till they lighted a fire, then she ran into the house, grabbed a stick of burning wood, and ran into the hills with it. The sparks flew behind her, the fire caught the dry grass. A fire started behind Coyote, a grassfire. By the time she got home the fire was roaring on ten hills. Her family all had to run, they had to run like crazy, and jump into the river! There they all were in the river with only their noses out. “Hey,” Coyote says, “are you warm now?”

  After they came out of the river everything was burned on one side. The rain came and it got cold, it was a cold winter. They lived in a new den on the other side of that river. The child was even colder there, but it didn’t want to ask Coyote to light another fire. It thought, “I won’t stay here with these coyotes in this cold house any more. I’ll go where my kind of people are and live that way.” So in the daytime it got up, in the middle of the day when the coyotes were sleeping, and it took some venison jerky and some dried mice,* that’s what there was to eat in the house, and started off. All day it walked along, walking along all day, running sometimes, to get a long way away from Coyote, clear away from that house. At the end of the day, after sunset, the child looked for a place to hide and sleep. It found a ledge of rock, and made a bed with fir twigs, and lay down there and went to sleep.

  Coyote was waking up. She was stretching and yawning. Her pups said, “Hey! Where’s Two-Legs?” She looked around. She looked over in the corner of her house and saw the child sleeping on the shelf where she kept things. “There, on the shelf over there,” she said. “Why is that child sleeping there, I wonder?” They all went out to hunt.

  The child got up next morning, and all day long it ran and walked, all day long, going a long, long way, and at night it hid in a cave to sleep. The coyotes woke up. “Hey! Where’s Two-Legs?” She looked around her house. “There, in my basket, my sewing basket. Why is that child sleeping there, I wonder?” So they went on out.

  The next day the child came to a town of human people. They all kept away from it because it looked strange to them at first, and some people threw rocks at it to drive it away, but it stayed there. It hid under the porch of a house, and at night it came up and slept on the porch, near the door. When the people who lived in the house saw it there they were sorry for it, and brought it inside so it could sleep near the fire. In their house the coyotes were waking up. The young coyotes were looking around. “Where’s Two-Legs?”—“Oh! my child is gone! My child has gone to another house!” Coyote went outside and cried and howled all night. “Bring me my dried mice back!” So they say. That’s what she says when she comes around outside town in the moonlight, she’s saying, “Bring me my dried mice back!” So they say.

  Note:

  some dried mice: tupúde útí gosútí

  Dira

  Told by Ire’s husband Red Bull to a group of children and young adolescents in the Obsidian heyimas.

  Heya hey heya, hey heya heya, in that time that place, in the dark cold time, the dark cold place, she was going along, this woman, a human woman, walking in the hills, looking for something to eat. She was looking for brodiaea and calochortus bulbs before they bloomed, and putting
out snares for brush rabbit, and gathering anything that could be food, because her people were hungry and so was she. Those were times when people had to work all day for enough to eat, times when even so they didn’t have enough to eat, and people died of hunger, human and animal, they died of hunger and cold, so they say.

  She was hunting and gathering in the hills, then, and started down into a canyon where she thought she saw some cattail down by the creek. She got into buckbrush and scrub oak and thorn, and had to push her way long; there weren’t any deer trails, not even rabbit trails. She pushed along through the brush, trying to get down into the canyon. It was very dark, like it was going to rain. She thought, “Oh, before I get out of this brush, this time of year, I’ll be covered with ticks!” She kept brushing at her neck and arms and feeling in her hair for ticks, trying to keep them from sticking to her. She didn’t find any cattails. There was nothing to eat down in the canyon. She started to go along downstream, pushing through that thick underbrush, tearing her shirt and scratching her skin on the buckbrush and the thorn. She came into a place where the yellow broom grew very tall and close together. Nothing else grew there. The broom was half dead and grey-looking, without flowers yet. She pushed her way into the broom thicket, and ahead of her there, in the middle of the thicket, she saw a person standing. It was a wide, thin, dark person, with a little head, and one hand without fingers, just two prongs, like pliers or pincers. It stood there waiting. It had no eyes, they say.

  She stopped; she stood still. Then she tried to back away very quietly as she had come. But the broom thicket had closed behind her and it made a lot of noise when she tried to go back. She could only go forward quietly. The person stood still, not moving, not looking, so still she began not to be sure it was alive. She thought, “Maybe I can get past it.” She went forward very quietly, moving softly, smoothly, quickly The waiting person didn’t move. She saw how thin and flat it was, dry-looking, and thought it must be something that had never been alive. She came on past it. She was beside it. She passed it and now her back was to it. It jumped, then. It jumped, and caught her with its gripping hand at the back of her neck. It held her and said, “Take me home with you!”