Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Her mother and sister and the others say that would be foolish; they all say she went down the Valley to the Mouths of the Na, or up to the Springs. Fefinum is certain that she went downriver. She used to do that. Probably she’s on the way home now. I’m a fool to worry this way, I know. But the child kept waking and crying to her.”

  Duhe did not answer. Presently she began to sing under her voice, a Serpentine blessing song:

  “Where grass grows, go well, go easily.

  Where grass grows, go well.”

  Kamedan knew the song. He did not sing with her, but listened to the song. She sang it very quietly and let her voice become fainter until the song became inaudible breath. After that they spoke no more, and Kamedan slept.

  In the morning the little boy woke early and stared all around himself for a while, wondering. The only thing he saw that he knew was his father, sleeping beside the cot. Monkeyflower had never slept up on a cot with legs, and felt as if he might fall out of bed, but he liked the feeling. He lay still for a while, and then climbed down off the cot, stepped over his father’s legs, and went to the door of the room to look out. There was a woman he did not know curled up asleep in the porch there, so he went the other direction, to the inner door, into the second room. There he saw a lot of beautiful glass jars and bottles and containers of various colors and shapes, many ceramic bowls and holders, and several machines with handles to turn. He turned all the handles he could reach, and then took down off the shelves first one colored glass jar and then another, until he had a great many of them on the floor. There he began to arrange them. Some of them had something inside that made a noise when the jar was shaken. He shook all the jars. He opened one to see what was inside, and saw a grey, coarse powder, which he thought was sand. Another one had fine, white sand in it. A blue glass jar had black water in it. A red glass jar had brown honey in it; that got onto his fingers, and he licked them. The honey tasted bitter as oakgalls, but he was hungry, and finished licking his fingers. He was opening another bottle when he saw the woman stand in the doorway looking at him. He stopped doing anything, and sat there amidst all the jars and bottles arranged around him. The black water had run out of the jar and soaked into the floor. Seeing that, he wanted to piss, and did not dare to.

  Duhe said, “Well, well, well, well. Monkeyflower, you get to work early!” She came into the pharmacy. Monkeyflower sat very small.

  “What’s this one?” Duhe said. She picked up the red jar. She looked at the child, took his hand, and sniffed it. “Sticky Monkeyflower, you are going to be constipated,” she said to him. “When you become a doctor you can use all these things. Until you become a doctor you’d better not. So let’s go outside.”

  Monkeyflower let out a wail. He had pissed on the floor.

  Duhe said, “O Spring of the Yellow River! Come on outside now!” He would not get up, so she picked him up and carried him out to the porch.

  Kamedan woke and came out on the porch. Monkeyflower was standing there, and Duhe was washing his buttocks and legs. Kamedan said, “Is he all right?”

  “He is interested in becoming a doctor,” Duhe said. Monkeyflower put up his arms and whimpered to Kamedan. Duhe picked him up and gave him to Kamedan to hold; the child was between them in the first light of the day’s sun, hinging them. Monkeyflower held his father tight and would not look at Duhe, being ashamed.

  Duhe said, “Listen, brother: instead of going to the lofts this morning, maybe you could go with Monkeyflower somewhere, do some work with him. Stay out of the sun in the middle of the day, make sure there’ll be plenty of water to drink where you go. This way you will be able to judge for yourself if he’s well or ill. I think he’s been wishing to be with you, since his mother is away. You might come back by here with him towards the end of the day, and we can talk then about whether we might want to hold a singing, or a bringing-in, and about other things. We’ll talk, we’ll see. All right?”

  Kamedan thanked her and left, carrying the child on his shoulders.

  After Duhe had straightened up the pharmacy she went to bathe and eat breakfast in her household. Later in the morning she started across the arms to Hardcinder House. She wanted to talk to Whette’s people. On the way, in the narrow gardens, Sahelm came to meet her. He said, “I’ve seen Whette.”

  “You saw her? Where?”

  “Outside the house.”

  “Is she home, then?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Who else saw her?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Whettez—Whette?”*

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Whom have you told?”

  “No one but you.”

  “You’re crazy, Sahelm,” the doctor said. “What have you been doing? Moongazing?”

  Sahelm said again, “I saw Whette,” but the doctor was angry at him. She said, “Everybody’s seen her, and each in a different place! If she’s here she’ll be in her house, not outside it. This is all crazy. I’m going to Hardcinder House and talk to the women there. Come if you want to.”

  Sahelm said nothing, and Duhe went on through the narrow gardens. He watched her go around the oleander bushes towards Hardcinder House. Somebody up on a balcony of that house was shaking out blankets and hanging them over the railing to air. The day was already getting hot. Squash blossoms and tomato blossoms were yellow all around in the narrow gardens, and the eggplant flowers were beautiful. Sahelm had eaten nothing but lettuce and lemon the day before. He felt dizzy, and began to separate and be in two times at one time. In one time he was standing among squash blossoms alone, in one time he was on a hillside talking to a woman wearing white clothes. She said, “I am Whette.”

  “You’re not Whette.”

  “Who am I, then?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  The woman laughed and whirled around. His head whirled around inside itself. He came back together on his hands and knees on the path between tomato vines. A woman was standing there, saying something to him. He said, “You are Whette!”

  She said, “What’s the matter? Can you stand up? Come on out of the sun. Maybe you’ve been fasting?” She pulled his arm and helped him up, and held his arm till they came into the shade of the drying-racks at the end of the narrow gardens by the first row of Pedoduks vines. She pushed him a little till he sat down on the ground in the shade. “Are you feeling better at all?” she asked him. “I came to pick tomatoes and saw you there, talking, and then you fell down. Who was it you were talking to?”

  He asked, “Did you see someone?”

  “I don’t know, I couldn’t see well through the tomato vines. Maybe some woman was there.”

  “Was she wearing white, or undyed?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the people here,” she said. She was a slender, strong, young woman with very long hair braided nine times, wearing a white shift belted with a many-colored woven sash, carrying a gathering basket.

  Sahelm said, “I’ve been fasting and going into trance. I think I should go home and rest awhile.”

  “Eat something before you walk,” the young woman said. She went and took some plums off the racks and picked some yellow pear-tomatoes from a vine. She brought these to Sahelm, gave them to him, and watched him eat them. He ate very slowly. “The flavors are strong,” he said.

  “You’re weak,” she said. “Go on. Eat it all, the food of your gardens given you by the stranger.” When he was done, she asked, “Which house do you live in?”

  “Between the Orchards House,” he answered. “But you live in Hardcinder House there. With Kamedan.”

  “Not any more,” she said. “Come on now, stand up. Show me where your house is between the orchards, and I’ll go with you.” She went with him to his house, and up the stairs to the first floor; she went with him into the room he used, laid out his mattress, and said to him, “Now lie down.” While he turned away to lie down, she turned and left.

  Coming away from
that house she saw a man coming down into Telina between the Telory Hills; following the creek path from the hunting side, carrying a dead deer. She greeted them: “Heya, guest from the Right Hand coming, my word and thanks to you! And you, Hunter of Telina, so you are here.”

  He said, “So you are here, Dancer of Wakwaha!”

  She walked along beside them. “Very beautiful, that Blue Clay person who gave himself to you. You must be a strong singer. Tell me all about your hunt.”

  Modona laughed. “I see you know that the best of the hunting is the telling. Well, I went up on Spring Mountain in the middle of the day, and spent the night at a camp I know up there, a well-hidden place. The next day I watched the deer. I saw which doe went with two fawns and which with one and which with a fawn and a yearling. I saw where they met and gathered, and what bucks were about alone. I chose this spike-horned buck to sing to, and began singing in my mind. In the twilight of evening he came, and died on my arrow. I slept by the death, and in the twilight of morning the coyote came by singing too. Now I’m bringing the death to the heyimas; they need deer hooves for the Water Dance; and the hide will go to the Tanners, and the meat to the old women in my household, to jerk; and the horns—maybe you’d like the horns to dance with?”

  “I don’t need the horns. Give them to your wife!”

  “Such a being there is not,” said Modona.

  The smell of the blood and meat and hair of the death was pungent and sweet. The deer’s head was near the dancer’s shoulder, moving up and down as Modona walked. Grass seeds and chaff lay on the open eye of the deer. Seeing this, the dancer blinked and rubbed her eyes. She said, “How did you know that I’m from Wakwaha?”

  “I’ve seen you dance.”

  “Not here in Telina.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “In Chukulmas?”

  “Maybe so.”

  She laughed. She said, “And maybe in Kastoha-na, and maybe in Wakwaha-na, and maybe in Ababa-badaba-na! You can see me dance in Telina this evening, anyhow. What strange men there are in this town!”

  “What have they done that you think so?”

  “One of them sees me dancing where I’m not, another doesn’t see me dancing where I am.”

  “What man is that—Kamedan?”

  “No,” she answered. “Kamedan lives there,” pointing to Hard-cinder House, “though this man says that I do. He lives there,” pointing along the arm to Between the Orchards House, “and has visions in the tomato patch.”

  Modona said nothing. He kept looking at her across the death, turning his eyes but not his head. They came to the narrow gardens, and Isitut stopped there, saying, “I came to pick tomatoes for our troupe to eat.”

  “If you players would like venison as well, here it is. Will you be here several days? It has to be hung.”

  “The old women in your household need the meat for jerky.”

  “What they need, I’ll give them.”

  “A true hunter! Always giving himself!” said the dancer, laughing and showing her teeth. “We’ll be here four days or five days, at least.”

  “If you want enough to go around, I’ll kill a kid to roast with this meat. How many are you?”

  “Nine and myself,” said Isitut. “The deer is enough; all of us will be filled full with meat and gratitude. Tell me what to play for the feast you bring us.”

  “Play Tobbe, if you will,” Modona said.

  “We’ll play Tobbe, on the fourth evening.”

  She was picking tomatoes, filling her basket with yellow pear and small red tomatoes. The day was hot and bright, all smells very powerful, the cicadas shrilling loud near and far continuously. Flies swarmed to the blood on the hair of the deer’s death.

  Modona said, “That man you met here, the visionary, he came here from Kastoha. He’s always acting crazy. He doesn’t go across into the Four Houses, he just walks around here staring and jabbering, making accusations, making up the world.”

  “A moongazer,” said Isitut.

  “In what House do you live, woman of Wakwaha?”

  “In the moon’s House, man of Telina.”

  “I live in this person’s House,” Modona said, lifting the deer’s head with his hand so that the death seemed to look forward. The tongue had swollen and stuck out of the black lips. The dancer moved away, picking from the tall, strong-smelling vines.

  The hunter asked, “What will you be playing this evening?”

  From behind the vines Isitut replied, “I’ll know that when I go back with the tomatoes.” She moved farther away, picking.

  Modona went on to the dancing place. Outside his heyimas he stopped, set the death down on the earth, and cut off the four hooves with his hunter’s knife. He cleaned and strung them, tied the string to a bamboo rod, and stuck this in the earth near the southwest corner of the heyimas roof so that the hooves would dry in the sun. He went down into the heyimas to wash, and talked to some people there. He came back up the ladder and walked down the west steps of the roof, looking for the dead deer. It was not where he had set it down.

  He walked clear round the heyimas roof, and then around the dancing place, hurrying and staring. Some people greeted him, and he said to them, “There’s a death walking four-legged around here. Where’s it gone?”

  They laughed.

  “There’s a two-legged coyote around here,” Modona said. “If you see a spike-horn buck walking without hooves, let me know!” He went off at a run, across the Hinge, to the middle common place. The troupe of players from Wakwaha were all sitting around in the shade of the gallery and the booths, eating flat bread, sheep’s-milk cheese, and red and yellow tomatoes, and drinking dry Betebbes. Isitut was with them, eating and drinking. She said, “So you are here, man of the Blue Clay Where’s your brother?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” he said. He looked around the booths and gallery. A cloud of flies was in one place behind the gallery, and he went to look there, but it was dog turds they were clustering on. The deer was nowhere there. He came back by the players, speaking to them: “So you are here, people of the Valley. Has any of you seen a deer’s death go by this place?” He made his voice sound easy, but there was an angry look in his body and face. The strangers did not laugh. A man answered politely, “No, we have not seen such a thing.”

  “It was a gift to you. If you see it, take it, it’s yours,” the hunter said. He looked at Isitut. She was eating, and did not look at him. He went back to the dancing place.

  This time he noticed some marks in the dirt at the foot of the southwest side of the roof of the Blue Clay heyimas. He looked with care and saw that farther on there were dry grass stems broken, pointing away from the heyimas. He went on in that direction. Clear over at the bank of the River, down under the bank, he saw something white. He walked towards it, staring. The white being moved. It rose up and faced the hunter. It stood over the deer’s death, which it had been eating. It showed its teeth and cried out.

  Modona saw a woman in white clothes. His head whirled in itself and he saw a white dog.

  He stooped and picked up rocks and threw them hard, shouting, “Get away! Get off that!”

  When a rock hit the dog in the head she shrieked and ran away from the death, downstream, towards the dwelling-houses.

  This dog’s mother was hechi, her father dui,* and she was unusually tall and strong; her coat of hair was white, with no other color, and her eyes were bluish. When a puppy she had been befriended by Whette, and they had played together and gone together whenever Whette went outside the town. Whette had called her Moondog. After marrying Kamedan Whette had seldom called the dog to walk or guard, and nobody else knew her well; she would not have anything to do with any human being but Whette, and kept alone even in dogtown. She was getting old now and had lost keenness of hearing; lately she had been getting thin. Hunger had given her the strength to drag the death from the heyimas down to the River, and she had eaten most of one haunch. Bewildered by the pain where
the rock had struck her between eye and ear, she ran up into Telina, between the houses, to Hardcinder House.

  Inside Shamsha’s household the people heard a clawing and a crying at the outer door, which was closed to keep out the day’s heat. Fefinum heard the voice crying and said, “She’s back! She has come back!” Speaking, she cowered down in the corner of the room farthest from the door.

  Shamsha jumped up and said, talking loudly, “Children playing on the porches, it’s a shame, it’s never quiet here!” She stood in front of her daughter, concealing her from Duhe.

  Duhe looked at them, went over to the door, and opened it enough to look out. She said, “It’s a white dog, crying here. Whette used to walk with this dog, I think.”

  Shamsha came to look. “Yes, but not for years now,” she said. “Let me drive her away. She’s crazy, coming here, trying to get inside the house like that. Old and crazy. Get away, get off, you!” She took up a broom and poked it out the door at Moondog, but Duhe kept the broom from striking the dog, and said, “Please wait a minute. It seems to me the dog’s been hurt and wants help.” She went out to look more closely at Moondog’s head, having seen blood on the white hair about the eye. Moondog cringed and snarled at first, but feeling that the doctor was not at all afraid, she held still. When the doctor’s hands touched her she felt great authority in them, and she made no objection while Duhe examined the wound the rock had made between her left ear and eye.

  Duhe spoke to her: “What a beautiful old woman-dog you are, though a queer color for a dog, better for a sheep; and you haven’t been overeating recently, to judge by your ribs. Now what happened, did you run into a branch? No, this looks more like a rock was thrown at you and you didn’t dodge it; that’s not so smart, old woman-dog. Shamsha, may I please have some water and a clean cloth to wash this injury with?”

  The old woman brought a bowl of water and some rags, grumbling. “That dog is worthless, of no account.”