Powers

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  It wasn't easy for me to ask them about Ferusi, not that they didn't know all about it or didn't want to talk about it, but because it was their entire universe and was therefore taken for granted. They could not understand the kind of questions I asked. How could anybody not know the name of the lake? Why would anybody ask why men and women lived separately—surely no one could think they should live shamelessly in the same village, the same house? How could anybody possibly be ignorant of the evening worship or the words to say when giving or receiving food? How could a man not know how to cut reedgrass or a woman not know how to pound it to make reedcloth? I soon learned that I was more ignorant here than I'd been even my first winter in the forest, for there was a lot more to be ignorant of. City people might say that the Sidoyu were simple people, living a simple life; but I think only a life as solitary, poor, and crude as Cuga's could be called simple, and even so the word belies it. In the villages of the Sidoyu existence was full, rich, elaborate, a tapestry of demanding relationships, choices, obligations, and rules. To live as a Sidoy was as complex and subtle a business as to live as an Etran; to live rightly as either was, perhaps, equally difficult.

  My uncle Metter had taken me into his house without any show of welcome, certainly, but without the least reluctance; he was quite ready to be fond of his long-lost nephew. He was a mild, modest, gentle man, embedded contentedly in the village network of duties and habits and relations like a bee in a hive or a swallow in a colony of mud nests. He wasn't very highly considered by the other men, but didn't mind, not being restless or rivalrous. He had several wives, and that did earn him respect, though any relationship with women was of course set apart from the rest of a man's life. ... But if I try to tell what I learned about living as a Sidoy as I learned it—slowly, in fragments, by guesswork—my story will go on and on. I must explain what I can while I get on with what happened.

  What happened was that I ate a good supper of cold fish cakes and ricegrass wine with my uncle, his cat Prut, and his dog Minki, a kind old bitch who showed up just in time for her supper. She put her greying muzzle on my palm very politely. I watched my uncle dance and speak a brief worship to the Lord of the Waters on the deck of his hut in the twilight, as other men were doing on the decks of their huts in the twilight, and then he unrolled a bed mat for himself and helped me lay out the sitting mats as my bed. The cat went mousing underneath the hut, and the dog curled up on her master's mat as soon as he unrolled it. We lay down, said good night, and went to sleep while the last gleam of daylight was fading from the water of the lake.

  Before sunrise the men of the village went out on the lake, one or two of them to a boat, with a dog or two. Metter told me that this was the season for great numbers of a fish called tuta to come into the lake from the seaward channels, and they hoped this morning might begin the run. If so, I gathered they'd be working hard for a month or so in both villages, the men catching fish and the women drying them. I asked if I could come with him and begin to learn how they fished. He was the sort of man who finds it impossible to say no. He hemmed and mumbled. Somebody was coming that I should talk to, was all I could understand.

  "Is it my father who is coming?" I asked.

  "Your father? Metter Sodia, you mean? Oh, he went north after Tano was lost," Metter said rather vaguely. I tried to ask but all he would say was, "Nobody ever heard about him again."

  He got away as soon as he could and left me alone in the village—with the cats. Every house had its black cat, or several of them. When the men and dogs were gone, the cats ruled, lying about on the decks, wandering over the roofs, having hissing matches between houses, bringing kittens out to play in the sun. I sat and watched cats, and though the kittens made me laugh, I felt my heart very heavy. I knew now that Metter meant no unkindness. But I had come home to my people, and they were utterly strange to me, and I a stranger to them.

  I could see the fishing boats away off on the lake, the tiny wings of the sails on the silken blue water.

  A boat was coming towards the village. It was a big canoe, several men paddling hard. The canoe slid up to the muddy shore, the men leapt out, drew it up farther, and then came directly to me. Their faces were painted, I thought, then saw it was tattooing: all had many lines drawn from temple to jaw, and an older man's whole forehead to the eyebrows was covered with vertical black lines, as was the top of his nose, so that he looked like a heron with a head dark above and light below. They walked with stately dignity. One of them carried a stick with a great plume of white egret feathers on top of it.

  They halted in front of the deck of Metter's cabin and the older man said, "Gavir Aytana Sidoy."

  I stood up and reverenced them.

  The older man made a long statement which I did not understand a word of. They waited a moment, and then he said to the man with the stick, "He hasn't had any of the training."

  They conferred for a while, and the man with the stick turned to me. "You will come with us for your initiation," he said. I must have looked blank. "We are the elders of your clan, the Aytanu Sidoyu," he said. "Only we can make you a man, so that you can do a man's work. You've had no training, but do your best, and we'll show you what to do."

  "You can't stay as you are," the older man said. "Not among us. An uninitiated man is a danger to his village and a disgrace to his clan. The claw of Ennu-Amba is against him and the herds of Sua flee from him. So. Come." He turned away.

  I stepped down from the deck among them, and the man with the stick touched my head with the egret plume. He didn't smile, but I felt his good will. The others were cold, stern, formal. They closed in round me and we went to the canoe, got in, pushed off. "Lie down," Egret Plume murmured to me. I lay down between the rowers' feet, and could see nothing but the bottom of the canoe. It too was made of reedcloth, I realised, heavy strips laminated across and across and stiffened with a translucent varnish till it was smooth and hard as metal.

  Out in mid-lake the rowers lifted their paddles. The canoe hung in the silence of the water. In that silence, a man began to chant. Again the words were completely incomprehensible. I think now that they may have been in Aritan, the ancient language of our people, preserved over the centuries in the ritual of the Marsh dwellers, but I don't know. The chanting went on a long time, sometimes one voice, sometimes several, while I lay still as a corpse. I was half in a trance when Egret Plume whispered to me, "Can you swim?" I nodded. "Come up on the other side," he whispered. And then I was being picked up by several men as if I were indeed a corpse, swung high up into the air, and thrown right out of the boat headfirst.

  It was all so sudden that I didn't know what had happened. Coming up and shaking the water out of my eyes, I saw the side of the canoe looming above me. "Come up on the other side," he'd said—so I dived right down and swam under the huge shadow of the canoe, coming up again gasping just outside its shadow in the water. There I trod water and stared at the canoe full of men. Egret Plume was shaking his feathered stick and shouting "Hiyi! Hiyi!" He reversed the stick and held out the plain end to me. I grabbed it and he hauled me in to the side of the canoe, where several hands pulled me aboard. The instant I sat up, something was jammed down over my head—a wooden box? I couldn't move my head inside it, and it came right down onto my shoulders. I could see nothing but the gleam of light from below my chin. Egret Plume was shouting "Hiyi!" again and there was some laughter and congratulation among the others. Whatever had happened apparently had happened the right way. I sat on a thwart with my head in a box and did not try to make sense out of anything.

  I've told this much of the initiation because it isn't secret; anybody can see it. The fishermen out on the lake had gathered near the war canoe to watch. But once I had the box on my head, we steered straight for the village where the secret rites were held.

  Ferusi was five villages: the one where I was born, East Lake, and four others strung out within a few miles along the shores of Lake Feru. They took me for initiation to South Shore, the
largest village, where the sacred things were kept. The big canoes were called war canoes not because the Marsh people ever fought a war either against others or among themselves, but because men like to think of themselves as warriors, and only men paddled the big canoes. The box on my head was a mask. While I wore the mask I was called the Child of Ennu. To the Rassiu the cat goddess Ennu-Mé is also Ennu-Amba, the black lion of the Marshes. I can't tell more of the rites of initiation, but when they were all done I had a fine black line tattooed from the hair above my temple down to my jaw, one on each side. I am so dark-skinned the lines are hard to see. Once I was initiated and came back to East Lake, I realised that all the men had such lines down the side of their face, and most had two or more.

  And when I was initiated and came back to East Lake, I was one of them.

  I was an odd one, to be sure, since I was so ignorant. But the men of my village let me know they thought I wasn't totally stupid, probably because I showed promise as a fisherman.

  I was treated much as the other boys were. Normally, a boy came over from the women's village after his initiation at about thirteen and lived with an older male relative for some years—his mother's brother, or an older brother, occasionally his father. Fatherhood was much less important than relation through the mother's family, one's clan.

  Here in the men's village, boys learned the men's trades: fishing and boat building, bird hunting, planting and harvesting ricegrass, cutting reeds. The women kept poultry and cattle, gardened, made reedcloth, and preserved and cooked food. Boys older than seven or eight living in the women's village weren't expected or even allowed to do women's work, so they came over to the men's village lazy, ignorant, useless, and good for nothing, or so the men never got tired of telling them. Boys weren't beaten—I never saw a Rassiu strike another person, or dog, or cat—but they were scolded and nagged and ordered about and criticized relentlessly until they had learned a craft or two. Then they had their second initiation, and could move into a hut of their own choice, alone or with friends. The second initiation wasn't permitted until the older men agreed that the boy had fully mastered at least one skill. Sometimes, they told me, a boy, refusing his second initiation, chose to return to the women's village and live there as a woman the rest of his life.

  My uncle had several wives. Some Rassiu women had several husbands. The marriage ceremony consisted of the two people announcing, "We are married," at the daily food exchange. Scattered along between the two half villages were some little reedcloth huts, just big enough for a cot or mat, which were used by men and women who wanted to sleep together. They made their assignation at the food exchange or at a private meeting in the paths or fields. If a couple decided to marry, the man built a marriage hut, and his wife or wives came to it whenever they agreed or arranged to. I once asked my uncle as he left in the evening which wife he was going to, and he smiled shyly and said, "Oh, they decide that."

  As I watched the young people flirting and courting, I saw that marriage had a good deal to do with skill in fishing and skill in cooking, for a husband gives the fish to the wife, who cooks it for him. That daily food exchange of raw for cooked was called "the fish-mat." The women, with their poultry and dairying and gardening, actually produced a good deal more of our food than the men did by fishing, but their butter and cheese and eggs and vegetables were all taken for granted, while everybody made a fuss over what the men provided.

  I understood now why Ammeda had seemed ashamed when he cooked the fish I'd caught. Village men never cooked. Boys and unmarried men had to bargain or wheedle for their dinners, or take whatever was left on the fish-mat. My uncle's taste in wives and cooks was excellent. I ate well while I lived with him.

  I spent the year after my initiation as an Aytan Sidoy of the Rassiu learning how to do what the men of my people did: fish, plant and harvest ricegrass, and cut and store reeds. I was unhandy with a bow and arrow, so I wasn't asked to go out in the boat to shoot wild fowl, as boys often were. I became my uncle's net thrower. While we dragged the net, I fished with the rod and line. My knack for this was recognised at once and won me approval. Often we took a boy along to shoot, and it was the joy of old Minki's life to leap into the water after the duck or goose when he brought one down, fetch it back to the boat, and carry it proudly ashore, wagging her tail. She always gave her birds to my uncle's oldest wife Pumo, and Pumo thanked her gravely.

  Planting and harvesting ricegrass is the easiest job on earth, I think. You go out in autumn in a boat on the silky blue water over at the north end of the lake where the rice islets are close together, and pole slowly down the tiny channels, tossing handfuls of small, dark, sweet-smelling grain in showers to right and left as you go. Then in late spring you go back, bend the tall grasses down into the boat from right and left, and knock the new seeds off the stems into the boat with a little wooden rake till the boat's half full of it. I know the women sniggered at the fuss the men made about planting and harvesting ricegrass, as if there were any skill to it; but they always received our bags of rice with praise and honor at the fish-mat exchange. "I'll stuff you a goose with it!" they said. And it tasted almost as good as Etran grain porridge.

  As for reed cutting, that was hard work. We did a great deal of it, in late autumn and early winter, when the weather was often grey and cold or raining. Once I got used to standing all day in water two or three feet deep, and to the angle of the curved scythe and the triple rhythm of cutting and gathering and handing—for you must gather the reeds together before they separate and drift off on the water, and hand the long, heavy bundle up into the boat—I liked it well enough. The young fellows I went out with were good companions, rivalrous about their own prowess as cutters, but kind to me as a novice, and full of jokes and gossip and songs that they shouted across the great reed beds in the rainy wind. Not many of the older men went reed cutting; the rheumatism they had got from doing it as young men kept them from it now.

  It was a dull life, I suppose, but it was what I needed. It gave me time to mend. It gave me time to think, and to grow up at my own pace.

  Late winter was a pleasant, lazy time. The reeds had been cut and handed over to the women to make into reedcloth, and there wasn't much for the men to do unless they were boat makers. Nothing bothered me but the damp, foggy cold: our only heat was from a tiny charcoal fire in a ceramic pot. It made a very small sphere of warmth in the hut. If the sun was shining, I went to the shore and watched the boat makers at their work, a refined and exacting skill. Their boats are the finest art of the Rassiu. A war canoe is like a true line of poetry, there is nothing to it that is not necessary, it is purely beautiful. So when I wasn't huddled over the fire pot dreaming, I watched the boat grow. And I made myself a good set of rods and lines and hooks, and fished if it wasn't raining hard, and talked to my friends among the young people.

  Though women didn't set foot in the men's village or men in the women's village, we had, after all, the rest of the world to meet in. Men and women got to talking at the fish-mat, and out on the lake from boat to boat—for the women fished too, especially for eels—and in the grasslands inland from the villages. My luck in fishing helped me make friends among the girls, eager to trade their cooked food for my catch. They teased me and flirted mildly and were happy to walk along the lakeshore or an inland path, a few of them with a few of us young men. Real pairing off was forbidden until the second initiation. Boys who broke that law were exiled from their village for life. So we young people stayed together as a group. My favorite among the girls was Tisso Betu, called Cricket for her pinched little face and skinny body; she was bright and kind and loved to laugh, and she tried to answer my questions instead of staring at me and saying, "But Gavir, everybody knows that!"

  One of the questions I asked Tisso was whether anybody ever told stories. Rainy days and winter evenings were long and dull, and I kept an ear out for any tales or songs, but subjects of talk among the boys and men were limited and repetitive: the day's events, plans
for the next day, food, women, rarely a little news from a man from another village met out on the lake or in the grasslands. I would have liked to entertain them and myself with a tale, as I had Brigin's band and Barna's people. But no one here did anything like that at all. I knew that foreign ways, attempts to change how things were done, weren't welcomed by the Marsh people, so I didn't ask. But with Tisso I wasn't so afraid of putting a foot wrong, and I asked her if nobody told stories or sang story-songs. She laughed. "We do," she said.

  "Women?"

  "Ao."

  "Men don't."

  "Eng." She giggled.

  "Why not."

  She didn't know. And when I asked her to tell me one of the stories I might have heard if I'd been a little boy growing up in the women's village, it shocked her. "Oh, Gavir, I can't," she said.

  "And I can't tell you any of the stories I learned."

  "Eng, eng, eng," she murmured. No, no, no.

  I wanted to talk to my aunt Gegemer, who could tell me about my mother. But she still held aloof from me. I didn't know why. I asked the girls about her. They shied away from my questions. Gegemer Aytano was, I gathered, a powerful and not entirely beloved woman in the village. At last, on a winter day when Tisso Betu and I were walking in the pastures behind the rest of the group, I asked her why my aunt didn't want anything to do with me.

  "Well, she's an ambamer," Tisso said. The word means marsh-lion's daughter, but I had to ask what that meant.

  Tisso thought about it. "It means she can see through the world. And hear voices from far away."

  She looked at me to see if I knew what she was talking about. I nodded a little uncertainly.

  "Gegemer hears dead people talking, sometimes. Or people who aren't born yet. In the old women's house, when they do the singing, Ennu-Amba Herself comes into her, and then she can walk all across the world and see what's happened and what's going to happen. You know, some of us do some of that kind of seeing and hearing while we're children, but we don't understand it. But if Amba makes a girl her daughter, then she goes on seeing and hearing all her life. It makes her kind of strange, you know."Tisso pondered for a while. "She has to try to tell people what she saw. The men won't even listen. They say only men can have the power of seeing and an ambamer is just a crazy woman. But Mother says that Gegemer Aytano saw the poison tide, when the people who eat shellfish in the Western Marshes got sick and died, a long time before it happened, when she was just a child. ... And she knows when people in the village are going to die. That makes people afraid of her. Maybe it makes her afraid of them. ... But sometimes she knows when a girl's going to have a baby, too. I mean, even before she is. She said, 'I saw your child laugh, Yenni,' and Yenni cried and cried, she was so happy, because she wanted a child and she'd never got one. And a year later she did."