Coming of Age in Karhide

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  black in the sun, Aunt Sadne always went off for a night or two with him, andcame back looking cross and self-conscious. Aunt Noyit explained to me thatDownriver Lame Man's songs were magic; not the usual bad magic, but what shecalled the great good spells. Aunt Sadne never could resist his spells. "Buthe hasn't half the charm of some men I've known," said Aunt Noyit, smilingreminiscently. Our diet, though excellent, was very low in fat, which Motherthought might explain the rather late onset of puberty; girls seldommenstreated before they were fifteen, and boys often weren't mature till theywere considerably older than that. But the women began looking askance at boysas soon as they showed any signs at all of adolescence. First Aunt Hedimi, whowas always grim, then Aunt Noyit, then even Aunt Sadne began to turn away fromBorny, to leave him out, not answering when he spoke. "What are you doingplaying with the children?" old Aunt Dnemi asked him so fiercely that he camehome in tears. He was not quite fourteen. Sadne's younger daughter Hyuru wasmy soulmate, my best friend, you would say. Her elder sister Didsu, who was inthe singing circle now, came and talked to me one day, looking serious. "Bornyis very handsome," she said. I agreed proudly. "Very big, very strong" shesaid, "stronger than I am." I agreed proudly again, and then I began to backaway from her. "I'm not doing magic, Ren," she said. "Yes you are," I said. "I'll tell your mother!" Didsu shook her head. "I'm trying to speak truly. Ifmy fear causes your fear, I can't help it. It has to be so. We talked about itin the singing circle. I don't like it," she said, and I knew she meant it; she had a soft face, soft eyes, she had always been the gentlest of uschildren. "I wish he could be a child," she said. "I wish I could. But wecan't." "Go be a stupid old woman, then," I said, and ran away from her. Iwent to my secret place down by the river and cried. I took the holies out ofmy soulbag and arranged them. One holy -- it doesn't matter if I tell you -was a crystal that Borny had given me, clear at the top, cloudy purple at thebase. I held it a long time and then I gave it back. I dug a hole under aboulder, and wrapped the holy in duhur leaves inside a square of cloth I toreout of my kilt, beautiful, fine cloth Hyuru had woven and sewn for me. I torethe square right from the front, where it would show. I gave the crystal back, and then sat a long time there near it. When I went home I said nothing ofwhat Didsu had said. But Borny was very silent, and my mother had a worriedlook. "What have you done to your kilt, Ren?" she asked. I raised my head alittle and did not answer; she started to speak again, and then did not. Shehad finally learned not to talk to a person who chose to be silent. Bornydidn't have a soulmate, but he had been playing more and more often with thetwo boys nearest his age, Ednede who was a year or two older, a slight, quietboy, and Bit who was only eleven, but boisterous and reckless. The three of them went off somewhere all the time. I hadn't paid much attention, partlybecause I was glad to be rid of Bit. Hyuru and I had been practicing beingaware, and it was tiresome to always have to be aware of Bit yellingand jumping around. He never could leave anyone quiet, as if their quietnesstook something from him. His mother, Hedimi, had educated him, but she wasn'ta good singer or story-teller like Sadne and Noyit, and Bit was too restlessto listen even to them. Whenever he saw me and Hyuru trying to slow-walk orsitting being aware, he hung around making noise till we got mad and told himto go, and then he jeered, "Dumb girls!" I asked Borny what he and Bit andEdnede did, and he said, "Boy stuff." "Like what ?" "Practicing." "Beingaware?" After a while he said, "No." "Practicing what, then?" "Wrestling. Getting strong. For the boygroup." He looked gloomy, but after a while hesaid, "Look," and showed me a knife he had hidden under his mattress. "Ednedesays you have to have a knife, then nobody will challenge you. Isn't it abeauty?" It was metal, old metal from the People, shaped like a reed, pounded out and sharpened down both edges, with a sharp point. A piece ofpolished flintshrub wood had been bored and fitted on the handle to protectthe hand. "I found it in an empty man's-house," he said. "I made the woodenpart." He brooded over it lovingly. Yet he did not keep it in hissoulbag. "What do you do with it?" I asked, wondering why both edges were

  sharp, so you'd cut your hand if you used it. "Keep off attackers," hesaid. "Where was the empty man's-house?" "Way over across Rocky Top." "Can I go with you if you go back?" "No," he said, not unkindly, butabsolutely. "What happened to the man? Did he die?" "There was a skull in the creek. We think he slipped and drowned." He didn't sound quite likeBorny. There was something in his voice like a grown-up; melancholy; reserved. I had gone to him for reassurance, but came away more deeply anxious. I wentto Mother and asked her, "what do they do in the boygroups?" "Perform natural selection," she said, not in my language but in hers, in a strained tone. Ididn't always understand Hainish any more and had no idea what she meant, butthe tone of her voice upset me; and to my horror I saw she had begun to crysilently. "We have to move, Serenity," she said -- she was still talkingHainish without realizing it. "There isn't any reason why a family can't move, is there? Women just move in and move out as they please. Nobody cares whatanybody does. Nothing is anybody's business. Except hounding the boys out oftown!" I understood most of what she said, but got her to say it in mylanguage; and then I said, "But anywhere we went, Borny would be the same age, and size, and everything." "Then we'll leave," she said fiercely. "Go back tothe ship." I drew away from her. I had never been afraid of her before: shehad never used magic on me. A mother has great power, but there is nothingunnatural in it, unless it is used against the child's soul. Borny had nofear of her. He had his own magic. When she told him she intended leaving, hepersuaded her out of it. He wanted to go join the boygroup, he said; he'd beenwanting to for a year now. He didn't belong in the auntring any more, allwomen and girls and little kids. He wanted to go live with other boys. Bit's older brother Yit was a member of the boygroup in the Four RiversTerritory, and would look after a boy from his auntring. And Ednede wasgetting ready to go. And Borny and Ednede and Bit had been talking to somemen, recently. Men weren't all ignorant and crazy, the way Mother thought. They didn't talk much, but they knew a lot. "What do they know?" Mother askedgrimly "They know how to be men," Borny said. "It's what I'm going tobe." "Not that kind of man -- not if I can help it! In Joy Born, you mustremember the men on the ship, real men -- nothing like these poor, filthyhermits. I can't let you grow up thinking that that's what you have tobe!" "They're not like that," Borny said. "You ought to go talk to some ofthem, Mother." "Don't be naive," she said with an edgy laugh. "You knowperfectly well that women don't go to men to talk." I knew she was wrong; allthe women in the auntring knew all the settled men for three days' walkaround. They did talk with them, when they were out foraging. They only keptaway from the ones they didn't trust; and usually those men disappeared beforelong. Noyit had told me, "Their magic turns on them." She meant the other mendrove them away or killed them. But I didn't say any of this, and Borny saidonly, "Well, Cave Cliff Man is really nice. And he took us to the place whereI found those People things" -- some ancient artifacts that Mother had beenexcited about. "The men know things the women don't," Borny went on. "At leastI could go to the boygroup for a while, maybe. I ought to. I could learn alot! We don't have any solid information on them at all. All we know anythingabout is this auntring. I'll go and stay long enough to get material for ourreport. I can't ever come back to either the auntring or the boygroup once Ileave them. I'll have to go to the ship, or else try to be a man. So let mehave a real go at it, please, Mother?" "I don't know why you think you haveto learn how to be a man," she said after a while. "You know how already." He really smiled then, and she put her arm around him. What about me? I thought. I don't even know what the ship is. I want to be here, where my soul is. Iwant to go on learning to be in the world. But I was afraid of Mother and Borny, who were both working magic, and so I said nothing and was still, as Ihad been taught. Ednede and Borny went off together. Noyit, Ednede's mother, was as glad as Mother was about their keeping company, though she saidnothing. The evening before they left, the two boys went to every house in theauntring. It took a long time. The houses were each just wi
thin sight or

  hearing of one or two of the others, with bush and gardens and irrigationditches and paths in between. In each house the mother and the children werewaiting to say goodbye, only they didn't say it; my language has no word forhello or goodbye. They asked the boys in and gave them something to eat, something they could take with them on the way to the Territory. When the boyswent to the door everybody in the household came and touched their hand orcheek. I remembered when Yit had gone around the auntring that way. I hadcried then, because even though I didn't much like Yit, it seemed so strangefor somebody to leave forever, like they were dying. This time I didn't cry; but I kept waking and waking again, until I heard Borny get up before thefirst light and pick up his things and leave quietly. I know Mother was awaketoo, but we did as we should do, and lay still while he left, and for a longtime after. I have read her description of what she calls "An adolescent maleleaves the Auntring: a vestigial survival of ceremony." She had wanted him to put a radio in his soulbag and get in touch with her at least occasionally. Hehad been unwilling. "I want to do it fight, Mother. There's no use doing it ifI don't do it right." "I simply can't handle not heating from you at all, Borny," she had said in Hainish. "But if the radio got broken or taken orsomething you'd worry a lot more, maybe with no reason at all." She finallyagreed to wait half a year, till the first rains then she would go to alandmark, a huge rain near the fiver that marked the southern end ofthe Territory, and he would try and come to her there. "But only wait tendays," he said. "If I can't come, I can't." She agreed. She was like a motherwith a little baby, I thought, saying yes to everything. That seemed wrong tome; but I thought Borny was fight. Nobody ever came back to their mother fromboygroup. But Borny did. Summer was long, clear, beautiful. I was learningto starwatch; that is when you lie down outside on the open hills in the dryseason at night, and find a certain star in the eastern sky, and watch itcross the sky till it sets. You can look away, of course, to rest your eyes, and doze, but you try to keep looking back at the star and the stars aroundit, until you feel the earth turning, until you become aware of how the starsand the world and the soul move together. After the certain star sets yousleep until dawn wakes you. Then as always you greet the sunrise with awaresilence. I was very happy on the hills those warm great nights, those cleardawns. The first time or two Hyuru and I starwatched together, but after thatwe went alone, and it was better alone. I was coming back from such a night, along the narrow valley between Rocky Top and Over Home Hill in the firstsunlight, when a man came crashing through the bush down onto the path andstood in front of me. "Don't be afraid," he said, "Listen!" He was heavyset, half naked; he stank. I stood still as a stick. He had said "Listen!" just asthe aunts did, and I listened. "Your brother and his friend are all right. Your mother shouldn't go there. Some of the boys are in a gang. They'd rapeher. I and some others are killing the leaders. It takes a while. Your brotheris with the other gang. He's all right. Tell her. Tell me what I said." I repeated it word for word, as I had learned to do when I listened. "Right. Good," he said, and took off up the steep slope on his short, powerful legs, and was gone. Mother would have gone to the Territory right then, but I toldthe man's message to Noyit, too, and she came to the porch of our house tospeak to Mother. I listened to her, because she was telling things I didn'tknow well and Mother didn't know at all. Noyit was a small, mild woman, verylike her son Ednede; she liked teaching and singing, so the children werealways around her place. She saw Mother was getting ready for a journey. Shesaid, "House on the Skyline Man says the boys are all right." When she sawMother wasn't listening, she went on, she pretended to be talking to me, because women don't teach women: "He says some of the men are breaking up thegang. They do that, when the boygroups get wicked. Sometimes there aremagicians among them, leaders, older boys, even men who want to make a gang. The settled men will kill the magicians and make sure none of the boys getshurt. When gangs come out of the Territories, nobody is safe. The settled mendon't like that. They see to it that the auntring is safe. So your brother

  will be all right." My mother went on packing pigi-roots into her net. "A rape is a very, very bad thing for the settled men," said Noyit to me. "It means the women won't come to them. If the boys raped some woman, probablythe men would kill all the boys." My mother was finally listening. She did not go to the rendezvous with Borny, but all through the rainy season she wasutterly miserable. She got sick, and old Dnemi sent Didsu over to dose herwith gagberry syrup. She made notes while she was sick, lying on her mattress, about illnesses and medicines and how the older gifts had to look after sickwomen, since grown women did not enter one another's houses. She never stoppedworking and never stopped worrying about Borny. Late in the rainy season, when the warm wind had come and the yellow honey-flowers were in bloom on allthe hills, the Golden World time, Noyit came by while Mother was working inthe garden. "House on the Skyline Man says things are all right in theboygroup," she said, and went on. Mother began to realize then that althoughno adult ever entered another's house, and adults seldom spoke to one another, and men and women had only brief, often casual relationships, and men livedall their lives in real solitude, still there was a kind of community, a wide, thin, fine network of delicate and certain intention and restraint: a socialorder. Her reports to the ship were filled with this new understanding. Butshe still found Sorovian life impoverished, seeing these persons as meresurvivors, poor fragments of the wreck of something great. "My dear," shesaid -- in Hainish; there is no way to say "my dear" in my language. She wasspeaking Hainish with me in the house so that I wouldn't forget it entirely. -- "My dear, the explanation of an uncomprehended technology as magic isprimitivism. It's not a criticism, merely a description." "But technologyisn't magic," I said. "Yes, it is, in their minds; look at the story you justrecorded. Before Time sorcerors who could fly in the air and undersea andunderground in magic boxes!" "In metal boxes," I corrected. "In other words, airplanes, tunnels, submarines; a lost technology explainedas supernatural." "The boxes weren't magic," I said. "The people were. Theywere sorcerors. They used their power to get power over other persons. To liverightly a person has to keep away from magic." "That's a cultural imperative, because a few thousand years ago uncontrolled technological expansion led todisaster. Exactly. There's a perfectly rational reason for the irrationaltaboo." I did not know what "rational" and "irrational" meant in my language; I could not find words for them. "Taboo" was the same as "poisonous." Ilistened to my mother because a daughter must learn from her mother, and mymother knew many, many things no other person knew; but my education was verydifficult, sometimes. If only there were more stories and songs in herteaching, and not so many words, words that slipped away from me like waterthrough a net! The Golden Time passed, and the beautiful summer; the SilverTime returned, when the mists lie in the valleys between the hills, before therains begin; and the rains began, and fell long and slow and warm, day afterday after day. We had heard nothing of Borny and Ednede for over a year. Thenin the night the soft thrum of rain on the reed roof turned into a scratchingat the door and a whisper, "Shh -- it's all right -- it's all right." We wakened the fire and crouched at it in the dark to talk. Borny had gottall and very thin, like a skeleton with the skin dried on it. A cut acrosshis upper lip had drawn it up into a kind of snarl that bared his teeth, andhe could not say p, b, or m. His voice was a man's voice. He huddled at thefire trying to get warmth into his bones. His clothes were wet rags. The knifehung on a cord around his neck. "It was all right," he kept saying. "I don'twant to go on there, though." He would not tell us much about the year and ahalf in the boygroup, insisting that he would record a full description whenhe got to the ship. He did tell us what he would have to do if he stayed onSoro. He would have to go back to the Territory and hold his own among theolder boys, by fear and sorcery, always proving his strength, until he was oldenough to walk away -- that is, to leave the Territory and wander alone tillhe found a place where the men would let him settle. Ednede and another boyhad paire
d, and were going to walk away together when the rains stopped. It