The Found and the Lost

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  She left him standing at the waymeet, on level ground, and walked up the hill path for a little way, a few strides. She turned and looked back down at him. “What keeps you from the hill?” she said.

  The air was darkening around them. The west was only a dull red line, the eastern sky was shadowy above the sea.

  The Summoner looked up at Irian. Slowly he raised his arms and the white staff in the invocation of a spell, speaking in the tongue that all the wizards and mages of Roke had learned, the language of their art, the Language of the Making: “Irian, by your name I summon you and bind you to obey me!”

  She hesitated, seeming for a moment to yield, to come to him, and then cried out, “I am not only Irian!”

  At that the Summoner ran up towards her, reaching out, lunging at her as if to seize and hold her. They were both on the hill now. She towered above him impossibly, fire breaking forth between them, a flare of red flame in the dusk air, a gleam of red-gold scales, of vast wings—then that was gone, and there was nothing there but the woman standing on the hill path and the tall man bowing down before her, bowing slowly down to earth, and lying on it.

  Of them all it was the Herbal, the healer, who was the first to move. He went up the path and knelt down by Thorion. “My lord,” he said, “my friend.”

  Under the huddle of the grey cloak his hands found only a huddle of clothes and dry bones and a broken staff.

  “This is better, Thorion,” he said, but he was weeping.

  The old Namer came forward and said to the woman on the hill, “Who are you?”

  “I do not know my other name,” she said. She spoke as he had spoken, as she had spoken to the Summoner, in the Language of the Making, the tongue the dragons speak.

  She turned away and began to walk on up the hill.

  “Irian,” said Azver the Patterner, “will you come back to us?”

  She halted and let him come up to her. “I will, if you call me,” she said.

  She reached out and touched his hand. He drew his breath sharply.

  “Where will you go?” he said.

  “To those who will give me my name. In fire, not water. My people.”

  “In the west,” he said.

  She said, “Beyond the west.”

  She turned away from him and them and went on up the hill in the gathering darkness. As she went farther from them they saw her, all of them, the great gold-mailed flanks, the spiked, coiling tail, the talons, the breath that was bright fire. On the crest of the knoll she paused a while, her long head turning to look slowly round the Isle of Roke, gazing longest at the Grove, only a blur of darkness in darkness now. Then with a rattle like the shaking of sheets of brass the wide, vaned wings opened and the dragon sprang up into the air, circled Roke Knoll once, and flew.

  A curl of fire, a wisp of smoke drifted down through the dark air.

  Azver the Patterner stood with his left hand holding his right hand, which her touch had burnt. He looked down at the men, who stood silent at the foot of the hill, staring after the dragon. “Well, my friends,” he said, “what now?”

  Only the Doorkeeper answered. He said, “I think we should go to our house, and open its doors.”

  PARADISES LOST

  This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

  What falls away is always. And is near.

  I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

  I learn by going where I have to go.

  Theodore Roethke, The Waking

  The Dirtball

  THE BLUE PARTS WERE LOTS of water, like the hydro tanks only deeper, and the other-colored parts were dirt, like the earth gardens only bigger. Sky was what she couldn’t understand. Sky was another ball that fit around the dirtball, Father said, but they couldn’t show it in the model globe, because you couldn’t see it. It was transparent, like air. It was air. But blue. A ball of air, and it looked blue from underneath, and it was outside the dirtball. Air outside. That was really strange. Was there air inside the dirtball? No, Father said, just earth. You lived on the outside of the dirtball, like evamen doing eva, only you didn’t have to wear a suit. You could breathe the blue air, just like you were inside. In nighttime you’d see black and stars, like if you were doing eva, Father said, but in daytime you’d see only blue. She asked why. Because the light was brighter than the stars, he said. Blue light? No; the star that made it was yellow, but there was so much air it looked blue. She gave up. It was all so hard and so long ago. And it didn’t matter.

  Of course they would “land” on some other dirtball, but that wasn’t going to happen till she was very old, nearly dead, sixty-five years old. By then, if it mattered, she’d understand.

  Privative Definition

  ALIVE IN THE WORLD ARE human beings, plants, and bacteria.

  The bacteria live in and on the human beings and the plants and the soils and other things, and are alive but not visible. The activity even of great numbers of bacteria is not often visible, or appears to be simply a property of their host. Their life is on another order. Orders, as a rule, cannot perceive one another except with instruments which allow perception of a different scale. With such an instrument one gazes in wonder at the world revealed. But the instrument has not revealed one’s larger-order world to that smaller-order world, which continues orderly, undisturbed and unaware, until the drop dries suddenly on the glass slide. Reciprocity is a rare thing.

  The smaller-order world revealed here is an austere one. No amoeba oozing along, or graceful paisley-paramecium, or vacuum-cleaning rotifer; no creature larger than bacteria, juddering endlessly under the impacts of molecules.

  And only certain bacteria. No molds, no wild yeasts. No virus (down another order). Nothing that causes disease in human beings or in plants. Nothing but the necessary bacteria, the house-cleaners, the digesters, the makers of dirt—clean dirt. There is no gangrene in the world, no blood poisoning. No colds in the head, no flu, no measles, no plague, no typhus or typhoid or tuberculosis or AIDS or dengue or cholera or yellow fever or Ebola or syphilis or poliomyelitis or leprosy or bilharzia or herpes, no chickenpox, no cold sores, no shingles. No Lyme disease. No ticks. No malaria. No mosquitoes. No fleas or flies, no roaches or spiders, no weevils or worms. Nothing in the world has more or less than two legs. Nothing has wings. Nothing sucks blood. Nothing hides in tiny crevices, waves tendrils, scuttles into shadows, lays eggs, washes its fur, clicks its mandibles, or turns around three times before it lies down with its nose on its tail. Nothing has a tail. Nothing in the world has tentacles or fins or paws or claws. Nothing in the world soars. Nothing swims. Nothing purrs, barks, growls, roars, chitters, trills, or cries repeatedly two notes, a descending fourth, for three months of the year. There are no months of the year. There is no moon. There is no year. There is no sun. Time is divided into lightcycles, darkcycles, and tendays. Every 365.25 cycles there is a celebration and a number called The Year is changed. This Year is 141. It says so on the schoolroom clock.

  The Tiger

  OF COURSE THERE ARE PICTURES of moons and suns and animals, all labelled with names. In the Library on the bookscreens you can watch big things running on all fours over some kind of hairy carpet and the voices say, “horses in wyoming,” or “llamas in peru.” Some of the pictures are funny. Some of them you wish you could touch. Some are frightening. There’s one with bright hair all gold and dark, with terrible clear eyes that stare at you without liking you, without knowing you at all. “Tiger in zoo,” the voice says. Then children are playing with some little “kittens” that climb on them and the children giggle and the kittens are cute, like dolls or babies, until one of them looks right at you and there are the same eyes, the round, clear eyes that do not know your name.

  “I am Hsing,” Hsing said loudly to the kitten-picture on the bookscreen. The picture turned its head away, and Hsing burst into tears.

  Teacher was there, full of comfort and queries. “I hate it, I hate it!” the five-year-old wailed.

  “It
’s only a movie. It can’t hurt you. It isn’t real,” said the twenty-five-year-old.

  Only people are real. Only people are alive. Father’s plants are alive, he says so, but people are really alive. People know you. They know your name. They like you. Or if they don’t, like Alida’s cousin’s little boy from School Four, you tell them who you are and then they know you.

  “I’m Hsing.”

  “Shing,” the little boy said, and she tried to teach him the difference between saying Hsing and saying Shing, but the difference didn’t matter unless you were talking Chinese, and it didn’t matter anyway, because they were going to play Follow-the-Leader with Rosie and Lena and all the others. And Luis, of course.

  If Nothing Is Very Different from You, What Is a Little Different from You Is Very Different from You

  LUIS WAS VERY DIFFERENT FROM Hsing. For one thing, she had a vulva and he had a penis. As they were comparing the two one day, Luis remarked that he liked the word vulva because it sounded warm and soft and round. And vagina sounded rather grand. But “Penis, peee-niss,” he said mincingly, “pee-piss! It sounds like a little dinky pissy sissy thing. It ought to have a better name.” They made up names for it. Bobwob, said Hsing. Gowbondo! said Luis. Bobwob when it was lying down and Gowbondo when it stood up, they decided, aching with laughter. “Up, up, Gowbondo!” Luis cried, and it raised its head a little from his slender, silky thigh. “See, it knows its name! You call it.” And she called it, and it answered, although Luis had to help it a little, and they laughed until not only Bobwob-Gowbondo but both of them were limp all over, rolling on the floor, there in Luis’s room where they always went after school unless they went to Hsing’s room.

  Putting on Clothes

  SHE LOOKED FORWARD TO IT forever and couldn’t sleep at all the night before, lying awake forever. But there was Father standing there suddenly, wearing his dress-up clothes, black long pants and his white silky kurta. “Wake up, sleepyhead, are you going to sleep through your Ceremony?” She leaped up from bed in terror, believing him, so that he said at once, seriously, “No, no, I was only joking. You have plenty of time. You don’t have to get dressed, yet!” She saw the joke, but she was too bewildered and excited to laugh. “Help me comb my hair!” she wailed, tugging her comb into a knot in the thick black tangles. He knelt to help her.

  By the time they got to the Temenos her excitement only made everything clearer than usual, bright, distinct. The huge room seemed even bigger than usual. Music was playing, cheery and dancy. Lots and lots of people were coming, naked children, each one with a parent in dress-up clothes, some of them with two parents, many with grandparents, a few with a little naked brother or sister or a big brother or sister in dress-up clothes. Luis’s father was there, but he was only wearing workshorts and an old singlet, and she was sorry for Luis. Her mother Jael came through the big crowd of people. Jael’s son Joel came with her from Quad Four, and both of them were wearing really, really dress-up clothes. Jael’s had red zigzags and sparkles painted on, and Joel’s shirt was purple with a gold zipper. They hugged and kissed, and Jael gave Father a package and said “For later,” and Hsing knew what was in it, but didn’t say anything. Father was hiding his package in one hand behind his back and she knew what was in it too.

  The music was turning into the song they had all been learning, all the seven-year-olds in all four schools in the whole world: “I’m growing up! I’m growing up!” The parents pushed the children forward or led the shy ones by the hand, whispering, “Sing! Sing!” And all the little naked children, singing, came together in the center of the high round room. “I’m growing up! What a happy happy day!” they sang, and the grown-ups began to sing with them, so it got huge and loud and deep and made tears start in her eyes. “What a happy happy day!”

  An old teacher talked a little while, and then a young teacher with a beautiful high clear voice said, “Now everyone sit down,” and everyone sat down on the deck. “I will read each child’s name. When I read your name, stand up. Your parent and relations will stand up too, and then you can go to them, and look at your clothes. But don’t put them on till everybody in the world has their new clothes! I’ll say when. So! Are you ready? So! 5-Adano Sita! Stand up and be clothed!”

  A little tiny girl jumped up in the circle of sitting children. She was red in the face and looked around in terror for her mother, who stood up laughing and waving a beautiful red shirt. Little Sita ran headlong for her, and everybody laughed and clapped. “5-Alzs-Matteu Frans! Stand up and be clothed!” And so it went, till the clear voice said, “5-Liu Hsing! Stand up and be clothed!” and she stood up, her eyes fixed on Father, who was easy to see because of Jael and Joel glittering beside him. She ran to him and took something silky, something wonderful, into her arms, and the people from Peony Compound and Lotus Compound clapped specially hard. She turned and stood pressed against Father’s legs, watching.

  “5-Nova Luis! Stand up and be clothed,” but he was up and over with his father almost before the words were said, so that people laughed again, and hardly had time to clap. Hsing tried to catch Luis’s eye but he wouldn’t look. He watched the rest of the Ceremony seriously, so she did too.

  “These are the fifty-four seven-year-old children of the Fifth Generation,” the teacher said when no more children were left in the center of the circle. “Let us welcome them to all the joys and responsibilities of growing up,” and everybody cheered and clapped while the naked children, hurrying and inept, struggling with unfamiliar holes, getting things upside down, fumbling with buttons, put on their new clothes, their first clothes, and stood up again, resplendent.

  Then all the teachers and grown-ups started singing “What a happy happy day” again and there was a lot more hugging and kissing. Hsing got enough of that pretty soon, but she noticed that Luis really liked it, and hugged back hard when grown-ups he hardly knew hugged him.

  Ed had given Luis black shorts and a blue silky shirt, in which he looked absolutely different and absolutely himself. Rosa had all white clothes because her mother was an angel. Father had given Hsing dark blue shorts and a white shirt, and Jael’s package was light blue pants and a blue shirt with white stars on it, to wear tomorrow. The cloth of the shorts rubbed her thighs when she moved and the shirt felt soft, soft on her shoulders and belly. She danced with joy, and Father took her hands and danced gravely with her. “So, my grown-up daughter!” he said, and his smile crowned the day.

  Luis Being Different

  THE PENIS-VULVA DIFFERENCE WAS SUPERFICIAL. She had learned that word from Father not long ago, and found it useful. Luis wasn’t different only from her or only because of that superficial difference. He was different from everybody. Nobody said “ought to” the way Luis did. He wanted the truth. Not to lie. He wanted honor. That was the word. That was the difference. He had more honor than the others. Honor is hard and clear and Luis was hard and clear. And at the same time and in exactly the same way he was tender, he was soft. He got asthma and couldn’t breathe, he got big headaches that knocked him out for days, he was sick before exams and performances and ceremonies. He was like the knife that wounds, and like the wound. Everybody treated Luis with a difference, respectfully, liking him but not trying to get close to him. Only she knew that he was also the touch that heals the wound.

  V

  WHEN THEY WERE TEN AND finally were allowed to enter what the teachers called Virtual Earth and the Chi-Ans called V-Dichew, Hsing was overwhelmed and disappointed. V-Dichew was exciting and tremendously complicated, yet thin. It was superficial. It was programs.

  There were infinite things in it, but one stupid real thing, her old toothbrush, had more being in it than all the swarming rush of objects and sensations in City or Jungle or Countryside. In Countryside, she was always aware that although there was nothing overhead but the blue air, and she was walking along on grass-stuff that carpeted the uneven deck for impossible distances rising up into impossible shapes (hills), and that the noises in her ear
s were air moving fast (wind) and a kind of high yit-yit sound sometimes (birds), and that those things on all fours way off on the winds, no, on the hills, were animals (cattle), all the same, all the time, she knew she was sitting in a chair in School Two V-Lab with some junk attached to her body, and her body refused to be fooled, insisting that no matter how strange and amazing and educational and important and historical V-Dichew was, it was a fake. Dreams could also be convincing, beautiful, frightening, important. But she didn’t want to live in dreams. She wanted to be awake in her body touching true cloth, true metal, true skin.

  The Poet

  WHEN SHE WAS FOURTEEN, HSING wrote a poem for an English assignment. She wrote it in both the languages she knew. In English it went:

  In the Fifth Generation

  My grandfather’s grandfather walked under heaven.

  That was another world.

  When I am a grandmother, they say, I may walk under heaven

  On another world.

  But I am living my life now joyously in my world

  Here in the middle of heaven.

  She had been learning Chinese with her father since she was nine; they had read some of the classics together. He smiled when he read the Chinese poem, read the characters “under heaven”—“t’ien hsia.” She saw his smile and it made her happy, proud of her erudition and enormously proud that Yao had recognised it, that they shared this almost secret, almost private understanding.

  The teacher asked her to read her poem aloud in both languages at first-quarter Class Day for second-year high-schoolers. The next day the editor of Q-4, the most famous literary magazine in the world, called her up and asked if he could publish it. Her teacher had sent it to him. He wanted her to read it for the audio. “It needs your voice,” he said. He was a big man with a beard, 4-Bass Abby, imperious and opinionated, a god. He was rude to everybody else but kind to her. When they made the recording and she fluffed it, he just said, “Back up and take it easy, poet,” and she did.