"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Visionary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

He was like a little hawk that came into one's hands for the warmth, for a moment, fearless and harmless,
but hurt. After he died, Stillwater lost heart, and began longing for his old home. Presently he went back
to Chukulmas to live in his mothers' house. Sometimes I went to visit him there.
I went back to my childhood home, my mothers' house, where my grandmother and mother and father
and aunt and cousin and her husband and two children were. They were still busy and noisy; it was not
where I wanted to be. I would go to the heyimas and drum, but that was not what I wanted, either. I
missed Stillwater's company, but it was no longer the time for us to live together; that was done. It was
something else wanted, but I could not find out what.
In the Blood Lodge one day they told me that Milk, who was now truly an old woman, had had a
stroke. My son came with me to see her and helped her in her recovery; and since she was alone, I went

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 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Visionary

to stay with her while she needed help. It suited her to have me there, and so I lived with her. It was
comfortable for both of us; but she was looking for her last name and learning how to die, and although I
could be of some help to her while she did that and could learn from her, it wasn't what I wanted myself,
yet.
One day a little before the Summer I was working in the storage barns above Moon Creek. The Art
had put in a new generator there, and I was checking out the wiring to the threshers, some of which
needed reinsulation; the mice had been at it. I was working away there in a dark, dusty crawl space,
hearing the mice scuttering about overhead in the rafters and between the walls. Presently I noticed with
part of my attention that several people were in the crawl space with me, watching what I was doing.
They were grayish-brown people with long, slender, white hands and feet and bright eyes: I had never
seen them before, but they seemed familiar. I said, while I went on working. "I wish you would not take
the insulation off the wires. A fire could start. There must be better things to eat in a grain barn!"
The people laughed a little, and the darkest one said in a high soft voice, "Bedding."
They looked behind them then and went away quickly and quietly. Somebody else was there. I felt
one little chill of fear. At first I couldn't see him clearly in that twilight of the crawl space; then I saw it
was Tarweed.
"You never ride horses anymore, Flicker," he said.
"Riding is for the young, Tarweed," I said.
"Are you old?"
"Nearly forty years old."
"And you don't miss riding?"
He was teasing me, as people had teased me once about being in love with the roan horse.
"No, I don't miss that."
"What do you miss?"
"My child that died."
"Why should you miss him?"
"He is dead."
"So am I," said Tarweed. And so he was. He had died five years ago.
So I knew then what it was I missed, what I wanted. It was only not to be shut into the House of
Earth. I did not have to go in and out the doors, if only I could see those who did. There was Tarweed,
and he laughed a little, like the mice.
He did not say anything more, but watched me in the shadows.
When I was done with the work, he was gone.
When I left the barn, I saw the barn owl high upon a rafter, sleeping.
I went home to Milk's household. I told her at supper about Tarweed and the mice.
She listened and began to cry a little. She was weak since the stroke, and her fierceness sometimes