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

My childhood was like everybody's, except that with going to the Doctors Lodge and working with
my father and liking to be alone, perhaps I played less with other children than many children do, after I
was seven or eight years old. Also, though I went all over Telina with my father and knew all the ways
and houses, we never went out of town. My family had no summer house and never even visited the hills.
"Why leave Telina?" my grandmother would say. "Everything is here!" And in summer the town was
pleasant, even when it was hot; so many people were away that there was never a crowd at the wash
house, and houses standing empty were entirely different from houses full of people, and the ways and
gardens and common places were lonesome and lazy and quiet. It was always in summer, often in the
great heat of the afternoon, that I would see the people passing through Telina-na, coming upriver. They
are hard to describe, and I have no idea who they were. They were rather short and walked quietly, alone,
or three or four - one after the other; their limbs were smooth and their faces round, often with some lines
or marks drawn on the lips or chin; their eyes were narrow, and sometimes looked swollen and sore as if
from smoke or weeping. They would go quietly through the town, not looking at it and never speaking,
going upriver. When I saw them I would always say the four heyas. The way they went, silently, gripped
at my heart. They were far from me, walking in sorrow.
When I was nearly twelve years old, my cousin came of age, and the family gave a very big passage
party far her, giving away all kinds of things I didn't even know we had. The following year I came of
age, and we had another big party, though without such lavishness, as we didn't have so much left to
give. I had entered the Blood Lodge just before the Moon, and the party for me was during the Summer
Dance. At the end of the party, there were horse games and races, for the Summer people had come down
from Chukulmas.
I had never been on horseback. The boys and girls who rode in the games and races for Telina brought
a steady mare for me to ride and boosted me up to her back and put the rein in my hand, and off we went.
I felt like the wild swan. That was pure joy. And I could share it with the other young people; we were all
joined by the good feeling of the party and the excitement of the games and races and the beauty and
passion of the horses, who thought it was all their festival. The mare taught me how to ride that day, and
I was on horseback all night dreaming, and the next day, rode again; and on the third day I rode in a race,
on a roan colt from a household in Chukulmas. The colt ran second in the big race when I rode him and
ran first in the match race when the boy who had raised him rode him. In all that glory of festival and
riding and racing and friendship, I left my childhood most joyously, but also I went out of my House, and
got lost from too much being given me at once. I gave my heart to the red colt I rode and to the boy who
rode him, a brother of the Serpentine of Chukulmas.
It was a long time ago and not his fault or doing; he did not know it. The word I write is my word; to
myself let it be brought back.
So the Summer games were over in our town and the horse riders went off downriver to Madidinou
and Ounmalin; and there I was, a thirteen-year-old woman and afoot.
I wore the undyed clothing I had been making all the year before, and I went often to the Blood
Lodge, learning the songs and mysteries. Young people who had been friendly to me at the games
remained friends, and when they found I longed to ride, they shared the horses of their households with
me. I learned to play vetulou and helped with caring for the horses, who were stabled and pastured then
northwest of Moon Creek in Halfhoof Pasture and on Butt Hill. I said at the Doctors Lodge that I wanted
to learn horse doctoring, and so they sent me to learn that art by working with an old man, Striffen, who
was a great doctor of horses and cattle, I would listen to him. He used different kinds of noises, words

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ursula%20K.%20LeGuin%20-%20The%20Visionary.html (2 of 15) [10/16/2004 3:22:16 PM]
 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Visionary

like the matrix words of songs, and different kinds of silences and breathing; and so did the animals. But
I never could understand what they were saying.
Once when I came to the Obsidian heyimas for a Blood Lodge singing, a woman, I thought her old