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

then, named Milk, met me in the passage. She looked at me with eyes as sharp and blind as a snake's eyes
and said, "What are you here for?"
I answered her, "For the singing," and hurried by, but I knew that was not what she had asked.
In the summer I went with the dancers and riders of Telina to Chukulmas. There I met that boy, that
young man. We talked about the roan horse and about the little moonhorse I was riding in the vetulou
games. When he stroked the roan horse's flank, I did so too, and the side of my hand touched the side of
his hand once.
Then there was another year until the Summer games returned. That was how it was to me: There was
nothing I cared for or was mindful of but the Summer and the games.
The old horse doctor died on the first night of the Grass. I had gone to the Lodge Rejoining and
learned the songs; I sang them for him. After he was burned I gave up learning his art. I could not talk
with the animals or with any other people. I saw nothing clearly and listened to no one, I went back to
working with my father, and I rode in the games in Summer. My cousin had a group of friends, girls who
talked and played soulbone and dice, gambling for candy and almonds, sometimes for rings and earrings,
and I hung around with them every evening, There were no real people in the world I saw at that time.
All rooms were empty. Nobody was in the common places and gardens of Telina. Nobody walked
upriver grieving.
When the sun turned south, the dancers and riders came again from Chukulmas to Telina, and I rode
in the games and races, spending all day and night at the fields. People said, "That girl is in love with the
roan stallion from Chukulmas," and teased me about it but not shamefully; everybody knows how
adolescents fall in love with horses, and songs have been made about that love. But the horse knew what
was wrong: He would no longer let me handle him.
In a few days the riders went on to Madidinou, and I stayed behind.
Things are very obstinate and stubborn, but also there is a sweet willingness in them: They offer what
they meet, Electricity is like horses: crazy and willful and also willing and reliable. If you are careless
and running counter, a horse or a live wire is a contrary and perilous thing. I burnt and shocked myself
several times that year, and once I started a fire in the walls of a house by making a bad connection and
not grounding the wires. They smelled the smoke and put out the fire before it did much harm, but my
father, who had brought me into his Art as a novice, was so alarmed and angry that he forbade me to
work with him until the next rainy season.
At the Wine that year I was fifteen years old. I got drunk for the first time. I went around town
shouting and talking to people nobody else saw. So I was told next day, but I could not remember
anything of it. I thought if I got drunk again, but a little less drunk, I might see the kind of people I used
to see, when the ways were full of them and they kept my soul company. So I stole wine from our house
neighbors, who had most of a barrel left in bottle after the dance, and I went down alone by the Na in the
willow flats to drink it.
I drank the first bottle and made some songs, then I spilled most of the second bottle and went home
and felt sick for a couple of days. I stole wine again, and this time I drank two bottles quickly. I made no
songs. I felt dizzy and sick and fell asleep. Next morning I woke up there in the willow flats on the cold
stones by the river, very weak and cold. My family was worried about me after that. It had been a hot

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 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Visionary

night; so I could say I had stayed out for the cool and had fallen asleep, but my mother knew I was lying
about something. She thought it must be that I had come inland with some boy but for some reason
would not admit it. It shamed and worried her to think that I was wearing undyed clothing when I should
no longer do so. It enraged me that she should so distrust me; yet I would say nothing to her in denial or
explanation. My father knew that I was sick at heart, but it was soon after that that I set the fire, and his
worry turned to anger. As for my cousin, she was in love with a Blue Clay boy and interested in nothing