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

and roof, underground. The walls were earth: the whole earth. Outside them was the sky: the whole sky.
The room was the universe of power. I was in my vision. It was not in me.
So I went home to live and try to stay on the right way.
Part of most days I went to the heyimas to study with Tarweed or to the Blood Lodge to study with
Milk. My health was sound, but I was still tired and sleepy, and my household did not get very much
work out of me. All my family but my father were busy, restless people, eager to work and talk but never
to be still. Among them, after the month in the heyimas, I felt like a pebble in a mountain creek, bounced
and buffeted. But I could go to work with my father. Milk had suggested to him that he take me with him
when he worked. Tarweed had questioned her about that, saying that the craft was spiritually dangerous,
and Milk had replied, in the patient, patronizing tone she used to men, "Don't worry about that. It was
danger that enabled her."
So I went back to working with power. I learned the art carefully and soberly, and set no more fires. I
learned drumming with Tarweed, and speaking mystery with Milk. But it was all slow, slow, and my fear
kept growing, fear and impatience. The image of the roan horse's rider was not in my mind, as it had
been, but was the center of my fear, I never went to ride, and kept away from my friends who cared for
the horses, and stayed out of the pastures where the horses were. I tried never to think about the Summer
dancing, the games and races. I tried never to think about lovemaking, although my mother's sister had a
new husband, and they made love every night in the next room with a good deal of noise. I began to fear
and dislike myself, and fasted and purged to weaken myself.
I told Tarweed nothing of all this, shame preventing me; nor did I ever speak of it to Milk, fear
preventing me,
So the World was danced, and next would come the Moon. The thought of that dance made me more

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 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Visionary

and more frightened: I felt trapped by it. When the first night of the Moon came, I went down into my
heyimas, meaning to stay there the whole time, closing my ears to the love songs. I started drumming a
vision-tune that Tarweed had brought back from his dragonfly visions. Almost at once I entered trance
and went into the house of anger.
In that house it was black and hot, with a yellowish glimmering like heat lightning and a dull
muttering noise underfoot and in the walls. There was an old woman in there, very black, with too many
arms. She called me, not by the name I then had. Berry, but Flicker: "Flicker, come here! Flicker, come
here!" I understood that Flicker was my name, but I did not come.
The old woman said, "What are you sulking about? Why don't you go fuck with your brother in
Chukulmas? Desire unacted is corruption. Must Not is a slave owner, Ought Not is a slave. Energy
constrained turns the wheels of evil. Look what you're dragging with you! How can you run the gyre,
how can you handle power, chained like that? Superstition! Superstition!"
I found that my legs were both fastened with bolts and hasps to a huge boulder of serpentine rock so
that I could not move at all. I thought that if I fell down, the boulder would roll on me and crush me.
The old woman said, "What are you wearing on your head? That's no Moon Dance veil. Superstition!
Superstition!"
I put up my hands and found my head covered with a heavy helmet made of black obsidian. I was
seeing and hearing through this black, murky glass, which came down over my eyes and ears.
"Take it off, Flicker!" the old woman said.
I said, "Not at your bidding!"
I could hardly see or hear her as the helmet pressed heavier and thicker on my head and the boulder
pushed against my legs and back.
She cried, "Break free! You are turning into stone! Break free!"
I would not obey her. I chose to disobey. With my hands I pressed the obsidian helmet into my ears