Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 21

that you may have had a wife. Think, if she was waiting for you…" She
shivered.
"What of it?" he said. "What do I care about what may have been,
what I was? Why should I go from here? All that I am now is yours, Parth,
came from you, your gift—"
"It was freely given," the girl said in tears. "Take it and go. Go on…"
They held each other, and neither would break free.
The House lay far behind hoar black trunks and inter-tangling leafless
branches. The trees closed in behind the trail.
The day was gray and cool, silent except for the drone of wind
through branches, a meaningless whisper without locality that never
ceased. Metock led the way, setting a long easy pace. Falk followed and
young Thurro came last. They were all three dressed light and warm in
hooded shirt and breeches of an unwoven stuff called wintercloth, over
which no coat was needed even in snow. Each carried a light backpack of
gifts and trade-goods, sleeping-bag, enough dried concentrated food to see
him through a month's blizzard. Buckeye, who had never left the House of
her birth, had a great fear of perils and delays in the Forest and had
supplied their packs accordingly. Each wore a laser-beam gun; and Falk
carried some extras—another pound or two of food; medicines, compass, a
second gun, a change of clothing, a coil of rope; a little book given him
two years ago by Zove—amounting in all to about fifteen pounds of stuff,
his earthly possessions. Easy and tireless Metock loped on ahead, and ten
yards or so behind he followed, and after him came Thurro. They went
lightly, with little sound, and behind them the trees gathered motionless
over the faint, leaf-strewn trail.
They would come to Ransifel on the third day. At evening of the
second day they were in country different from that around Zove's House.
The forest was more open, the ground broken. Gray glades lay along
hillsides above brush-choked streams. They made camp in one of these
open places, on a south-facing slope, for the north wind was blowing
stronger with a hint of winter in it. Thurro brought armloads of dry wood
while the other two cleared away the gray grass and piled up a rough
hearth of stones. As they worked Metock said, "We crossed a divide this
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