Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 35

more count of one than of the other. Time went on; and he went on.
The book was not the only thing he had lost; they had kept Metock's
silver water-flask, and a little box, also of silver, of disinfectant salve.
They could only have kept the book because they wanted it badly, or
because they took it for some kind of code or mystery. There was a period
when the loss of it weighed unreasonably on him, for it seemed to him it
had been his one true link with the people he had loved and trusted, and
once he told himself, sitting by his fire, that next day he would turn back
and find the house of Fear again and get his book. But he went on, next
day. He was able to go west, with compass and sun for guides, but could
never have refound a certain place in the vastness of these endless hills and
valleys of the Forest. Not Argerd's hidden valley; not the Clearing where
Parth might be weaving in the winter sunlight, either. It was all behind
him, lost.
Maybe it was just as well that the book was gone. What would it have
meant to him here, that shrewd and patient mysticism of a very ancient
civilization, that quiet voice speaking from amidst forgotten wars and
disasters? Mankind had outlived disaster; and he had outrun mankind. He
was too far away, too much alone. He lived entirely now by hunting; that
slowed his daily pace. Even when game is not gunshy and is very plentiful,
hunting is not a business one can hurry. Then one must clean and cook the
game, and sit and suck the bones beside the fire, full-bellied for a while
and drowsy in the winter cold; and build up a shelter of boughs and bark
against the rain; and sleep; and next day go on. A book had no place here,
not even that old canon of Unaction. He would not have read it; he was
ceasing, really, to think. He hunted and ate and walked and slept, silent in
the forest silence, a gray shadow slipping westward through the cold
wilderness.
The weather was more and more often bleak. Often lean feral cats,
beautiful little creatures with their pied or striped fur and green eyes,
waited within sight of his campfire for the leavings of his meat, and came
forward with sly, shy fierceness to carry off the bones he tossed them: their
rodent prey was scarce now, hibernating through the cold. No beasts since
the house of Fear had spoken to or bespoken him. The animals in the
~ 33 ~