Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 38

he went that day, alert, so quiet that often the waterbirds that thronged the
shores of the river rose up startled almost under his feet.
He crossed no path and saw no sign at all that any human beings dwelt
or ever came near the river. But towards the end of the short afternoon a
flock of the bronze-green wild fowl rose up ahead of him and flew out
over the water all clucking and calling together in a gabble of human
words.
A little farther on he stopped, thinking he had scented woodsmoke on
the wind.
The wind was blowing upriver to him, from the northwest. He went
with double caution. Then as the night rose up among the tree-trunks and
blurred the dark reaches of the river, far ahead of him along the brushy,
willow-tangled shore a light glimmered, and vanished, and shone again.
It was not fear or even caution that stopped him now, standing in his
tracks to stare at that distant glimmer. Aside from his own solitary
campfire this was the first light he had seen lit in the wilderness since he
had left the Clearing. It moved him very strangely, shining far off there
across the dusk.
Patient in his fascination as any forest animal, he waited till full night
had come and then made his way slowly and noiselessly along the
riverbank, keeping in the shelter of the willows, until he was close enough
to see the square of a window yellow with firelight and the peak of the
roof above it, snow-rimmed, pine-overhung. Huge over black forest and
river Orion stood. The winter night was very cold and silent. Now and then
a fleck of dry snow dislodged from a branch drifted down towards the
black water and caught the sparkle of the firelight as it fell.
Falk stood gazing at the light in the cabin. He moved a little closer,
then stood motionless for a long time.
The door of the cabin creaked open, laying down a fan of gold on the
dark ground, stirring up powdery snow in puffs and spangles. "Come on
into the light," said a man standing, vulnerable, in the golden oblong of the
doorway.
Falk in the darkness of the thickets put his hand on his laser, and made
no other movement.
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