Wild Girls Read online

  Wild Girls

  Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

  Wild Girls

  I

  Bela ten Belen went on a foray with five companions. There had been no nomads near the City for several years. Harvesters in the Eastern Fields reported seeing smoke of fires beyond the Dayward Hills, and the six young soldiers declared they would go see how many camps there were. They said nothing about attacking the camps. They took with them as guide a Dirt man, Bedh Handa, who had been born a nomad of the Dayward tribes, captured as a child and brought to the City as a slave. Bedh's sister Nata Belenda, famous for her beauty, was the wife of Bela's brother Alo ten Belen. Bedh had guided forays against the nomad tribes before.

  The soldiers walked and ran all day following the course of the East River up into the hills. In the evening they came to the crest of the hills and saw on the plains below them, among the watermeadows and winding streams, three circles of the nomads’ skin huts.

  “They came to the marshes to gather mudroots,” the guide, Bedh, said. “They're not planning a raid on the Fields of the City. If they were, the three camps would be close together."

  “Who gathers the roots?” ten Belen asked.

  “Men and women. Old people and children stay in the camps."

  “When do the people go to the marshes?"

  “Early in the morning."

  “We'll go down to that nearest camp tomorrow after the gatherers are gone,” said ten Belen.

  “It would be better to go to the camp beyond that one, the one on the river,” Bedh said.

  Ten Belen did not answer the Dirt man. He said to his companions, “Those are his people. I think he should be shackled."

  They agreed, but none of them had brought shackles. Ten Belen began to tear his cape into strips.

  “Why do you want to tie me up, lord?” Bedh asked with his fist to his forehead to show respect. “Have I not guided you to the nomads? Am I not a man of the City? Is not my sister your brother's wife? Is not my nephew your nephew, and a god? Why would I run away from the great wealthy City to those ignorant people who starve in the wilderness, eating mudroots and crawling things?” But the Crown men did not answer the Dirt man. They tied his legs with the lengths of twisted cloth, pulling the knots in the silk so tight they could not be untied but only cut open. Ten Belen appointed three of them to keep watch in turn that night.

  Tired from walking and running all day, the young man on watch before dawn fell asleep. Bedh put his legs into the coals of their fire and burned through the silken ropes and stole away.

  Waking in the morning and finding the Dirt man gone, Bela ten Belen's face grew heavy with anger, but he said only, “He will have warned that nearest camp. We'll go to the farthest one, off there on the high ground."

  “They'll see us crossing the marshes,” said Dos ten Han.

  “Not if we walk in the rivers,” ten Belen said.

  When they came down out of the hills onto the flat lands, they walked along streambeds, hidden by the high reeds and willows that grew on the banks. As it was autumn, before the rains, the water was shallow enough that they could make their way along beside it or wade in it. Where the reeds grew thin and low and the stream widened out into the marshes, they crouched down and found what cover they could. No one in the nomad camps saw them pass.

  By midday they came near the farthest of the camps, which was on a low grassy rise like an island among the marshes. They could hear the voices of people gathering mudroot on the eastern side of the island. Keeping to the south, they crept up through the high grass and came to the camp. No one was in the circle of skin huts but a few old men and women and a number of children. The children were turning over roots spread on the grass, while the old people cut up the largest roots and put them on racks over low fires to hasten the drying. The six Crown men came among them suddenly with their swords drawn. They cut the throats of the old men and women and then pursued the children, some of whom ran away down into the marshes, though others stood staring, uncomprehending.

  All the soldiers were young men on their first foray; they had made no plans. Ten Belen had said to them, “I want to go out there and kill some of those thieves and bring home slaves,” which seemed a good plan to them. To his friend Dos ten Han he had said, “I want to get some new Dirt girls, there's not one in the City I can stand to look at.” Dos ten Han knew he was thinking about the beautiful nomad-born woman his brother had married. All the young Crown men thought about her and wished they had her, or a girl as beautiful as her.

  “Get the girls,” ten Belen shouted to the others, and they all ran at the children, seizing one or another. The older children had mostly fled like deer, and only the young ones still stood staring, or began too late to run. The soldiers each caught one or two and dragged them back to the center of the hut-village, where the old people lay in their blood in the sunlight.

  They had brought no ropes to tie the children with, and had to keep hold of them. One little girl fought so fiercely, biting and scratching, that the soldier let her go; she ran away screaming shrilly for help. Bela ten Belen ran after her, took her by the hair, and cut her throat to silence her screaming. His sword was sharp and her neck was soft and thin; her body dropped away from her head, held on only by the bones at the back of the neck. He dropped her and came back to the others. He told them each to pick one child they could carry and follow him.

  “Where shall we run?” they said. “The people over there will be coming.” For the children who had escaped had all run down the east side of the hill toward the marsh where their parents had gone.

  “Follow the river back,” he said, and set off running, carrying a girl of about five years old. He held her wrists and slung her on his back as if she were a sack. The others followed him, each with a child, two of them babies a year or two old.

  The raid had occurred so quickly that they had a long lead on the nomads who came straggling round the hill following the children who had run to them. The soldiers were able to get down into the rivercourse, where the banks and reeds hid them from people looking for them even from the top of the island.

  The nomads scattered out through the reedbeds and meadows west of the island, looking for them on their way back to the City.

  Ten Belen led them not west but southeast, down a branch of the river. They trotted and ran and walked as best they could in the water and mud and rocks of the riverbed. At first they heard voices far away behind them. The heat and light of the sun filled the world. The air above the reeds was thick with stinging insects. Their eyes soon swelled almost closed with bites and burned with salt sweat. Crown men are not used to carrying burdens and they found the children they carried heavy, even the little ones. They struggled to go fast but went slower and slower along the winding channels of the water, listening for the nomads behind them. When the children made any noise, the soldiers slapped or shook them till they were still. The girl Bela ten Belen carried hung like a stone on his back and never made any sound.

  When at last the sun sank behind the Dayward Hills, that seemed strange to them, for they had always seen the sun rise behind those hills. They had gone a long way south and were still a long way east of the hills. They had heard no sound of their pursuers since early in their flight. The gnats and mosquitoes growing even thicker with dusk drove them at last up onto a drier meadowland, where they could sink down in a place where deer had lain and be hidden by the high grasses. There they all lay while the light died away. The great herons of the marsh flew over with heavy wings. Birds down in the reeds called. The men heard each other breathing, and the whine and buzz of insects. The little children made tiny whimpering noises, but not often, and not loud. Even the babies of the nomad tribes were used to fear and silence.
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  As soon as the soldiers had let go of them, making threatening gestures to them not to try to run away, the children crawled together and huddled up into a little mound, holding one another. Their faces were swollen with insect bites and one of the babies looked dazed and feverish. There was no food, but none of the children complained.

  The light sank away from the marshes, and the insects grew silent. Now and then a frog croaked, startling the men as they sat silent, listening.

  Ten Han pointed northward: he had heard a sound, a rustling in the grasses, not far away.

  They heard the sound again. They unsheathed their swords as silently as they could.

  Where they were looking, kneeling, straining to see through the high grass without revealing themselves, suddenly a ball of faint light rose up and wavered in the air, fading and brightening. They heard a voice, shrill and faint, singing. The hair stood up on their heads and arms as they stared at the bobbing blur of light and heard the meaningless words of the song.

  The child that ten Belen had carried suddenly called out a word. The oldest, a thin girl of eight or so who had been a heavy burden to Dos ten Han, hissed at her and tried to make her be still, but the younger child called out again, and an answer came.

  Singing, talking, and babbling shrilly, the voice came nearer. The grasses rustled and shook so much that the men expected a whole group of people, but only one head appeared among the grasses. A single child appeared. She kept talking, stamping, waving her hands so that they would know she was not trying to surprise them. The soldiers stared at her, holding their drawn swords. She looked to be nine or ten years old. She came closer, hesitating all the time, but not stopping, watching the men all the time, but talking to the children. Ten Belen's girl got up and ran to her and they clung to each other. Then, still watching the men, the new girl sat down with the other children. She and ten Han's girl talked a little in low voices. She held ten Belen's girl in her arms, on her lap, and the little girl fell asleep almost at once.

  “It must be that one's sister,” one of the men said.

  “She must have tracked us from the beginning,” said another.

  “Why didn't she call the rest of her people?"

  “Maybe she did."

  “Maybe she was afraid to."

  “Or they didn't hear."

  “Or they did."

  “What was that light?"

  “Marsh fire."

  “Maybe it's them."

  “Marsh fire."

  They were all silent, listening, watching. It was almost dark. The lamps of the City of Heaven were being lighted, reflecting the lights of the City of Earth, making the soldiers think of that city, which seemed as far away as the one above them in the sky. The faint bobbing light had died away. There was no sound but the sigh of the night wind in the reeds and grasses.

  The soldiers argued in low voices about how to keep the children from running off during the night. Each may have thought that he would be glad enough to wake and find them gone, but did not say so. Ten Han said the smaller ones could hardly go any distance in the dark. Ten Belen said nothing, but took out the long lace from one of his sandals and tied one end around the neck of the little girl he had taken and the other end around his own wrist; then he made the child lie down, and lay down to sleep next to her. Her sister, the one who had followed them, lay down by her on the other side. Ten Belen said, “Dos, keep watch first, then wake me."

  So the night passed. The children did not try to escape, and no one came on their trail.

  The next day they kept going south but also west, so that by mid-afternoon they reached the hills. They did not try to run. The older children, even the five-year-old, walked, and they passed the two babies from one man to another, so their pace was steady if not fast. Along in the morning, the girl who had joined them pulled at ten Belen's tunic and kept pointing left, to a marsh: she made gestures of pulling up roots and eating. Since they had eaten nothing for two days, they followed her to the marsh. The older children waded out into the water and pulled up certain wide-leafed plants by the roots. They began to cram what they pulled up into their mouths, but the soldiers waded after them and took the muddy roots and ate them till they had had enough. Dirt people do not eat before Crown people eat. The children did not seem surprised.

  When she had finally got a root for herself, the girl who had joined them pulled up another, chewed it up and spat it out into her hand for the babies to eat. One of them ate eagerly from her hand, but the other would not; she lay where she had been put down, and her eyes did not seem to see. Ten Han's girl and the one who had joined them held her and tried to make her drink water. She would not drink.

  Dos ten Han stood in front of them and said, pointing to the elder girl, “Vui Handa,” naming her Vui and saying she belonged to his family. Bela named the one who had joined them Modh Belenda, and her little sister, the one he had carried off, he named Mal Belenda. The others named their prizes; but when Ralo ten Bal pointed at the sick baby to name her, the girl who had joined them, Modh, got between him and the baby, vigorously gesturing no, no, and putting her hand to her mouth for silence.

  “What's she up to?” Ralo asked. He was the youngest of them, sixteen.

  Modh kept up her pantomime: she lay down, lolled her head, and half opened her eyes, like a dead person; she leapt up with her hands held like claws and her face distorted, and pretended to attack Vui; she pointed at the sick baby.

  The young men stood staring. It seemed she meant the baby was dying. The rest of her actions they did not understand.

  Ralo pointed at the baby and said, “Groda,” which is what Dirt people who have no owner and work in the field teams are called-Nobody's.

  “Come on,” ten Belen ordered, and they made ready to go on. Ralo walked off, leaving the sick child lying.

  “Aren't you bringing your Dirt?” one of the others asked him.

  “What for?” he said.

  Modh picked up the sick baby, Vui picked up the other one, and they went on. After that the soldiers let the older girls carry the sick baby, though they themselves passed the well one about so as to make better speed.

  When they got up on dry ground in the hills, away from the clouds of stinging insects and the wet and heavy heat of the marshlands, the young men were glad; they felt they were almost safe now; they wanted to move fast and get back to the City. But the children, worn out, struggled to climb the steep hills. Vui, who was carrying the sick baby, straggled along slower and slower. Ten Han, her owner, slapped her legs with the flat of his sword to make her go faster. “Ralo, take your Dirt, we have to keep going,” he said.

  Ralo turned back angrily. He took the sick baby from Vui. The baby's face had gone greyish and its eyes were half closed, like Modh's in her pantomime. Its breath whistled a little. Ralo shook the child. Its head flopped. Ralo threw it away into the bushes. “Come on, then,” he said, and set off walking fast uphill.

  Vui tried to run to the baby, but ten Han kept her away from it with his sword, stabbing at her legs, and drove her on up the hill in front of him.

  Modh dodged back to the bushes where the baby was, but ten Belen prevented her, herding her in front of him with his sword. As she kept dodging and trying to go back, he seized her by the arm, slapped her hard, and dragged her after him by the wrist. Little Mal stumbled along behind them.

  After they had gone a long way, Vui began to make a shrill long-drawn cry, a keening, and so did Modh and Mal, and though the soldiers shook and beat them till they stopped, soon they would start again. The soldiers did not know if they were far enough from the nomads and near enough the Fields of the City that they need not fear pursuers hearing the sound. They hurried on, carrying or dragging or driving the children, and the shrill keening cry went with them like the sound of the insects in the marshlands.

  It was almost dark when they got to the crest of the Dayward Hills. Forgetting how far south they had gone, the men expected to look down on the Fields and the
City. They saw only dusk falling on the lands, and the dark west, and the far lights of the City of the Sky beginning to burn.

  They settled down in a clearing, for all were very tired. The children huddled together and were asleep almost at once. Ten Belen forbade the men to make fire. They were hungry, but there was a creek down the hill to drink from. Ten Belen set Ralo ten Bal on first watch. Ralo was the one who had gone to sleep, their first night out, allowing Bedh to escape.

  Ten Belen woke in the night, cold; he missed his cape, which he had torn up to make bonds. He saw that someone had made a small fire and was sitting cross-legged beside it. “Ralo!” he said angrily, and then saw that the man was not Ralo but the guide Bedh.

  Ralo lay motionless nearby. Ten Belen drew his sword.

  “He fell asleep again,” the Dirt man said, grinning at ten Belen.

  Ten Belen kicked Ralo, who snorted and sighed and did not wake. Ten Belen leapt up and went round to the others, fearing Bedh had killed them in their sleep, but they had their swords, and were sleeping soundly; and the children lay in a little heap. He returned to the fire and stamped it out.

  “Those people are miles away,” Bedh said. “They won't see the fire. They never found your track."

  “Where did you go?” ten Belen asked him after a while, puzzled and suspicious. He did not understand why the Dirt man had come back.

  “To see my people in the village."

  “Which village?"

  “The one nearest the hills. My people are the Allulu. I saw my grandfather's hut from up in the hills. I wanted to see the people I used to know. My mother's still alive, but my father and brother have gone to the Sky City. I talked with my people and told them a foray was coming. They waited for you in their huts. They would have killed you, but you would have killed some of them. I was glad you went on to the Tullu village."

  It is fitting that a Crown ask a Dirt person questions, but not that he converse or argue with him. Ten Belen, however, was so disturbed that he said sharply, “Dirt does not go to the Sky City. Dirt goes to dirt."