The Left Hand Of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) - Ursula K. Le Guin Page 0,23
bowed. ‘I am honoured!’ he said. ‘I’ve lived here three years, but haven’t yet acquired enough ignorance to be worth mentioning.’ He was highly amused, but his manner was gentle, and I managed to recollect enough scraps of Handdara lore to realize that I had been boasting, very much as if I’d come up to him and said ‘I’m exceedingly handsome …’
‘I meant, I don’t know anything about the Foretellers—’
‘Enviable!’ said the young Indweller. ‘Behold, we must sully the plain snow with footprints, in order to get anywhere. May I show you the way to the glade? My name is Goss.’
It was a first name. ‘Genry,’ I said, abandoning my ‘l’. I followed Goss farther into the chill shade of the forest. The narrow path changed direction often, winding up the slope and down again; here and there, near it or away off among the massive trunks of the hemmens, stood the small, forest-coloured houses. Everything was red and brown, dank, still, fragrant, gloomy. From one of the houses drifted the faint whistling sweetness of a Karhidish flute. Goss went light and quick, graceful as a girl, some yards ahead of me. All at once his white shirt blazed out, and I came out after him from shadow into full sunlight on a wide green meadow.
Twenty feet from us stood a figure, straight, motionless, profiled, the scarlet hieb and white shirt an inlay of bright enamel against the green of the high grass. A hundred yards beyond him stood another statue, in blue and white; this one never moved or glanced our way all the time we talked with the first one. They were practising the Handdara discipline of Presence, which is a kind of trance – the Handdarata, given to negatives, call it an untrance – involving self-loss (self augmentation?) through extreme sensual receptiveness and awareness. Though the technique is the exact opposite of most techniques of mysticism it probably is a mystical discipline, tending towards the experience of Immanence; but I can’t categorize any practice of the Handdarata with certainty. Goss spoke to the person in scarlet. As he broke from his intense movelessness and looked at us and came slowly towards us, I felt an awe of him. In that noon sunlight he shone of his own light.
He was as tall as I, and slender, with a clear, open, and beautiful face. As his eyes met mine I was suddenly moved to bespeak him, to try to reach him with the mindspeech I had never used since I landed on Winter, and should not use, yet. The impulse was stronger than the restraint. I bespoke him. There was no response. No contact was made. He continued to look straight at me. After a moment he smiled and said in a soft, rather high voice, ‘You’re the Envoy, aren’t you?’
I stammered and said, ‘Yes.’
‘My name is Faxe. We’re honoured to receive you. Will you stay with us in Otherhord a while?’
‘Willingly. I am seeking to learn about your practice of Foretelling. And if there’s anything I can tell you in return about what I am, where I come from—’
‘Whatever you like,’ said Faxe with a serene smile. ‘This is a pleasant thing, that you should cross the Ocean of Space, and then add another thousand miles and a crossing of the Kargav to your journey to come to us here.’
‘I wanted to come to Otherhord because of the fame of its predictions.’
‘You want to watch us foretelling, then, perhaps. Or have you a question of your own?’
His clear eyes compelled truth. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Nusuth,’ said he, ‘it doesn’t matter. Perhaps if you stay a while you’ll find if you have a question, or no question … There are only certain times, you know, when the Foretellers are able to meet together, so in any case you’d dwell with us some days.’
I did, and they were pleasant days. Time was unorganized except for the communal work, field labour, gardening, wood-cutting, maintenance, for which transients such as myself were called on by whatever group most needed a hand. Aside from the work, a day might pass without a word spoken; those I talked with most often were young Goss, and Faxe the Weaver, whose extraordinary character, as limpid and unfathomable as a well of very clear water, was a quintessence of the character of the place. In the evenings there might be a gathering in the hearth-room of one or another of the low, tree-surrounded houses; there was