Free Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin

and dear remembrance of Melle Aulitta of Caspromant.”
    I sat down, facing the dark end of the room, for if I couldn’t look at it neither could I turn my back on it. I drew the lamp closer to the book and began to read.
    I woke there in the grey of early morning, the lamp dead, my head on the open book. I was chilled to the bone. My hands were so stiff I could barely write the letters on the air to leave the room.
    I ran to the kitchen and all but crawled into the fireplace trying to get warm. Ista scolded and Sosta chattered but I didn’t listen. The great words of the poem were running in my head like waves, like flights of pelicans over the waves. I couldn’t hear or see or feel anything but them.
    Ista was really worried about me. She gave me a cup of hot milk and said, “Drink this, you fool girl, what are you taking sick for now? With guests in the house? Drink it up!” I drank it and thanked her and went to my room, where I fell on the bed and slept like a stone till late in the morning.
    I found Gry and her husband in the stableyard, with the lion and the horses and Gudit and Sosta. Sosta was neglecting her sewing to swoon around Caspro, Gudit was saddling the tall red horse, and Gry and Caspro were arguing. They weren’t angry with each other, but they weren’t in agreement. Lero was not in their hearts, as we say. “You can’t possibly go there by yourself,” Gry was saying, and he was saying, “You can’t possibly go there with me,” and it was not the first time either had said it.
    He turned to me. For a moment I felt almost as swoony as Sosta, thinking that this was the man who had made the poem that I had read all night and that had remade my soul. That confusion went away at once. This was Orrec Caspro all right, only not the poet Caspro but the man Orrec, a worried man arguing with his wife, a man who took everything terribly seriously, our guest, whom I liked. “You can tell us, Memer,” he said. “People saw Gry in the marketplace yesterday, saw her with Shetar—hundreds of people—isn’t that true.?”
    “Of course it is,” Gry said before I could speak. “But nobody saw inside the wagon! Did they, Memer?”
    “Yes,” I said to him, and “I don’t think so,” to her.
    “So,” she said, “your wife hid in the wagon in the marketplace, and now stays indoors in the house, like a virtuous woman. And your servant the lion trainer emerges from the wagon and comes with you to the Palace.”
    He was obstinately shaking his head.
    “Orrec, I travelled as a man with you for two months all over Asudar! What on earth makes it impossible now?”
    “You’ll be recognised. They saw you, Gry. They saw you as a woman.”
    “All unbelievers look alike. And the Alds don’t see women, anyhow.”
    “They see women with lions who frighten their horses!”
    “Orrec, I am coming with you.”
    He was so distressed that she went to him and held him, pleading and reassuring. “You know nobody in Asudar ever saw I was a woman except that old witch at the oasis, and she laughed about it. Remember? They won’t know, they won’t see, they can’t see. I will not let you go alone. I can’t. You can’t. You need Shetar. And Shetar needs me. Let me go dress now—there’s plenty of time. I won’t ride, you ride and we’ll walk with you, there’ll be plenty of time. Won’t there, Memer? How far is it to the Palace?”
    “Four street crossings and three bridges.”
    “See? I’ll be back in no time. Don’t let him go without me!” she said to me and Gudit and Sosta and perhaps to the horse, and she ran off to the back of the house, Shetar loping along with her.
    Orrec walked to the gateway of the court and stood there straight and stiff, his back turned to us all. I felt sorry for him.
    “Stands to reason,” Gudit said. “Murderous snakes they are in that Palace what they call it. Our Council House it was. Get over there, you!” The tall red horse looked at him with mild reproach and