The Daughter of Odren by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page B

out of the bowl of meal, scared from its daily breakfast, and vanished into the weeds at the base of the stone.
    The young man stopped a few feet from the stone and straightened up to face its pale grey, blunt bulk. It stood about his own height and maybe twice his girth, a little wider than it was deep. A cleft ran up the lower part, dividing it in two, and the top of it narrowed in enough to give a faint suggestion of a head.
    â€œThe Standing Man,” Hovy whispered.
    The young man nodded impatiently. He moved a little closer, reached out his right hand, and touched the stone. He drew in his breath.
    â€œWhat’s this?” he said, looking down at the bowl of meal and the withering branch of flowers.
    â€œI don’t know,” the other man said.
    â€œSomebody’s made an offering here, Hovy.”
    In the flood of sunlight in the silent valley they stood silent, the three of them, the young man, the older man, the stone.
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    â€œIt’s kind of you to let me rest here,” said the stranger to the innkeeper. “‘If you want dried fish, go on down to the port,’ I said to ’em, ‘but I’m not taking an extra step today.’” She stuck out her worn shoes with patched soles.
    â€œOn your way north, eh?”
    â€œOur nephew that’s been living with us is going back to his folk there. Might be we’ll settle there too if there’s work. There’s none where we’re from.” She gestured vaguely to the south.
    â€œAnd where would they live then?” the innkeeper asked, looking up from the beans she was shelling, ready to chat. “In Riro, would it be?”
    â€œOh, let me give you a hand with those. I can’t sit and see work done and not lend a hand. No, it’s not Riro. The name of the village has just gone out of my head, but it’s a great long way up the coast, I believe. I’ll find out how long it is with my own feet, won’t I? Paro, would that be the name of the place?”
    The innkeeper shook her head, indifferent. Riro was the north end of her world.
    â€œIt’s a long road is all I know! Now, these are lovely beans. Fat and sweet as little quail.”
    â€œThey’ll be supper. With a bit of rabbit, or a hen if you’d rather.”
    â€œOh, rabbit by all means. I love a bit of stewed rabbit with raily beans. D’you call ’em railies?”
    â€œI’ve heard it. Mostly we call ’em trailers.”
    The guest nodded, thumbing the plump pink beans from their mottled shells into a bowl and tossing the shells into a wide basket in rhythmic alternation with her hostess.
    â€œNow it seems I once was told a story about the great house here,” she said. “Or is it about Riro, the story I’m thinking of?”
    â€œNo,” the innkeeper said with perfect certainty. “It’s about Odren.” She screwed up her long face, suppressing satisfaction. “A terrible story,” she said.
    â€œIs it? It was to do with a sorcerer, I think? An uncanny man? Eh, I don’t know if I want to hear it if it’s about uncanny things. I do lie awake nights fearing things! Though what there is to fear I don’t know. My man and I can hardly get poorer than we are, and what’s to fear worse than starving?” She laughed her cheerful laugh, but her eyes had an anxious look in them.
    The innkeeper was not diverted from her course. “Terrible it is, the story,” she said. “Uncanny, and worse than that. It was when I first came here from Endway Farm. Fourteen, fifteen years ago. The lords of Odren, they’re the great folk here; they own land here and all north of here for a long way. The master of Odren, he’s the master of many among us. And so. That was the time when pirates had gathered in the isles, out there.”
    Her voice had begun to take on the long rhythm of the storyteller. She waved a bean-pod to the east. She was not