None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to smell one another's smells, feel or rub or caress one another's scales or skin or
196 JT BUFFALO GALS
feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh, keep one another warm, -- that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food.
This was more or less the effect I had been after. It was somewhat more powerful than I had anticipated, but I could not now, in all conscience, make an exception for myself. I resolutely put anxiety away, went to Adam, and said, 'You and your father lent me this -- gave it to me, actually. It's been really useful, but it doesn't exactly seem to fit very well lately. But thanks very much! It's really been very useful."
It is hard to give back a gift without sounding peevish or ungrateful, and I did not want to leave him with that impression of me. He was not paying much attention, as it happened, and said only, "Put it down over there, OK?" and went on with what he was doing.
One of my reasons for doing what I did was that talk was getting us nowhere; but all the same I felt a little let down. I had been prepared to defend my decision. And I thought that perhaps when he did notice he might be upset and want to talk. I put some things away and fiddled around a little, but he continued to do what he was doing and to take no notice of anything else. At last I said, "Well, goodbye, dear. I hope the garden key turns up."
He was fitting parts together, and said without looking around, "OK, fine, dear. When's dinner?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "I'm going now. With the -- " I hesitated, and finally said, "With them, you know," and went on. In fact I had only just then realized how hard it would have been to explain myself. I could not chatter away as I used to do, taking it all for granted. My words now must be as slow, as new, as single, as tentative as the steps I took going down the path away from the house, between the dark-branched, tall dancers motionless against the winter shining.
(1985)
'Plume
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D BUFFALO GALS AND OTHER ANIMAL PRESENCES by Ursula K. LeGuin.
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Ursula K. Le Guin does hear the animals' voices, and as she shows us in this luminous collection of one novella, ten stories and eighteen poems, they are magical, fascinating, and terrifying. In the novella of the title, Buffalo Gals, a child survives a plane crash and enters the Dream Time of primitive myths, where the coyote knows secrets about that world-and this one. In other stories we journey further into unknown realms, like the deep space planet where only fear dwells, or the unfamiliar worlds of wolves, rats, and horses whose realities make us question our own.
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