Unlocking The Air
fiction By URSULA K. LE GUIN
THIS IS A FAIRY TALE. People stand in the lightly falling snow. Something
is shining, trembling, making a silvery sound. Eyes are shining. Voices
sing. People laugh and weep, clasp one anotherвs hands, embrace.
Something shines and trembles. They live happily ever after. The snow falls on
the roofs and blows across the parks, the squares, the river.
This is history. Once upon a time, a good king lived in his palace in a
kingdom far away. But an evil enchantment fell upon that land. The wheat
withered in the ear, the leaves dropped from the trees of the forest and
nothing thrived.
This is a stone. Itвs a paving stone of a square that slants downhill in
front of an old, reddish, almost windowless fortress called the Roukh Palace.
The square was paved nearly 300 years ago, so a lot of feet have walked on
this stone, bare feet and shod, childrenвs little pads, horsesв iron shoes,
soldiersв boots; and wheels have gone over and over it, cart wheels, carriage
wheels, car tires, tank treads. Dogsв paws every now and then. There has been
dogshit on it, there has been blood, both soon washed away by water sloshed
from buckets or run from hoses or dropped from the clouds.
You canвt get blood from a stone, they say, nor can you give it to a
stone; it takes no stain. Some of the pavement, down near that street that
leads out of Roukh Square through the old Jewish quarter to the river, got dug
up, once or twice, and piled into a barricade, and some of the stones even
found themselves flying through the air, but not for long. They were soon put
back in their place, or replaced by others. It made no difference to them. The
man hit by the flying stone dropped down like a stone beside the stone that
had killed him. The man shot through the brain fell down and his blood ran out
on this stone, or another one maybe; it makes no difference to them. The
soldiers washed his blood away with water sloshed from buckets, the buckets
their horses drank from. The rain fell after a while. The snow fell. Bells rang
the hours, the Christmases, the New Years. A tank stopped with its treads on
this stone. Youвd think that that would leave a mark, a huge heavy thing like a
tank, but the stone shows nothing. Only all the feet bare and shod over the
centuries have worn a quality into it, not a smoothness, exactly, but a kind of
softness, like leather or like skin. Unstained, unmarked, indifferent, it does
have that quality of having been worn for a long time by life. So it is a stone of
power, and who sets foot on it may be transformed.
This is a story. She let herself in with her key and called, "Mama? Itвs
me, Fana!"
And her mother, in the kitchen of the apartment, called, "Iвm in here,"
and they met and hugged in the doorway of the kitchen.
"Come on, come on!"
