Escape


I am a rarerity among pensioners - I am more comfortable with the computer and the internet than with the older form of communication - the telephone. In fact I have come to the conclusion that I am slightly phone phobic. I am ok taking calls, but making one is always difficult. Like now, anyone else would have sorted the trouble with the wood delivery by now. Me - I sit here by my computer typing in the cold house hoping that the company has finally read one of my many emails and will send the wood I ordered and paid for (all done on the internet) before I freeze. This is the fifth day without the heat. The wood was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. Yesterday I escaped into a book - after making my moves in scrabble. I read a book from cover to cover and I will write about that book in due course. Now I will escape to The Western Shore....

The Western Shore is a world born in the imagination of Ursula Le Guin and revealed in the Annals of the Western Shore comprising of three books: Gifts, Voices and Powers. The Western Shore, as its name implies, is a western part of the world by the sea. It has a mountainous region in the north called The Uplands inhabited by people with dangerous gifts living on farmsteads or domains scattered around the mountains. On the far south there is Ansul famous for its university and library and peaceful people engaged in commerce. In between there are the warlike City States fighting each other and sometimes people further away taking slaves. On the east there is Asudar, on the edge of a desert. Alds live there and from there send their armies to Ansul determined to destroy demons they believe inhabit the place.

All the various peoples of the Western Shore originally came over the desert from the east and first settled in Ansul speaking the old language which then evolved into what is spoken in all the various nations of the Western Shore. In the library in Ansul there are books written in that old language.

One of the themes running through all the books is the importance of stories, both oral and written. All the books are written in the voice of one of the main characters. Orrec is the narrator of the first book and an heir to one of the domains in The Uplands. Pers story is about learning about pers gift and accepting it and learning to use it. The gifts were passed on from father to son, from mother to daughter. Orrec's father's gift was undoing, a terrible, fearful gift. But not to have that gift as pers father's son was shameful and also dangerous for the whole domain, because without it there was no protection agains other domains. It was the fear of gifts that kept a sort of peace between domains.

Orrec's mother, Melle Aulitta, also had a gift, but not a kind of gift that was considered of any worth within the domains. Orrec's mother was not from the Uplands, but pers father brought per from a raid to the Lowlands. Per was not taken by force; per chose to come. Melle was an educated person who told stories to Orrec and pers friend Cry and taught Orrec to read. Pers gift to Orrect was a book per made, the only one in the Uplands, with the stories per could remember from pers youth. Orrec inherited this gift of telling stories and making up stories and poems. Orrec's gift was making, not undoing, and that was no good in the Uplands. So at the end Orrec chose to leave, had to leave, the Uplands. Cry came with per as pers wife.

The narrator of the second book, Voices, is Memer in Ansul. Memer lives in the Oracle House, which was built on the place where the people first settled on coming from beyond the desert. It has a secret library with very special books. And in the courtyard there is an Oracle Fountain, which has been dry for many years. Memer is a true daughter of this important house in Ansul, but per is also a daughter of rape. Pers mother was raped by Ald soldiers when they first came to conquer Ansul with a purpose of destroying what they called demons and the Mouth of Evil which they believed to be in Memer's house.

Alds fear written word. They worship one god to whom written word is blasphemy. When they finally took over Ansul they destroyed any book they could find and killed any people found with books. They ransacked Memer's house, but did not find the secret library where Memer's mother was hiding with baby Memer. After the initial destruction in Ansul the soldiers settled to rule and kept the people of Ansul in subjugation. Memer grew up in Ansul, not a free citizen like all the peole of Ansul were previously, but as a member of a subjugated people under the rule of Alds. Memer's mother game from hiding and put the house in as good an order as per possibly could in the circumstances. Other people of the house came back and the Waylord, the head of the household, a relative of Memer, was finally released from Ald prison and came back to live in the house also.

Memer wrote pers story at the age of 17. It is a story of Memer learning about life and pers place in the society. It is a story of how Memer met Orrec, the famous poet and storyteller, and Cry. It is a story of how Ansul became free again. It is a story of how Memer came to learn about and to accept pers special gift.

The last book in the Annals is the book about Gavir. While Orrec learnt about pers gift and purpose in life at pers home domain, and Memer did the same at pers home, Gavir started pers journey in one of the City States, a place where per was brought as a young child to be a slave. Gavir also had a gift or a power as it was called by pers people, but had to hide it, because city people were afraid of them. This gift was to see the future or as Gavir put it "to remember" something that had not happened yet.

Gavir was an indoor slave in an important house where slave children attended school with the children of their owners. The teacher was a slave and Gavir having shown aptitude was being trained to take over once the old teacher was retired. Gavir's older sister was an indoor slave in the same house and once per was old enough was given to the oldest son as a gift-girl. Per was happy about it as per loved this son who loved per back. However, being a slave the sister was badly used and killed by another son, who was not punished. So in a daze Gavir walks away and starts pers journey, to find freedom, to find perself, to find the place where per could feel at home.

The journey takes Gavir through various places and communities, from a crazy hermit, through two different communities of escaped slaves, to pers own Marsh people and finally to Urdile, where Gavir was drawn because Orrec, the poet and writer, was there. There Gavir finds the person from one of pers early "memories" who happens to be Orrec and who offers to vouch for Gavir so that Gavir can become a citizen Urdile and be free. So Gavir finally finds pers real home.