The Dyer backed away from him another step and stood watching him, the exaltation in his face clouding slowly… — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dyer backed away from him another step and stood watching him, the exaltation in his face clouding slowly over until it was replaced by a strange, heavy look; it was as if reasoning thought were laboring to break through the storm of words and feelings and visions that confused him. Finally he turned around without a word and began to run back down the road, into the haze of dust that had not yet settled on his tracks.
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“There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”
“You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.”
So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
