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The Poacher [MultiFormat]
eBook by Ursula K. Le Guin
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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description:  A peasant boy is foraging for mushrooms in the forest when he discovers a gigantic bramble hedge, and for the next two years he spends all his free time cutting a tunnel through its branches ... and dreaming of what he will find on the other side. When he finally breaks through, he finds an enchanted castle with all of its occupants asleep ... as if under a spell. He is especially careful not to disturb the princess, for he senses that the source of the dream he has entered is this sleeping beauty.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Xanadu, ed. Jane Yolen, 1992
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2001
This eBook is also available in the following bundle(s):
253 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [32 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [29 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [18 KB]
, Portable Document Format (PDF) [183 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [40 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [89 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [71 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [44 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [16 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [48 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [29 KB]
Words: 6648
Reading time: 18-26 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Overhead the sky was the soft blue of early summer. Before me, a little downhill from the hedge, stood the house of yellow stone, the castle, in its moat. Flags hung motionless from its pointed towers. The air was still and warm. Nothing moved. I crouched there, as motionless as everything else, except for my breath, which came loud and hard for a long time. Beside my sweaty, blood-streaked hand a little bee sat on a clover blossom, not stirring, honey-drunk. I raised myself to my knees and looked all round me, cautious. I knew that this must be a hall, like the Baron's hall above the village, and therefore dangerous to anyone who did not live there or have work there. It was much larger and finer than the Baron's hall, and infinitely fairer; larger and fairer even than the friary church. With its yellow walls and red roofs it looked, I thought like a flower. I had not seen much else I could compare it to. The Baron's hall was a squat keep with a scumble of huts and barns about it; the church was grey and grim, the carved figures by its door faceless with age. This house, whatever it was, was delicate and fine and fresh. The sunlight on it made me think of the firelight on my stepmother's breasts. Halfway down the wide, grassy slope to the moat, a few cows lay in midday torpor, heads up, eyes closed; they were not even chewing the cud. On the farther slope, a flock of sheep lay scattered out, and an apple orchard was just losing its last blossoms. The air was very warm. In my torn, ragged shirt and coat, I would have been shivering as the sweat cooled on me, on the other side of the hedge, where winter was. Here I shrugged off the coat. The blood from all my scratches, drying, made my skin draw and itch, so that I began to look with longing at the water in the moat. Blue and glassy it lay, very tempting. I was thirsty, too. My waterbottle lay back in the passage, nearly empty. I thought of it, but never turned my head to look back. No one had moved, on the lawns or in the gardens around the house or on the bridge across the moat, all the time I had been kneeling here in the shadow of the great hedge, gazing my fill. The cows lay like stones, though now and again I saw a brown flank shudder off a fly, or the very tip of a tail twitch lazily. When I looked down I saw the little bee still on the clover blossom. I touched its wing curiously, wondering if it was dead. Its feelers shivered a little, but it did not stir. I looked back at the house, at the windows, and at the door--a side door--which I had first seen through the branches. I saw, without for some while knowing that I saw, that the two carved figures by the door were living men. They stood one on each side of the door as if in readiness for someone entering from the garden or the stables; one held a staff, the other a pike; and they were both leaning right back against the wall, sound asleep. It did not surprise me. They're asleep, I thought. It seemed natural enough, here. I think I knew even then where I had come. I do not mean that I knew the story, as you may know it. I did not know why they were asleep, how it had come about that they were asleep. I did not know the beginning of their story, nor the end. I did not know who was in the castle. But I knew already that they were all asleep. It was very strange, and I thought I should be afraid; but I could not feel any fear.
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