Voices

Ansul was once a peaceful town filled with libraries, schools, and temples. But that was long ago, and the conquerors of this coastal city consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death. And they believe the Oracle House, where the last few undestroyed books are hidden, is seething with demons. But to seventeen-year-old Memer, the house is a refuge, a place of family and learning, ritual and memory--the only place where she feels truly safe.Then an Uplands poet named Orrec and his wife, Gry, arrive, and everything in Memer's life begins to change. Will she and the people of Ansul at last be brave enough to rebel against their oppressors?A haunting and gripping coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of violence, intolerance, and magic, Voices is a novel that readers will not soon forget.

1The first thing I can remember clearly is writing the way into the secret room.I am so small I have to reach my arm up to make the signs in the right place on the wall of the corridor. The wall is coated with thick grey plaster, cracked and crumbling in places so the stone shows through. Its almost dark in the corridor. It smells of earth and age, and its silent. But Im not afraid; Im never afraid there. I reach up and move my writing finger in the motions I know, in the right place, in the air, not quite touching the surface of the plaster. The door opens in the wall, and I go in.The light in that room is clear and calm, falling from many small skylights of thick glass in the high ceiling. Its a very long room, with shelves down its wall, and books on the shelves. Its my room, and Ive always known it. Ista and Sosta and Gudit dont. They dont even know its there. They never come to these corridors far in the back of the house. I pass the Waylords door to come here, but hes sick and lame and stays in his rooms. The secret room is my secret, the place where I can be alone, and not scolded and bothered, and not afraid.The memory isnt of one time I went there, but many. I remember how big the reading table looked to me then, and how high the bookshelves were. I liked to get under the table and build a kind of wall or shelter with some of the books. I pretended to be a bear cub in its den. I felt safe there. I always put the books back exactly where they belonged on the shelves; that was important. I stayed in the lighter part of the room, near the door thats not a door. I didnt like the farther end, where it grows dark and the ceiling comes down lower. In my mind I called that the shadow end, and I almost always stayed away from it. But even my fear of the shadow end was part of my secret, my kingdom of solitude. And it was mine alone, until one day when I was nine.Sosta had been scolding me for some stupid thing that wasnt my fault, and when I was rude back to her she called me sheep hair, which put me in a fury. I couldnt hit her because her arms were longer and she could hold me off, so I bit her hand. Then her mother, my bymother Ista, scolded me and cuffed me. Furious, I ran to the back part of the house, to the dark corridor, and opened the door and went into the secret room. I was going to stay there till Ista and Sosta thought Id run away and been taken as a slave and was gone forever, and then theyd be sorry for scolding unjustly and cuffing and calling me names. I rushed into the secret room all hot and full of tears and rage and there, in the strange clear light of that place, stood the Waylord with a book in his hands.He was startled, too. He came at me, fierce, his arm raised as if to strike. I stood like a stone. I could not breathe.He stopped short. Memer! How did you come here?He looked at the place where the door is when its open, but of course nothing was there but the wall.I still couldnt breathe or speak.I lef

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Excerpted from Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin
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