“The Poacher” (1992)

This interesting story by Ursula K. Le Guin rolls through fantasy all the way back to fairy tales, according to coeditor Terry Windling in her introduction in a Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. “The Poacher” is fantastic and vaguely allegorical, with a mysterious forest, a castle, a sleeping princess (actually a sleeping everyone), and much more. The main character, out foraging for mushrooms and berries, discovers a hedge in the forest so dense and tall it’s impossible to see beyond it. Then he discovers it is encircling a space and he sets out to hack his way through it with tools he steals, or poaches—he is a poacher in many different ways. Even reaching this interior space takes him something close to two years. “The hedge grew unnaturally fast, in season and out, even in midwinter thick, pale shoots would grow across my passageway, and in summer I had to spend some time every day clearing out new growth, thorny green sprays full of stinging sap.” The story takes its time getting to its points—if it takes years to enter the space, what he finds inside is fully and amply described: a castle, a full household of masters and servants busy at their tasks, except—they are all sleeping and remain asleep for as long as the main character is there, which at story’s end is decades. He discovers a princess sleeping in her chambers, and somehow knows that all this is her dream, that even touching her will awaken her with wholly unknown results, potentially including the end of everything. He’s taking no chances. The food replenishes every day, the weather is beautiful, the place is wonderful. He stays. Le Guin’s writing is patient and lovely, in no hurry at all, and thus her revelations are unforced and somehow believable. It reminds me of a 1964 story by Robert Aickman called “The School Friend,” which also concerns a mysterious space in the deep woods with fairy tale appointments. Aickman’s story at least leaves something of a line tracing back to reality but that’s much less the case in “The Poacher,” which seems to exist unconnected from anything we would call reality. We are verging on pure magic here, which Le Guin somehow keeps within range of suspended disbelief as we read, as if casting spells herself.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Unlocking the Air and Other Stories
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.