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Yumen is the Athsheans’ word for “human.”
Yumen Quotes in The Word for World is Forest
The The Word for World is Forest quotes below are all either spoken by Yumen or refer to Yumen. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter Two
Quotes
He went out to see what kind of trees they were. They all lay broken and uprooted. He picked up the silvery branch of one and a little blood ran out of the broken end. No, not here, not again, Thele, he said: O Thele, come to me before your death! But she did not come. […] Outside the other door, across the tall room, was the long street of the yumen city Central. Selver had the gun in his belt. If Davidson came, he could shoot him. He waited, just inside the open door, looking out into the sunlight. Davidson came, huge, running so fast that Selver could not keep him in the sights of the gun as he doubled crazily back and forth across the wide street, very fast, always closer. The gun was heavy. Selver fired it but no fire came out of it, and in rage and terror he threw the gun and the dream away.
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“[…] Much of what he told me, I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t the language that kept me from understanding; I know his tongue, and he learned ours; we made a writing of the two languages together. Yet there were things he said I could never understand. He said the yumens are from outside the forest. That’s quite clear. He said they want the forest: the trees for wood, the land to plant grass on.” Selver’s voice, though still soft, had taken on resonance; the people among the silver trees listened. “That too is clear, to those of us who’ve seen them cutting down the world. He said the yumens are men like us, that we’re indeed related, as close kin maybe as the Red Deer to the Greybuck. He said that they come from another place which is not the forest; the trees there are all cut down; it has a sun, not our sun, which is a star. All this, as you see, wasn’t clear to me. I say his words but don’t know what they mean. It does not matter much. It is clear that they want our forest for themselves […] ”
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Chapter Five
Quotes
The townsfolk also knew that the 1200 slaves at Centralville had been freed soon after the Smith Camp massacre, and Lyubov agreed with the Colonel that the natives might take the second event to be a result of the first. That gave what Colonel Dongh would call ‘an erroneous impression,’ but it probably wasn’t important. What was important was that the slaves had been freed. Wrongs done could not be righted; but at least they were not still being done. They could start over: the natives without that painful, unanswerable wonder as to why the ‘yumens’ treated men like animals; and he without the burden of explanation and the gnawing of irremediable guilt.
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Yumen Term Timeline in The Word for World is Forest
The timeline below shows where the term Yumen appears in The Word for World is Forest. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Two
...Selver is awake and explaining to the group that his city, Eshreth, was destroyed by “yumens” (his people’s name for humans) who cut down the trees there. The yumens enslaved him,...
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Selver remained free and would sometimes visit the yumen camps, speaking to the people that the yumens kept in pens. Those people told him...
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The yumen Selver had known initially got away, but then he returned to his camp after they’d...
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Selver tells Torber that his wound is from the yumen’s weapon, which he took and has with him now. Coro Mena asks if Selver was...
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...Mena says that the world can always change and adapt. He asks Selver what the yumens are like and whether they’re men. Selver doesn’t know: they certainly aren’t like men he...
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Coro Mena, who has seen the yumens once and concluded that they appear to be men, asks if yumens dream. Selver says...
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...to evacuate just in case the humans attack. Then, she sends scouts out to monitor yumen activity and has Selver tell his story to everyone else once he regains his strength....
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...Selver returns to the house and notices that he’s near a street in Central, the yumen city.
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Anticipating yumen attack, Selver notes that he has a gun he can use to shoot Davidson, who...
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...first—maybe in their culture, women are the ones who dream. Ebor Dendep believes that the yumens are insane, since they “only dream in sleep,” but Selver insists that a whole people...
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...that if they kill a tree it’ll come back. But Selver shakes his head. The yumens understand death, he says. In fact, Selver is the one who didn’t understand a lot...
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The yumens come from a place that has no forest, something that Selver can’t understand. But it...
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Selver once saw the yumens kill a woman as she begged for mercy. Even if the yumens are also men,...
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Chapter Six
...enslaved Athsheans who knew the place, and most of the others had never seen a yumen city. But they’d been having the evil dream and needed Selver to help them control...
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There were 1700 yumens in Central, including 500 females. Selver had chosen this particular time to attack because the...
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They continue on through the city, passing a dead female yumen and another yumen under a beam. It’s unfair that Selver should see him out of...
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...this isn’t a dream at all, but rather world-time. Selver tells Lyubov that all the yumens’ engines are burned, and the women are dead. He’d told his people not to burn...
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...to his “roots” instead. Selver replies that his people’s violent dream will stop when the yumens are gone, but Lyubov says to stop it now. Lyubov’s gaze slackens, and Selver tells...
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...a nearby village, Endtor. There, Selver dreams in total insanity for two days. Currently, 500 yumens are being held prisoner in the creechie-pens, and some have escaped. Some are still being...
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...tells them that the killing is over, and that he needs to talk with the yumens in the compound. They head to the creechie-pen, where Reswan asks for Colonel Dongh in...
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Selver says that he’s aware that the yumens could still kill Selver’s people, but the yumens are also outnumbered. They should wait quietly...
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...because Lyubov was his friend, he’s not dead. Gosse yells at Selver for killing the yumen women, and Selver says that he did so to sterilize the men. Selver learned what...
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...from world-time, because he went without dreams for too long. An ex-slave says that the yumens take poisons to dream but they can’t control their dreams, and the dreams enslave them....
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...building, and Lyubov tells Selver that he has a headache. The next day, the captive yumens in the creechie-pen ask to speak to Selver. Along with Reswan and a few others,...
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...triumph passes, and he wearily repeats the Athsheans’ terms to Dongh. Dongh reveals that the yumens have had a functioning radio for days—which Selver already knew—and that they could’ve escaped all...
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...to speak on Dongh’s behalf, but Dongh says that Gosse should do it instead. The yumens agree to Selver’s terms: they’ll live in one region and stay out of the forest....
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...the Athsheans have no centralized government to attack. Selver notices that because Dongh is the yumens’ equivalent of an Old Man, his word is obeyed. Selver then says that his people...
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...is bad “for the mind.” He asks Dongh to send for the rest of the yumens, and once they’re gathered here, the Athsheans will open the gates and free them. The...
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Selver heads back to Endtor. The headwoman who accompanies him says that the yumens aren’t as stupid as she assumed, as they clearly recognized Selver’s godly status at the...
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Tubab wonders if Selver told the yumens that they were insane, and Selver says he didn’t; he told them they were ill....
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Chapter Seven
...the gift of not killing. Davidson will have to carry that gift alone, because the yumens told Selver that if he returns Davidson to them, they’ll put Davidson on trial and...
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Chapter Eight
...Lyubov for a long time, ever since that last conversation with Davidson. But when the yumens’ ship comes back (three years after the last attack), Lyubov is there in Selver’s dream...
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...after five generations, some scientists will come back to study the land. Selver observes that yumen orders are quickly followed, which isn’t the case for the Athsheans; one headwoman’s order wouldn’t...
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