Mara and Dann
Doris Lessing
A visionary novel from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.It is sooner than you might think. And the Earth’s climate is much changed – it’s colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home …They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children’s constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew.Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we perceive only dimly and scarcely know how to value.
DORIS LESSING
Mara and Dann
AN ADVENTURE
Contents
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Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Read On (#litres_trial_promo)
The Grass is Singing (#litres_trial_promo)
The Golden Notebook (#litres_trial_promo)
The Good Terrorist (#litres_trial_promo)
Love, Again (#litres_trial_promo)
The Fifth Child (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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The scene that the child, then the girl, then the young woman tried so hard to remember was clear enough in its beginnings. She had been hustled – sometimes carried, sometimes pulled along by the hand – through a dark night, nothing to be seen but stars, and then she was pushed into a room and told, Keep quiet, and the people who had brought her disappeared. She had not taken notice of their faces, what they were, she was too frightened, but they were her people, the People, she knew that. The room was nothing she had known. It was a square, built of large blocks of rock. She was inside one of the rock houses. She had seen them all her life. The rock houses were where they lived, the Rock People, not her people, who despised them. She had often seen the Rock People walking along the roads, getting quickly out of the way when they saw the People; but a dislike of them that she had been taught made it hard to look much at them. She was afraid of them, and thought them ugly.
She was alone in the big, bare rock room. It was water she was looking for – surely there must be water somewhere? But the room was empty. In the middle of it was a square made of the rock blocks, which she supposed must be a table; but there was nothing on it except a candle stuck in its grease, and burning low… it would soon go out. By now she was thinking, But where is he, where is my little brother? He, too, had been rushed through the dark. She had called out to him, right at the beginning, when they were snatched away from home – rescued, she now knew – and a hand had come down over her mouth, ‘Quiet.’ And she had heard him cry out to her, and the sudden silence told her a hand had stopped his cry in the same way.
She was in a fever, hot and dry over her whole body, but it was hard to distinguish the discomfort of this from her anxiety over her brother.
She went to the place in the wall where she had been thrust in, and tried to push a rock that was a door to one side. It moved in a groove, and was only another slab of rock; but just as she was giving up, because it was too heavy for her, it slid aside, and her brother rushed at her with a great howl that made her suddenly cold with terror and her hair prickle. He flung himself at her, and her arms went around him while she was looking at the doorway, where a man was mouthing at her and pointing to the child, Quiet, quiet. In her turn she put her hand over his open, howling mouth and felt his teeth in her palm. She did not cry out or pull away, but staggered back against a wall to support his weight; and she put her arms tight around him, whispering, ‘Hush, shhh, you must be quiet.’ And then, using a threat that frightened her too, ‘Quiet, or that bad man will come.’ And he at once went quiet, and trembled as he clutched her. The man who had brought in the little boy had not gone away. He was whispering with someone out in the darkness. And then this someone came in, and she almost screamed, for she thought this was the bad man she had threatened her brother with; but then she saw that no, this man was not the same but only looked like him. She had in fact begun to scream, but slammed her own free hand across her mouth, the hand that was not pressing her brother’s head into her chest. ‘I thought you were…that you were…’ she stammered; and he said, ‘No, that was my brother, Garth.’ He was wearing the same clothes as the other one, a black tunic, with red on it, and he was already stripping it off. Now he was naked, as she had seen her father and his brothers, but on ceremonial occasions, when they were decorated with all kinds of bracelets and pendants and anklets, in gold, so that they did not seem naked. But this man was as tired and dusty as she and her brother were; and on his back, as he turned it to put on the other tunic he had with him, were slashes from whips, weals where the blood was oozing even now, though some had dried. He pulled over his head a brown tunic, like a long sack, and she again nearly cried out, for this was what the Rock People wore. He stood in front of her, belting this garment with the same brown stuff, and looking hard at her and then at the little boy, who chose this moment to lift his head; and when he saw the man standing there, he let out another howl, just like their dog when he howled at the moon; and again she put her hand over his mouth – not the one he had bitten, which was bleeding – but let him stare over it while she said, ‘It’s not the same man. It’s his brother. It’s not the bad one.’
But she could feel the child trembling, in great fits, and she was afraid he would convulse and even die; and she forced his head around, back into her, and cradled it with her two arms.
For days, but she did not know how long, the two children had been in a room in their own home while the other one, who looked like this man, questioned them. The other one, the bad man, and others in the room, men and women, wore the long black tunics, with red. The two children were the centre of the scene. All the questions had been asked by the bad man, whose face even now seemed to burn there, inside her eyes, so that she had to keep blinking to force it away, and see the face of this man whom she could see was a friend. The bad one kept asking her over and over again about her close family, not the Family, and in the beginning she had answered because she had not known they were enemies; but then the bad man had taken up a whip and said that if they did not answer he would beat them. At this, one woman and then another protested, but he had made them be quiet, with an angry look and a thrust of the whip at them. But the trouble was, she did not know the answers to the questions. It was she who had to answer, because the little boy had screamed at the sight of the whip, and had begun his clinging to her, as he was doing now, his face pressed into her. These bad people, who she was beginning to see were probably relatives, though not her own family – she seemed to remember faces – were asking who came to their house, who slept there, what their parents talked about with them, what their plans were. None of this she knew. Ever since she could remember anything, there had been people coming and going; and then there were the servants, who were like friends. Once, during the questioning there was a confused, angry moment when she had answered a question with something about the man who ran the house and took orders from her mother; but the bad man had not meant him at all, and he leaned right down and shouted at her, the face (so like the face she was looking at now) so close to hers she could smell his sour breath and see the vein in his forehead throbbing; and she was so frightened that for a moment her mind was dark, and was dark for so long that, when she saw again, she was looking up at the man staring down at her; and they were all alarmed and silent, and he was too. She could not speak after that: her tongue had gone stiff and, besides, she was so thirsty. There was a jar of water on the table, and she pointed at it and said, ‘Please, water,’ using the politeness she had been taught; and then the bad man was pleased at the new good idea he had, and began pouring water into a cup, and then back again, making the water splash, so that her whole dry body yearned for it; but he did not give her any. And all that went on, the whip sometimes in the man’s hand, sometimes lying on the table where she could see it, the water being splashed, and the man pouring it deliberately and drinking it, mouthful by mouthful, and asking, asking, asking the questions she did not know the answers to. And then there was a great noise outside of voices and quarrelling. The people in the room had exclaimed, and looked at each other, and then they ran off, fast, through the door into the storerooms, leaving the two children alone; and she had been just about to reach for the water when a whole crowd had rushed into the room. She thought at first they were Rock People because they wore the brown sack things, but then saw that no, they were People, her people, being tall, and thin, and nice looking. Then she and the little boy were lifted up and told, Quiet, be quiet, and they had travelled for hours through the dark, while the stars jogged overhead; and then she had been thrust into this room, the rock room, alone.
Now she said to this man, ‘I’m so thirsty’; and at this his face had a look as if he wanted to laugh, the way you laugh when something impossible is asked for. She knew exactly what he was thinking; her mind was so clear then, and she could look back afterwards and see that face of his, the good one – like her parents’, kind – but on it that smile, Oh no, it’s not possible, because everything was so dangerous and more important than water. But that was the end of the clear part, the end of what she remembered.
He said, ‘Wait.’ And went to where the room slab had been slid to shut out the night, full of enemies, pushed it along in its groove, and in a low voice said something which must be about water. How many people were out there? He came back with a cup of water. ‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘there isn’t much.’ And now the little boy tore himself out of her arms and grabbed the cup and began gulping and snuffling the water down, and then…the cup slipped, and what was left splashed on the rock of the floor. He wailed, and she put her hand on his mouth again and turned his face into her. She had not had even one mouthful but the man hadn’t noticed. This was because he had turned away at the moment the boy was drinking to make sure the door slab was in place. Her mouth was burning, her eyes burned, because she wanted to cry and there were no tears there, her whole being was so dry, she burned with dryness. And now the man squatted in front of her and began talking. And this was the part she tried to remember afterwards, for years, as she was growing up, for what he told her she most desperately wanted to know.
The beginning she did take in. She knew – didn’t she? – that things had been pretty bad for a long time, everything getting worse…she must know that. Yes, she did, her parents talked about it, and she did know, as this man kept saying, that the weather was changing. It was getting drier but not in any regular way: sometimes it rained in the way it should and sometimes not at all or very little; and there was a lot of trouble with the Rock People, and there was a war going on between the different big families, and even inside the families – because, as she could see, his brother and he were on different sides and …
Her little brother seemed to be asleep, slumped there against her. She knew he was not asleep but had fainted, or gone into some kind of fit of not knowing, because he could not bear any more; and the few mouthfuls of water had been enough to relax him into a temporary quiet, though he jerked and trembled as he clung heavily to her, limp, his arms heavy and dragging. She felt she would fall. She had been like this for days, in that other place, her own home, where the child had clung and shivered and cried, noisily, then silently, when the bad man hit him to keep quiet. And now he was still there, against her, and she was staring over his head into the face of the man which, she could see because it was so close to her, was thin and bony because he was hungry, and full of pain too, for his back must be hurting. He was talking, fast, straight into her face; his mouth was moving and she could not stop looking at it: it was as if every word were being rolled around inside his mouth and forced out… He was tired, he was so tired it was hard for him to talk, and to explain all these things. It was about his brother, Garth, the bad one, and his friends. It was about her parents, who had gone away somewhere because the bad ones had wanted to kill them. And she must be careful to look after the little boy… She thought she was going to fall. She tried to speak but found her mouth was gummed up, there was only a thick gum in her mouth, and she looked into this man’s face, the man who was saving her and her brother – she knew that much – and she saw a greying scum on his lips. That was why it was hard for him to talk. He was thirsty, like her. And now he grabbed her by both shoulders, and looked close into her face, and was demanding an answer – but this time not frighteningly, like the other one, but a kind of Yes from her, meaning she had understood; but she hadn’t, she was thinking about water. It seemed that the sounds of water were everywhere, splashing on the rock roof and the rocks outside, but she knew she imagined it; and suddenly she saw from the dark, exhausted face so close to hers that he had understood. And she managed to lift a hand and point to her mouth. He looked for the cup and saw it lying on its side on the floor, and the stain of spilt water. He picked up the cup and got up, slowly, went slowly to the door, because he was stiff now from the wounds on his back, pushed the door along, said something, while he supported himself on the wall with one hand. A long wait. Then the cup was handed back in. He brought it to her. It was only half full. She said to herself that she would not gulp and guzzle as her brother had, but she couldn’t help herself, and bent her head to the cup, hastily, greedily; but she did not spill any, not a drop, and as she drank the precious mouthfuls she saw the mouth next to hers moving, as his eyes watched every little movement of swallowing. He was thirsty, was desperate for water, but had given her those mouthfuls. And now he took the cup from her, slid it inside his tunic where the belt was, put big strong hands on either side of her, pressed her gently, and then gathered her, together with her little brother, into his arms and held them there a few moments. Never would she forget how she felt then, protected, safe, and she wanted never to move away from those kind arms. Then he gently released her and, squatting in front of her, as he had before, asked, ‘What is your name?’ And as she told him, she saw his face change into a weariness and disappointment with her that made her want to clutch him and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ – but she did not know what for. He put his face close, so that she could see a little mesh of red veins in his eyes and the grime in the pores of his face, and he said, ‘Mara. I told you: Mara. I’ve just told you.’ And now she did remember that, yes, it was one of the things he had been telling her during the time she couldn’t listen. He had told her to forget her name, her real name, and that now she was called Mara. ‘Mara,’ she repeated, obedient, feeling that the sound had nothing to do with her. ‘Again,’ he said, stern, and she knew he did not believe she would remember, because she hadn’t, until now. ‘Mara. My name is Mara.’ ‘Good – and this child here…?’ But she could not remember what he had said. He saw from her desperate face that she did not know. ‘His name is Dann now. He must forget his name.’ And he went to the door, very stiff and slow, and there he turned and looked at her, a long look, and she said, ‘Mara. I’m Mara.’ He went out and this time the rock door was not slid back. Outside she could see the dark of the night and the dark shapes of people. Now she let her brother go loose and he woke. ‘That was a good man,’ she told him. ‘He is our friend. He is helping us. The one you are frightened of, he’s the bad one. Do you understand? They are brothers.’ He was staring up at her, trying to understand: she was taller, because he was three years younger, four years old, and he was her little brother whom she had protected and cared for since he was born. She said it all again. This one was good. The other was bad. And her name was Mara now and he must forget her real name. And his name was…a moment’s panic: had she forgotten it? No. ‘Your name is Dann.’ ‘No it isn’t, that’s not my name.’ ‘Yes, it is. You must forget your real name, it’s dangerous.’ And her voice shook, she heard it become a sob, and the little boy put up his hand to stroke her face. This made her want to howl and weep, because she felt he had come back to her, her beloved little brother, after a horrible time when some sort of changeling had been attached to her. She did not know if he had understood, but now he said, ‘Poor Mara,’ and she clutched him and kissed him, and they were crying and clutching when two people came in, in the clothes of the Rock People, but they were not Rock People. They had bundles of the brown tunics under their arms and they took two, one for her and one for Dann. She hated the feel of the tunic, slippery and thin, going down over her head, and the little boy said, ‘Do I have to wear this?’
Now the man said, ‘Quick, we must hurry,’ and hustled them to the door. The candle was left burning; then he remembered, took it up and held it high, looking around the room to see what had been forgotten.
The little girl who was now Mara looked back too, so as to remember the room, or what she could, for she was already anxious because of what she was forgetting.
As for the little boy, he would remember later only the warmth and safety of his sister’s body, as he pressed himself into it. ‘Are we going home now?’ he asked, and she was thinking, Of course we are; because all this time she had been thinking, We’ll go home and the bad people will have gone and then…Yet that man had been telling her, yes, he had been telling her – while he squatted in front of her, talking and talking, and she had not been able to hear because of her longing for a drink – they were not going home. This was the first time the little girl really understood that they were not going back to their home. Outside, in the darkness, she looked up to see how the stars had moved. Her father had taught her how to look at stars. She was trying to find the ones that were called The Seven Friends. And they were her friends, her stars. She had said to her father, ‘But there are eight – no, nine,’ and he had called her Little Bright Eyes. Where was her father? Her mother? She was just going to pull at the elbow of the tall man who had come in with the clothes, and ask, when she understood that she had been told and had not heard properly. She did not dare ask again. She saw four of the people go off quietly, quickly, hardly to be seen in the brown clothes. Two were left: the man and a woman. She could hear by how they breathed, too loud, that they were tired and wanted to rest and sleep – yes, sleep…And as she drowsed off, standing there, she felt herself shaken awake and in her turn shook her brother, who was limp and heavy in her grasp. ‘Can you walk?’ asked the woman. ‘Good,’ said the man while she hesitated, and he said, ‘Then come on.’ Around them were other rock houses. They were all empty, she could see, while being hurried past. Why was the village empty? How could they, the People, just go into a rock house and walk through a rock village without guards?
‘Where are they?’ she whispered up at the woman, and heard the whisper, ‘They’ve all gone north.’
Soon they stopped. High in the sky above her she saw the head of a cart bird turning and tilting to look down at them to see who they were. She was terrified of these tall birds, with their sharp beaks and great feet and claws that could rip somebody to pieces. But it was harnessed to a cart and she was expected to climb in. The cart was used on the fields, and was a flimsy thing that rattled about and only carried light loads. She could not manage it and was lifted in, and then Dann was beside her, and the whole cart creaked and seemed to want to settle to the earth as the two big people got in. The cart bird stood waiting. The slave who looked after the cart bird, who they called the cart bird man, sat just behind the bird, making it start and stop with a whistle she had often heard them make. The man and the woman wanted the cart to go forward and kept saying, ‘Go, go,’ but the bird did not move. Mara whispered, ‘It needs a whistle.’ ‘What whistle?’ ‘Like this.’ Mara had not meant her little piping whistle to make the bird go, but that is what happened. The cart was rushing forward and the great feet of the cart bird were going down hard into the dust and lifting up and scattering dust back over them all. Where were they going? Mara was afraid that these two people who were trying to help them did not know, but they were saying to each other loudly, because of all the noise, ‘There’s the big hill,’ ‘That’s the black rock they described,’ ‘I think that must be the dead tree.’ Weren’t they supposed to be keeping quiet because of enemies? Anyone near could hear the rattling of the cart, though the wheels were running quietly through the dust. The little boy was crying. She knew he felt sick, because she did. And then Mara fell off to sleep and kept waking to see the cart bird’s great head jerking along against the stars…And then, suddenly, the cart stopped. The cart bird had stopped because it was tired. It fell to its knees and its beak was open, and it tried to get up but couldn’t, and sank back into the dust.
‘We are there anyway,’ the man told the children; and the two big people lifted the children out of the cart, and were tugging them off away from the cart when Mara said, ‘Wait, the cart bird.’ And then, seeing these people did not know much about cart birds, she said, ‘If the bird is left tied to the cart and can’t move it will die.’
‘She’s right,’ said the man, and the woman said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’
Now the two moved to where the rope from the cart was tied to the harness on the bird; but they did not know how to untie it. The man took out a knife and cut all the lines. The bird staggered up and to the side of the track, where it fell again, and sat moving its head around, and opening and shutting its beak. It was so thirsty: Mara could feel the dryness of its mouth in her own.
Now they were walking along a path, the kind the Rock People used: not straight and wide, like the real roads, but going through the bushes and grasses anyhow it could, and looping around rocky places. It was soft underfoot, this path: it was only dust. Several times she had to stop herself tripping, because her feet dragged in the dust drifts and she was pulling her brother along. The woman said something, and the man came back and picked up the child, who let out a wail, but stopped himself in time to prevent that hand over his mouth. They were trying to talk quietly, but the little girl thought, Our breathing is so loud, anyone near could hear it, and we are all too tired to walk carefully. Once or twice she drifted off to sleep as she walked, and came to herself at the tug of the woman’s hand. Now it was light, Mara could see her face: it was a nice face, but so tired, and around her mouth was the greyish scum of being thirsty. The light was still grey, and across the great stretch of country from that reddening sky came that cold breath that says the sun will soon rise. Like the little cluster of stars, this early cold was her special friend, and she knew it well, for at home she liked to wake early before anyone else and stand by the window and wait for the sweet coolness on her face and then look out, watching how the world became light and the sky filled with sunlight.
Dann was asleep on the shoulder of the man carrying him, who was almost staggering with the weight. Yet Dann was not heavy, she often carried him. Now it was full daylight. All around was this enormous, flat country covered with grass, a yellow, drying grass that she could easily see over. No trees. Here and there were little rocky hills, but not one tree. The child could see that the woman, whose hand she was clutching, dozed off as she walked; and when that happened the big, dry hand went limp, and the child had to grab it and hold on. She felt she would soon start crying, she had to cry, she was so miserable and frightened, but she had no tears.
They were going down off a ridge and, look, there were trees, a line of them, and a smell Mara knew, the smell of water. She cried out, and then all four of them were running forward, towards that smell…They were on the edge of a big hole, one of a string of big holes, and at the bottom of this was some muddy water. Things flapped about down there. Fish were dying in that water, which was hardly enough to cover them, and there was a strong smell coming up, of dead things. The four jumped off the jagged edge of the hole into the dried mud around the water; but it was not water at all: it was thick mud and they could not drink it. They stood there, looking down at the dark mud where fishes and a tortoise struggled, and there was a new thing, a new sound, a roar, a rumble, a rushing, and the smell of water was strong…And then the woman snatched her up and the man picked up Dann, and the four were at the top of the edge of the big hole, and then running and stumbling as fast as they could, and Mara was saying, ‘Why, why, why?’ gasping dry breaths; and they reached one of the little hills of rocks, and climbed a short way and turned to see…What the little girl thought she saw was the earth moving along towards where the waterholes were, a brown fast moving, a brown rush, and there was a smell of water, and the woman said, ‘It’s all right, it’s a flash flood.’ And the man said, ‘There must have been a cloudburst up north.’ Mara, no longer tired, her whole being vibrating with fear because of the nearness of the flood, could see only blue sky, not a cloud anywhere, so how could a cloud have burst? The brown water had reached level with them, jumping and tumbling past, but a wash of water was spreading out and had reached the little hill. Dann began struggling and roaring in the man’s arms to get down into the water, and in a moment all four were standing in the water, splashing it all over them, drinking it, while Dann was like a dog, rolling in it, and laughing and lapping, and shouting, ‘Water, water’; and then Mara sat down in it, feeling that her whole body was drinking in the water; and she saw the two grown-up people were squatting to drink and splash themselves but the water was only part-way to their knees. It was up to her shoulders, and rising. Then the two grown-ups were standing and looking towards where the flood had come from and saying quick, frightened things to each other, using words Mara did not know. That water was short and everyone must be careful all the time, she knew, and could not remember now when things had been different. But she had not heard of floods, and dams and clouds bursting, and inundations. And then she felt herself scooped up again and saw how the man lifted Dann up out of the water; and they were halfway up the hill when there was another roar and a second brown flood came racing down. But now it was not just roaring: there were bangs and crashes and rumbles, and bellows and bleats too, for in this second flood were all kinds of animals, and some of them she had never seen before except in the pictures painted on the walls at home. Some were being tossed by the waves of the flood to one side of the main rush of water and, finding that they had ground under them, were climbing out and making for the higher ground. The big animals were doing well, but smaller ones were being swept past, calling and crying; and Mara saw one of them, like her little pet, Shera, at home, who slept in her bed and was her friend, riding past on a tree that had all sorts of little animals stuck all over the branches. Now Mara was crying because of the poor animals; but meanwhile others were running down from the higher ground towards the water, and straight into the flood to stand in it and drink and drink and roll in it, just as the four of them had done, for they were so thirsty. Mara saw the cart bird come staggering out of the grass, its feet going down wide because it was so weak, and when it reached the edge of the water it simply sank down and drank, sitting, while the water rose so that soon its neck was poking up out of the brown flood, like a stick or a snake. The water was now rising fast around the hill they were on. Where just a moment before they had splashed and rolled, it was so deep that a big horse, like the ones her parents rode, was up to the top of its legs; and then another wave came spilling out from the main flood and the horse stepped out and began swimming. Then the cart bird stood up, and now that it was wet all over, and its puffs of white and black feathers flat and thin, you could see it was all bones. Mara knew that animals were dying everywhere because of the dryness, and when she saw the cart bird, so thin and weak, she understood. She had a big book, with pictures of animals pasted in, and some she had never seen; but here they were, all along the edge of the water, drinking. Now she was watching a big tree rolling and tossing as it swept past, with animals on it; and as she watched she saw it rear up and turn over…and when it rolled back the animals had gone. Mara was crying, feeling on her palms the soft fur of her pet, and she wondered if someone was looking after Shera. And it was the first time she had thought that they, the People, had gone fast away from the houses, run away; but what had happened to their house animals, the dog and Shera? Meanwhile above her head the man and woman were talking in low, frightened voices. They were disagreeing. The man got his way, and in a moment she and Dann were lifted up again and the two grown-ups were in the water, which was nearly up to their shoulders now, so that the children were in it to their waists, and they were wading as fast as they could to another hill, much higher, less rocky, not far away. But it seemed very far, as the water was rising around them; and the tussocks of grass they could not see tripped them up, and the man once even fell, and Dann tumbled out of his arms and disappeared into the water, while Mara cried out. But the man got up from the water, picked Dann out of it, and when a roar from behind said there was another big wave on the way, he tried to run, and did run, making great, splashing bounds, easier as the water grew shallower; and they all reached this other hill just as the new wave banged into them, and their heads went under, and then they were up on the side of the hill, together with all kinds of animals, who were dragging themselves up, streaming water, half drowned, their open mouths full of water.
The children were carried nearly to the top of this hill, which was much higher than the one they had left. When they looked back they could see the water was already halfway up, past where they had been standing, and the animals there were so thickly clustered their horns and trunks were like the little, dead forest near home with its branches sticking up. Now the water covered everywhere: there was nothing to be seen but water, brown, tossing and flooding water, and all the hills were crowded with animals. Just near where the four people stood, the two children clutching tight to the legs of their rescuers, was a big, flat rock covered in snakes. Mara had never seen them alive, though she knew there were still some left. They were lying stretched out or coiled up, hardly moving, as if they were dead, but they were tired. And snakes were swimming towards the hill, through the waves, and when they reached the dry ground they slithered out and just lay, still.
‘Some cloudburst,’ said the woman, and above them was a blue sky without one cloud in it, and the sun shone down on the flood. ‘I saw a river come down once, like this, but it was thirty years ago,’ said the man. ‘I was about the age of these children. It was up north. The big dam burst in the hills – no maintenance.’ ‘This is no dam,’ said the woman. ‘No dam could hold this amount of water.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d say the plain above the Old Gorge flooded, and the water got funnelled through the gorge down to here.’ ‘A pity we can’t stop all this water flooding to waste.’
Meanwhile Dann had found a hollow place in a flat rock where the water was trickling in, and he was sitting in the water. But he was not alone: lizards and snakes were there with him.
‘Dann,’ shouted Mara. The child took no notice. He was stroking a big, fat, grey snake that lay beside him in the water, and making sounds of pleasure. ‘Stop it, that’s dangerous,’ said Mara, looking up at the woman so she could stop Dann; but she did not hear. She was staring off in the direction Mara knew was north, and yet another wall of water was coming down. It was not as high as the others, but enough to push in front of it boulders and dead animals, the big ones with trunks and big ears and tusks.
‘We can’t afford to lose any more animals,’ said the man. And the woman said, ‘I suppose a few more dead don’t make any difference.’
They were speaking very loudly above the sounds of the water and the banging rocks and stones, and the cries of the animals.
At this moment Dann got up out of his pool, unlooping a big green snake that had come to rest around his arm, and climbed up towards them, careful not to step on a snake or an animal too exhausted to move out of his way, and stood in front of the two grown-ups and said, ‘I’m hungry. I’m so hungry.’ And now Mara realised she had been hungry for a long time. How long was it since they had eaten? The bad people had not given them food. Before that…Mara’s mind was full of sharp little pictures she was trying to fit together: her parents leaning down to say, ‘Be brave, be brave and look after your brother’; the big man with his dark, angry face; before that, the quiet ordinariness of their home before all the terrible things began happening. She could not remember eating: food had been short for quite a long time, but there had been things to eat. Now she looked carefully at Dann, and she had not done that for days because she had been so thirsty and so frightened, and she saw that his face was thin and yellowish though usually he was a chubby, shiny little child. She had never seen him like this. And she saw something else: his tunic, the brown sack thing of the Rock People, was quite dry. The water had streamed off it as he had climbed out of the rock pool. And her tunic was dry. She hated the thin, dead, slippery feel of the stuff, but it did dry quickly.
‘We don’t have much food,’ said the man, ‘and if we eat what we have now we might not find any more.’
‘I’m so hungry,’ whispered Mara.
The man and the woman looked worriedly at each other.
‘It isn’t far now,’ he said.
‘But there’s all that water.’
‘It’ll drain away soon.’
‘Far? Where?’ demanded Mara, tugging at the brown slipperiness of the woman’s tunic. ‘Home? Are we near home?’ Even as she said it her heart was sinking because she knew it was nonsense: they were not going home. The woman squatted down so that her face was on the same level as hers, and the man did the same for the boy. ‘Surely you’ve got that into your head by now?’ said the woman. Her big face, all bone and hollows, her eyes burning out between the bones, seemed desperate with sadness. The man had Dann by the arms and was saying, ‘You must stop this, you must.’ But the little boy hadn’t said anything. He was crying: tears were actually falling down his poor cheeks now that he had drunk enough to let him cry properly.
‘What did Lord Gorda tell you? Surely he told you?’
Mara had to nod, miserably, tears filling her throat.
‘Well then,’ said the woman, straightening up. The man, too, rose, and the two stood looking at each other; and Mara could see that they didn’t know what to do or say. ‘It’s too much for them to take in,’ the woman said, and the man said, ‘Hardly surprising.’
‘But they have to understand.’
‘I do understand. I do, really,’ said Mara.
‘Good,’ said the woman. ‘What is the most important thing?’
The little girl thought and said, ‘My name is Mara.’
And then the man said to the little boy, ‘And what is your name?’
‘It’s Dann,’ said Mara quickly, in case he had forgotten; and he had, because he said, ‘It isn’t my name. My name isn’t Dann.’
‘It’s a question of life and death,’ said the man. ‘You’ve got to remember that.’
‘Better if you could try to forget your real name,’ said the woman. And Mara thought that she easily could, for that name was in her other life, where people were friendly and kind and she wasn’t thirsty all the time.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Dann again.
The two grown-ups looked to see that the rock behind them did not have a snake on it. There were a couple of lizards and some scorpions, who did not look as if the water had discouraged them. They must have emerged from crevices to see what the disturbance was all about. The man took up a stick and gently pushed it at the scorpions and lizards, and they disappeared into the rocks.
The four of them sat down on the rock. The woman had a big bag tied around her waist. Water had got into it, but the food inside was so well wrapped in wads of leaves that it was almost dry, only a little wet. There were two slabs of thick white stuff, and she broke each slab into two so they each had a piece. Mara took a bite and found her mouth full of tasteless stuff.
‘That’s all there is,’ said the woman.
Dann was so hungry he was taking big bites and chewing and swallowing, and taking another bite. Mara copied him.
‘Anything you don’t finish, give back,’ said the woman. She was not eating but watching the children eat. ‘Eat,’ said the man to her. ‘You must.’ But he had only eaten a little himself.
‘Is it the Rock People’s food?’ asked Dann, surprising his sister, but pleasing her, for she knew that he did notice things, remembered, and came out with it later, even when you’d think he was too little to understand.
‘Yes, it is,’ said the man, ‘and you’d better learn to like it because I doubt whether you’ll get much else – at least, not for a while.’
‘Probably for a good long while,’ said the woman, ‘the way things are going.’
The man and the woman stood up and went forward to the very edge of a rock to take a good, long look at the water. It was still at the same height. And all the hills were crowded, simply crammed, with animals waiting for the flood to go down, just as they were. Down below, the great plain of brown water hurried past, still carrying bushes where little animals clung, and trees where big animals balanced; but now it seemed that there was less fret and storm in the water.
‘It has reached its peak,’ said the woman.
‘If there isn’t more to come,’ said the man.
The sky was still a hard, clear blue, like a lid over everything. The sun was shining hot and fierce, and there were no new big waves from the north.
Dann had gone to sleep holding a half-eaten hunk of the white stuff. The woman took it from him and put it in her bag. She sat down and her eyes closed and her head fell forward. The man’s eyes closed and he sank down, asleep.
‘But we must keep awake,’ the little girl was pleading, ‘we must. Suppose the bad people come? Suppose a snake bites us?’ And then she tumbled off to sleep, but later only knew she had been asleep because she was scrambling up, thinking, Where’s my brother? Where are the others? And her head was aching because she had been lying in the sun, which had moved and was going down, sending pink reflections from the sky across the water. But the water that had covered everything had gone down and was a river racing down the middle part of the valley. Dann was awake and holding the hand of the woman, and they were standing higher up where they could see everything easily. This hill was now surrounded by brown mud, and the yellow grasses were just beginning to lift up.
‘Where are we going to cross over?’ asked the woman.
‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to,’ said the man.
Now the rocks around them did not have animals all over them, for they were carefully making their way back towards the high ground on the ridge. Mara thought that soon they would all be thirsty again. And then: We’ll be thirsty too, and hungry. They had slept all afternoon.
‘I think it would be safe to have a try,’ said the man. ‘Between the waterholes there will be hard ground.’
‘A bit dangerous.’
‘Not as dangerous as staying here if they are coming after us.’
The dark was filling the sky. The stars came out, and up climbed a bright yellow moon. The mud shone, the tufts of grass shone, and the fast water that was now a river shone.
The man jumped down off the rocks and down the hill to the bottom, where his feet squelched as he took a few steps. ‘It is hard underneath,’ he said.
He picked up Dann, who was sleepy and silent, and said to Mara, ‘Can you manage?’
When Mara jumped down there was a thickness of mud under her feet, but a hardness under that. The moonlight was so strong it made big shadows from the rocks, and from the branches that were stuck in the mud, and sad shadows from the drowned animals lying about everywhere. The grasses dragged at their feet, but they went on, past the hill where they had been first, and where now there were no animals at all, and then they reached the edge of the river. The other side seemed a long way off. The man picked up one of the torn-off branches, held the leafy part, carefully stepped to the very edge of the water. He poked the branch in and it went right down. He went squelching along the edge and tried again, and it went down. He did it farther along and this time the wood only went in to about the height of the children’s knees. ‘Here,’ he said, and the woman lifted Mara up. The two big people stepped into the brown water, which was racing past, rippling and noisy, but not deep, not here. The man went ahead with Dann, poking the wood of the branch into the water at every step, and the woman, with Mara, was just behind. Mara thought, Suppose the flood comes down now? We’ll be drowned. And she was trembling with fear. They were right in the middle now, and everything glistened and shone because of the moon, which was making a gold edge on every ripple. The mud on the other side of the water was a stretch of yellowish light. They were going so slowly, a step and then a stop, while the man poked the water, and then another step and a stop. It seemed to go on and on, and then they were out of the water and on the mud. Close by were some trees. They had had water quite high up their trunks, though usually they were on the edge of a waterhole. They seemed quite fresh and green, and that was because they were here, not far from water, while the trees around Mara’s home were dying, or dead. There were dark blotches on the branches. Birds. They must have been sitting here safely all through the flood.
Now they were well past the water. Mara felt herself being set down, while the woman’s whole body seemed to lift itself up because of the relief of not having Mara’s weight. And again Mara thought, She must be so tired, and weak too, because I’m not so heavy really.
They were walking carefully through the dirty and wet tussocks of grass, away from the water. They reached the rise that was as far as they had been able to see from the top of the big hill they had been on and, when they were over it, ahead were trees, quite a lot. So this couldn’t be anywhere near their home – Mara had been thinking wildly, although she knew it couldn’t be true, that perhaps they were going back home. She was trying to remember if she had ever seen so many trees all together. These had their leaves, but as she passed under them she could smell their dryness. These thirsty trees must have been thinking of all that water rushing past, just over the ridge, but they couldn’t get to it.
The man stumbled and fell because he had tripped over a big white thing. It was a bone. He was on his feet at once, telling Dann, who had taken another tumble and was wailing, ‘Don’t cry, hush, be quiet.’
Ahead was another river, full of fast water, and the wet had reached all the way up here to the edge of the trees and had pushed away earth from under a bank, making a cave; and in the cave were a lot of white sticks: bones. The man poked his branch into the bones and they came clattering out.
‘Do you realise what we are seeing?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman, and although she was tired she was actually interested.
‘What is it, what is it?’ Mara demanded, tugging at the woman’s hand and then at the man’s.
‘This is where the old animals’ bones piled up, and the water has exposed them – look.’
Mara saw tusks so long and thick they were like trees; she saw enormous white bones; she saw cages made of bones, but she knew they were ribs. She had never imagined anything could be this big.
‘These are the extinct animals,’ said the man. ‘They died out hundreds of years ago.’
‘Why did they?’
‘It was the last time there was a very bad drought. It lasted for so long all the animals died. The big ones. Twice as big as our animals.’
‘Will this drought be as long as that?’
‘Let’s hope not,’ he said, ‘or we’ll all be extinct too.’ The woman laughed. She actually laughed; but Mara thought it was not funny, it was dreadful. ‘Really we should cover all these bones up again and mark where they are, and when things get better we can come and examine them properly.’
He believed that things were going to get better, Mara thought.
‘No time now,’ the woman said.
The man was poking with his branch at the wet earth, and it was falling away and the bones kept tumbling out, clashing and clattering.
‘Why here?’ whispered Mara.
‘Probably another flood like this brought down dead animals and they piled up here. Or perhaps it was a graveyard.’
‘I didn’t know animals had graveyards.’
‘The big animals were very intelligent. Nearly as clever as people.’
‘This is no graveyard,’ said the woman. ‘All the different species together? No, it was a flood. We’ve seen today how it must have happened.’
The man was pulling from the mass of bones a ribcage so big that when he stood inside it the ribs were like a house over him. The ends of the ribs rested on the wet earth and sank in because of the weight. The big central bone, the spine, was nearly as thick as the man’s body. If some of the ribs had not been broken away, leaving gaps, the man would not have been able to pull it: it would have been too heavy.
‘What on earth could that have been?’ said the woman, and he answered, ‘Probably the ancestor of our horse. They were three times as big.’ He went on standing there, with the broken ribs curving over him, the moon making another shadow cage with a blotch in it that was his shadow, lying near.
‘Don’t forget where this place is,’ said the woman to Mara. ‘We’ll do our best to come back, but with things as they are who knows…’ And she stopped herself from going on, thinking she would frighten Mara. Who was thinking, That means she doesn’t know how frightening all the other things she has said were. And how could Mara remember where the bones were when she didn’t know where she was going?
‘Come on,’ said the woman, ‘we must hurry.’
But the man didn’t want to leave. He would have liked to go on poking about among those old bones. But he came out from the ribs of the ancient horse and lifted up Dann, and they walked on, Mara holding tight to the woman’s hand.
Soon it was dry underfoot. They were back in the dryness that Mara knew. She could hear the singing beetles hard at it in the trees. She felt her tunic: dry. The mud on her legs and feet was dry. Soon they would all be thirsty again. Mara was already a bit thirsty. She thought of all that water they had left and longed for it. Her skin felt dry again. The moon was getting its late look, and was going down the sky.
It was hot. Everything was rustling with dryness: grass, bushes, a little creeping wind. Then, ahead, was a Rock Village, and the man said to the little boy, ‘Don’t make a sound,’ and the woman said to Mara, very low, ‘Quiet, quiet,’ and they were running towards the village. It was not empty like the other one, for it had a feel of being lived in, and from a window in a house light came, just a little, dim light. And in a moment they had reached this house, and the man had slid the door along, and a tall woman came out at once. She put her hand on Mara’s shoulder; and when the little boy, half asleep, slid down out of the man’s arms, she put her other hand on his shoulder; and the three big people whispered over Mara’s head, fast and very low, so she could not hear; and then she heard, ‘Goodbye Mara, goodbye Dann,’ and then these two who had rescued them – and carried them and held them and fed them, brought them safely through all that water – they were running off, bending low, and in a moment had disappeared up into the trees that grew among rocks.
‘Come in,’ said this new woman in a whisper. And pushed the children inside, and followed them, and pulled the door across in its groove.
They were inside a room, like the other rock room, but this was bigger. In the middle was a table made of blocks of stone, like the other. Around it were stools made of wood. On the wall was a lantern, the same as the ones that were used in storerooms or servants’ rooms, which burned oil.
On the walls too were lamps of the kind that went out by themselves when the light was bright enough and came on when it was dark, and dimmed and lightened as the light changed; but these globes were broken, just like the ones at home. It had been a long time since these clever lamps had worked.
The woman was saying, ‘And now, before anything else, what is your name?’
‘Mara,’ said the child, not stumbling over it.
And now the woman looked at the little boy, who did not hesitate but said, ‘My name is Dann.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘And my name is Daima.’
‘Mara, Dann and Daima,’ said Mara, smiling in what she meant to be a special way at Daima, who smiled back in the same way. ‘Exactly,’ she said.
And now, the way Daima looked them over made Mara examine herself and her brother. Both were filmed with dust from the last bit of walking and there were crusts of mud all up their legs.
Daima went next door and came back with a wide, shallow basin made of the metal Mara knew never chipped or broke or bent. This was put on the floor. Mara took off Dann the brown, slippery garment and stood him in the basin and began to pour water over him. He stood there half asleep, and yet he was trying to catch drops of water with his hands.
‘We are so thirsty,’ said Mara.
Daima poured half a cup of water from a big jug, this time made of clay, and gave it to Mara to give to Dann. Mara held it while he drank it all, greedily; and when Mara gave the cup back to Daima she thought it could happen as it did yesterday – yesterday?…it seemed a long time ago – when Dann drank all the water and it was not noticed that she had not drunk anything. So she held the cup out firmly and said, ‘I’m thirsty too.’ Daima said, smiling, ‘I hadn’t forgotten you,’ and poured out half a cup.
Mara knew this carefulness with water so well there was no need to ask. When Dann stepped out of the basin, Mara pulled off the brown thing and stood in the dirtied water. Daima handed her the cup to pour with and Mara poured water over herself, carefully, for she knew she was being watched to see how well she did things and was aware of everything she did. Then, just as she was going to say, Our hair, it’s full of dust, Daima took a cloth and energetically rubbed it hard over Mara’s hair, interrupting herself to examine the cloth, which was brown and heavy with dust. Another cloth was used to rub Dann’s hair, as dirty as Mara’s. The two dusty cloths were thrown into the bathwater to be washed later.
The two children stood naked. Daima took the tunics they had taken off to the door, slid it back a little and shook them hard. In the light from the wall lamp that fell into the dark they could see dust clouds flying out. Daima had to shake the tunics a long time.
Then they went back over Dann’s head and Mara’s head. She knew they were not dirty now. She knew a lot about this stuff the tunics were made of: that it could not take in water, that dust and dirt only settled on it but did not sink in, that it need never be washed, and it never wore out. A tunic or garment could last a person’s life and then be worn by the children and their children. The stuff could burn, but only slowly, so there would be time to snatch it out of flames, and there would not even be scorch marks. There were chests of the things at home; but everyone hated them and so they were not worn, only by the slaves.
Now Daima asked, ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Yes,’ said Mara. The little boy said nothing. He was nearly asleep, where he stood.
‘Before you go to sleep remember something,’ said Daima, bending down to him. ‘When people ask, you are my grandchildren. Dann, you are my grandson.’ But he was asleep, and Mara caught him and carried him where Daima pointed, to a low couch of stone that had on it a pad covered with the same slippery, brown stuff. She laid him down but did not cover him because it was already so hot.
On the rock table Daima had put a bowl with bits of the white stuff Mara had eaten yesterday, but now it was mixed with green leaves and some soup. Mara ate it all, while Daima watched.
Then Mara said, ‘May I ask some questions?’
‘Ask.’
‘How long will we be here?’ And as she asked, again, she knew the answer.
‘You are staying here.’
Mara was not going to let herself cry.
‘Where are my father and mother?’
‘What did Gorda tell you?’
Mara said, ‘I was so thirsty while he was telling me things, I couldn’t listen.’
‘That’s rather a pity. You see, I don’t know much myself. I was hoping you could tell me.’ She got up, and yawned. ‘I was awake all night. I was expecting you sooner.’
‘There was a flood.’
‘I know. I was up there watching it go past.’ She pointed to the window, which was just a square hole in the wall with nothing to cover it or stop people looking in. It was light outside: the sun was up. Daima pointed through it, past some rock houses to a ridge. ‘That’s where you came. Over that ridge is the river. Not the place you crossed, but the same one higher up. And beyond that is another river – if you can call them rivers now. They are just waterholes.’ Then she took Mara by the shoulders and turned her round so that she was facing into the room. ‘Your home is in that direction. Rustam is there.’
‘How far is it from here?’
‘In the old days, by sky skimmer, half a day. Walking, six days.’
‘We came part of the way with a cart bird. But it got tired and stopped.’ And now Mara’s eyes filled and she said, beginning to cry, ‘I think it must be dead, it was so thin.’
‘I think you are tired. I’m going to put you to bed.’
Daima took Mara into an inner room. It was like the outer room without the big table of rocks in the middle, but it had couches made of rocks, three of them, built against the walls. It wasn’t thatch here but a roof of thin pieces of stone.
Daima showed Mara which shelf to use and a little rock room that was the lavatory and said, ‘I shall lie down for a little too. Don’t take any notice when I get up.’ And she lay down on a shelf that had pads on it to make it soft, and seemed to be asleep.
Mara on her rocky shelf, which was hard in spite of the pads, was far from sleeping. For one thing she was worrying about Dann next door. Suppose he woke and found himself alone in a strange place? She wanted to wake Daima and tell her, but didn’t dare. Several times she crept off this hard shelf that was supposed to be a bed and crept to the doorway to listen, but then Daima got up and went next door. Mara had time to take a good look at her.
Daima was old. She was like Mara’s grandmothers and grand-aunts. She had the same glossy, long, black hair, streaked all the way to the ends with grey, and her legs had knots of veins on them. Her hands were long and bony. Mara suddenly thought, But she’s a Person, she’s one of the People, so what is she doing here in a rock village?
Now Mara knew she wouldn’t sleep. She sat up and looked carefully around her. A big floor candle made a good, steady light she could see nearly everything by. These walls were made of big blocks of rock. They were smooth, and she could see carvings on them, some coloured. These walls were not like the ones in the other rock house, whose walls had been rough. Overhead, the big stone columns that held up the stone slabs of the roof had carvings on them. There were shelves made of rock, and in the corner a little room, sticking out, and opposite that a door into an inner room, with curtains of the brown, slippery stuff. This room had a window, but there were wooden shutters, not properly closed. People could see in if they wanted. Outside now, people were walking about; Mara could hear them: they were talking.
Now Mara was sitting up, arms on her knees, and she had never thought harder in her life.
At home there was a game that all the parents played with their children. It was called, What Did You See? Mara was about Dann’s age when she was first called into her father’s room one evening, where he sat in his big carved and coloured chair. He said to her, ‘And now we are going to play a game. What was the thing you liked best today?’
At first she chattered: ‘I played with my cousin…I was out with Shera in the garden…I made a stone house.’ And then he had said, ‘Tell me about the house.’ And she said, ‘I made a house of the stones that come from the river bed.’ And he said, ‘Now tell me about the stones.’ And she said, ‘They were mostly smooth stones, but some were sharp and had different shapes.’ ‘Tell me what the stones looked like, what colour they were, what did they feel like.’
And by the time the game ended she knew why some stones were smooth and some sharp and why they were different colours, some cracked, some so small they were almost sand. She knew how rivers rolled stones along and how some of them came from far away. She knew that the river had once been twice as wide as it was now. There seemed no end to what she knew, and yet her father had not told her much, but kept asking questions so she found the answers in herself. Like, ‘Why do you think some stones are smooth and round and some still sharp?’ And she thought and replied, ‘Some have been in the water a long time, rubbing against other stones, and some have only just been broken off bigger stones.’ Every evening, either her father or her mother called her in for What Did You See? She loved it. During the day, playing outside or with her toys, alone or with other children, she found herself thinking, Now notice what you are doing, so you can tell them tonight what you saw.
She had thought that the game did not change; but then one evening she was there when her little brother was first asked, What Did You See? and she knew just how much the game had changed for her. Because now it was not just What Did You See? but: What were you thinking? What made you think that? Are you sure that thought is true?
When she became seven, not long ago, and it was time for school, she was in a room with about twenty children – all from her family or from the Big Family – and the teacher, her mother’s sister, said, ‘And now the game: What Did You See?’
Most of the children had played the game since they were tiny; but some had not, and they were pitied by the ones that had, for they did not notice much and were often silent when the others said, ‘I saw…’, whatever it was. Mara was at first upset that this game played with so many at once was simpler, more babyish, than when she was with her parents. It was like going right back to the earliest stages of the game: ‘What did you see?’ ‘I saw a bird.’ ‘What kind of a bird?’ ‘It was black and white and had a yellow beak.’ ‘What shape of beak? Why do you think the beak is shaped like that?’
Then she saw what she was supposed to be understanding: Why did one child see this and the other that? Why did it sometimes need several children to see everything about a stone or a bird or a person?
But the lessons with the other children stopped. It was because of all the trouble going on, and people going away, for every day there were fewer children, until there were only Mara and Dann and their near cousins.
Then there were no lessons, not even with the parents, who were silent and nervous and kept calling the children indoors; and then…there was the night when the parents were not there and she and Dann were with the bad man. The good brother was called Gorda. He was Lord Gorda, so said the two who had rescued them. She knew that there was a king and that her parents had something to do with the court.
She kept trying to put herself back into standing in front of Gorda while he was telling her things and she couldn’t listen, but all she could see was that tired face of his, all bones, the eyes red with wanting to sleep, his mouth with the grey scum at the corners. He was so thin – just like the cart bird. He was not far off dying, Mara realised. Perhaps he was dead by now? And her parents? He had been telling her about her parents.
And now this place, this village. Rock People. In it a Person. She was sheltering them and she was afraid someone would come after them, but why would they want to? Why were Dann and she so important and, if so, who thought so?
And as she puzzled over this, the child’s head fell on to her knees and she slid sideways and slept…And then Daima was bending over her and she could hear her brother’s voice, ‘Mara, Mara, Mara.’
There was a strong yellow glare beyond the window square. It must be the middle of the day. Outside now no voices, no people moving. Time to hide from the sun. It was cool in this room. Mara sat up quickly because of the shrillness of the little boy’s ‘Mara, Mara,’ and was off the rock bed or shelf, and next door, as he rushed at her, nearly knocking her over – ‘Mara, Mara…’ All the fear of the past few days was in his face and his voice and she picked him up and carried him to the rock couch, laid him down and lay beside him. Daima was sitting at the rock table watching how Mara handled the child, ‘There, it’s all right, it’s all right,’ over and over, while Dann wailed, ‘No, no, no, no.’
Daima said, ‘Try to make him cry more quietly.’ And Dann heard, and at once his sobs and wails were quieter. This is what he had learned: to obey fear. Mara held him, and he hid his face on her shoulder and sobbed softly, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ and lay still there, but only for a time, because then it began again. All afternoon Mara lay there with him, and then Daima said, ‘I think he should eat something.’ Mara carried him to the table and he looked at the mess, so unlike anything he had ever eaten, and picked up his spoon and tried it, and made a face; but his hunger made him eat, at first slowly, and then it was all gone.
‘Can I go out?’ he suddenly asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Daima. ‘We are going out at a special time, the three of us. It’s important we do this. Till then, keep in here.’
‘Someone was looking in,’ said Dann.
‘I know. That’s all right. They’ll all know by now that at least one child is here. Tomorrow we’ll go out.’
Again he needed to cling to his sister, so she sat herself on the rocky couch and he sat inside her arm and she played the game with him. ‘When we were on the first hill, what did you see? Then, when we got to the second hill, what animals were there?’ As usual, she was surprised and impressed at what he had noticed. Insects for instance: ‘A great spider in its web between two rocks, yellow and black, and there was a small bird tangled in the web. And on the second hill there was a lizard…’ At this Daima said, ‘What lizard, what kind of lizard?’ Dann said, ‘It was big.’ ‘How big?’ ‘As big as…’ ‘As big as me?’ asked Mara. ‘No, no, as big as you, Daima.’ And Daima was frightened, Mara could see, and said, ‘Next time you see one of those dragons, run.’ ‘I couldn’t run anywhere because of all the water. It didn’t want to eat me, it was eating one of the little animals. It ate it all up.’ ‘But when was that, when did you see it?’ said Mara, thinking he was making it up. But no, he wasn’t: ‘You were asleep, and so were the other two. You were all fast asleep. I woke up because the big lizard was making such a noise, it was going Pah, pah, pah, and then it finished eating and went off into the rocks. And then I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t wake, so I went back to sleep.’
Daima said, ‘You don’t know how lucky you were.’
Mara went on with the game. ‘And when we were going through the water, when we came down from the hill, what did you see?’
And Dann told them. Soon, Mara thought, she would say to him, ‘And what did you see…?’ taking him back to the room where the bad man frightened him; but not yet. He could not bear to think of that yet, Mara knew. Because she could hardly bear to think of it herself.
‘Did you play the game?’ Mara asked Daima. ‘I mean, when you were little?’
‘I did, of course. It’s how the People educate our children. We always have. And let me tell you, it’s stood me in good stead ever since.’
That always … Mara seemed to hear it for the very first time. It frightened her, a little. What did it mean, always?
The light outside was yellow instead of orange and hot, and the voices and movements were there again; and more than once a face appeared in the window hole and Daima nodded at them not to notice, just keep on doing what they were: Mara cuddling Dann and singing to him, Daima at the table. Then it was dark outside, and there were more of the lumps of white food, and this time with it some kind of cheese. The water in the mugs tasted muddy. The evening was beginning. Mara used to love all the things they did when the light went outside and the lights came up bright inside: games of all kinds, and then eating their supper, always with one parent there and sometimes both; and often their cousins stayed to sleep.
Daima was striking on the wall a kind of match Mara had never seen, and with it lighting a tall candle that stood on the floor, and then another, in a little basin of oil that was on a spike pushed in a crack between rocks. The light in the room wasn’t very bright. Both flames wavered and fled about because of the air from the window. Some insects flew in, to the flames. And now Daima picked up a heavy wooden shutter and slid it over the window. The flames stood up quiet and steady. Mara hated that, because she was used to air blowing in the window and through the house.
Dann was on Mara’s lap and she was beginning to ache with his weight. But she knew he needed this and she must go on for as long as he did. And now he began something he had not done since he was a tiny child. He was sucking his thumb, a loud squelching noise, and it was upsetting. Daima was irritated by it. Mara pulled the thumb out of the little boy’s mouth, but he at once jammed it back.
‘I think we should all go to bed,’ said Daima.
‘But it’s early,’ said Mara.
There was a pause then, and Mara knew that what Daima was going to say was important. ‘I know that you are used to a different kind of life. But here you’ll have to do what I do.’ A pause again. ‘I was used to – what you are used to. I’m very sorry, Mara. I do know how you feel.’
Mara realised they were both almost whispering. She had kept her voice low ever since she had come into the rock house. And now Dann said loudly, ‘But why, why, why, Daima? Why, why, why?’ ‘Shhhhh,’ said Daima, and he at once began to whisper, ‘Why, why? I want to know.’ He had learned to obey, all right, and Mara’s heart ached to see how he had changed. She had always loved the little child’s confidence, and his bravery, and the way he chattered his thoughts, half aloud, and sometimes aloud, acting out all kinds of dreams and dramas that went on in his mind. He had never been afraid of anything, ever, and now …
Mara said to Daima, ‘Tomorrow, can we play What Did You See?’
The old woman nodded, but after another pause: she always thought things out before she spoke. Mara thought how everything was slow here, and she was used to everything quick and light and easy – and airy. It was stuffy now. The candles smelled hot and greasy.
‘Tomorrow morning, when we wake up.’ Daima got up, and she was stiff and slow as she went next door. Mara could hear shutters being slid over there too, and could hear the match striking on the stone. A dull yellow light showed in the doorway. Daima came to lift Dann off Mara, saying, ‘Quiet, it is time to be quiet,’ and carried him next door, while he piped, ‘Mara, Mara…’ She followed. Daima put the child where she had lain herself that afternoon. She did not take off his tunic. At home they wore little white shifts to sleep in. Daima said, ‘I wake when it is light. I’ll wake you. Put out the light when you want to.’
There was no door between the main front room and this one. Mara heard Daima moving about, blowing out the flames, and lying down. After a while Mara went to the doorway and looked in. She could just see from the light in her room that Daima was already asleep, lying heavy and still, her long, grey hair all over her head and face and shoulders, like a covering. Of course, she had not slept last night.
Mara went back into her room and found Dann asleep. Again she was saying, ‘I couldn’t go to sleep so early,’ and certainly she was alert and awake, listening. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed or at least into their homes. Silence, everywhere. Mara began examining the walls. She could not make sense of it all. On one big block were carvings of people doing something that looked like a procession, carrying jars and dishes to a man and a woman who had high headdresses. But these people were nothing like the People, who were tall and thin with long, slippery, shiny, black hair. They were solid, with thick shoulders but thin waists, and long feet and narrow faces, and their hair was short, just below their ears and parted in the middle. They wore a tunic or dress that left one shoulder bare. They were not like the Rock People either. Who were they? On another block was a surface of fine, hard, white, and on that coloured pictures – red, yellow and green – of the same people. And now you could see their hair was black and the skin was a reddish pink, and the tunics were striped and tied with long sashes. But this picture was part of another picture, for only some was on this stone, and the edge of the stone interrupted the story. Other stones were blank, and even rough, and some had the figures going up towards the roof and were part of other stories; and the stones that had the white surfaces and the colours could even be upside down, so Mara stood with her head bent to see them. Why had she never seen anything like these people before? Where had all those bright, pretty clothes gone to? The cloth they were made of was finer than she had ever seen, and she could feel it soft and supple between her fingers when she closed her eyes to imagine it.
The candle that stood in a little shallow dish was sinking. Once it was out, Mara could not relight it. If she wanted to see she would have to slide the shutter along, but she was afraid of waking Daima. Then she saw a stick about the length of her finger near the candle, and she knew she must rub it on the wall to make a light if she needed one. She blew out the candle and rushed to her low bed where the slippery pads were.
It was completely dark. The dark seemed to be the same as the stuffiness. In her home Mara went to bed in a tall, light room open all around with windows, where she could pull the curtains back if she wanted and it was never really dark. The sky was always just there, outside, and the stars shone so brightly sometimes they woke her up.
Now Mara lay stiff, listening, alert with all of herself. This house was on the edge of the village. Not far away were some of the low, dry trees she had seen, and she ought to be hearing night noises: a bird perhaps, or the singing beetles who could go on all night when it was hot. But she could not hear anything. The air was heavy with the smell of the candle, and there was a little-child smell from where Dann lay asleep on his shelf. She had always loved burying her face in his neck, while he laughed and clung to her and she took in breaths of that warm, fresh, friendly smell; but he wasn’t laughing now, but seemed to be dreaming, a bad dream, because he was whimpering. Ought she to be waking him, comforting him, holding him…? She fell asleep, and woke to see Daima lifting the shutter down and letting in the morning light. And Dann was already running across to fling himself on her – ‘Mara, Mara’ – and she fell back with his weight, and then pulled herself up, holding him, and carried him, while he clutched her, next door, where the shutter was off and Daima’s bed was tidied.
Later, this is what she remembered most when she tried to relive that time in her mind: the damp weight of the child, his face pressed into her shoulder, his clinging, and how her arms and then her back ached. And Daima watched and understood it all. Soon Daima would find ways of calling Dann away for a little, to go with her into another room or to help her, so Mara could rest.
Food was waiting on the table: bowls of the white lumps, this time with sour milk. Mara was beginning to hate this food, but she knew she had to eat it. And Dann was eating. Daima ate very little, watching them. Mara thought, That means food is short.
When they had finished, Mara asked, ‘May I see your house now?’
‘Begin with this room.’
Mara looked carefully around, and the first thing to notice was that there were no carvings on the rocks and no bright pictures. Over her head was thatch. It was a rough grass with some straws hanging down from it. All the blocks of rock were the same size, and smooth, and fitted together without the stuff that filled the spaces between the bricks she was used to. And they did fit, very well, but in some places there were cracks big enough to be useful, because the dish-lamp spike could go in. There were hooks, made of the same spikes bent, that had all kinds of things hanging on them: spoons and dishes and knives. All the things they used for eating were on the walls.
Mara went into the room she had slept in with Dann. She knew that room now, and about the lavatory in the little rock room, which was a deep hole going far down into the rocky soil. Near it was a box with earth and a shovel. There was a jug to pour water over yourself when you had finished, but nothing to dry with, and that was because of the slipperiness of the brown stuff that seemed to be used for everything when you wanted cloth. The air was so dry the wet between your legs dried quickly.
Dann came rushing after her – ‘Mara, Mara’ – and grabbed her hand, and with Dann clinging to her hand, and Daima just behind, she went into the room separated from the sleeping room by a curtain. In it were only some stones in the middle of the rock floor. This was where Daima cooked. There were three stones, with ashes between them. All the stones were blackened by smoke, and so were the pots and pans that stood together along a wall. Above the cooking place was a hole in the roof, which in this room was made of flat bits of stone, and there was a rope to pull if you wanted to close the hole and make this stone go up flat against the roof if it rained. There were old insect webs on the rope, so the stone had been where it was for a long time. The rocks that made this room were rough, and put together so you could see through them in places to the outside. There were no carvings or pictures on the walls here. There was a door into another room that had a heavy wooden beam across it. The end of the beam had a chain, and Daima opened with a big key where the chain fitted together. She lifted the beam aside. They stepped into the dark. Daima struck a light on the wall and lit a big floor candle, and then another. There were no windows. This room was a big, square rock box, and in a corner was smaller rock box. Mara could not see over into it, and tried to pull herself up with her arms, letting go of Dann; and when she had got up, she sat on the edge and saw that in it was water. There was another big rock box, and a wooden chest of the kind she knew from her own home. Dann was tugging at her legs and whimpering, so she jumped down and took his hand. Daima lifted up the child, and he let her. He was getting used to her. He lay against her, and put his thumb in his mouth and sucked. Suck, suck, suck. Daima did not stop him. Mara went to the other rock box and found it full of white, floury stuff. This was what they were eating. She tasted it, but it did not taste of much.
‘Is this a plant?’
‘A root.’
‘Does it grow around here?’
‘It used to. Everyone grew it. Not now: we haven’t had enough rain.’
‘Then where does this come from?’
‘People bring it from the north and sell it to us.’
‘What if they don’t come?’
‘Then we would be very hungry,’ said Daima.
Suck, suck, suck. The sound was driving Mara quite wild with dislike of it, an irritation that made her want to hit her little brother, and she was ashamed of herself and began to cry. She had hardly cried all this time. Crying, she went to the enormous wooden chest. She could just lift the lid. Inside were clothes of the kind they wore at home: delicate, light coloured tunics and trousers and scarves. They were made from the plants she had seen growing before everything got so dry, or of the stuff worms made. Because she was crying, and she knew her hands were dirty, she did not touch them; but she wanted to plunge her hands into the clothes, or stroke them, then throw off the nasty brown thing she was wearing and put on these. She stood by the big chest looking, and wanting, and crying, and listening to how her little brother sucked his thumb. Then Daima took the thumb out of Dann’s mouth, and he turned his face into her neck and howled.
Mara thought, Poor Daima, with two crying children, and stopped crying.
She wiped her hands carefully on her tunic and just gently stroked the robe that lay on top. It was a soft, glowing yellow. As she stroked, she thought that at home these clothes were in the big chests because they were precious and must be looked after. She knew now that these were carefully kept clothes from the past, and no one expected to have new ones.
She let the lid of the chest drop on the yellow, and looked at the grey rock all around. There were no pictures on these walls.
On a rock shelf lay bundles of the brown garments, lying anyhow. You couldn’t hurt them no matter what you did.
She went to a door, this time a slab of rock in a groove, but it was too heavy for her, and Daima slid it aside. Dark – or almost, because light came in from the floor candles next door. This room was empty, but on the walls were the broken up pictures, like the brightly coloured ones on the hard, white stuff.
‘You can come in and look at the wall pictures another time,’ said Daima.
She went through this dark room to another rock door, slid that back, lit a match, and in its flare Mara saw a rock room, empty, like this.
‘There are two other rooms,’ said Daima. ‘Four empty rooms in all.’
‘Do they have the pictures?’
‘Two of them do.’
They went back the way they had come, and Daima slid the chain into place on the storeroom and locked it. In the room where the children slept she put the little boy down on the bed. He had gone to sleep. ‘It is a good thing he is sleeping. Perhaps he will sleep away the bad memories,’ she said.
The old woman and the child went into the room where they ate. They sat at the rock table.
‘Do you want to start?’ asked Daima.
Mara’s mind was full of new thoughts and she almost said, Not yet, but said, ‘Yes.’ She began, slowly, thinking as she talked. ‘You have four empty rooms. That means the other houses aren’t crowded, or the Rock People would come and live here. Have some of them gone away?’
‘A lot died when we had the drought disease. And some went north.’
‘Then it’s the same as in Rustam. It is half empty.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There used to be people coming through, both ways, going north, going south, and they told us what was going on. Now they hardly ever come. One was here two months ago. He said there was fighting in Rustam.’
‘Two months…I didn’t know there was fighting.’
‘I expect your parents were trying not to frighten you.’
‘That means they thought the fighting was going to stop.’
‘No, Mara, I don’t think they believed that.’
Mara sat silent. She said, ‘I don’t want to go on with that bit, I don’t want to cry again.’ And her lips were trembling. She steadied herself and said, ‘You have your food and water in a room that has locks. That means you are afraid they will be stolen. But if all the Rock People got together they could lift the stones of the roof away and take the food and water. That means they still have food and water of their own.’
‘We still have enough. But only just. And if it rained properly here, we could grow a crop and fill our storerooms and our tanks.’
‘I could see it hasn’t rained for a long time. I could see from how the trees looked. The trees we have left look worse than your trees, but your trees are dry.’
Mara was thirsty, talking about rain. She was used to being thirsty. But she was licking dry lips, and Daima saw, and poured her half a cup of the not very nice water.
Mara went on, ‘This house wasn’t built all at the same time. The rooms that have the stones with pictures were built first. The stones must have come from another house where the pictures went the same way.’
‘Good,’ said Daima.
‘Some rooms were built on later. Like this room.’
‘Good,’ said Daima again.
‘So once this village must have had a lot of people and they needed more room.’
‘It has far fewer people now than it had then. But that was ten years ago. It was before you were born.’
There was a good long pause here while Mara tried to understand that before you were born, because her life seemed to have gone back a long way, beginning with little, bright memories, mostly of her brother.
She said, ‘The pictures on the stones are not Rock People or the People. Other kinds of people live around here.’
‘Lived here.’
‘When?’
‘They think thousands of years ago.’
‘Thousands…’ But Mara could not take this in. Only a moment ago she had been trying to work out: Ten years ago is three years before I was born, and the three years had seemed to her a very long time.
‘They think as much as six or seven thousand years. They left old buildings up on that hill there.’
Mara’s eyes filled with tears: it was those thousands of years, like Daima’s always, that made her want to lie down and sleep, like Dann, who had gone to sleep because everything was too much for him.
Mara went on, ‘You are a Person. You are one of the People, and you live here and the Rock People let you. That means they are afraid of you.’
Daima nodded. ‘Good.’ And then, ‘But not as afraid as they once were.’
Mara could not work this out.
Daima said, ‘You’ve done very well. I’ll tell you the rest.’
‘No, no, let me try. You came here – the way Dann and I did. You had to run away.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that was before I was born?’
Daima smiled. ‘Well, yes. It was thirty years ago.’
‘Thirty…’ And Mara really could not go on.
‘I came here with my two children. My husband was killed in the fighting. We were travelling for many days, and we had to stop and hide because there were soldiers out looking for refugees. Twice I stole horses from the Rock People and we rode them for a while, and then let them loose so they could find their way back home. When we came to villages they wouldn’t let us stop, but these people here did not drive us away.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because the year before the People punished them for attacking a sky skimmer that landed near here.’
‘Did they think you were going to punish them?’
‘They thought I was a spy.’
‘I don’t know that word.’
‘They thought the People had sent me so I could watch them and make reports.’
‘Then they must have hated you.’
‘Yes, they hated us. And the children had to be careful every minute of the day in case there was a trap. Once I had gone to the market – there was a market in those days – and left the children here, and they brought one of the dragons in. But the children locked themselves in an inside room.’
‘What did you do when you came back and found out what had happened?’
‘Nothing. I pretended nothing had happened. I let the dragon out and it went back on to the hill there.’
Mara could see from Daima’s face how much she had suffered because of her children’s being hated. ‘Where are your children?’
‘That is what I hoped you might tell me. They went to Rustam.’
‘But that is where our home is.’
‘Yes.’
And now Mara had to think for a long time. ‘So perhaps I know them?’
‘You probably know of them. Moray and Kluart.’
Mara shook her head. A long silence now, and then Mara said, ‘You’ll have to say.’
‘I had to run away because your family threw my family out of our palace.’
‘Did my family treat you the way Dann and I were by that bad man?’
‘That bad man is my cousin Garth, and so is the good one, Lord Gorda.’
‘Then it is all very difficult.’
‘No. There have always been changes in how the families are friends and enemies.’
‘Always,’ whispered Mara, holding back her tears.
‘Yes. You must understand that, Mara. Sometimes one family is in power, and then another. But some of my family were good friends with your family and became part of the court. And your family heard I was here, later, and sent me presents.’
‘What did they send?’
‘Money. Coins. There was nothing else of any use. I hid it. I’ll show you where; but first I want to be sure no one is coming after you, because if they catch you they’ll want to know if there is money and where it is.’
Mara was trembling, afraid, reminded of the bad man, Garth, saying he would beat her if she did not tell what she knew.
‘I know it is hard for you,’ said Daima. ‘But it is a good time to talk now, when Dann is asleep. Your grandmother was a cousin of my mother’s. She always liked me. Once she even sent a message to come home, and said your parents agreed. But they had not sent the message. And besides…’ she moved the brown stuff away from her chest and right across her old, wrinkled breast were scars where she had been beaten, ‘… I couldn’t forget this. It was your father who gave the order for me to be beaten.’
Mara was crying.
‘It’s no good crying about these things, Mara. Bad things. It’s better to try to understand them. The next thing was, there were rumours about the one you call the bad one. I knew that Garth would try to make a rebellion. I grew up with him and I know him. He was always…you are right to call him bad. I’m not blaming him for wanting to take back what is our family’s: the palace and the land.’
‘You could go back now, if Garth is your family?’
‘No. I don’t trust him. And besides, it won’t last. There’ll be another rebellion and more fighting. The worse things get with water and food, the more fighting. Besides, if he does manage to keep power then he will soon be hated, because he is so cruel. He won’t last. I’m an old woman now, Mara. I’ve lived half my life here, in this village. I know these people. They aren’t my people, but I’ve seen some grow up, and some have been kind to me. When I was ill, after I sent my children back to Rustam, one of them nursed me. She lives in the next house. Her name is Rabat. We help each other.’
‘Do the Rock People know about the beautiful clothes in the chest?’
‘Yes. Rabat took my keys off me when I was sick, and she went in and looked at everything. I lay here in that corner and watched them all go in to find out what I had. They thought I would have more. They looked for the coins but didn’t find them.’
‘They didn’t take any of the clothes?’
‘Yes, some. But they can’t wear them. We are thin and tall, and they are short and thick. The children sometimes wear a tunic until they grow out of it – but our clothes are not meant to last.’ And now there were tears in Daima’s voice. Mara thought, That’s funny – she didn’t cry when she remembered her husband’s being killed, and being beaten and running away, but she wants to cry now and she’s only talking about clothes. ‘Everything is so ugly, Mara. And it all gets worse because it’s such a bad time. And there is a funny thing: all our clothes – the People’s, I mean – and the dishes and the furniture and curtains and coverings, they are all beautiful and delicate and won’t last. But everything here will last forever, and it’s so ugly, so ugly, I can’t bear it.’
‘Didn’t the People ever want the things that last forever?’
‘They were invented long before there were People.’
‘Invented?’
‘You don’t know the word because nothing is invented now. Once, long ago, there was a civilisation – a kind of way of living – that invented all kinds of new things. They had science – that means, ways of thinking that try to find out how everything works – and they kept making new machines, and metals…’ She stopped talking for a while, seeing Mara’s face, then put out her old hand and laid it over Mara’s. ‘There was once a time, but it was a long, long time ago, when there were machines so clever they could do everything – anything you could think of, they could do it – but I’m not talking about then. No one knows why all that came to an end. They say that there were so many wars because of those machines that everyone all over the world decided to smash them. I’m talking of machines since then, simpler ones. And they invented this material that never wears out and the metal you see here that you can’t break. There were whole storehouses of these things, but so deep in big forests no one had ever found them. Then the People came, and they wanted to prevent the Rock People from having them, to keep them for ourselves. But then we said it was not interesting, always having the same clothes and the same everything, nothing wearing out or breaking, so we took the old things and gave them to the Rock People, and went back to growing plants to make cloth, and making dishes and pots out of earthenware. But you might have noticed that in the kitchen at home there were some of the big vessels of this metal, because they are useful for storage.’
Mara was silent, hoping she had taken all this in.
‘Why are the special lamps here – look, like that one? At home only we have them, not the servants or the slaves.’
‘The Rock People raided once when there was a rebellion and fighting in the palace, and took away a lot of things. But it is a long time since these lamps worked. No one knows how they work.’
‘Why didn’t you ask those people who brought Dann and me here where your children are?’
‘There wasn’t time.’
‘Who are those people? Why did they want to save us?’
‘Gorda paid them to bring you. He probably thought there wasn’t any other place that was safe.’
‘Are we safe?’
‘Not very,’ said Daima. ‘But if my children could manage, then so can you.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mara.
‘That’s good,’ said Daima. ‘That means you’ll be on your guard.’
‘I will try.’
‘And now, Mara, we should stop, and you can think about everything and we can talk again.’
‘And play the What Did You See game?’
‘As often as you like. I would enjoy that, after all this time. And we must play it with Dann, because there aren’t schools here and the children are taught nothing at all.’ She got up. ‘It is midday now. This afternoon everyone in the village will go over that ridge to the river, because there will still be new water there from the flood, and we will fill our containers. I’m going to take you and Dann so they can all see you. And remember, you are my grandchildren.’ And she embraced Mara, a good, hard hug, and she said, ‘I wish you were. I’m going to think of you as my granddaughter, Mara. You’re a good girl. No, don’t cry now; you can have a good cry tonight, but if we start crying now we won’t stop. And I’m going to wake Dann, or he’ll not sleep tonight. And I’ve got something new for you to eat.’
She took a big yellow root from a jar and sliced it fine. She put the slices in three bowls, poured water over them and went to fetch Dann.
Mara tasted the water the sliced root was in. It was very sweet and fresh, and Mara did not find it easy to remember her manners and sit quiet, waiting for Dann. He came to sit on Mara’s lap, and sucked his thumb until Daima told him to stop.
They ate up the root and drank the fresh water. Dann wanted more, but Daima said the roots in the jar were all she had until she could go out and hunt for more in the earth.
Daima then gave Mara a big jug and Dann a small one, and she herself lifted up four big cans that had set across their tops pieces of wood to hold them by, tied two by two with loops of rope. She pushed the door and it slid along in its groove, and the light and heat came in. Mara’s eyes hurt, and she saw Dann screw up his eyes and try to turn his face aside, so that he was squinting to see. Then Mara was outside the house, holding Dann’s hand, and her eyes stopped dazzling and she was able to see. There was a crowd of Rock People, all looking at her and at Dann. Mara made herself stand still and look back, hoping they did not see she was frightened. Now she was close to them for the first time in her life, she could see their dull greyish skin and their pale eyes, like sick eyes, and their pale frizzy hair, which stood out around their heads like grass or like bushes. And they were so big. Everything about them seemed to Mara unhealthy and unnatural, but she knew they were not sick but strong people. She had often seen them carrying heavy loads along the roads. A girl was in one of the People’s tunics. It was torn and dirty, but it had been a soft yellow colour once. She was splitting it because she was so big.
Daima was saying, ‘These are my grandchildren. They have come to live with me. This is Mara, and this is Dann.’
Everyone was staring at these two thin, bony little children, with their short black hair that should be shining and smooth but was stiff with dirt.
A man said, ‘Yes, we know about the fighting in Rustam.’ Then he said to Mara, ‘Where are your parents, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mara. Her lips were trembling, and she stood biting them, while he grinned at her, showing big yellow teeth.
‘This is Kulik,’ Daima said. ‘He is the head man here.’
‘Don’t you curtsy to your betters?’ said Kulik.
‘Curtsy?’ said Mara, who had never heard the word.
‘I suppose she expects us to curtsy to her,’ said a woman.
Then another woman came out of the crowd and said to Daima, ‘Come on, the water’s going fast.’
‘This is Rabat,’ said Daima to the children. ‘She lives in this house here, just next to us – remember? I told you about her.’
Rabat said, ‘Pleased to meet you. I remember your parents when they were little, like you.’
Now all the crowd was moving off, and going to where the ridge was and, beyond it, the river. Everyone carried jars and jugs and cans.
Rabat was just in front of Mara, who could see the big buttocks, like hard cushions, moving under the brown stuff, and sweat dripping down fat arms. Rabat smelled strong, a sour, warm smell, and her pale hair glistened as though it had fat on it – but no, it was sweat. And then Mara saw that the brown garments everyone wore seemed different. It was the strong light that was doing it: making the brown silvery, or even whitish, and on one or two people even black; but the colour changed all the time, so that it was as if all these people were wearing shadows that slipped and slid around them. Looking down at her own tunic, Mara saw that it was brown; but when she lifted her arm the sleeve fell down in a pale shimmer that had black in its folds.
Meanwhile Rabat had fallen back to Daima and was saying, very low, ‘Last evening four soldiers came asking for you. I was on my way back from the river and saw them first. They asked if you had children with you and I said no, there were no children. Then they asked where all the people were and I said at the river. I didn’t say you were at home, though I knew you were there with the children. I was afraid they would go to the river and ask, but they were tired. I’d say they were on their last legs. One said they should stay the night in the village, and I was going to tell them we had the drought sickness here, but the others said they should hurry on. They nearly came to blows over it. I’d say they might have killed each other by now. They were quarrelling with every word. It seemed to me they didn’t really want to be bothered with the children at all, they wanted to take the opportunity to run up north.’
‘I am indebted to you,’ said Daima to Rabat, in a deliberate way that Mara could see meant something special.
Rabat nodded: yes, you are. Then she bent down to Mara and said with a big, false smile, ‘And how are your father and mother?’
Mara’s mind was working fast, and it took only a moment to see that Rabat was not talking about her real parents. ‘They were well,’ she said, ‘but now I don’t know.’
‘Poor little thing,’ said Rabat, with the same big, sweet smile. ‘And this is little Dann. How are your father and mother, dear?’ Dann was stumbling on, his feet catching in the grass tussocks and tangles, and he was concentrating so hard on this Mara was afraid he would forget and say, That’s not my name, and Daima was afraid of it too. ‘I don’t know where they are,’ he said. ‘They went away.’ And the tears began running down his dirty face.
Again Mara could not help seeing herself and Dann as all the others must: these two thin, dusty little children, different from everyone here except for Daima.
They were now going up the rise between dry trees whose leaves, Mara knew, would feel, if she took them between her fingers, so crisp and light they would crumble – not like the leaves of the plants in the house at home, soft and thick and alive, that had water put on them. These trees had not been near enough to the flood to get any water.
Now all the crowd stopped on the crest of the rise and waited for four of them to catch up. Again Mara was surrounded by the Rock People: these big, strong people, with their great balls of fuzzy hair that she could see, now she was so close, was not always the same paleness but sometimes almost white, and sometimes a deep yellow. If they wanted to they could kill Dann and her, just like that. But they hadn’t killed Daima, had they? And Rabat was Daima’s friend…No, she wasn’t, Mara thought fiercely. She was not Daima’s friend, but only pretending to be.
In front of them the grass was covered with the brown dirt from the flood, which had been mud but was quite dry now. This was the slope down to where the water was – but surely this could not be the same river, for that had been so wide and this was just a little valley.
There were some trees marking where the water was, and a lot of animals of every kind clustered by the water, and that is why the villagers had to go to the water all together: for protection.
It was quite a short walk down, and the people in front were shouting and yelling to scare away the animals. They were mostly of the kind the People used for meat and milk – rather, had used. Some were smaller furry ones that tried to hide themselves in the grasses; and there were cart birds too, though Mara could not see if the one she thought of as her cart bird was there. All the feathers and fur were dry and you could not see how thin the beasts were.
And now Dann was tugging at Mara’s hand: ‘Water, water,’ he was shouting.
‘You’d better be careful,’ said Rabat to him, ‘or you’ll get yourself eaten up by a water dragon.’ She said this with a smile, but it was not a real smile and Dann shrank away from her.
Now everyone was standing around the biggest pool and beating it with sticks, and there were all kinds of wrigglings and heavings under the water, and dark shapes appeared and sank, and then out came an enormous lizard, a water dragon, that lived in water and pulled smaller animals in to eat. The people stood back as it hissed at them, darting its tongue and banging its tail about, and whipping it from side to side. Then it turned and was off into the grass. ‘They are all going off to the big river,’ said Rabat. ‘There is a lot of water there and it is still running.’
And Mara could see how the different kinds of animals were making their way from this smaller river up on to the ridge opposite and over it. She understood now. This was not the big river she had crossed – how long ago? it seemed a long time – but a smaller one that joined it.
The water of this pool was still being beaten, the sticks flailing about over the surface, and then there appeared a water stinger. Mara had never seen one, though she knew about them. It was very big, as big as the largest of the Rock People, and it had pincers in front that could easily crush Dann, and a long sting like a whip for a tail. This beast came straight out of the water at the people, its pincers opening and closing and its little eyes gleaming and cruel. The people did not run away but stood around it, so they were brave, and they beat the stinger with their sticks; and in a moment it had rushed through a gap in the crowd left for it to run through, and it went into a nearby pool with a big splash. The animals still around that pool sheered away. And now Mara saw that another water stinger, a smaller one, was by that pool and its tail sting was holding a quite big, furry animal – which was still alive, for it was bleating and crying as the pincers tore off bits of meat and stuffed them into the stinger’s mouth.
The crowd were now all standing around the pool they had beaten. And then they all fetched their jars and containers and bent to fill them, and Daima did too, and Rabat, and Mara found a place low among all the big legs and filled her jar, and helped Dann fill his. Then, again, all the people stood around the pool, looking at it. Then, one by one, they stepped down into the water or jumped in. And Dann pulled himself off Mara’s hand and was in, splashing and paddling like a little dog. ‘Hey, there,’ said Kulik, grinning, ‘look what we’ve got here,’ and he ducked Dann, who did not come up at once. Which meant that Kulik was holding him under. ‘Stop it,’ said Daima, and Rabat said nothing but climbed down into the water and pulled Dann up, coughing and spluttering. Kulik only laughed, showing those big yellow teeth. Now Mara was in, and Daima. Dann did not seem to know what had happened, for he was laughing and shouting and struggling to get out of Rabat’s arms back into the brown water. But Daima took the child from Rabat and went out of the water with him, though he was kicking and complaining. She never once even looked at Kulik. Mara quickly splashed herself all over, keeping close to Rabat, who stood near her, her brown tunic floating around her middle, staring hard at Kulik. Then Daima called, ‘Mara,’ who most reluctantly got out of the water, feeling it flow down off her and away from the stuff of her tunic, so that it was dry at once. Mara saw that Daima had called to her because a woman was bending down to take Daima’s cans. As Daima took the cans from her, this woman giggled and smiled, just as if she had not been going to steal Daima’s precious cans.
Rabat had got out of the water, and was standing with them, her tunic streaming and very dark, then lighter and then silver.
Everyone was getting out of the pool, and the animals that had not gone off to the other ridge were coming back and standing at the edge again.
Mara saw that Dann had had all the dust washed off him, but his hair was tangled and dull and her own felt stiff and nasty. Would she ever again have smooth, clean, shiny hair?
Daima, her hands filled with her four cans, and Mara, holding Dann, and Rabat went together away from the pool. Dann was tugging at Mara’s hand, looking back over his shoulder at the pools and the animals and chanting, ‘Water, water, I want the water.’
‘You mustn’t ever go there by yourself,’ said Daima, and suddenly Mara understood what a very big danger that was. If Dann got away from them and went to the water…She would have to watch him every minute. He could never be left alone.
Soon they were walking through the rock houses. Some were bigger than Daima’s, some smaller, some not more than a room with a roof of rough grass. The stone roofs of some houses had fallen in. There were heaps of rock that had been houses. Outside every house was a big tank made of rock. There was one outside Daima’s. All kinds of little pipes and channels led from the different roofs to the tank.
Rabat was saying things to Daima that Mara knew were important.
‘I milked our milk beast,’ she said. ‘And I gave it food and water. I knew you were busy with your grandchildren.’ She did not make that last word a joke with her voice, but Mara knew she meant to tell Daima she did not believe her story.
‘Thank you,’ said Daima. ‘You were very kind. I am in debt to you,’ she said, in the same special way.
‘I took half the milk, as usual,’ said Rabat.
‘I’m going to need milk for the children,’ said Daima.
‘She is giving less milk than she was.’
‘Then I shall need all of it.’
‘You are indebted to me.’
‘You can put the debt for the milk beast against your debt to me for the roots.’
‘What about the soldiers?’
‘That is such a big debt I don’t think a little milk could match it.’
‘A quarter of all the milk,’ said Rabat.
‘Very well,’ said Daima. Her voice sounded heavy, and angry. She did not look at Rabat, who was looking at her in a way that said she was ashamed. ‘They are such pretty children,’ Rabat said, trying to make up for insisting on the milk.
Daima did not say anything.
They had stopped outside the house next to Daima’s. Suddenly the two women embraced, and Mara could see they hadn’t meant to. Rabat was saying, ‘I have hardly any food left. Without the milk…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Daima. ‘We’ll all manage somehow.’
Rabat went into her house, taking the water cans, and the others went on to Daima’s house.
Mara stopped by the big rock cistern. ‘Is there water in here?’
‘There would be if it rained.’
Dann was jumping up like a puppy, trying to get hold of the cistern’s edge so as to haul himself up. Daima took the cans of water into the house, rescuing Dann’s jar, which was in danger of being kicked over. She came back and lifted Dann up and sat him on the edge of the cistern.
‘There’s a scorpion,’ he said.
‘It must have fallen in, then.’
Mara was trying to pull herself up: her hands could not get a proper grip on the edge, which she could only just reach. Daima lifted her up and she sat by Dann, pulling her legs up well away from the angry scorpion, which was trying to climb up the rocky sides, but falling back.
‘Poor thing,’ said Mara.
‘It’s like the water stinger,’ said Dann, ‘only much smaller.’
Daima fetched a stick, pulled herself up, sat on the edge of the tank and said, ‘Mind,’ reaching down the stick. The scorpion gripped it with its pincers, Daima lifted – and the scorpion let go. ‘If you don’t hold on you’ll die there,’ said Daima, but this time the scorpion kept its grip on the stick, and Daima lifted it out carefully. The three watched the beast scuttle off into the mats of dead grass.
‘It’s hungry,’ said Daima, ‘just like everything else.’
It was so hot on the edge of the rocky box Mara’s thighs were burning. She jumped down. So did Daima, and lifted down Dann before he could protest.
‘How long since there was water in that?’
‘We had a big storm about a year ago. The cistern filled up. I kept carrying water through to the tank you saw inside. And I’ve made that water last.’
‘Perhaps we will have another storm,’ said Mara.
‘Sometimes I think it will never rain properly again.’
Inside the house Dann began yawning. He ate some sour milk, making faces; and then Mara took him next door, to the lavatory, and then to his bed. He was asleep at once.
Mara thought, I want Dann to sleep, so as to sleep away the bad memories, but I want to remember everything. What is the What Did You See? game if it is not trying to remember everything? The light was going outside. Daima lit the big floor candle. This room was cool because of the rock walls, in spite of the warm air coming in at the window. Tomorrow the sun would jump up like an enemy and then soon it would be too hot to go out of doors.
Mara sat at the rock table with Daima.
‘Is Rabat a spy?’ she asked. ‘Does she tell the others everything about us?’
‘She is a spy but she doesn’t tell everything.’ Daima saw from Mara’s face that she did not know what to ask. ‘Things are not simple,’ she said. ‘It’s true that I shouldn’t trust Rabat – isn’t that what you are thinking?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she did look after me when I was ill. And I looked after her when she broke her leg. And when my children were small she helped me with them.’
‘Didn’t she have any children?’
‘She did, but they died. It was when we had the little drought, and they got the drought sickness.’
‘Will she tell the others about the soldiers asking for us?’
‘She might, but I don’t think so. But it wouldn’t matter. If the soldiers offered money for us, yes. But I think they were really running away as fast as they could. Rabat counts on me. She has very little food left. When the traders came last time I bought food for her because she had nothing to exchange. They give flour in exchange for the roots, but it is difficult finding the roots. Some people here grow a little poppy, but it has been too dry. The water in her tanks is finished, and I’ve been giving her some. And she does help me with the milk beast.’
‘Why doesn’t she have one?’
‘I said things were not simple. She had four milk beasts left. She and her husband gave me one for my children. It was her husband that was so kind: he was a really good man. And he died. One night some people on the run came through here and they stole her three milk beasts. So now she shares mine. It is only fair – I suppose.’
‘Do you always fetch water from the pool where we were today?’
‘That little river has been dry for a couple of years. The big river has been nearly dry. I’ve got enough water in my tank in there to last us, if we are careful. I’m going back to the pool tomorrow when everyone goes. And I want you to keep Dann here.’
‘You think Kulik meant to drown him?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he began by a joke and then…It would be very easy to keep him under a little too long.’
‘Why did he want to kill Dann? A little boy?’
‘Little boys grow up. And so do little girls, Mara. Be careful all the time. Not that you have to keep in the house. I’m going to teach you how to milk the animal, and how to let the milk go sour and make cheese. And how to find the roots too – and that is very important. You have to be out and about and do your share. I might die, Mara. I’m an old woman. You have to know everything I know. I’ll show you where the money is. But remember: it is easy to slip a scorpion into a fold of cloth or throw a stone from behind a wall so that it looks as if it has come off a roof, or put a child in a cistern and pull the rock lid over. A child did die like that once. One of theirs, though. No one could hear it cry out because the lid was a fit.’
‘That means someone meant to kill it.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘That means that they fight each other – the Rock People.’
‘Yes, they do. There are families who won’t speak to each other.’
Suddenly Mara giggled, and Daima seemed surprised. Mara quickly said, ‘We haven’t enough water. We only have a little food. But they quarrel.’ And looked at Daima to see if she had understood.
Daima said, very dry, but smiling, ‘I see you are growing up fast. But that is the point. The harder things are the more people fight. You’d think it was the other way about.’
Next morning Daima said to Dann that he could go out and play just outside the doorway, where they could see him. He went out and stood poking a stick at the dust. He seemed half asleep. Mara thought that if their mother could see this dirty little child with his matted hair, she would not know him. Above all she would not know this listlessness. Soon there were footsteps, and voices, and two men came, and stopped a few paces away to stare openly through the doorway, where Daima and Mara could be seen sitting at the table. Dann was staring at them, and then began moving closer to them, step by step, his eyes going from one face to the other. The two men stood looking at him, surprised, then uneasy, then angry. They spoke to each other in low, angry voices. And still Dann moved towards them, step by step, staring. ‘Shooooo,’ said one man, and the other shook a stick at him, as if Dann were an animal.
‘What’s the matter with the child?’ asked Daima. ‘Stop him.’
‘I know what’s wrong,’ said Mara, and she did, though at first she hadn’t. The faces of the two were so alike you could hardly tell them apart: two angry faces looking down at the child, their lips thin and tight with dislike of him. Mara ran out and grabbed Dann just as one man picked up a stone to throw at him. ‘Dann,’ she said, ‘no, no, no.’ And to the man, ‘No, please, don’t.’ And still Dann stared, twitching with fear, his whole body shaking in his sister’s hands.
‘You keep those brats of yours to yourself,’ one man said loudly into the doorway to Daima.
And they went off, the two men, as similar from the back as from the front: heavy and slow, both with the same way of poking their heads forward.
Mara held the child as he sobbed, limp against her shoulder; and she said to Daima, past his head, that there had been two men with similar faces, and one had threatened to beat them and kept them without water, and the other was kind and gave them water – and now they seemed to Dann the same: the two brothers, Garth and Gorda.
Daima said, ‘Those two out there grew up with my two. I know them. They are bullies and they are sly. Dann must keep away from them, and you too, Mara.’
And now Mara began explaining to Dann that two people can look the same but be quite different inside, in their natures, that he was confused because of what had happened…And as she talked, she was thinking that all that had been less than a week ago.
While Mara talked, Dann was staring out of the door, where the two men had stood. She did not know if he had heard her. She went on, though, talking and explaining, because often he surprised her, coming out later with something that showed he had understood.
‘Let’s play the game,’ she tried, at last. ‘What did you see? – ’ then, at home, with the bad people? ‘What did you see? – ’ later, with the man who gave us water? Slowly Dann did begin to answer, but his eyes were heavy and his voice was heavy too. Mara persisted, while Dann did reply, but he was talking only about the bad man, the bad man, with the whip. At last Mara stopped. It looked as if the child had muddled it all up: the scene that had gone on for hours, in their own home, when they had to stand hungry and thirsty, being threatened by the whip, and the other one in the rock room when Gorda came in. ‘Don’t you remember how he was kind and gave us water?’ But no, Dann did not remember, and he said, ‘Those two men out there, with the stick, why did they have the same face?’
He stuck his thumb in his mouth and the loud sucking began, and then he slept, while Mara sat rocking him and Daima went off to the river with her containers.
When she came back she washed them both again, while they stood in the shallow basin; and this time she washed their hair too, though it would not stay nice and shiny for long, with the dust swirling about everywhere.
Then Daima took the children out to where she said the milk beast was waiting – she had told Rabat she would milk it. Dann was clinging tight to Mara, so she could hardly walk. And she kept close to Daima because the milk beast was so enormous, and frightened her. Its back was level with Daima’s head, and she was tall. It was a black and white beast, or would have been if the dust wasn’t thick on it. It had pointed, hard hooves. Its eyes were clever and knowing; and Mara had never seen eyes like them, for instead of a soft coloured round with white around, these eyes were a strong yellow and had a black bar down them, and long lashes. She thought the animal looked wicked, but Daima had already slipped a loop of rope over its horns, and then the rope over a post, and she was kneeling right under the beast’s belly, where there was a bag that had teats sticking out like enormous pink fingers. Daima had a basin under the milk bag and she was using both hands to make the milk come out. It shot into the basin, which rang out like a bell, and meanwhile the beast stood still, chewing with quick movements of its jaws. It turned its head and put its nose on Daima’s neck, and then into Mara’s neck, and she cried out, but Daima said, ‘Don’t mind Mishka, she won’t hurt you. Now, sit down here.’ Mara squatted by Daima, feeling Dann right behind her, because he was afraid of the beast but needed her more. ‘Use both hands on one teat,’ said Daima. The hot, slippery teat filled Mara’s hands, and she squeezed, and a little milk came out; but Daima showed her how to do it and soon the milk was spurting. ‘There, you’ve got the knack,’ said Daima. ‘And she knows you now.’ Daima finished off the milking, until the bag hung empty, and the beast bleated and went off when Daima took the rope from her horns, picking her way among the humps and mats of grass to a group of milk beasts standing together under a thorn tree. They belonged to different people but they spent all their days together, and their nights too, in a shed, because the dragons came after them.
Daima had two cans of milk, one full and one partly full. They went to Rabat’s house and gave her the part-full can. She looked sharply into the can to see if she had her promised share, then smiled in the way Mara hated and said, ‘Thank you.’
Now it was the hot part of the day, and they sat in the cool half dark of the big room. Dann was sitting on the floor, his thumb in his mouth, pressed against Mara’s legs.
Mara saw that Daima’s eyes were full of tears, and then that tears were running down the creases in Daima’s cheeks. ‘It is funny,’ said Daima, speaking as if Mara were grown up, ‘the way the same things happen.’
‘You mean, your children, and then Dann and me?’
‘They wanted to play with the other children, but Kulik came and said, Keep your brats to yourself.’
Mara left Dann, and climbed up on Daima’s lap and put her arms around her neck. This made Daima cry harder, and Mara cried, and then the little boy began tugging at Mara’s legs to be lifted up, and soon both children were on Daima’s lap and they were all crying.
Then Mara said, ‘But your children are all right. They grew up. No one hurt them.’
‘Plenty tried to. And when I’d got them through it all, they went away. I know they had to. I wanted them to.’ Daima sat weeping, not trying to stop herself.
‘I won’t go away, I promise,’ said Mara. ‘I’ll never leave you alone with these horrible Rock People, never, never.’
‘I won’t go away,’ piped up Dann. ‘I won’t leave you.’
‘I’ll leave you first,’ said Daima.
Dann cried out, but Mara said, ‘She didn’t mean that she would leave us. She didn’t mean that.’
And the rest of the day was spent reassuring Dann that Daima did not mean to abandon them.
Now Daima said it was time to show Mara how to do everything. How to look after the milk beast, Mishka. How to make milk go sour in a certain way. How to make cheese. How to look in the grasses for the tiny plants that showed where the sweet yellow roots were, deep below. Which green plants could be picked to cook as vegetables. How to make candles. And soon Daima said Mara should know where the money was hidden.
‘If you were going to hide money, Mara, where would you put it?’
Mara thought. ‘Not in the room where the water tank is, or anywhere near where the food is. And not in this room, because people can come in so easily. Not in the thatch, because grass can burn. Not somewhere out of the house, because people would see when you went to look for it. And not in one of the empty rooms, because people would expect that.’
A long pause.
‘Where, then?’ persisted Daima. But Mara could not guess.
In a corner of this room stood a bundle of big floor candles. The biggest ones were as thick as Mara’s chest. One that looked just like all the others was quite smooth at the bottom; but when you scraped off a layer and pulled out a plug of candle, there was a hole, and in it a leather bag with coins in it. They were gold, quite small but heavy, and there were fifty of them. Mara remembered that at home the People wore big, heavy ornaments of this stuff, gold, and she herself had been given when she was born a bracelet made of these same coins, which she knew was very valuable. Where was it now? But her old life in the great, airy palace in its gardens seemed every day more of a dream and harder to remember. And she had had another name. What was it? She asked Daima if she knew what her name and Dann’s had been, but Daima said no, she didn’t, and anyway it wasn’t a bad idea to forget them. ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ she said.
Often Mara climbed on Daima’s lap, but when Dann was asleep, because she didn’t want him to know that she often felt like a baby too. She hugged Daima, and felt the bones in the hard arms and the hard lap. Daima was not soft anywhere. Mara laid her face in Daima’s bony shoulder and thought about her mother, though it was hard now to remember her face, and how she was soft everywhere and had a sweet, spicy smell, who had hugged her with arms that had bracelets on them, and long black hair where Mara could bury her face. Daima smelled dry and sour and dusty. Dust, the smell of dust, the feel of dust on everything: soft pads of dust underfoot, dust piling up in the grooves the door slid along in, dust on the rocks of the floor, which had to be swept out every day into the dust outside. Films of dust settled on the food even while they ate it, and often winds whirled dust and grass up into the air and the sunlight became spotty and dirty-looking.
‘Perhaps it will rain,’ Mara implored Daima, who said, ‘Well, perhaps it will.’
Soon Mishka began giving much less milk. Some mornings there was hardly any. There was something in the way Rabat smiled and looked that made Mara ask if perhaps Rabat was going out at night to steal milk. Daima said yes, she thought so. She said to Mara, ‘Don’t be too hard. She has nothing to eat.’
‘Why doesn’t she go out and dig up roots, the way we do?’
Daima sighed and said that it was no good expecting people to do what they couldn’t do.
‘Why can’t she?’
Daima lowered her voice, though they were alone, and said, ‘She’s a bit simple-minded.’ And then, lower still, ‘That’s why the others have never wanted anything to do with her. And why she was glad to be friends with me.’ She gave the grim smile that Mara had learned to dread. ‘Two outcasts.’
‘Will Mishka give more milk when it rains?’
‘Yes, but she is getting old and it is time she was mated. Her milk will dry up altogether soon if she isn’t.’
‘Why can’t she be mated?’
‘Kulik owns the only male milk beast, and he won’t let it mate with ours.’
Mara was in such a tumult of feelings: she had just taken in that Daima’s only friend all these years was a loony woman; and now, how cruel Kulik was.
She went off into the room where her rock bed was, and lay on it, and turned her face to the wall and thought hard. She knew she could not tell Daima what she wanted to do, because she would say no. She waited until Daima had gone out with Dann to take some water to Mishka, and then she went through the village, smiling politely at people, to where she knew most of the men were in the hot midday. Against a disused rock house was a long seat made of rocks, shaded by some old thatch that had slipped down the roof. Along this bench sat about ten men, their hands on their knees, apparently half asleep. Among them was Kulik.
It was difficult to walk towards them, seeing how their faces grew hard as she got near. This is the look she had seen on the faces of Rock People all her life when any of the People were near. Their eyes were narrowed, their mouths tight and angry.
She made herself smile, but not too much, and stood in front of Kulik. She said, ‘Please, our Mishka needs to be mated.’ In spite of herself, her voice was weak and her lips trembled.
First there were looks between the men, who were surprised. Then they laughed: ugly, short laughter, like barks. Then they all stared at her, their faces hard again. Kulik, however, had a grin on his face, and his teeth showed.
Mara said, her voice stumbling, ‘My little brother, he needs the milk.’
Kulik narrowed his eyes, stared hard, kept his thin, ugly grin, and said, ‘And what do I get in exchange?’
‘I don’t think we’ve got anything. I could get some roots for you.’
More laughter from the men.
‘I wasn’t thinking of roots,’ said Kulik. Then slowly, and with his face so full of hatred for her she could hardly keep standing there in front of him, ‘Down on your knees, Mahondi brat, down on your knees and beg.’
At first Mara was not sure what he wanted her to do, but she dropped to her knees in the dust, and when she looked at him she could hardly see through her tears.
‘Now bend right down, three times,’ said Kulik.
Mara had to think again, but she bent down once, twice, three times, trying to keep her hair out of the dust. On the last time she felt Kulik’s big hand on her head, grinding her face down into the dirt. Then he let go. She straightened to her knees and, since he did not say anything, stood up. The dust was falling past her eyes from her head.
She said, ‘Please will you let Mishka be mated?’
And now a big roar of astonished laughter from all of them – except Kulik, who did not laugh this time but only grinned, and sat forward and said, almost spitting as he talked into her face, ‘You bring her when she is ready. I’m sure you know all about that from your hard work on the farms.’
‘I do know,’ said Mara. ‘I learned about how to mate animals.’
‘That would come in useful, to give orders to your slaves.’
‘Please,’ said Mara, ‘please.’
‘Bring your animal. But you must come alone. I’m not dealing with that old bag Daima. Alone, do you hear?’
Mara was angry that he’d called Daima an old bag, but she made herself smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘And if the kid turns out to be male, I shall have it.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you – ’ and she ran off.
She told Daima what she had done, and Daima caught her hand to her heart and had to sit down. ‘Mara,’ she said, ‘Mara … That was so dangerous. I’ve known Kulik kill someone who stood up to him.’
‘What is a Mahondi?’
‘We are Mahondis. The People are Mahondis. Did he call you a Mahondi? Well, you are one. And me. And Dann.’
‘And he wants the kid if it is male. That means, we can keep it if it is female and have milk from her when she grows up.’
‘There are too many females,’ said Daima. ‘We can’t feed what we have. He wants another male because his is old and he can keep control of who has milk and who doesn’t.’
‘Perhaps Mishka will have twins.’
‘Don’t wish for that. We would have to kill one. How could we keep them fed? You know yourself how hard it is to find food for them.’
When Daima said that Mishka was ready, Mara put the rope around her horns and went through the houses to where the men sat.
She stood in front of Kulik with the beast and said, ‘Here is Mishka. I’ve come by myself, as you said.’
‘What makes you think I haven’t changed my mind?’ said Kulik, and went on grinning there, a long time, to keep her afraid in case he had changed his mind.
‘You promised,’ said Mara at last, not crying, for she was determined not to.
‘Very well, you come with me.’
He got up, in his heavy, slow way – like an animal that has decided to tread all over you, Mara thought – and went towards the enclosure where his male milk beast was, all by itself. Mishka began to jump and rush about at the end of her rope.
Kulik turned his head to grin back and say, ‘Can’t wait for it, can she? – you are all the same.’
Mara had no idea what he meant.
At the entrance to the enclosure, which was a small one – just room for one animal and a bit over – he slid back a bar and pushed in Mishka, and then picked up Mara and lifted her over so that she was among the legs and the horns. Then he leaned his arms on the wooden rail, grinning, and watched while Mara dodged about, as the big male beast nudged and pushed and edged Mishka into position, and she sidled and evaded, and came back … and all the time those great hooves were missing Mara by inches. Along the fence of the enclosure now were the men, standing there grinning and hoping that Mara would get a hard kick, or a poke from one of those sharp horns. It seemed to go on for a long time, the pushing and shoving in the enclosure, and Mara tried to get out through the rails of the fence; but the men pushed her back in, and this time she was just under Mishka’s head. The male was on Mishka’s back now and pushing Mishka down, but she was trying not to hurt Mara, keeping her head and shoulders away from the girl. At last it was done. The two beasts stood clear of each other. Mara was trembling so that she could hardly stand, and she felt her pee running down her legs. But she got the rope around Mishka’s horns and stood with her at the place where the opening was. For a good long while Kulik did not take his arms from where they lay on the rail. Then he moved back, lifted off the rail and stood aside. Mara led Mishka out. She did not look at Kulik or at the other men, who were standing there grinning and pleased with themselves.
‘Remember, it’s mine if it’s a male,’ said Kulik.
‘I promise,’ said Mara.
‘She promises,’ said the men to each other, in copies of her little voice, but lisping and silly, not as she spoke.
She took Mishka back to her place near the others, and stood for a time with her arms around one of the big front legs, because she could not reach any higher; and Mishka put down her soft muzzle and licked Mara’s sweaty, dusty neck for the salt.
Then she went to Daima and told her. Daima only sat with her head on her old hand at the table and listened.
‘Well, let’s hope she takes,’ she said. And Mishka did ‘take’: she was pregnant and she gave birth to a male. Dann could hardly be got away from Mishka and her kid. He adored the little beast, which would look out for Dann, who brought it bits of green he found in the grass, or a slice of the yellow root.
Mara said, ‘Don’t love that little beast so much, because we can’t keep him.’
And Daima said, ‘That’s right. He must know what the world is like.’
‘Perhaps it won’t always be like this,’ said Mara.
And then the beast, which Dann called Dann, was taken away by Kulik, who chased Dann off and said, ‘I’m not having any Mahondi brats, get away.’
Dann could not understand what had happened. He sat silent, puzzled, full of grief; but then it seemed some sort of change took place in him. ‘I hate Kulik,’ he said, but not like a little boy. ‘One day I’ll kill him.’ And he didn’t cry. His face was narrow and tight and suspicious and hard. He was not yet five years old.
2 (#ulink_f808541e-eaf0-54ff-b60d-e8f6ad8254c3)
On the low hill overlooking the village was a tall rock, precipitous on three sides and sloping steeply on the village side. There on the top of it sat Mara, looking down at a group of half a dozen boys playing a game of fighting with sticks. Dann was taller than any of them, though he was younger than some, at ten years old, and he was a quick, always watchful child, who dominated them all. Mara was almost grown, with her little bumps of breasts, and she was tall and thin and wiry, and could run faster than the boys, which she had learned to do from having so often to rescue Dann from danger. He seemed to have been born without a sense of self-preservation: would leap off a rock or a roof without looking to see where he was going to land, walk up to a big hissing dragon, jump into a pool without checking if there were stingers or a water dragon. But he was much better, and that was why Mara was up here, watching quite idly, not anxious and on guard as she had been every minute of her days and nights. Only recently had she understood that her long watch was over. She had been strolling from the hill to the village, listening to the singing beetles and her own thoughts, when she had seen Dann rushing towards her with a stick, then past her, and she had whirled to see him attacking a dragon that was following her.
‘You should be more careful, Mara,’ he had chided, and not at all as if he were mimicking her constant, Be careful, do be careful, Dann.
She had gone in to Daima and told her, and the two had wept and laughed in each other’s arms for the wonderful ludicrousness of it. And Daima had said, ‘Congratulations, Mara. You’ve done it. You’ve brought him through.’
This was her favourite place. Nobody came up here: not Dann, who liked to be always rushing about; not Daima, who was too old and stiff; not the villagers, who said it was full of ghosts. Mara had been here at all times of the day, and at night too, and had never seen or heard ghosts. The danger was the dragons, who were so hungry they would eat anything. That is why she sat on a rock that on three sides they could not climb up, while in front she could slide down on her bottom and be off as soon as she heard the angry hissing. Or she could wait up here, safe, throwing stones down at the dragons if they showed signs of climbing up. This rock rose out of a tumbling and piling of small, rocky hills, full of clefts and crevices where bushes and trees grew, and caves and cliffs and pits that were old traps, and in some places heaps of old walls and roofs. When she had played the What Did You See? game with Daima, she liked best to do this hill, because she was always finding new things.
‘And then?’
‘The pits have black rings, with bits of chain on the rings.’
‘And then?’
‘The rings are made of some metal we don’t have.’
‘And so?’
‘All the same, Daima, I think those pits are quite recent – I mean hundreds of years, not thousands.’
When Mara said hundreds, she meant a long time; and when thousands, it meant her mind had given up, confessed failure: thousands meant an unimaginable, endless past.
Up on those hills – for behind the one near the village were piled others – forcing herself between bushes and saplings, squeezing through gaps in boulders, sliding down shaly descents in showers of stones, climbing trees to look over places she could not penetrate because of thick undergrowth, what Mara had slowly understood – and it had been slow, years – was that this was not just, as Daima had told her, a ruined city thousands of years old, or hundreds, or what the villagers saw it as – a place to get stones for building – but layers of habitations, peoples, time. She had been standing between walls still mostly intact, though roots had brought down part of one into a slope of blocks where little lizards sunned themselves, and in front of her was a great wall, many times her height, and wider than Daima’s whole house, and there was not one rock missing from it. The whole wall was carved into stories and they were all about a war: the fighters in baggy trousers and tops and big boots, and they carried all kinds of weapons that Daima could not explain, saying only that once there had been weapons so terrible one of them could destroy a whole city. This wall was celebrating a victory: and certainly it was a description of how these ancient people had seen themselves and their enemies, for the faces of the victors were cruel and fierce and the defeated ones were frightened and pleading. At any rate, it was a story, on that wall, of how people had fought, and some had been killed. But on another wall in the same room, or hall, the blocks of stone were smaller and fitted closer, and were covered over with the fine, hard plaster, and the pictures were coloured. These were the same people, with their flat, broad shoulders and lean bodies, and narrow faces, and there was fighting again, but the weapons were different and so were the clothes. The same people, but from different times. That meant these people had been here for – hundreds? – of years. It meant that between the time of the plain carving of the stone and the time of decorating this smooth, crisp plaster with the coloured pictures, they had discovered the plaster and how to make it stick on rock, and how to mix colours that lasted for – how long? And on another part of the hill she found a part-fallen building with the inner walls carved, but it had earth halfway up the walls. Almost on top of these walls, as if the builders had tried to continue the old ones upwards, were other, newer walls, the white ones, with colours. This meant that the builders of the top building had not known of the building underneath. Earth had been washed away, so now you could see the two walls, one almost on top of the other. And this whole great area of hills and stones and rocks tumbling everywhere – Mara understood it all, quite suddenly. There had been a very big city of stone walls decorated with carvings. And there had been an earthquake. And on top of and between the half destroyed houses and halls another city had been built, much more beautiful and finely decorated. And that, too, had been tumbled by a quake, but this time the people had not bothered to rebuild. Why hadn’t they? What had happened to them? Where were they? Up here by herself, and even at night, though Daima hated her coming at night, Mara stood with these layers of the past all around her; and sometimes felt herself go cold and frightened, thinking of how they had lived here, all those people, building their houses when the earth shook and everything fell down … And living there again, decorating walls with such care, mixing colours, putting pictures of birds and beasts and feasts, as well as fighting and soldiers, on their walls … And then they had disappeared. People just like herself, she supposed: they had vanished, and no one knew about them. A little girl, overwhelmed by time, the weight of it, thoughts that crammed her brain and made it want to burst, she had climbed up on Daima and shivered and clung. ‘They’ve just gone, gone, gone, Daima, and they were here for so long … And we don’t know their names or anything.’
But these days she did not cling or cuddle up to Daima, for Mara was as tall as she was, and much stronger. Now when she held Daima she felt as if the old woman were the child and she the mother, and she marvelled that this huddle of thin bones held together at all.
Down below the little boys were fighting, a real fight. Often a play fight became that, the Rock People ganging up on Dann because they hated him, but so far he had not been hurt more than bruises and, once, a sprained arm. Mara watched and made herself stay still. ‘You must let him,’ said Daima. ‘You can’t protect him any more. He has to fight his own battles.’ And perhaps letting him fight his own battles had led to his being able to say to Mara, like a grown-up, ‘You should be more careful.’ Now she watched how Dann was defending himself against the kicking, flailing boys, and it was almost more than she could do to stop herself from running down to stand by him and fight with him. It seemed to her even now that her whole life had been only that: Dann, Dann; and that for years all her body had been able to feel was his trembling need for her. Now the fight was a whirl of sticks and legs and stones, and then Dann broke free and ran into one of the empty houses, whose roof had gone, and shouted down at the others from the top of crumbling walls. It was dangerous. A bit of wall fell away from under his feet and he jumped clear. The others did not follow but went off, all together. Dann leaped down, and was off into Daima’s house. He came out with two cans, and went running through the houses to where the milk beasts clustered under their old thorn tree. Their own beast now was not Mishka but Mishka’s daughter, called Mishkita. When Mishka’s milk stopped, Mara went to Kulik and asked that she should be mated again. This time he looked hard and long at her, and she could not read that look. Then he nodded and said, ‘Bring her when she’s ready.’ Mishka was mated with her own son, Dann, and gave birth to Mishkita. Daima had said, ‘Don’t go out by yourself at night, Mara. He’s got a soft spot for you. That’s even more dangerous.’ But Mara did go out at night, and when she saw Kulik smiled and nodded as if he were a friend and not an enemy, while all the time he was near her heart beat with fear of him.
Dann knelt under Mishkita, keeping a watch on those sharp hooves, and milked into the cans. He was quick and skilful. All the time he was looking around for fear of an ambush. He had once beaten up a whole gang of children teasing the milk beasts, and he said that if he ever caught them again they would find out what he could do.
This milk was all that Daima could eat now. If it didn’t rain soon there would be no more milk.
There was only a little of the white flour left, because a trader had come but he had said he thought it wasn’t worth his while if all they could give him was the yellow roots.
Mara had been making experiments. She found grasses that had small, lumpy seeds. She beat the thin, fragile heads of the grass on a stone, got out some grain and beat that on a stone. But for a whole day’s work there was only a cup of flour. She had a stroke of luck when she found, while digging for the yellow roots, a big round root the size of a baby’s head, which was filled with a dense white stuff. She cooked it and, risking that it was poison, ate, while Daima watched, ready with an emetic. But it was not poisonous and made a filling porridge. There were very few green leaves anywhere. They ate, though sparingly, the white flour, in case this was the last they’d see, the yellow roots, and this new white root. They ate sour milk and a little cheese. They were always hungry. Daima said that neither of them had had a square meal in five years and yet were shooting up like reeds after rain. They must be feeding on air, she said. ‘Or dust,’ they joked.
Two years after the children had come to Daima’s house there was a big storm. Not a cloudburst far away, so that brown water rushed in torrents under a bright blue sky. It was real rain. It was sudden and violent. The cisterns outside the houses filled with water, and everyone shared the water in the cisterns outside the empty houses. Daima and the children carried water again and again to the locked-up tank indoors. Soon, there was another storm. The dried-up, yellowish earth and the dead-looking grasses were bursting into life, and there were flowers, and the milk beasts grew fat, and the people lost their dried, dusty look. The waterholes became a river, and the wild animals stood about on the banks at dusk and dawn, and there was a trumpeting and bleating and howling and yapping from both rivers. All the villagers went up to the ridge to look: they had believed there were no animals left. Certainly there were only half of what had been. Because of the storm there were some baby animals born. Kulik and his sons went out to catch the babies: no one was strong enough now to hunt the big animals. They did not share the meat with anyone else in the village. The villagers made a channel for the water of the nearer river to flow into a low place, and there a guard was set, day and night, so the stingers and water dragons did not get into it; and in that pool everyone bathed every day, all at the same time, for safety. There was even a little friendliness shown to Mara and Dann, who took their turn, with Daima, guarding the pool.
And then – that was it. Because there had been two big storms in that rainy season, everyone waited for rain in the next, with cleaned-out cisterns and mended roofs. But there was no rain that season, nor the next, nor the next. That good season with the two storms had been four years ago. Again the waterholes were almost empty in the little river, and the big river had stopped running. Everywhere the bones of animals lay in the dead grass. Extraordinary events were reported. A water dragon, almost dead with hunger, had been attacked by a water stinger half its size; and when the villagers went down together to the waterholes they saw half a dozen stingers fighting over the half-dead beast. And just outside the village a couple of the big black birds that normally ate only seeds and berries attacked in full daylight a wild pig too weak to run away, tearing from its shoulders and neck big beakfuls of flesh, while the pig squealed. And these birds had taken to gathering not far from the milk beasts, to stare at them, moving closer and waiting, and moving in again; and Dann had run out shouting and throwing stones at them. They had flapped off, slowly, so weak they kept sinking and wavering in the air, letting out hoarse, desperate cries. The milk beasts were thin and weak and gave hardly any milk.
Perhaps this next rainy season? – everyone was saying. Or perhaps even another flash flood from up north.
There were fewer people. Only twenty still remained. Rabat had died. The old people had died, and three new babies. There was not one baby or small child in the village. Up north, so it was believed, things were better, even normal, and so many families had left or were leaving. Often the village was full of people, just for a night or two, because travellers from the south would arrive and simply take over the empty houses, demanding food from the villagers. They were mostly Rock People themselves with relatives, even distant ones, here, and so they could claim hospitality. But they found little food or water and went off again.
Once a gang forced their way into Daima’s house and found the old woman lying – and, they thought, dying – on the shelf in the outer room. They drank all the water in the jars and cans in that room, but went off. The children were hiding in the empty rooms at the back. And now Daima told them that there must always be just enough of the roots and flour in the front room for any marauders to think that this was all there was in the house, and they must be careful to keep the inner doors locked and the keys hidden.
Then one midday when everyone was lying down waiting for the heat to lessen, a crowd of travellers came, about twenty, and they stood in a close group while the villagers came out to see who it was this time. And, gazing and examining, they became silent. These were certainly Rock People: squat, thick-built, greyish in colour, with pale masses of frizzled hair. But their faces were all the same. At first in disbelief, then in quiet horror, the people standing around the travellers looked from one face to another, and then again … No, it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. Perhaps the villagers had become silly, their wits gone because of not having enough water and food … But no, it was true. Every face was the same, identical, with lumpy noses, long thin mouths, pale eyes under yellow brows, broad foreheads made lower still because of the frizzy bush above. The same in every detail. A moan, or groan, from the villagers. Then they began shouting. And then – Mara saw it while her heart went cold – Dann walked forward as if he were being pulled, one step after another, just as he had been when he saw the two brothers years before, unable to help himself, drawn by something he did not understand and did not know about. He came to a stop just in front of this little mass of people, which was also one person, or seemed to be, since their movements were the same and their faces each had the identical cold and hostile anger. And, as one, their eyes focused on Dann, the tall thin boy with the dusty black hair: a person so unlike them, and unlike anybody else there, that he seemed to them like an unfamiliar animal, a new kind of monkey perhaps. As if they were one person, their hands rose, and in the hands were sticks; and Mara raced forward and pulled Dann back, and the hands and the sticks fell, but slowly, and in the same movement. And now these people, who were like one person, were staring at the two children, who were not like any they had seen, being so knobbly and bony and staring back with frightened eyes.
Mara did not pull the boy into the house for fear this would bring this enemy after them, but stood at their door, behind some other villagers. She could feel Dann trembling, though now her hands were gripping not a little child but a strong boy whose head was nearly on a level with hers. He stood and shivered as he had years ago, shocked by a mystery: faces that resemble each other, eyes that are alike, while behind lie worlds as different as day and night. But here it was not two faces: there were many.
The newcomers went off, together, and the villagers dispersed, whispering among themselves as if afraid of provoking some new manifestation of this horror: people you could not tell apart, no matter how you stared and matched and compared. And Mara led Dann into the house where, like a small boy, he lay on his bed and hid his face.
Soon a neighbour came to say that these new people were going to stay for a while – ‘and that means until they have eaten everything we have got’ – and she had been told to come to Daima’s house to get food. And that meant, Mara thought, they were afraid to come themselves. And, yes, it was true: ‘They think you are ghosts. They think you are cursed.’
Mara produced half a dozen of the yellow roots, shrivelled but still good. And then she went out to make sure the beasts were safe. The newcomers had taken over empty houses at the end of the village. Mara decided to stay with the milk beasts. Late, when the moon was making shadows around the houses, she saw the shadows thicken and then lengthen like drops before they fall and separate themselves. They were the same-faced ones, moving furtively, crouching and running, and she stood up and shrieked at them, stamping her feet and whirling about, and they went scrambling off, shouting with fear that there were demons in this place.
Dann could not be kept in the house. He was always watching the travellers: leaning against a house wall or even standing quite near them, staring, his face squeezed up and his eyes puckering with the effort of trying to understand. They pretended to ignore him, but they were afraid of him. And soon they left, partly because of their fear and, too, they were hungry.
This event had an effect on Dann. He was restless, but then lay on his bed for hours, staring. He put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it, with the old squelching sound that drove Mara wild with anxiety and irritation. He did not join in the other children’s play, but did come up the hill to sit on the rock with Mara, when she asked him, to break his mood; but when there he only sat, staring down into the village. She said to him, ‘Dann, do you know why people who are alike make you afraid?’ But he did not: in his mind was a door shut fast against memories, and all he knew – if he knew that much, and was not merely experiencing – was that the people who were alike haunted him, challenged him, frightened him. It went on for some days, this new behaviour of Dann’s: listlessness, and a look of apprehension in those deep, dark eyes of his. He wanted to be with Mara, though he seemed not to know he had become a little boy again, reaching for her hand, or pressing close, when some thought she could only guess at made him tremble.
Then one evening two men came into the village, and they were Persons, People – Mahondis. They were directed to Daima’s house by the villagers. But they had not come to see Daima or find the children, of whom they had never heard. They had walked from a long way south of Rustam, hoping to find shelter in that town, because their country was all dried up and dead. But Rustam was full of sand, they said: sand storms had blown over it, filling the houses and burying the gardens. No one lived in Rustam now: no people, no animals. And between Rustam and here, while things were better than in the South, it was dry and there were stretches of country where the trees were dying. Among these were new trees, of the kind that can live in semi-deserts. It seemed that the trees had known what was going to happen because they must have begun growing before the desert-like country appeared. When these two men came to the river and saw there was still some water, they had wept, because it was so long since they had seen waterholes that were not all cracked and dry.
Mara fed these men with sliced roots and milk and said they could use the bed in the outer room and her bed, and she and Daima went into one of the inner rooms for the night. They could hear the men’s deep voices and Dann’s excited voice, talking and laughing too: Dann did not often laugh but he was laughing now.
In the morning everything was quiet. Daima was asleep, and Mara went quickly into the room she and Dann had, and then the outer room; but the men were not there and Dann was not there. Mara ran out and through the village, looking for them. A woman said, Didn’t Mara know? Dann had left with the men very early that morning, all three walking quietly, ‘as if they had stolen something.’ Dann had first run to Mishkita, pulling down her head to kiss her ears and her hairy cheeks, and then running back to the two watching men, crying. It was this – Dann’s crying – that told Mara it was true: Dann had meant to leave, and for good.
Mara went into the house slowly, afraid she would fall. When she told Daima, the old woman put her arms around Mara and held her and rocked her while she wept.
3 (#ulink_a8f11f6f-e345-5b6c-a0eb-8c4d4a420dc3)
It was almost dark in the room, because the door was shut and the window shutter left only a little slit for light. Through this slit fell dusty air. On the rock table sat a spindly creature: tall, with long, knobbly arms and legs, every bit of her skin covered with a brownish dust, and her hair hanging in long, greyish spikes. Her eyes were small and red in a little, bony face. Her brown, glistening garment seemed as fresh and new as at any time these last hundred or so years. This poor thing was Mara, and nearly five years had passed.
On the rock bed lay Daima, who was as thin and bony, but her hair was not in shags and rags because Mara combed it. Daima had by her a bag of the brown, shiny stuff, and she was lying on her side and taking out, one by one, all kinds of objects: a comb, a stone, a spoon, a dishevelled red feather, a snake’s shed skin. She looked at them amazed, incredulous. ‘Mara, but there’s nothing here, it’s so little, is this all it is?’ Mara did not answer, because Daima did this over and over again when she was awake. She was saying, Mara knew, Is this all my life has amounted to? At first, Mara had answered, ‘Everything is there. I’ve checked. Nothing is missing.’ But she could not go on saying it, she had so little energy left. Then Daima turned her old eyes on Mara with a close, intent, suspicious inspection; and it was as if she did not know who it was, though she did, for Mara understood that when Daima counted her life out in those possessions from the bag, Mara was among them, for she would touch a bit of cloth or the stone and say, ‘Mara, it is Mara.’ Mara made her face smile as she sat there, and turned her head so that Daima could see her, letting Daima look, and look, the close, deep stare, though she did not know what it was Daima searched for in her face. Perhaps she was making sure Mara was still there with her, for she was uneasy when Mara went out. While she did not know how bad things were out there, she did know it was dangerous.
It was midday. Daima was licking her lips, which were cracked and sore, and blinking her eyes to make some water, they were so dry. Mara went into the inner room where the pile of yellow roots was: only a few left now, only thirteen. She and Daima needed one a day to keep them as much alive as they were. Mara these days did not have the inclination to go out with her digging stick, or go to the waterholes, where there had not been water now for months, let alone climb up the hill to where the old cities were. Mara cut up a root into yellow slices and fed half of them to Daima, who even now when she was so feeble was trying to refuse her share so that Mara could have it.
Almost a year ago there had been another storm, not much of one, and they were just finishing the water Mara had collected then. Out on the plain around the village this rain had plumped the roots that lived many feet down in the earth. They had been shrivelling and were rather like wood: when Mara poked her digging stick into them they were not far off wood. But then the rain came and the roots were juicy again, and that meant Mara and Daima could live a little longer. The big white roots that seemed to absorb water were again like balls of hard, white pith.
Because of that rain, some people who had decided to leave stayed a little longer; but now no one was left, only the two women. Mara would have gone with the last group, even though Kulik was one of them, if it had not been for Daima, who could not walk.
When every one of the villagers had left, Mara had gone through the rock houses to see if anything had been left, and it was this that spoke most loudly and terribly of what had happened here. There was nothing in the houses. At least there had been a few utensils and some cans, and in each corner some of the yellow roots that were keeping them all alive, and a jar or so of water that they drank a sip or two at a time. But everything had been taken away.
As people died, and it was impossible to bury them in the hard earth because no one had the strength to dig graves, they were put in one of the empty houses and left, with the doors pulled tight shut. The air was so dry they shrivelled into mummies, so light you could pick them up like pieces of wood. But then the big lizards and the dragons, hunting everywhere for food, came into the village and tried to push the doors aside, or force their way through the windows, and one of them even climbed up on a roof and went down through the thatch. Once, these beasts had eaten only vegetable stuff, but they had long ago forgotten they were herbivores and ate anything they could find. They had lain in wait by the waterholes, when there was water, and fought with the water dragons for a share of any meat there was. Mara had come into the front room one morning to see the head and shoulders of a big lizard pushing through the aperture of the window, hissing, its tongue flickering. It wanted Daima, who was asleep on her shelf. Mara had hit the thing with empty water cans, and at last it went out backwards and waddled through the village looking for a way into a house.
That was why the rock doors were always shut now, though Mara believed there could be no lizards left, they must be all dead. But perhaps not. She had not been up to the hill cities for some time, because she was afraid, so she did not know if lizards and dragons were still there. Up in the oldest part of the ruins, Mara had found storerooms deep in the earth; and while there was nothing left of what they had once held – weapons? gold? ornamented dishes and basins and trays, like the ones pictured on the walls? – there had been water. It was old water that tasted bad because of what had fallen into it, but it was real water and for a while she had gone up to collect it. Twice she had scared away the big lizards drinking there, one of them actually standing in the water, so at first she had thought it was a water dragon; but it wasn’t, it was a land dragon. That water had not been replenished by the storm of a year ago, so it must have forced its way up through the rocks from deep under the hills. But the last time Mara saw it there was only a damp stain on rock with scorpions over it, perhaps hoping the water would well up again. From where? These days Mara saw what she looked at differently from how she once had. Hills did not stay the same, she knew that: she had seen the boulders come crashing down hillsides when lightning cracked them open. Waterholes sometimes were dusty pits and were sometimes rivers. Animals that had eaten plants learned to chase humans for their flesh. Once, digging for a root, she had found a small stream running through a rocky place underground; but when she looked for it later it was dry. Who knew what rivers moved under the earth, or had moved and were now dried up? Under the hills up there had been cities upon cities, and the people must have drunk water, so perhaps rivers once ran there that had gone long ago? Everything changed: rivers moved, disappeared, ran again; trees died – the hills were full of dry forests – and insects, even scorpions, changed their natures.
The scorpions were in the village. Mara had to watch every step. They had come in for the dead people. She had watched them trying to squeeze in through the cracks in houses, or down through the roof stones. And they did squeeze through. You could hear them scuttling and rattling about in the houses, eating up the corpses. Then the villagers had begun something new. Instead of finding an empty house and putting their dead into it, they fitted corpses into the cisterns that stood outside the door of every house. Sometimes the dead person had to be put in bent double. Then the heavy stones were put back on. The scorpions could not get in, because the lids always fitted perfectly to keep the dust out of the water. As you walked through the village, the scorpions clustered on the tops of the cisterns … Waiting? For what? And then they died. There were dead scorpions everywhere. But there were scorpions that had not died, that were able somehow to live – eating what? – and they were bigger than the old ones had been. It would be easy to think that there were two kinds of scorpion, big and little ones; but no, some were growing larger, and very fast. Once, Mara would have kicked a scorpion out of the way, but she would be afraid to now, for these new beasts could take a hand off, or a big piece of flesh out of a leg.
Mara sat on the rock table, with her feet pulled up, just in case there was something she had overlooked – a scorpion or a smaller, half-grown lizard that had hidden in the empty rooms – and she had long, interesting thoughts while she watched over Daima’s sleep. Perhaps one day, as far into the future as the old cities in the hills were in the past, people would find this village half buried in dust, or perhaps deep under the dust, and the bones in the cisterns, and they would say, ‘These ancient people buried their dead just outside their houses in rocky graves.’ They would find the bones of big lizards in the deep rocky pools in the hills because – who knew? – the water might start filling the pools up there again, and they would say, ‘There were two kinds of lizard, or dragon, and they both lived in water.’ They would find the pig bones scattered about over the plain and see the marks of bird claws and beaks and say, ‘These birds killed and ate pigs.’
But what was worrying Mara now was that they might also be able to say, ‘In those days there were insects, earth insects, the size of a thumb.’ When Mara looked out over the plain where she had dug for roots she could see everywhere circles showing pale on darker old grass. The under-earth insects whose tall homes dotted the plain – though they hadn’t when Mara and Dann first came: these great hard-earth heaps were new – came up from their tunnels at night to chew up the dry old grass with jaws like the pincers of stingers, though not as big yet, and the fragments of grass made these whitish circles. They must have watercourses running deep under their heaps for the earth of their galleries was wet. The villagers had even thought of how they could dig down through one of these insect cities until they reached water; but not only were they afraid of the insects that thought nothing of eating up a small animal in a few minutes, they did not have the strength left to dig, nor did they have anything better than wooden sticks to dig with.
These insects were rapidly growing larger. So far they did not seem to want to move far from their homes, but Mara had watched a column of them marching towards the hills of the old cities – so many of them you could not think of counting them: brownish, glistening, fat insects with their pincered heads – and she had simply run away. Every day she expected to see their brown columns trickling through the houses.
While the milk beasts were still alive these insects had been the villagers’ greatest worry. A guard was put on the beasts, day and night, to watch the grass tussocks for the scorpions and the lizards and then, when they noticed how the earth insects were growing large and bold, for their columns.
One night this problem was solved for them. Travellers had come through, pushed the weakened villagers aside and driven off the milk beasts. Mara cried as she had not since Dann went away. She loved Mishkita, and now there was nothing left for her except Daima, who she knew would soon die. And yet quite soon they would have had to kill the milk animals, for they gave so little milk now and there was nothing to give them to eat. Mishkita’s teats had been red and sore from being squeezed to get milk. And Mara had seen something that had made her frantic with the sadness of it. Mishkita had spread her legs and bent her head under her body, careful that her horns would not poke the flesh, and sucked at her own teats. She was so desperate, for she was given only two or three of the yellow roots every day and it was weeks since she had been given a drink of water – it was when Mara had found the old water up in the hills. Mara had found herself thinking, as she stood with her arm over the beast’s back, and Mishkita’s nuzzle in her neck, licking, licking, because of the salt, Perhaps poor Mishkita will not be sorry when her life is over. And that made her think of her own: would she, Mara, be pleased if one day she were surprised by one of the big lizards, or found the earth insects scrambling over her as she slept? She thought for a long time about this. Every day was so hard, such a struggle, and she was feeling so weak and often so dizzy – and yet she thought, No, I don’t want to die yet. When Daima dies I’ll go north by myself and then …
There had been another worry, the biggest of them all. One day, when there was still a little water left in the waterholes and she was not as thin as she was now, she saw a red thread of blood on her skin, on the inner thigh, and she thought, Something has stung me. But no, the blood was flowing from inside. She was at the waterholes when this happened. She went carefully back through the houses, holding the water cans so no one could see; but Daima had noticed and said, ‘Oh I hoped this would not happen. I thought perhaps you are too thin, there’s no flesh on you.’ She then told Mara what she needed to know. But what concerned her most was that Mara should never, ever, let a man near her, because for her to get pregnant was the worst thing that could happen. It would be the death of her – she was too undernourished, and the child would die too. Since then Mara had looked newly at every male, and at their instruments for making children, but she could not imagine not being able to defend herself. But while Mara thought about it, deciding there was nothing to be afraid of, with all the men so weak and hungry, she did keep an instinct of alarm alive for Daima’s sake. For she had been so apprehensive, so frightened for her – Mara could not remember Daima’s ever being so anxious.
Meanwhile, while the blood did flow there was a problem. The brown material did not absorb liquid. The mosses the village women used were all dust. Daima told Mara to tear up one of the beautiful old robes in the chest to use as pads, and Mara did, though it hurt to do it. She used secretly to let her mind linger over that chest of coloured garments, when the ugliness of everything around seemed to be dragging the life out of her.
The blood ran for two or three days, stopped. It came again. And Kulik, who had had too many problems of his own to notice Mara, sensed what was happening. He was thin, he was gaunt, but he was not weak, and Mara found herself looking out for him. When he saw her he came up, grabbed her by the arm, grinned right into her face and said, ‘What are you waiting for, a Mahondi husband?’
She tore herself free of him and ran, but then the blood stopped, and he seemed to know that too.
Kulik had had two sons. One was killed by a water stinger, not at the waterholes but just outside the village. The young man’s bones was all that they found. The other son went north with some travellers passing through. And then, but not long ago, Kulik went. He was the last to go from the rock houses.
Recently Mara had been thinking that if she did have a child – if the blood did come back – it would be something to love. For sometimes her arms ached to hold somebody. It was her little brother her arms remembered, she knew that, and now it was Mishkita, for she had so often gone to stand with her arms high around the beast’s neck, her head on its shoulder.
Suppose – Mara thought – that she had become too weak to leave? She had never had this thought before: it had always been, When I leave. This frightened her.
On this afternoon, as Mara sat on the rocky perch, she heard the light, rasping breaths from the dusty shelf where Daima lay and she thought, I have heard that breathing before, when someone is not far off dying.
Mara longed to be out of this dark, hot place where she and Daima were like two prisoners. She was dreaming of water on her face and on her arms, and running over her body. She took up a can, from sheer habit, from the line of cans near the wall and went out into the glare, though it was less now, being afternoon. She could hardly see the plain with its pale dryness, where some dust devils circled lazily in the haze. There was a fire somewhere. In the dust were little flecks of black from dead, burning grasses. They were bitter on her tongue. One fell on her and she rubbed and, because it was still warm, greasy marks were left on her skin. The fire smoke hung in dark clouds away beyond the hills of the old cities. If the fire reached them, that would be a real conflagration, for there had not been a fire there that Mara could remember, and there were all those dead trees and old scrub.
The spaces between the houses of the Rock Village were bare. The heaps of dust had been swept away by hot winds. Mara walked past the house where Rabat had died and where she now lay on her rocky shelf. Drying out had twisted those falsely smiling features into an angry sneer. There were scorpions on the roof but they could not get in. Mara went on slowly, listlessly, knowing she was straying about, not going directly forward. She could hardly keep her feet on the path to the ridge. No, she thought, she could not leave here; this is where she would die. It took a long time to reach the ridge from where she could see down to the lines of dead trees along the empty waterholes. She stood there resting, panting, her tongue dry between dry lips. Then she staggered down through the dead grasses. Among them were bones, but most of the bones were over the second ridge, on either side of the main watercourse. That is where the dying animals made their way, hoping there might be water left there. Every kind of bone was scattered about: big ones from the great animals that had died first because they needed so much water, to the little furry animals that had sometimes come up to the houses begging for water, before they died.
Mara did not stop at the first dry waterhole, the one where long ago Kulik had almost drowned Dann, nor the second, where lay the carapaces of two big water stingers, and the shells of turtles, and the bones of water lizards. Beyond was a stretch of clean white sand. She set down the can, which had not held water for months, and took off her tunic, and knelt on the sand. She came here, when she felt strong enough, to this bright, clean sand, to try to free herself of dust. For a long time she knelt there, running the fine white sand over her legs, then her arms, seeing how the dirty surface of her skin came away, leaving cleanness, and then she rubbed handfuls over her neck and her cheeks. The greasy lumps of her hair disgusted her, but she could not do anything to improve them, for the sand only stuck there. Pressing her eyes tight shut she rubbed sand over them and her forehead, again and again, and then lay on the sand and rolled her itching back and shoulders in it. She was rolling as she had seen animals do it, and at the thought she quickly raised her head to see if some scorpion or big bird, with its great talons and beak, or a lizard, had come for her; but no, the banks were empty. And now she knelt and looked down between her thighs to see if perhaps that trickle of red blood was back, but the lips of her slit were pulled tight and wrinkled with dryness. Where she should be peeing was a burning that she had become so used to it seemed only part of the angry, hungry, itchy desperation of her whole body for water. She peed so seldom, and when she did it was dark yellow and so strong she could not drink it, though she had tried, thinking that here was some sort of liquid going to waste. She had watched the dark drops being sucked into the dust and at once drying, leaving a few rough edges around the little pit, like an anteater’s hole.
She was kneeling there, rocking back and forth as Daima did, or had done – for pain and grief, eyes shut – when she heard thunder and opened her eyes to see clouds that were not smoke clouds. They were far ahead, on the horizon; but up there, in the north, was water, was rain: she was sure she could smell it. Slowly she climbed out of her little sandy desert and stood on the bank above the dried watercourse to look at the clouds: it was so long since she had seen lightning dance in banks of black cloud. Her skin craved and ached – soon, soon, drops of rain would fall and hiss on her parched skin … But she had done that before, stood waiting and watching rain on the horizon, but no rain had come. The clouds were growing bigger, gaining height over her. Was the thunder louder? She thought, If there are any animals left, they will be thinking as I am, and running as fast as they can to get here. But she could see no animals. Then she saw, as she had as a child, what seemed like the earth rolling down towards her, a brown avalanche; but now the flood was a low, brown creeping, and not very fast, not roaring and raging and throwing animals and trees and branches about, but it was coming, and would soon be here. At last she could drink her fill and fill the can and take it back to Daima, who had not felt water on her tongue or her lips, only the juice of the yellow roots, for days now.
The flood had reached her, and was slowly spreading out, but low down, filling the waterholes which bubbled and hissed, drinking in the wet, and billows of white foam almost reached Mara’s legs, and she stepped back. This was nothing like the floods she remembered, when it had seemed the whole world had become water; but it was a flood, this was water, and she knelt at the edge and plunged in her face and arms and then her whole body, rolling in it as she had in the sand. And then there was a great clacking and clattering and the surface of the flood was carrying a white load, which was bones, the bones of so many dead animals. She had to move quickly back, for now there were trees too: not the green, fresh trees that had tossed and bounded on the surface of other floods but the dead, white, fragmented trees of the drought. It was dangerous to be in the water or even too close. She stood back and waited for the water to carry the bones and trees past her. Then she saw, farther down, a big tree had stuck itself in a bank, and another came to rest against it; and behind this barrier were piling bones, loads of bones – a mass, a multitude – and she remembered how, long ago, she had seen the bones spilling out from under the bank on the big river she had come through with the two rescuers she had never seen again, or heard of. ‘Remember,’ the man had said to her, ‘remember where this is.’ But she had never been back to see if the bones were there or had been washed away again. Yet that place was no farther away than the short walk it had needed for the two strangers and Dann and her to get to the village. And now here was a new mountain of bones, with brown water rushing through them making them knock against each other. When the flood went down they would remain and the dust would blow over them and they would be hidden. People would think, This is just a river bank, until another flood … The clacking and clicking seemed to be less and the brown water was running more slowly. Up north the sky was blue, the hot, bright, antagonistic blue of drought, and soon the water would be gone. Desperate, she stepped into it, risking blows from the last of the bones, and splashed herself and drank and drank. It was muddy water, but she could feel her body soaking it in. Soon she was standing by water running low again and shrinking back into the waterholes; and her body was fresh and cool, and the filthy, dry paste of dirt had gone, leaving on her a film of the dust the water carried, a greyish film. She thought, I’m the same colour as the Rock People, but did not care. For she was thinking of Daima, and how she had not yet felt the water on her face and in her mouth. Mara was stronger now. With the sun setting in a blaze in the again hot, dry sky behind her she went home, walking well, looking at every step for insects or scorpions or anything at all making its way to the waterholes. And she did see some scorpions, the big ones, going in lines towards the water.
In the dark, hot room Daima moaned, and her breath was hot and heavy. Mara took down the shutter and opened the door a little, and gave Daima a drink, and said it had rained up-country and there had been a small flash flood. But Daima was too ill to care now, and Mara washed her all over, slowly, for a long time, so the water could sink into that drying, cracking skin; and she rubbed cloths over her hair. And made her drink, again and again.
When the morning came, Mara would go up to the waterholes again, and perhaps over the next ridge to the river, to fill the cans and bring them back, to get more water into the cistern that was in the house, though no longer locked up, since there was no one to steal it. She would make the journey again and again till the cistern was full – but then Mara thought, What for? Daima will soon die and there will be nothing here to keep me. Mara was awake all night, standing at the door, looking into the dark and at the sky, where all the stars were out, washed clean and glittering. The very moment the light greyed she took up cans and shut the door tight, and went on, the only moving thing in that hot landscape, up the ridge to its top, and stopped to see what she could see. The flood had gone, leaving a film over everything, greying the white bones heaped up against the dead branching trees. The waterholes were filled, and around every one were scorpions, and beetles and spiders. Where had they been hiding all this time? She had not seen anything but scorpions for a long time. The stretch of sand where she had rolled yesterday was there again, a white glisten over a dark dampness. On the dead white trees along the watercourse the branches seemed clotted with dark crusts or bumps. Insects again, all kinds of them. Had they drunk what they needed and fled up the trees to get away from the scorpions?
Mara was hungry. Now she had drunk enough so that her whole body was sated, and the many aches and sorenesses were not one pain all over her body but could be felt separately – her stomach was shouting, was screaming, at her that she must eat, she must … But what?
Mara went on up the second ridge, and when she reached the top saw more or less what she had expected. There was a running brown stream, low down under the dead white trees with their white branches, like arms: Please, please, give us water. There were bones in piles on both sides of the water, but not very far up, and on the bones sat all kinds of insects and scorpions. She went slowly, watching every step, between the bones to the water’s edge. It was a slow, sinking stream with wet, whitish clay all along it, which would soon be hard crusts and ridges – as hard as the surface of the white on the walls of the old buildings of the dead cities in the hills. Mara had not come here very often, because when the waterholes nearer the village were dry this river was too. Why had she come here so seldom? For one thing she liked better than anything going to the old cities. And then, when the villagers were still here, she kept her distance and none of them would go near the old cities: they liked the water holes. Her life had steadily narrowed, even before she had become too weak to go to the hills.
The mud the water had carried down had sunk down to the bottom of the pools. She could see clear down through the water. Her ears were ringing. The singing beetles were there on the branches. She had not heard them for … She could not remember when she had heard them last. Another sound … surely not … it was not possible … Yes, there was a croaking from the edge of a pool. Some toad or frog had lived through the dry years under the hard, dry mud, and now, the water having softened the mud, the creature had climbed up through it and there it was, sitting on a stone. There were several. When the water went down – and it was going down fast – goodbye, that would be the end of them. The end, too, of the singing beetles. There would be silence again.
Mara stripped off the brown tunic and knelt by a pool. Slowly she sank into it, and rolled in it and lay there absorbing water; and then, when that pool was muddy, went to another pool and squatted, looking in. She could see herself, so thin, only bones with skin stretched over them. Her eyes were deep in her face. It was her hair – those greasy, solid clumps – that she hated. She could hardly bear to touch them. She was staring down at herself there in the water, and saw that next to her was someone else. For a moment she thought her reflection was doubled, but she raised her head and saw on the other side of the pool a youth, who was staring at her. Deliberately, he cupped his hands, dipped them in the water, and drank, keeping his gaze on her. He was naked. She saw there between his legs what Daima had told her she must be afraid of: the two young, round balls in their little sac, and the long thick tube over them – nothing like the wrinkled old lumps Mara had seen so often when the Rock People bathed. This youth was not as thin as she was. There was flesh on him. It had been a long time since she had seen skin fit so nicely over the bones of a face, or arms and legs that had a smooth softness to them. There was a quickness and lightness about him as he squatted there, balancing on his heels and letting the water trickle through his fingers. She was thinking, I ought to be afraid of him. She was thinking, He isn’t one of the Rock People … And then she knew it was Dann and, moreover, had known from the first. She reached her arms out towards him across the water, but let them fall, and smiled, and said, ‘You’ve come back.’
He did not say anything. He was looking at her as she was at him, at every little bit, taking in, finding out … But why didn’t he say anything? He did not smile, he did not seem to have heard. He only frowned and examined her. Five years he had been gone. He had been ten years old, and now he was fifteen. He was a man. The Rock People married when they were thirteen or fourteen and could have children by Dann’s age.
‘I heard you were still here,’ he said. ‘Before that I thought you must be dead.’
‘Everyone is dead, except for me and Daima.’
He stood up. He took up from the ground a whitish rough tunic of the kind servants had worn back home. He shook the dust out of it and slid it over his head. For the first time, it occurred to her that she was naked. She put on her brown tunic, hating it, as she always did. And he was making a face as he saw it. He was remembering that – and what else?
She wanted to ask, ‘What did you see?’ – but you asked that about a place, a feather, a tree, a person, not five years.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked, and he laughed. That was because it was a stupid question. He had not laughed or even smiled till now. ‘Have you been here all this time?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Just here, nowhere else?’
‘Yes.’ And she knew that part of what she wanted to know had been answered. His smile was scornful, and she was seeing her life as he did when he smiled: she had done nothing, been nowhere, while he …
‘Who told you I was here?’
‘Travellers said.’
She thought that he was speaking Mahondi as if he had forgotten how to. She spoke it with Daima, so she had not forgotten.
‘You haven’t been meeting many Mahondis,’ she stated.
That laugh again: short, ‘That’s it, yes. Not many.’
‘I’m going back to see how Daima is. She is dying.’ She dipped her cans and began walking back. She did not know if he would come with her. She could not read his face, his movements; she did not know him. He might just walk off again – disappear.
They went carefully past the fast drying waterholes of the smaller watercourse, where the scorpions were fighting, and where from the trees insects were dropping to the earth to get to the waterholes – where scorpions tore them apart with their pincers.
‘All the insects and the scorpions are getting bigger here,’ she said.
‘And everywhere. And down South.’
The phrase down South did not go easily into her mind. She had often said, ‘up north,’ ‘down south’ – but south to her had meant their old home and her family. She was thinking that, to him, who knew so much more, south must mean much more. Nearly everything of what she said or thought was from their old home, from the What Did You See? game, from Daima’s memories. It was as if she had been living off all that ever since.
They took some time to get to the village. It was because she was slow. He kept getting ahead of her, stopping to wait for her, but then when they set off in no time he was ahead again.
In the village she told him which houses had the dead in them, which cisterns had corpses – but they must be dried up now, or skeletons.
At Rabat’s house he stopped, remembering. He slid back the door, peered in, went to the corner where Rabat lay, and stood looking down. Then he lifted the corpse by its shoulder, stared into the face, let Rabat drop, like a piece of wood. Except, thought Mara, any piece of wood we found we’d treat more carefully than how he has just handled Rabat. And she had learned another thing about him: the dead were nothing to him; he was used to death.
At their house Mara slid back the door and listened. She thought at first that Daima had died. There was no sound of breathing, but she heard a little sigh, and then a long interval, and another sigh.
‘She’s going,’ Dann said. He did not look at Daima but went into the inner rooms.
Mara lifted water to Daima’s lips but the old woman was past swallowing.
Dann came back. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘I’m not going while she is alive.’
He sat down with his arms folded at the rocky table, put his head on his arms – and was at once asleep. His breathing was steady, healthy, loud.
Mara sat by the old woman, wiping her face with a wet cloth, then her arms and her hands. She kept taking gulps of water herself, each one a delicious surprise, since it had been so long since she could simply lift a cup and take a mouthful without thinking, I must only take a few drops. Mara thought, If I don’t eat soon I will simply fall over and die myself. She left Daima and went to the storeroom. There were still some roots. She sliced one, licking the juice off her fingers. Then she reached up out of the dry cistern a can that had some of the white flour in it, which she had saved so that one day she would have the strength to leave. It had been three seasons since anyone had come with flour to barter. It smelled a bit stale, but it was still good. She mixed it with water, patted it flat, and put it out on the cistern top, where she knew it would cook in that flaming heat in a few minutes. When she went back to Daima, the old woman was dead.
Dann still slept.
Mara put her hand out towards his shoulder, but before she touched him he was on his feet, and a knife was in his hand. He saw her, took her in, nodded, sat down and at once drew towards him the plate of sliced root, and began eating. He ate it all.
‘That was for both of us.’
‘You didn’t say.’
She got another root, sliced that, and ate it while he watched. Then she brought in the flat bread from the cistern top, broke it in two and gave him half.
‘This is almost the last of the flour,’ she said.
‘I have a little with me.’
When he had finished eating he went to bend over Daima, staring. She probably hadn’t changed very much since he left, except that her long hair was white.
‘Do you remember her?’ she asked.
‘She looked after us.’
‘Do you remember our home?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember the night Gorda rescued us and arranged for us to be brought here to Daima?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember the two people who brought us?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember Mishka? And her baby, Dann? You called him Dann?’
He frowned. ‘I think I do. A little.’
‘You cried when you had to say goodbye to Mishkita.’
And now he sighed, and looked long and hard at her. He was trying to remember? He didn’t want to remember? He did not like it, her trying to make him remember?
It was painful for Mara: her body, her arms – her arms particularly – knew how they had sheltered Dann, how he had clung and hugged her, but now he seemed to remember nothing at all. Yet those memories were the strongest she had, and looking after Dann had been the first and most important thing in her life. It was as if all that early time together had become nothing.
But she thought, If I did let my arms reach out now it wouldn’t be Dann, but only this strange young man with the dangerous thing between his legs. I could not just hug him or kiss him now.
Then just as the sense of herself, Mara, was fading away, and she was feeling like a shadow or a little ghost, he said unexpectedly, ‘You sang to me. You used to sing to me when I went to sleep.’ And he smiled. It was the sweetest smile – not a jeer, or a sneer – and yet what she felt was, the smile was for the songs, and not for her, who had sung them to him.
‘I looked after you,’ she said.
He really was trying to remember, she could see. ‘We’ll tell each other things,’ he said, ‘but now we should go.’
‘Where?’
‘Well, we can’t stay here.’
She was thinking, But I’ve been here, and Daima too … She wanted to give him something good out of those long years and said, ‘Up in those hills there are the old cities. You never really saw them. I could show you, when the fire has died out.’
‘There are old ruins everywhere. You’ll see.’
Mara and Dann stood on either side of the tall stack of rocks that was a table and looked at each other as strangers do who want to please each other, but thinking, I can’t read that face … that look … those eyes. And both sighed, at the same moment.
Dann turned away from the strain of it. He began looking around the room, with sharp, clever eyes: he was planning, Mara could see. What was going into those plans she could not even guess at. For she had been here, all this time, knowing nothing but this village, while he …
‘Water, first,’ he said. He took two of the cans that had the wooden handles set across the tops, put loops of rope into the handles, tested the loops, slung the cans on a thick stick. Then he took them inside to the cistern. He did not have to tell her why: the mud in that water would have had time to settle.
He brought the cans back. ‘A pity we can’t take all the cans.’
‘Don’t they have them – where we are going?’
‘Hardly any. Not of this metal. All these would keep us fed for a year. But never mind. Now, food.’ He put on the table a leather bag and showed her the flour in it. Enough for a few pieces of bread. Mara brought ten yellow roots from next door and a bag of the white flour traders had once brought.
‘Is that all we’ve got?’
‘That’s all.’
‘Get some of these things.’ He indicated Mara’s brown garment.
She grimaced, but went into the storeroom and fetched back an armful.
‘We can get food for these,’ he said. He bundled them, three and three.
She went back in, and fetched some of the delicate old garments from the chest full of them, and spread them out. He picked up one, frowning: his hands were unused to such fragile cloth.
‘Better leave these,’ he said. ‘If people see them they’ll think we’re … we’re…’
‘What? But we are. We wore these, at home. I don’t want to leave them.’
‘You can’t take them all.’
‘I’ll take these two.’ The soft folds, pale rose, and yellow, lay glowing on the dark rock.
‘Perhaps someone’ll pay for them. Or give us something.’
Now they set two sacks side by side on the floor and began packing. First, into hers, went a roll of the torn-up material that she used for the blood flow. She was embarrassed and tried to hurry and hide what she was doing, but he saw and nodded. This comforted her, that he understood what a problem it was for her. She put in next the two delicate dresses, rolled up. Then the three brown ones. Then five yellow roots and her little bag of flour. Into his went, on top of an old cloth that had in it an axe, five roots, his bag of flour, three of the brown tunics. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Wait.’ Mara went to Daima, stroked the old cheek, which was chilling fast, and stopped herself crying, because tears wasted water. She thought, Daima will lie here and go as dry as a stick, like Rabat, or the scorpions will push the thatch aside and come in. It doesn’t matter. But isn’t that strange? I’ve spent every minute of my time worrying about Daima – what can I give her to eat, to drink, is she ill, is she comfortable? – and now I say, Let the scorpions eat her.
‘Have we got candles?’
She indicated the big floor candles. Among them was one half-burned. Forgetting what it concealed, Daima had set it alight one evening, and it was only when an acrid smell of burning leather reminded them that they put out the flame. Now Mara took up the stump, turned it upside down, dug out the plug at the bottom and pulled out the little bag. She spilled on to the old rough rock a shower of bright, clean, softly gleaming gold coins. Dann picked one up, turned it about, bit it gently.
She could have cried, seeing those pretty, fresh, gold rounds, dropped in there from another world, like the coloured robes – nothing to do with this grim, dusty, rocky, cruel place.
‘I don’t think anyone would want these,’ said Dann. ‘I don’t think anyone uses them now.’ Then he thought and said, ‘But perhaps that’s because I’ve just been … I’ve been with the poor people, Mara. This is what I’ve been using.’
He took from the inside pocket of his slave’s garment a dirty little bag and spilled out on to the rock surface beside the scatter of gold some coins made of a light, dull greyish metal. Mara picked up a handful. They were of no weight at all, and greasy.
‘This is the same metal as the old pots and the cans.’
‘Yes. They’re old. Hundreds of years.’ He showed her a mark on one of them. ‘That means five.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘Five. Who knows what five meant then? Now they’re worth just what we say.’
‘How many of them to one of the gold pieces?’
And now he laughed, finding it really funny. ‘So much …’ He spread his arms. ‘No, enough to fill this whole room … Leave them. They’ll get us into trouble.’
‘No. Our parents … our family, the People, sent them to us. To Daima.’ She scooped them up, counting into the little bag, which was stiff with the candle wax, the pretty, bright little discs of gold, each the size of Dann’s big thumbnail, twice as thick and surprisingly heavy. Fifty of them.
‘Fifty,’ she said; and he said, ‘But keep them hidden.’
And that was how they could have left behind the coins that would save their lives over and over again.
Because of this little fluster and flurry over the gold, which really did seem to steal their minds away, they forgot important things. Matches – that was the worst. Salt. They could easily have chopped a piece off the bottom of a floor candle, but they didn’t think of that until too late. Mara did just remember to take up a digging stick, as they went out, which she had used for years and was as sharp as a big thorn.
What they were both thinking as they left, slinging the carrying pole between them: We have the most important thing, water.
4 (#ulink_b8d5cfce-473c-5d0f-b34d-a8347edc7369)
The two stood at the door and looked into the glare and the heat and the dust. Black flecks were floating about. Red flames could be seen beyond the hills. The wind was coming this way. As they thought this, a spurt of flame appeared at the top of the nearest hill and at once ran up a dead white tree and clung there, sending up flares of sparks.
‘If the wind doesn’t change the fire’ll be here in an hour,’ said Dann.
‘It can’t get inside the rock houses.’
‘The thatch will burn over Daima,’ said Dann.
Well, thought Mara, haven’t I just decided it doesn’t matter what happens to dead people? She felt sad, nevertheless, and angry with herself. She thought, If you’re going to feel sad every time someone dies or goes away, then that is all you’ll ever do … But she was wiping the tears away. Dann saw and said nicely, sorry for her, ‘We’d better go if we don’t want to be roasted too.’ A thin line of flames, almost invisible in the sunlight, was creeping towards them in the low, dry, pale grass.
They walked, then ran, though Mara was pleased she had the stick to hold on to, through the rock houses, up the first ridge, down past the already half-empty waterholes, each one clustered with spiders and scorpions and beetles – some dead, some alive – up the next ridge and down to the stream, which was running so low that it was only a string of waterholes with wet places between each.
Dann set down his can, told Mara to do the same, and caught two frogs, killed them with his knife, which he took from under his tunic, and skinned them – all in a moment. She had never seen anything so quick and so skilful. He gave her some pink meat to eat. She had not eaten meat, or could not remember doing so. She watched him chewing up pink shreds and felt her stomach heave, and he said, ‘If you don’t, you’ll starve.’
She forced the meat into her mouth and made herself chew. This hurt, because it was tough and her teeth were loose from starvation. But she did chew, and swallowed, and it stayed down. And now, for the first time in so long she could hardly remember, she needed to empty her bowels. She went off a little way into the grass, squatted, and the stuff poured out. Last time there had only been pellets, like Mishka and Mishkita’s black, round pellets. She was losing water to the earth. This was how people began the drought sickness, wet shit pouring from their backsides.
‘Perhaps I have the drought sickness,’ she shouted to Dann from her place behind tall grasses; but he shouted back, ‘No, you aren’t used to enough water.’
He made her kneel by one of the holes and drink, and drink again. Then he drank. They stayed there, side by side, feet in the water, their flesh soaking up wet. She was feeling her hair with both hands, wishing it away, knowing that if she put it into water the stiff, greasy clumps would not change. He watched. Suddenly he took his knife, said, ‘Bend your head.’ While she was thinking, Oh, he’s going to kill me, she felt the knife blade sliding over the bones of her skull and saw the horrible lumps falling into the sand. She kept quite still for fear of being cut, but he was skilful and there wasn’t a scratch. ‘Look at yourself,’ she heard, and bent close over the water and saw that her head was as smooth and as shiny as a bone or a nut; and she began to cry and said, ‘Oh thank you, thank you.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he mocked her gruffly, and she saw that thank-yous had not been part of his life.
She thought that her face, all bones, all hollows, made her smooth head look like a skull, and she again drank, wishing the water to fill out her face, her flesh.
‘We’d better get a move on,’ he said.
The sky behind them, where the village was, was black with smoke, and greasy burnt bits were falling everywhere around them.
She was thinking, I can’t move, I can’t. Running here from the village, up and down the ridges, had worn her out. Her legs were trembling. She was thinking, Perhaps he’ll just go off and leave me if I can’t keep up. He had gone off with those two men, hadn’t he? – without a thought for her, or for Daima?
‘What happened to those two men you went away with?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know.’ Then his whole body seemed to shrink and shiver. She could see little Dann, whom she had held trembling against her. ‘They were … they beat me … they …’ Dann could have sobbed, or cried out, she could see.
‘How did you get away from them?’
‘They tied me to one of them with a rope. I couldn’t keep up with them. Sometimes I dragged behind them on the earth. One night I chewed through the rope. It took a long time.’ Then he added, ‘Perhaps it wasn’t so long. It seemed long. I was just a child. And then I was starving. I came to a house and a woman took me in. She hid me when the men came to look for me. I stayed there – I don’t know how long.’
‘And then?’
She could see he would not answer much more – not now, at least. ‘I travelled north with some people. We came to a town that was still – it had people in it, it had food and water. And then there was a war again. I would have been a soldier, so I ran away again …’ And he stopped. ‘I will tell you, Mara. I want to know about you, too. But come on, we must go, quick.’
Again she was pleased that she had the stick between them, shoulder to shoulder, to steady her. They walked along the big watercourse, not close to the water, where the bones were heaped up, but halfway up the ridge. From there they could see the big flames leaping and climbing and dancing all over the hills where the big cities were. Well, those hills must have burned before, and often, and still the old walls stood.
‘While you were travelling,’ she addressed Dann’s back, ‘did you find out about …’ But she hardly knew what she wanted to ask, since there was so much she needed to know. ‘Has there been this kind of drought before? Or is it only here?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘but let’s keep quiet now. We don’t know who might be around.’
‘There’s no one. Everyone’s left, or they’re dead.’
‘There are people on the move everywhere, looking for water or for something better. Sometimes I think that all the people alive are on their feet walking somewhere.’
It was mid-afternoon, the hottest time, the sun beating down and the earth burning their feet. Mara’s naked head ached and throbbed as she walked with her free arm across it. The air was full of dust and of smoke. The sky was a yellowish swirl with dark smoke full of black bits pouring across it, and the sun was only a lighter place in the smoke. She wanted to lie down, sit down; she wanted to find a rock and creep under it …
‘We must keep moving, Mara. Look back.’ She screwed up her eyes to look where they had come and saw that smoke was rising from where the village was, and farther on too – the flames were racing to the watercourse, and soon would cross that, in a jump, and reach the one they were walking along. Would those piles of bones burn, putting an end to memories of so many animals? Dann saw how she held her arms across her pate, and found a bit of cloth in his sack and gave it to her to drape across her head and make a bit of shade. She saw that sweat poured off him everywhere, felt it running down her too. She was afraid that the water she felt running down her legs was wet shit. She quickly looked, but no, it was sweat. She was afraid because of losing all that water, and went to a waterhole to drink, with him. They drank and drank, both thinking that they must while it was there. Then he said, ‘Come on: if the wind changes, the fire’ll catch up with us.’
She was so glad of her end of the pole: otherwise she would be staggering and falling. She was walking in a kind of half-sleep, or trance, and wondered that Dann could still move so lightly, that he was so alert, turning his head all the time, this way, that way, for danger. They went on, and on, their shadows at first small under them, but then black and long on the flat places between rocks, but jumping and changing when they went through rocks. She felt she must fall, but knew they had to go on. Every time she turned her head she could see how the smoke clouds were darkening and how they hung well beyond this second watercourse: the flames must be into the plain beyond the rivers. Where she had never been. Stumbling there in her half-sleep, burning up because the sweat had run itself dry, she thought, What a little life I’ve been leading. I wasn’t curious enough even to cross over the rivers to the western plain … And there it was again, a word in her mind and she had no idea where it had come from: west, western. Like north, which everyone used. What was North, where was it?
Just when she thought she could no longer move one foot before the other, they were walking on burnt earth. The fire or another recent one had come here. The low, black grasses still kept their shape, as if they had grown out of the earth black and so fragile they crumbled into bits at a touch, and would blow away at the first strong wind. An old log burned, a red glow deep in grey ash.
‘We’ll be all right now,’ he said. They were still on the ridge with the watercourse down on their left, big pools from the flood. He lifted the pole off her shoulder, and went leaping down, and she followed, carefully holding herself upright. Just like farther down there were bones here, old bones and new ones, and the insects clustered and clotted on them and on the dead trees. Dann had flung off his garment and was in a pool like a big rock basin. She slowly took off her slippery skin and joined him. They drank and splashed water over their heads and shoulders and lay in the water, their heads resting on the edge. From there they stared straight up into a sky full of smoke and, turning their heads, saw columns and towers of smoke – probably the dead trees by the waterholes.
The fire would kill the scorpions and the singing insects and the new frogs. It would make the water in the holes steam and sink quickly down into the mud, which would soon be dry and cracked. It would burn the smaller bones. And the earth insects, which had to have grass to live? When the fire had passed over the plains, burning up everything, even the earth in some places, would the grass grow again? If not, the insect cities would die, their towers would stand dead and empty, and then … there would be just dry earth everywhere, and the dust clouds would blow about and slowly the Rock Village would be filled with dust and sand.
‘Come on,’ Dann said, as he leaped out and pulled on his white garment. Oh no, she was thinking, I can’t go on; but he had not meant that: he was looking for a safe place for them to spend the night. She climbed out of the water, put on her tunic that was like a snakeskin, and helped him search among the rocks. He was looking for a place that was hidden, but high enough for them to look down and around from. And there it was: a flattish rock on the top of a little hill, with still unburnt bushes and grass around it. There was something that looked like a barricade or a wall of small stones: yes, this was a wall, joining bigger boulders, and it had been made for defence. People before them had thought this place a good one. When she looked she could see the little rough walls here and there, some of them tumbling down. Quite a long time ago then, not recently, this hilltop had been fought over by – well, who?
The yellow glow in the sky that was the sun behind smoke and dust was lower now, but it was very hot, and the flat rock pumped out waves of heat. Mara took some of her white flour, mixed it with water and made cakes which she laid on the rock. Meanwhile Dann was moving away stones from where they could sit, their backs to a big boulder.
He sat with his legs stretched out, and she by him, thinking, Now perhaps he’ll talk, he’ll tell me … And then she was asleep, and woke to see that the whole sky seemed on fire, the clouds and billows of smoke full of light, and rays shooting right up towards the sinking sun. Dann was looking at her. She thought, I’m so ugly. He must think I’m like a monkey – but he has never seen a monkey I expect. But where did I see them? Oh yes, it was home, there were monkeys in a big cage. I know what I look like, and my head … She was so hungry. The flour cakes she had put on the rock? – he had eaten some. She would have gone to get herself some but she felt she could not move. His gaze did not leave her face. He was examining her, as Daima had looked at her before she died, as if her face – Mara’s – held some truth or secret. Oh, she was so hungry. As she looked at the cakes, wanting them, Dann leaped up and fetched them, putting them carefully into her hand. And then he watched her eat them, slowly, a bit at a time, as she had learned to eat, food being so short, every crumb, every tiny bit held in the mouth to get all the goodness from it. Besides, her teeth hurt.
She did not feel uncomfortable that he was watching her. She was happy he was there, but she did not understand him. Nothing he did was what she expected, nor much of what he said.
She said to him, ‘If you hadn’t come then I would be dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘I was dying and didn’t know it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when that fire started I think I would have decided to stay with Daima and let it burn me.’
He said nothing, only gazed at her face, and her eyes.
‘There would have been no reason for me to leave. Nowhere to go. And I was too weak anyway.’
He said, carefully – and it was because he didn’t want to offend her – ‘Didn’t you ever go anywhere else? Only the Rock Village?’
‘Only out to find the roots – and there were seeds, too.’
He put his knuckles to the earth and leaped up, and stood staring away down the side of the hill. She knew it was because he did not want her to see his face. He was shocked because she had not made any effort to go anywhere else. But you didn’t know how it was, how difficult, she wanted to say to him. But she was ashamed. She had lived all that time, knowing nothing – nothing. While he …
He was taking from his sack one of the yellow roots. He cut it and gave her half, sat by her, looked over to where the sun was going down, a red, burning place among the dark clouds.
‘When you went off with the two men did you come this way?’
He shook his head. A long silence now. A real silence. Long ago, at this hour, the sun going, there had been all kinds of animal noises, bird sounds, and the singing insects were so loud they split the ears. Now, nothing.
‘Where are we going?’
‘North.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s better there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘People say.’
‘Have they been there?’
‘The farther south, the worse. The farther north, the better. There’s water up there. It still rains there. There is a big desert, they say, and it is drying everything around its edges, but you can go around it.’
‘There is going to be a desert here.’
‘Yes.’
‘We use words like south and north and east and west, but why do we? Where do they come from?’
He said with a laughing sneer, as if he had suddenly become another person, ‘The Rock People are just stupid. Stupid rock rabbits.’
‘All these words come from somewhere. I think from the Mahondis.’
He jeered again, ‘The Mahondis! You don’t understand. They aren’t anything – we aren’t. There were people once – they knew everything. They knew about the stars. They knew … they could talk to each other through the air, miles away …’ His mood was changing: he seemed to be wanting to laugh, but properly, then giggle…‘From here to the Rock Village. From here to – up north. To the end of North.’
And now she found herself giggling too.
‘You’re laughing,’ he said, laughing. ‘But it’s true. And they had machines that could carry a hundred people at a time …’
‘But we had sky skimmers.’
‘But these could go on flying without coming down for days …’
And suddenly they were laughing aloud, for the ridiculousness.
‘And they had machines so big that – bigger than the Rock Village.’
‘Who told you all this?’
‘People who know what’s up North. There are places there where you can find out about the old people – the ones that lived long ago. And I’ve seen pictures.’
‘The pictures on the old walls?’
‘No, in books.’
‘When we were little there were books.’
‘Not just paintings on leather and leaves. They used to have books made of … It’s a very thin, fine stuff, white, and there can be a hundred pages in a book. I saw some pages from an old book … they were crumbling …’ His mood changed again. He said furiously, ‘Mara, if you only knew … We think the Rock People are just – rabbits. But those people, the ones that lived long ago – compared to them we are beetles.’
Now the dark was coming up through the rocks. He said, ‘I’m going to sleep. But you must stay awake. Do you know how to? When you get sleepy, then wake me. Don’t wake me suddenly or I’ll hit you. I’ll think you’re an enemy – do you see? You slept a bit earlier.’ And there and then he lay down on the rock and was asleep.
And now it was really dark. There was no moonlight: the moon was almost full, but the sky was too full of smoke and dust to see it, or the stars. Mara sat with her back against a rock and her head whirled with everything she had been hearing. She wanted to cry, and would have cried, but stopped herself, thinking, Bad enough to lose all that water in sweat, but I can stop myself crying. She thought of her life all these years with Daima, who told her tales, full of all kinds of things the little girl had thought were made up – just stories – but now Mara was wondering if Daima’s tales were true after all. But mostly they had played What Did You See? And what had Mara seen! The inside of a neighbour’s rock house. The details of the scaly skin of a land lizard. A dead tree. ‘What did you see, Mara?’ ‘The branches stick up like old bones. The bark has gone. The wood is splitting. In every crack insects are living.’ But they aren’t now: the flames have killed them, every one. ‘The birds come and sit in the dead trees and go off, disappointed. There are birds’ skeletons in the trees. When the skeletons fall to the ground you can see they are like us. They have legs and feet and their wings are like arms.’ ‘And what else did you see, Mara?’ ‘The dead wood of the different trees is different, sometimes light and spongy and sometimes so heavy and hard I can’t push my thumbnail into it.’ ‘And what else, Mara?’ ‘There are the roots deep in the ground that I dig up.’ And that was what she had seen, all those years. The village. The Rock People. The animals, always fewer and then gone. The lizards and dragons – but they had gone too. Mishka, darling Mishka, who had licked her face clean, and then Mishkita. And the earth insects … insects, scorpions, insects, always more of them … Well, even the scorpions would have been burned up by now, probably.
And that was all. She had not gone farther than the dead cities in the hills. ‘What did you see, Mara?’ ‘I saw pictures of people, but they were not like us, but a different brown, with differently shaped bodies, painted eyes, rings on their hands and in their ears. I saw …’ Perhaps those were the people that Dann said had been so clever that they knew everything?
Mara was staying awake easily because of her sad and ashamed thoughts. Then she wanted to pee and was afraid to move and wake Dann. She crawled away, trying not to make a sound, and squatted paces away. There was a lot of pee now, and her pee place was no longer sore. Her body was not burning and aching and itching and crying out for water. When she crawled back she saw Dann’s eyes were open, watchful gleams in the dark.
‘Did you hear something?’ he asked.
‘No.’
His eyes closed and he was instantly asleep. A little later he rolled towards Mara, and was hugging her. ‘Mara, Mara,’ he said, in a thick voice, but it was childish, a little boy’s voice. He was asleep. He snuggled up to her and she held him, her heart beating, for she was holding her little brother; but at the same time he was dangerous, and she could feel his tube thick and hot on her thigh. Then his arms fell away. He was sucking his thumb, suck, suck. Then silence. He rolled away. She could never tell him that he had sucked his thumb. He would probably kill her, she thought. Then was surprised at the thought, which had come so easily.
Before Dann fell asleep, while he watched his sister, he had been thinking, Why am I here? Why did I come for her? She’s such a poor, sick, feeble thing. But all he knew was that ever since he had heard from travellers that there were people alive in the old village, he had had to come. He did not know why, but he was restless, he was unhappy, he could not sleep. He had to look for her. She was mistaken, thinking he had not seen monkeys. He had, in cages – and people too, in cages. He thought she looked like a little monkey, with big, sad eyes and a naked head. But she was already fattening a little. She was no longer just a skeleton with a bit of skin over the bones and enormous dry, hungry eyes. And that was in only two days. At the waterhole he had seen something he first thought was an animal, with its long claws and filthy mats of hair on its head; but now he knew her again, for certain looks of hers, and movements, and memories, were coming back. They were all of warm arms and a soft voice, of shelter and comfort and safety. He was trying to match what he saw: the little, spindly creature, all bones, with the memories his limbs and body held, of soft, big, kind arms, everything big and soft and warm.
When the light began, Mara saw that all over her were bits of the black, greasy stuff from the fire. So the wind had shifted. She said, ‘Dann,’ and he was at once on his feet and looking at the black bits on him. The fire had burned to the edge of the older fire, and gone out. There was smoke everywhere, but it was thinner ahead, where they were going. He took up the water cans, and put the pole on his shoulder, and went bounding off down towards the nearest waterhole; and then he shouted to her and she went to the edge of the little hill, the rock already hot under her feet, and saw him point down. The black from the fires seemed to have over it greyish-yellowish streams, like liquid: earth insects, like a flood, going down to the watercourse. But that was not their destination: the streams were already on their way up the farther ridge. ‘Quick,’ he said, and bounded down, though keeping a distance between him and them; and she followed, shivering now not with weakness but with fear, and plunged after Dann into the biggest waterhole. There they washed the black smears off them, and filled the cans right up, and drank and drank, always watching the earth insects; but saw that the mass was spreading out sideways, towards their waterhole. She wanted to scramble out but he held her, and then, as the insects fell over into the water, he grabbed them with his quick fingers, pulling off their heads and cramming the still squirming bodies into his mouth. He ate several, then saw her face and stopped to think what to do. She was not far off fainting with horror. Along the edge of the water now was a fringe of drowning insects. He stepped through the water to the bank, reached for his big sack, took from it a smaller one, filled it with drowned insects, and then nodded at her to get out of the water. She was afraid, for the insects seemed to be everywhere. But he stepped up and out, carefully, putting his feet between the trickles of insects which, if they had a mind to, could eat him and her to bones in a moment. But no, the insects were going as fast as they could through the waterholes to make new cities for themselves in a part that had not been burned. Yet there was nothing to be seen but the black of the fire, so they would have a long way to go, carrying everything they had: bits of food from their underground farms – which, Mara could see, seemed dry and shrivelled instead of plump and fresh – their babies, and their big mothers, each the size of Mara’s hand, white and fat, and who even as they were being carried along were laying eggs that fell from them like maggots and were gathered up by the insects and carried in their mouths. This was a people moving from one home to another, as the Rock People moved into an empty house if they liked it better than their own. Mara watched Dann step carefully among the insects, who were now more like a flood, a flash flood, when it seemed as if the earth itself was on the move; and she went after him afraid she would set her feet down on them because of her faintness. But soon they were through the insects and going along the ridge again, above the watercourse where the holes were already only half what they were yesterday. Looking back they could see more and more of the insects coming; soon there would be none left in the tall earth towers that were like cities. Up the two went to the place between the rocks, and Dann put the drowned insects on the hot rock, and in a few moments they had lost their juicy, glistening look and were like little sacks of skin. And now Dann gave Mara one of them, looking hard at her, and she put it in her mouth. It tasted on her tongue acid, and pulpy; she pretended it was a bit of fruit. Dann handed her another and another, and she ate them, until she was full. Then off he jumped down back to the swarm, and she saw him scooping the insects out of the rivers of them, putting them into the bag, and in a moment was back, and as he took each one out of the bag he nipped off its head. The insects were hissing and fighting inside the little bag. His hands had been bitten, they were red and swollen. But he went on, beheading them and laying them out on the rock, which was by now almost too hot to touch. He ate them as they cooked, and handed her one after another, and she knew that he was measuring that bony little body of hers with his eyes and thinking, She’s fatter, she’s better. ‘Eat, Mara. Eat, you must,’ he commanded.
By then it was mid-morning. Again they were going to travel through the hottest part of the day. They went parallel to the watercourse. There was no shelter, only rocks and dead trees, their branches reaching up like bones. The fires were behind: ahead the sky was full of dust but not of smoke. Mara longed to give up for the day, go down into the water and lie there, because it was sinking so fast that some of the waterholes were already only mud.
She was walking with her eyes kept lowered because of the glare, holding tight to the pole where the water cans hung. Then Dann said, ‘Look ahead, Mara,’ and she did try to unscrew her eyes to see that ahead the ridge went sharply up and into a high country, and down it fell a trickle of water, which was all that was left of the flood of four days ago. But the fall of water was between sharp rocks, and she knew she could never climb there to drink. ‘We’ll stop soon,’ he said. She thought that he sounded as she must have done, talking to him when he was a child. He was coaxing her on. ‘It’s better up there, over the escarpment. You’ll see. Tonight we’ll stay halfway up and tomorrow we’ll be up.’
In the late afternoon they made their way down to the water, which here was not waterholes, had been a really big river, and still flowed slowly from the fall, before it ran farther and became sand and rocks and the sparse, drying holes. Bones everywhere. Big, branching, white bones and, among them, horns and tusks. As they walked to the water’s edge they had to step in the spaces between bones: ribs, and skulls and teeth and little bones that the sun was crumbling into chalky white earth.
She was afraid there might be stingers or even a water dragon still alive and so, evidently, was he. He stood by the side of the shallow stream and poked everywhere into it with the carrying pole, but there was no creature in it, nothing broke the surface. This water was flowing only because of the flood, and the stream had been dry so long nothing had lived, not even a frog or toad. Again they bathed and splashed and drank and filled the cans, and went up among rocks high above the ridge, some distance from the fall, which was whispering its way down – though once that waterfall had been half a mile wide, for where they stopped for the night the stains of water were on the rocks around them, and were so smooth from old water they had to be careful not to slip on them. The light had not yet gone. They sat looking down over where they had come, and saw how the fires were raging away, but going south, away from them. She could not see the village, though it could not be very far – they had been walking slowly because of her weakness. It was all blackened country, and smoke was rising in places from a slow-burning log, or from a pile of bones. She tried to see the hills near the village where the old cities were but they were only a faint blue line away in the smoke. The wind had changed again: no black smuts were falling on them.
She mixed flour with water and again cooked cakes on the rocks. Then they ate another root. Very little flour left now, and eight yellow roots.
‘Up on the top there’s more food,’ he said. And he took out his little bag of greyish coins and laid them out and counted them. ‘We won’t be able to buy much with that,’ he said. And then he stayed, squatting, brooding over the coins, resting lightly on his knuckles, his other hand stirring the coins around. ‘I’ve been thinking, Mara. It’s that gold. The trouble is, how are we going to change those coins? Let’s have a look at them.’ She brought out her bag of gold coins and spread them out on the rock.
‘You know, I’ve never heard about these except as a sort of joke. “As good as gold.” “More precious than gold.” “It’s a gold mine.” But the more I think about it, I remember that it is used. But only by the rich people and that’s why I didn’t think at first …’ He sat stirring his fingers now in the gold coins. ‘They’d kill us if they knew we had these,’ he said.
‘If we can’t change them, then how are we going to eat?’
‘I didn’t say we couldn’t.’ He sat, frowning, thinking.
The little coins lay shining there, and when she touched one it was already hot from the rock.
‘With one of these you could buy a big house,’ he said.
‘Oh Dann, let’s buy a house and live in it – somewhere there’s water all the time.’
‘You don’t understand, Mara.’
Well, she knew she didn’t, and she felt she must have heard this many times already: You don’t understand. ‘Then begin telling me,’ she said.
They were crouching face to face, coins, the gold ones and ugly, thin, grey ones, on a big stone between them, and even up here on a dried up hillside that seemed quite deserted, he lowered his voice.
He took up a big stick and began drawing in the dust between stones. He drew a big shape, longer than wide, and on one side it bulged right out, so that it was like a fat-stemmed throwing stick.
‘That’s the world,’ he said. ‘It is all earth, with sea around it.’
‘The world’ floated up easily into Mara’s mind from long-ago lessons with her parents. ‘The world is bigger than that,’ she said. ‘The world has a lot of pieces of land with water between them.’
He leaned forward, peering into her face. He seemed frightened. ‘How do you know? Who told you? We are not supposed to know anything.’
‘We were taught all that. I was, but you were too little. Our parents told us.’
‘But how did they know? Who told them? They don’t tell us anything. They want us to think that what we have is all there is. Like rock rabbits thinking their little hill is everything.’ The sneer was back in his voice.
‘It’s this shape you’ve drawn. I remember it. It is called Ifrik. And it is the piece of earth we live on. Where are we on it? – that’s what I’d like to know.’
He pointed in the middle, well below the bulging out bit.
‘And how far away is Rustam from here?’
He pointed a little distance down, and then put two fingers, almost together, one where he said they were and one where Rustam was.
She felt that she had really become as small and as unimportant as a beetle. In her mind the journey from Rustam was a long one, a change from one kind of life to a completely different one; and now all that had become – because of those two fingers of his, held with a tiny space between them – nothing very much, and she was nothing much too.
But she held herself steady and said, ‘I remember they said that Ifrik was very big. And where are we going tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow and the next day and the next …’ He held his fingers the same tiny distance apart, but now on the opposite side of where he had said they were.
‘And that is north?’
‘It is north. But the real North is …’ And, excited, he pointed to the very top of the space or shape he had drawn.
‘If it has taken us so long to come such a little way then how long to get North?’
‘Why long? It’s been two days.’
‘But …’ she was thinking of that journey by night away from Rustam and knew that he wasn’t. And probably couldn’t.
‘From here, going north, it will get better.’
‘And if we were going south, instead, it would be worse?’
‘Worse, until we got to the very bottom, here …’ and he pointed to the bottom of Ifrik. ‘There are high mountains, and then there is water and green.’
‘So why aren’t we going south?’
‘We’d die trying to get there. Besides, when everything started to dry up and the deserts began, then a lot of the people travelled south, crowds of people, like those earth insects today; everyone went down and down and then through the mountains. But the people there didn’t want them, there wasn’t enough water and food for everyone. There was a war. And all the people from the high, dry lands were killed – because they were weakened by the travelling.’
‘All killed?’
‘So they say.’
‘And when was this?’
‘Before we were born. When the rains began to stop, and there was no food, and the wars began.’
‘Daima ran away from a war. That was a long time before we were born.’
There was a silence then, with the sun going down in its dusty red, the shadows dark and warm between the rocks, the little tinkling of the waterfall.
‘I don’t see how we are going to stay alive,’ she said.
‘I’ve stayed alive, haven’t I? I know how to. You’ll see. But we have to be careful all the time.’ He looked again at the gold coins, thinking. Then he said, ‘Give me two of those strips of cloth you have.’
She fished them out of the bottom of her bag, wondering, sadly, And when am I going to need these again? He was watching her, and she thought, He knows what I am thinking: he’s kind.
He divided the coins into two heaps of twenty-five and tied them, one by one, into the strips of cloth, with a little knot between each. So they wouldn’t clink – she understood; and began to help him. There were soon two knotted cords of twisted cloth lying on the rocks.
‘See if you can tie one around you – high up, above your waist.’
She lifted her tunic and tied one of the cords where he had pointed. The trouble was she had no breasts at all, she was flat. When she showed him, she was ashamed, because across her chest under the flimsy brown the knots of the cord were visible, taller than her little nipples.
The tears splashed off her face on to the stones.
He smiled, and put his hand out, taking a little pinch of flesh where her neck was bare above the tunic. ‘Poor Mara,’ he said, gently. ‘But you’ll be a girl again soon, I promise you.’ And he rocked her a little with his hand, while she smiled and made herself stop crying. ‘All right, take it off.’ She slipped the cord down under her tunic and gave it to him.
‘We’ll get you something to wear that’s thicker and then no one will see what you’ve got under it.’
‘I wish I could have something different, soon.’ And she took up handfuls of the stuff of the tunic, letting them spring back into shape, trying to crush it, destroy it. ‘I do hate it, Dann. I wish I could wear the same as you’ve got on.’
He said nothing and his face changed: he was angry.
‘I know it is a slave’s dress,’ she said. ‘Our slaves used to wear them.’
‘I don’t remember.’ But he was remembering something bad.
‘Anything would be better than this,’ she insisted, and then he smiled at last.
Now it was dusk, the material of her tunic was not brown but a soft, glistening black.
‘It’s such funny stuff,’ he said, fingering it and hating it. ‘It changes colour. Sometimes in the strong sun I think it’s white, and then it’s brown again.’
‘Where can I get one like yours?’
‘We’ll have to buy one. And we don’t have enough of the little coins. So we’ll have to wait until we can change a gold one.’ He dropped one of the strings of twenty-five coins into his sack, and one into hers. ‘And now you sleep and I’ll stay awake.’
Mara lay down between the stones, her head on her hand, and was at once asleep, and woke to know Dann was not there beside her. Then she felt his hand over her mouth and heard his whisper, ‘Quiet, there are people.’ Feet moved among stones just below them, closer to the waterfall than they were. Clumsy feet: stones slipped and bounded down off the rocks. The light was in the sky again. The two peered over the edge of a rock and saw a man and a woman clambering down, who stopped, consulted, lay down where they were and slept. ‘Very tired,’ Mara breathed. Then she watched Dann creep down towards the travellers. He was among boulders, and in the dim light could be thought of as a boulder, for he stopped to wait, crept on, stopped … She saw him stoop down near the two sleeping bodies and was back with her at once, with a bag in his hand. They emptied it on the ground. Not much in it, only a little dried fruit and some pieces of flat bread. Dann at once divided the fruit and began eating his share. She thought that the two travellers had come from beyond the Rock Village somewhere, and down there was no food at all. ‘They’ll be hungry,’ she whispered, and saw Dann lean forward to stare into her face. When he did that, he was trying to work out what she was feeling, and what she was expecting him to feel. Then he whispered into her ear, ‘Eat, Mara. If you want us to stay alive, then we have to use our wits.’ She ate. The pieces of bread went into her sack.
Dann slung the cans back on the pole, careful they didn’t clink, and pushed the stolen bag deep into his sack. She slid her end of the pole on to her shoulder, and together they moved on up the sharp ridge, full of rocks. By the time they reached the top the sun was up and they looked back from this higher place at the black from the fires, the smoking logs here and there, and far away the fires themselves, burning slowly down into the south. Between where they were and the fires, nothing green was left, only grey rocks and stones here and there in the black. They went on up and over the escarpment and along the river that was falling behind them in the trickle she had seen from the plain. Mara was walking well, was keeping up easily with Dann. She was sure that her limbs were plumping out, with all the water she had been lying in, and drinking. But when she pinched her thigh through the tunic, and then her forearms, there was still only skin there, not flesh. But she was feeling better.
Now, ahead of them, was an enormous basin of land, with mountains all around it. The river came from a small lake. And the story was the same: once there had been water, big water, probably filling the basin right up to the mountains; but now cracked old mud, which was in places dust, spread out from the edges of the little lake. They were walking over hard, dry mud and bones.
In the lake, which was more of a large pool, she could see movement and said, ‘Are there still water dragons?’
‘No. They have died. But there are water stingers.’
‘Then we daren’t go in the water.’
‘No. When I was coming to you I walked along here. I thought the water was safe. I put a foot in to test it – and I only just got away. It was a big stinger.’
Here, on this side of the mountains, the air was cleaner. The sky was yellowish with dust, and low down, and the sun was making thick, regular rays through it, but it was not smoke. Soon they came to a village. The houses were not made of rocks but of big bricks, with roofs of thatch. A fire had been through here, but not recently, for the black had mostly blown away. The thatch had burned: the houses stood roofless. The inhabitants had left. The two went carefully through every house, room by room, and in every room Dann leaped up to see the tops of the walls, for he said people hid things up there and might have forgotten them. A likely story – both were thinking – with everything so scarce. There were jars in every house for water and food, but no rock cisterns. The jars were very big and it was not possible to carry them away. There was no food, not until the very last house, where Dann had to frighten away scorpions clustered around the door, and there they found in a jar some tightly packed down dry leaves. Dann filled one of his smaller bags with them: he said they were nourishing. While they were doing this they heard voices and hid, and peered out to see going past the couple they had robbed up in the hills. These two were a kind of person Mara had never seen, with great bushes of black hair and almost black skin. But they were so thin, and so weak, it was not possible to say whether really they were solid and strong, or wiry.
Dann pulled himself by a door to see all around the top of the wall. Only part of the thatch had burned here. He let out a shout, and reached out, and threw down a thin roll of cloth, which had inside it a garment like Dann’s. The cloth was a little scorched but not the robe. Mara took off her old skin-like tunic, which she had worn day and night for years, and was in this robe or dress that was made of a vegetable fibre, a soft, coarse cloth. She was actually crying because of her joy. She was about to throw the old brown garment – though it was as good as new, with not a mark on it, not a tear – away into a corner, goodbye, goodbye, you horrible thing, when Dann caught it up and said, ‘No, we can sell it.’ And stuffed it into her sack. Now they had seven of them.
With this new robe, which had been white once but was now a light brown, from dust, she felt she had thrown off her old life and was wearing a new life, though there was another person’s smell on it, and she knew that it was stained with that person’s sweat. But she could wash this dress and make it hers. And now Dann pulled out of her sack her cord of knotted coins, and she tied it just above her waist, and it could not be seen under the thick material. The cloth the dress had been rolled in would come in useful, for something.
The two went back to the edge of the lake, or pool, and stood looking at it. Mara wished she dared wash her dress there, and let it dry on her. Dann was silent. Mara saw on his face something she had not seen before: it was anger, or pain, or fear – but she could not decipher it. He only stared at the dirty little lake, and at the dried mud, and then over the lake to the mountains. She was afraid to ask, What’s wrong? – but he turned his head towards her, and she understood that if he could cry, could sob, could allow weakness, then that is what he would be doing now. It was pain she was looking at. ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why? I don’t understand. It was all water. When I ran away that time, it was water from here all around to the mountains. Why should everything go dry, why does the rain just stop, why? – there must be a reason.’ And he came stepping across the hard mud ridges and took her by the shoulders and peered deep into her face, as if she must know the reason.
She said, ‘But those cities, the ones near the Rock Village, they had people in them for thousands of years, Daima said, and now they are just nothing.’ And as she spoke, she thought that she used the word thousands because Daima did, yet she still did not know more than the ten fingers on her hands, the ten toes on her feet. Long ago she had been taught more than that, in the school at home, but in her mind it was the same as if she said hundreds or thousands, and yes – there was another word – millions. He let his hands fall and said, ‘We walk over all these bones, all the time.’ She knew that tears wanted to come into those sharp, clever eyes of his, which were beautiful when he sat thinking, or had just woken; but his mouth was tight. ‘When I came this way to get you I saw skulls, people’s skulls, piles – I couldn’t count them.’ And now his face was so close to hers she could feel the heat from it on her cheeks. And his eyes seemed to press into hers. ‘Why is it happening, Mara? Why don’t we understand anything? No one knows why anything happens.’
And then he let her go, turned away, picked up the end of his pole and waited for her to lift hers. ‘There was a boat,’ he said. ‘That was only a week ago.’ His voice sounded ordinary again. They went on, carefully, well beyond the edge of wet, for in both their minds was the thought that if a water dragon or a lizard had survived it could be up and out of that water to get one of them. The water stingers rattled as they moved, so you could hear them. She was thinking, I say words like day or week, or year, and never think what I am saying, but behind these words are what they are. I know what a day is because the sun shines in it, and then there is dark, and I say night. But why a week, and why a year? She was tormented, haunted, by memories that refused to come properly into her mind: she had been taught these things, she was pretty sure. And now she did not know what a year measured, or why the rain fell or did not fall, or that the stars were … Of course she had known about the stars: she remembered her father holding her up to look at them, and saying, ‘That one there is …’ But she had forgotten all the names.
They were at a place where once there had been a wooden jetty; but now the wood had rotted and all wood was so scarce that it was of stone that the causeway was made, leading to the water’s edge. A boat was coming. Mara had never seen one. It was a fisherman’s boat, Dann said, a big one, and a crowd of people were approaching over the dried mud, about twenty of them. Two men had long oars, and stood at the front and at the back of the boat. She and Dann went on with the others. There was a rail around the boat and she held on tight. They were all standing close together, and the smell of the crowd was thick and sour. The boat was low in muddy water. At the last moment a man and a woman came stumbling to the boat. They were the couple who had been robbed last night. It seemed they hadn’t found food anywhere else, because they were hardly strong enough to stand. Dann glanced at them indifferently, as he did at the others. Water stingers were watching them, their eyes and pincers sticking up out of the water. Everyone kept an eye on them: a stinger could knock someone in with its tail. Now the boat was in the middle of the little lake, and from down here the mountains seemed high. Yet the ones behind them were where Dann and she had come in a morning.
Mara had not known there could be so many different kinds of people. There was a woman with a thick body like the Rock People, but her hair was a frizzle of bright red. She was with a man who was yellowish brown, a thin, sick man, and his hair was in shags of white, though he wasn’t old. There were three that could be Mahondis, tall and thin, but their hair was like the Rock People’s, a pale mass. She and Dann were the only Mahondis, but no one seemed to notice them or mind, and this was because, they decided, they both wore the long, loose, once white robes that everyone knew were slaves’ or servants’ dress. What would Mara and Dann’s parents think if they could see their children now? Would they even recognise us? – and Mara tried to remember her mother’s face, and her father’s, but could not. Their voices – yes, and they laughed a lot, she was sure. And they smelled: her father had a warm, spicy smell she had thought was the smell of kindness, and her mother a teasing, sweet smell … Meanwhile Mara was standing in a press of people who smelled of dirty sweat and feet. The water was muddy. The boat was hardly moving. The boatmen were shouting at Dann to use his carrying pole to push the boat along. Then they passed an oar through the crowd to her. They thought she was a boy, being so thin and bony inside that robe, and with her still bare pate. Only the men were being given oars and paddles. The sun was scorching down. It was midday. Over the mud shores the heat waves oiled and shimmered. As the oars and poles plunged into thick water, bones were disturbed and appeared for a moment, and sank, and, worse, corpses of beasts came up, emitting the most fearful stench, and went down, leaving the air poisonous. But the boat was making progress. Soon they were out of the lake and into the stream that fed it – a narrow, shallow flow that had once been a big river – and the boat had to be pushed along with poles. It was farther to the mountains than it had seemed from where they embarked, and by the time they reached them it was mid-afternoon. There was a jetty of rotting wood, and the boatmen ordered everyone off. Grumbling, the people got on to the shore. The boatmen held out their hands, and into them were put a fruit, a little bag of flour, a flap of bread. Mara and Dann offered two yellow roots, which the boatmen turned over and over, not having seen them before, apparently. To save argument the two jumped quickly on to the jetty. Mara was beside the woman they had robbed. She saw the mass of black hair just in front of her eyes and thought, But that’s like the fur of a sick animal. It should be standing out and strong, but it was limp and dull. The woman was swaying, she could hardly keep herself up. Mara pulled out from her sack one of the yellow roots and held it out to her. She was thinking, But she’ll need a knife – when Dann was there, with his knife, and was cutting the root in two. The movement was so quick, and Dann’s eyes narrow and sharp – she looked and saw the crowd was pressing in around them, all eyes on her sack, and on Dann’s, and on his knife – which was why he had been so quick to cut the root in half: he wanted everyone to see the knife. The woman began sucking at the juice, moaning and crying, and her companion snatched at the other half and chewed at it. Dann pulled Mara away, and they ran up into the mountain, not stopping until they were among rocks. Mara was thinking that Dann believed they were going to be killed, because of the sacks, and the water. And she waited for him to scold her, or say something, but he didn’t. And she was thinking, Those two, when Dann was stealing their little bag, if they had woken up and seen him, would he have killed them – all for a little dried fruit and a bit of bread?
Dann said, ‘You must have a knife. And make sure that everyone sees you have got it.’
They climbed to where they could look down on the lake, and the river running in from this end and out the other side, and the great basin of dried mud and dust. The mountains on the other side where they were yesterday stood up high and blue and fresh. ‘That cloudburst must have been there,’ she said, ‘somewhere in those mountains. And the flash flood went down the other way, it didn’t come this side. Otherwise that lake would be bigger. And it would be fresh.’
‘It hasn’t rained here for a long time,’ he said. And the sullen, restless note was in his voice again. And she was thinking, If that cloudburst had happened just a little way this side of those mountains, the flood would have come this way, not down past the Rock Village, and I would be dead now. And Dann said, angrily, ‘Everything is just chance. It’s just luck – who stays alive and who dies.’ And then, again, ‘You must have a knife.’
They searched until they found a place where they could lie among rocks and look out. Several times they heard people from the boat go past, farther down. ‘They think the stream goes on and they can follow it,’ said Dann.
‘And it doesn’t go on?’
‘No.’
She wanted to ask, What will they do? And what will we do? – but Dann had dropped off to sleep, just like that. She kept watch until he woke, and then she slept while he kept watch. When the light came they drank water, but he said they should be careful, water was going to be short; and they ate the bread they had stolen, and a yellow root each. Now they had practically no food left. The dried leaves were so bitter Mara could not eat them, but Dann said they had to be cooked. There were no matches.
‘We’ll get some food today,’ he promised. And he smiled, a stretching of his lips, cracked and a bit swollen from the sun, and he quickly put his hand on her shoulder, but let it drop again, because he had heard a sound from down the hill. The hard, suspicious stare was back on his face, and he sent quick glances all around at the rocks and the dead or dying trees, and when a stone fell clattering down among rocks he was on his feet, his knife in his hand.
Then, silence. He pushed his knife back into the slit in his robe, where there was a long, narrow pocket to hold it, and crouched down over their sacks. He pulled out the bundle of brown tunics, and laid two out on the rocks. One had come off Mara’s body yesterday. They stared, for again it had sprung into its own shape and lay fresh, glistening, unmarked, though it had been on her day and night for months. It was repulsive, that unchanging, slippery brown skin, lying there on the rock, with them leaning over it, both so dry and dirty, their skins scaling and flaking dust. ‘How could they do it, how did they?’ he asked, in that voice that meant he could not bear his thoughts. ‘They made these things … and those cans that never break or mark or change. How did they? How, how, how?’ And began twisting the thing in his hands, trying to make it tear; and he pulled at it to make it split, but it resisted him, lying there whole and perfect on the rock, shining in the sunlight.
He sighed, and she knew what it meant, for she was feeling what he felt through her whole self: here they were, these two hunted and hunting creatures, and in their hands, their property to use as they liked, these amazing and wonderful things that had been made by people like themselves – but they did not know how long ago.
And now he pulled out the knotted cord of coins from the bottom of his sack, and in a moment had untied a coin and pushed the cord back, all the time glancing over his shoulders in case someone was watching. The slim, bright gold circle lay on the old grey rock. They sighed, both of them, at the same time. How long ago had that coin been made? And here it lay: the brightest, freshest, prettiest thing for miles around.
‘If we can change even this one coin, then …’ He put it down the long tube of cloth inside his robe that held the knife. ‘I’ll say you’re my brother,’ he said.
‘So what’s my name?’ she whispered, and her mind was full of that scene where Gorda had told her to forget her name. And she had: she had no idea what it was. She was going farther away from her real name now, when she said, ‘Maro. Dann and Maro.’
They set off downhill, united by the carrying pole where the water cans swung. The trees here were not all dead. Some must have roots down into deep-running water, for they stood strong and green among the tree corpses. There was a bad smell, sweet and disgusting, as they came to where the hill flattened into another plain. That smell … She knew it, but not as strong. Dann said, ‘They made a big grave over there.’ He pointed. ‘Hundreds of people.’
‘Was it the water sickness?’
‘No, there was a war.’
‘What about?’
‘Water. Who was to control the water from the spring that makes the stream that feeds the lake we were on.’
‘Who won?’
‘Who cares? It is all drying up anyway.’
As they walked away from the hill, the smell lessened and then it had gone.
Dann walked lightly, warily, his eyes always turning this way and that, his head sometimes jerking around so fast because of a sudden noise, or even a gust of wind, that she thought his neck must ache. She tried to walk as he did, his feet seeming to see by themselves where there was thick, soft dust or some rocky ground where they would make no sound. She knew they were nearing a place where people were, and when she saw his eyes she felt she ought to be afraid of him, they were so hard and cold. Ahead was a town, and these houses were bigger than any she had seen, though she seemed to remember her own home had been built high, windows above windows, and these were like that, of brick, but nothing like as graceful and delightful. They were walking along a street between ugly houses. There had been gardens, but in them now were only scorpions and big yellow spiders that coated every dead bush or tree with webs as thick as the material her robe was made of. Some spiders were the size of a child – of Dann, when she first had charge of him. She was afraid, seeing their glittering eyes watching them go past. There seemed to be no people.
‘Did they all die in the war?’ she asked, in a whisper, afraid the spiders would catch the sound, and a web near them began vibrating and jerking as the spider climbed to see what had made the noise. He nodded, watching the spider. No people, nobody. Then she saw sitting in the open door of a house an old woman, all bones and eyes, staring out at them, and in the path between her and them were clustering scorpions, and she was flicking them away from her with a stick. But as they landed on the earth, they scuttled back to where they had been, their pincers all held out towards her. Quite soon she would not care: she would let that tired old wrist of hers rest, with the stick lying in front of her, and would wait for the scorpions.
‘I don’t like this place,’ Mara whispered. ‘Please, let’s go.’
‘Wait. There’s a market here. If it is still here.’
They came into an open place of dull, yellowish dust, with some trestle-tables in the middle, and one man guarding them all. Around the edges of this space, along the walls of the houses, were scorpions. On the two dead trees were the spiders’ webs, and there was a big dragon, lying out in the sun as once dogs had done.
Her brother was standing in front of the man, staring hard at him, and the handle of his knife was showing: his right hand was held ready near it. On the wooden slats of the trestle were a few of the big roots Mara had not seen for a long time now, bags of dried leaf, a few pieces of flat bread, a bowl of flour, and strips of dried meat. What meat? It did not smell: it was too dry.
Dann took out the brown garment they had examined on the hill that morning, and she saw the man’s eyes narrow as he peered at it.
‘Haven’t seen one of those for a bit,’ he said. ‘Have you come from the Rock Village? I didn’t know anyone was still alive.’
‘There isn’t now,’ said Dann. ‘So this is the last of these you’ll be seeing.’
‘You aren’t Rock People,’ the man said. What he was really saying was, You are Mahondis.
Dann ignored that and asked, ‘What will you give me for this?’ He held tight to one end of the tunic.
The man looked steadily into Dann’s face, his teeth bared, and put on the board, one after another in front of Dann, six of the food fruits. He added a bag of dried leaf, but Dann shook his head and the bag was put back beside the other bags. A pile of the flat bread – Dann nodded. And waited. The two men stood glaring at each other. Mara thought they were like two animals about to attack each other. Past the man’s shoulder lay the dragon, apparently asleep. It was only a few paces away.
‘Water,’ said Dann.
The man lifted on to the board a jar of yellowish water. Dann slid their two cans off the pole, and was topping them up with water from the jar when the man said, ‘I’ll take those cans.’ Dann did not respond, went on pouring. ‘I’ll give you these dried fruits for them.’
Under the trestle was a sack full of dried fruits. Dann shook his head, put the cans back on the pole, where they swung between him and his sister.
‘We need more for this tunic,’ he said. ‘Matches?’
The man sneered, then laughed. ‘I’ll give you a bundle of matches for the two cans.’
‘Forget it,’ said Dann. ‘Have you got candles?’
The man produced some stumps of candle. At Dann’s nod, he laid them beside the big fruits and the bread.
The two glared at each other again. Mara thought that if it came to a fight Dann would win, because this man was as thin as a sick lizard and his hair had the flattened, lifeless look – pale, fuzzy hair. Starving children’s hair sometimes looked like that.
‘More bread,’ said Dann.
The man counted out from his pile one, two, three, four, five, six pieces of bread and pushed them forward.
And to Mara’s surprise, Dann let go the end of the garment and the man snatched it up, held it up, gloated. Mara thought, Something I’ve worn for years and years – it is worth some food fruits, a little water, and some bread. And stumps of candle.
‘Have you got another?’ asked the man, carefully pushing the garment into a sack and tying it tight.
Dann shook his head. Then – and Mara could feel Dann’s trembling, in the stick that lay from shoulder to shoulder – he said, ‘I want to change a gold fifty.’
At this the man’s face came to life in an ugly laugh. ‘Oh you do? And what do you want to buy with that? You can have one of the houses here for a few matches.’
‘Are you going to change it?’
‘Let me see it.’
Again the precious, shining gold piece seemed like a message from another time, or place. Dann held tight to one edge while the other stared at it. He sighed. Dann sighed. So did Mara.
The man’s eyes were glittering and he was very angry. ‘You could try your friends up there in that house. Wait till dark. You don’t want to be seen.’
Dann quickly put the bread, fruit, candles into Mara’s sack, and the two went away, as quickly as they could, and as far from the fat dragon as they could.
Dann began peering into the doorways of houses, but from each room came hissing, the sound of scales on dust or stone, the clattering of scorpions. Then there was a room that seemed to have nothing in it. The two went in, and Dann’s eyes were moving everywhere: up in the rafters, in the corners, behind the door. Was that a sound above them, in the room over this? There was something up there. Mara was frightened, but Dann took a big stone and jammed the door that led from this room into the rest of the house. He said, ‘Nothing can get in here.’ In the middle of the room, their eyes always on the door out into the market place, they squatted and drank water from a can, and ate two pieces of bread each. It was after midday, and the afternoon heat was yellowing the sky. Mara wanted to sleep, but Dann’s eyes were restless and suspicious: he was afraid. Several times people went past, stopped to glance in, and then went on. Then Mara did sleep, for she woke to see Dann at the door, watching some scorpions. It was getting dark.
Dann took one of the stumps of candle and fitted it into a hole in the wall. Mara was thinking, But we have no matches, when he pulled from the pocket that held the knife a single long match, and slid it back. ‘Last one,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t waste it.’ She had not known he still had a match. He hides things from me, she thought. Why does he? Doesn’t he trust me? Dann saw the look on her face and said, ‘Suppose someone said to you, “What does Dann have in his sack?” Well, if you didn’t know, you couldn’t tell them, could you?’ He laughed. And now what he saw on her face seemed to disturb him, for he said, ‘Oh come on, Mara. You don’t understand.’ There it was again, and she had no answer to it. He waited, watching her until she smiled, and then he gestured her to the door, and they went out, carefully, and stepped quickly past the scorpions.
They walked in the dusk up a path towards the lights of the house they had been shown. It was a house like the one she remembered from long ago: a tall, light, pretty house, and there had been a garden and trees.
They went up stone steps, and were outside a room that was lit by tall floor candles. Mara remembered furniture like these chairs and tables. A man came forward, smiling. Mara thought, He knew we were coming. And then, Of course, in a place where there are only a few people, everyone knows everything.
He was a Mahondi. The three of them were alike: tall, slim people with black, smooth, long hair. But he could not know that Mara’s black, fuzzy stubble was really hair like his.
‘I have a fifty gold,’ said Dann.
The man nodded, and Dann took out the coin. He gripped an edge tight, and held it out.
‘You’ll have to let me see it properly.’
That voice: waves of remembering went through Mara. She had become used to the heavy, rough voices of the Rock People. Dann let go of the coin. The Mahondi took it to a candle, turned it over and over, and bent to bite it. He straightened and nodded. Dann was trembling again. The man handed him back the coin and said, ‘What do you want for it?’
Dann had expected to change it, but now it was evident there would be no change. ‘We want to go North,’ he said. The Mahondi smiled: You don’t say! ‘How far could we go for that?’
‘Your brother and yourself? A long way.’
Mara could feel the carrying pole trembling again: Dann was full of fear, frustration and anger. It was because he did not know how much to ask, was afraid of being cheated. He asked, ‘Do you have transport? Can you arrange it?’
On the wall was an enormous coloured picture. Mara remembered it. It was a map. It was like the one she remembered from the classroom long ago. And it was the same shape as the one Dann had drawn in the dust for her. The Mahondi stepped to the map and pointed to a place in the middle. He meant: we are here. Then he pointed farther up the picture, to a black spot that said MAJAB, in large letters. It was a span of about three fingers’ breadth.
‘When can we go?’ asked Dann.
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘We’ll come back here,’ said Dann.
‘You’d do better to stay here. We’ll give you a room.’
Who was we?
‘How are we going to get to Majab?’ asked Mara. Dann and this Mahondi both looked impatiently at her for asking the question.
‘Well, of course,’ said Dann, ‘sky skimmer.’
Mara had not known they still existed.
The man said again, ‘You’ll be safe here.’ All of Mara longed to say, Yes, yes, yes, thank you; but Dann shook his head and then jerked it towards Mara – Come.
‘Then be here just after sunrise.’ And then they heard, ‘You shouldn’t go back into the town with that on you.’ Dann was walking away, not replying. ‘They know you’ve got gold. It’s dangerous.’
The last light was in the dark of the sky, a red flush. The two could hardly see the path. The man was watching them go. ‘He thinks we won’t be coming back,’ said Mara. ‘He thinks they’ll kill us down there.’ Dann said nothing. At least he didn’t say, You don’t understand – when Mara understood very well. It’s a funny thing, she thought, knowing something about someone, like why Dann is afraid of that Mahondi, but he doesn’t know. I don’t think I can explain it to him, either.
She could hardly bear to walk down into that town. In the market place the stallholder and some other people stood around the trestles eating. There was some bread and fruit there. All of them turned to watch Dann and Mara go past. Their faces were hard and cold. They had not expected to see the two again.
A woman said loudly, ‘Their own kind won’t have them.’
Those faces: Mara was looking at a hatred worse than anything she had known, even in the Rock Village. She whispered to Dann, ‘It’s not too late, we could go back up there.’ He shook his head. ‘These people want to kill us.’ But she could see he knew that.
They were returning to the house where they had been. The door was open on to the square: it had been closed when they left. Inside the main room some light came in from the twilight, not much. ‘The moon will be up later,’ he said.
‘It’s going to be quite dark until then,’ she pleaded, expecting him to ignore her; but he looked at her – that long, intent look – and took out the precious match, rubbed it on the wall, lit the candle stub. A thin light wavered over the dark room. Now he went to the inner door and pulled aside the stone that held it. They heard hissing. It was a lizard’s hiss. She was frantically trying to pull Dann towards the door into the square, but he said, ‘Wait. We must look.’ He pushed open the inner door and beckoned. There was another room, and along a wall a half-grown lizard was dying, and hissing at them, but only feebly. Stairs went up. Dann leaped up the stairs and nodded at her to come too. There was a big empty room up there. Beyond it another room. Dann opened that door and quickly stood back. She went to be with him, thinking this was the same as when he was small, when he would jump off a rock or into a pool hardly looking to see if there was danger. There was a great hole in the roof here, and the sky showed a couple of still pale stars. This room was full of spiders: not the yellow and black ones but enormous, brown spiders that were everywhere on the walls and the floor. What did they eat? – she was wondering, and at once knew the answer: they were eating each other, for as she looked a great brown spider, the size of a big dog, leaped on a smaller one and began crunching it up, while the victim squeaked and squirmed, and others came scrambling to join in the feast.
Mara said, ‘I’m not staying in this house.’
She had never said no to him, had let him take the lead. And he stood still, those intent eyes of his on her face: What am I seeing now, what does it mean? How strange it was, the way he searched faces, wanting to know what people were feeling. As if he didn’t feel himself – but that wasn’t true. And why was he not afraid now? The spiders knew they were there and would surely attack them? And suddenly Mara understood. Dann was afraid of people, only of people … But she was already off down the stairs, while he came leaping after her. She had picked up her sack and was out into the dark, and stopped, because of the scorpions. But they were not there, had gone off into their holes and hiding places because they did not like the cold. And the people had gone off too. Dann stood looking this way and that way and then he ran across to the trestles, and jumped up on the biggest of them. She followed. He was right: better to be well off the ground. But where was that big dragon? The light had gone, and the stars were coming out, dusty, but friendly to Mara. The two sat back to back, their sacks and water cans near them, she with the long carrying pole close to her hand, he with his knife pulled half out of its pocket. They ate one of the food fruits that were like bread, but this one was not soft and rich, as it ought to be, but was dryish and tasteless from lack of water. They drank a little of their water, not much. ‘Who knows when we are going to get some more?’ Dann whispered. And Mara thought, Those people up in that house, they would give us water.
And now the moon came up, as heavy and solid as a food fruit, but it was not a complete round. Its bright yellow had an edge that looked as if it had been gnawed. They could see everything. Both looked for the great dragon: where was it? And the yellow and black spiders in their thick webs: did they know the two were there, so close? Soon, it was sharply cold. She felt the heat from Dann’s back in her back, and wished that she had, like him, long black hair that she could pull close around her shivering neck. Instead she wrapped her naked head in the cloth that had held the slave’s dress that Dann had found at the top of the wall. Neither slept. They were in a half-sleep, or dream, watching how the black shadows of the houses moved towards them across the dust. And they saw something else: a movement in the shadow near the door of the house they had left. Then someone, crouching, ran back towards houses that had flickering lights in them. Here they burned candles all night, for protection: how did they dare to sleep at all, the people of this horrible town? The very moment the sky greyed, Dann was stretching, peering about, on guard. Again they hastily ate a little, one of the yellow roots, and drank a mouthful or two. They were waiting for the sun to show itself, and soon there it was, a hot red burn over the hill they had been on yesterday. The scorpions came running around the edges of the houses and took up their positions. The stallholder from yesterday came into the market, but stopped when he saw them. He seemed surprised. He went to the door of the house they had been in, opened it, and out waddled the dragon. The man had led the beast into the house when it was dark and had expected it to attack them. He had not seen them there on the trestles. The dragon came fast across to the trestles, its mouth open, hissing. The man took out a piece of meat from a jar and threw it to the dragon. His angry, hating smile at the two said clearly: I thought the dragon would not need feeding this morning. The dragon lay down where it was yesterday, in the sun. It was a guard for the stallholder, perhaps even a pet.
The two went quickly away out of the market and again up the path to the house on the rise. On the way Mara went aside to pee. It ran clear and light yellow into the soil, which hissed gently, from dryness. She was not sick any longer. She thought, I’m well; soon I’ll be as strong as I ever was. And she looked at her thin, stick-like legs, lifting her robe to see them, and thought they were already more like legs. She put her hands on her buttocks to feel them: but they were still just bones, no flesh there yet.
Just inside the door of the front room, they stood side by side, each holding an end of the carrying pole and a sack in their hands. The man from yesterday came in, and Mara saw his smooth, shining skin and his clean, shining hair, and thought how she and Dann must seem to him, with their dirty robes, and their dust. They had brought dust in with them: dusty footprints on the polished floor, and dust fell from them as they stood.
The man held out his hand. Dann took the yellow coin from the pocket that held the knife, and put it into the hand.
The man stood looking closely at them, Dann, Mara, Dann again, and asked, ‘Did you come from Rustam?’
Dann said, ‘I don’t know.’
The man looked enquiringly at Mara. She almost said, Yes, but was afraid. He said, ‘You look very much like …’ and stopped. Then, ‘Do you know how to ride in a skimmer?’ Surprising her, Dann said, ‘Yes.’ To Mara the man said, ‘You must keep very still. If the skimmer has to come down, get out, wait until it begins to lift, and jump in. They have very little power now.’
‘I had a job working skimmers, on a hill shuttle,’ said Dann. Was that actually a smile? Was he trusting this Mahondi after all?
‘Good. Then if you are both ready, we’ll go …’ And at that moment another man came in, a Mahondi, and Dann’s mouth was open; he stared, and was trembling. The two men were alike. But, thought Mara, frantic, already knowing what was going to happen, Mahondis are alike. These two men just look like Mahondis – that’s all.
Dann was letting out gasping, feeble sounds, and the two men, frowning, astonished, turned towards him, presenting their faces to him, close, leaning forward. Dann gave a shout, said to Mara, ‘Come on,’ and ran, the two cans on the carrying pole over his shoulder, his sack in his hand. Her first thought was, And now I shall have no water.
The two men were looking at her now: Why? She could not speak, for her throat was thick with the need to cry. She knew why, but how could she explain it to them? ‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked the man who had just come in.
Mara felt herself sway, and was able to reach a chair where she sat, eyes closed. When she opened them, the two were staring at her.
‘Your big brother is rather strange, isn’t he?’ said the first man.
And now she had to smile: little Dann, her big brother. But they were still staring: were they seeing something they hadn’t before? She thought, In a moment they’ll whisk up my robe to have a look. And what they will see first is the rope of coins knotted around my waist. She stood up. They were looking at her chest. She thrust it out so they could see its flatness.
‘How old are you?’ asked the second man.
‘Eighteen.’
The two looked at each other. She did not know what that look said. A long pause. Then the first man said, ‘We’ll take you, if you like.’
First she thought, Oh yes, yes, anywhere away from here. Then she thought, But Dann, I can’t leave him; and she said aloud, ‘I can’t leave my brother.’ She had nearly said, My little brother.
‘You’ll be by yourself. It’s dangerous,’ said the man she now felt was her friend, and whom she did not want to leave.
She did not reply. She could not. Her throat was thick again, and she was thinking, If I cry the way I’d like to, they’ll know I am a girl. And meanwhile there was a new thought in her mind. She wanted to ask, Please may I have a bath? – but this was ridiculous, so dangerous … But she was remembering, because of the faces of these two, which were so familiar to her, so near – like her parents, like all the people she had known as a child – how one could stand in a big basin and water was splashed all over you, cool water; and then there was a soft, sweet-smelling soap, not like the fatty sand she had used to clean herself at the waterholes. She longed so much for this water that she was afraid of saying anything at all, because it was dangerous … Of course it was, for she would have to take her clothes off and then …
The two men stood side by side and looked hard at Mara, trying to understand.
‘What’s your name?’ asked one suddenly.
A name came pushing into her mind from long ago; yes, she thought, that’s my name, it is my real name, my name – and then she saw Lord Gorda’s face, tired, thin, kind, so close to hers. Remember, you are Mara, your name is Mara.
She nearly said, Mara, but said, ‘Maro.’
‘What is your family name?’
And now she could not remember. Everyone then had had the same name, and she never thought about it.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and she was even thinking, Perhaps they’ll know and they’ll tell me. And she was still thinking, I’ll ask … they’re kind … and I can wash this robe and make it white instead of dusty brown and wash out the smell of that other person.
‘Then if you’re not coming, I’ll give you back the fifty,’ said the first man, holding it out.
And now she was pleading, ‘Oh no, no, please, let me have it in small coins, please.’
And now another long look between the men. Then the man she thought of as her friend said, ‘But Maro, the change for this would fill your sack. You couldn’t carry it. And besides, no one has that amount of money these days.’ And the other man asked, ‘Where have you come from, Maro?’ – meaning, How is it you don’t know this already?
She said, ‘The Rock Village.’
Again they looked at each other, really surprised.
To avoid more questions she said, ‘I’ll go.’ And held out her hand for the gold. The coin was put into her hand. Then her friend went to a chest, pulled out a bag of the light, flimsy coins, poured some into a smaller bag about the size of her hand, and gave it to her.
She said, ‘Thank you.’ And again, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ She longed to say, I’ve changed my mind, please take me in the skimmer away from here, but she could not.
‘Keep that money out of sight,’ her friend said.
And the other, ‘Don’t go back into the town.’
5 (#ulink_19de27bf-578d-5e95-86d1-dc4e8a078848)
She walked away from the house, and never in her life had she felt as she did then, as if her heart would break: she was going away from what she really was – that was how she felt.
At the foot of the rise she turned: they were still in their doorway, watching her. She lifted her hand: Goodbye. And thought that in her other hand she still held the gold coin and the little bag of coins. She dropped both into her sack.
She would rather have died than go back into the town. She felt sick with fear even thinking of it. There was a dusty track leading away from the town, going north, and she began walking along it, alone. She thought, I won’t last long without Dann. They’d kill me for this sack, or for this robe I have on.
She kept glancing back along the track to make sure she was not followed. On either side was the landscape that by now she knew so well: dead and dying trees, like sticking-up bones, whitish drifts of dust, the sky yellow with dust and, dotted about among the drought-killed trees, the occasional strong, fresh, green trees, their roots going far down. She walked on, the sun burning her pate through the thin cloth she had draped there, and she was thinking of how, deep in the earth, streams of clean water ran, making pools and marshes and falls and freshets and floods, and into them reached the roots of these few surviving trees. And why should these few have fought to reach the deep water, and the others given up? It was midday. Ahead she saw a thin crowd of people. She was at once afraid. More afraid than she had been of the spiders or the dragon? Yes; and she understood Dann. She was walking faster than they were: soon she would catch up with them. What ought she to do? When she was closer she saw they were the mix of peoples that was usual now: every kind of shape and skin colour and hair colour and kind of hair; but everything was dusty: dust on them and on the clothes they wore, which mostly were trousers and tunics that she knew were worn farther south than the Rock Village. When she came up with the end of the straggle of walkers, she saw the two people Dann and she had robbed – and was it really only two nights ago? Both were on their last legs, almost staggering, their eyes glazed. These two took no notice of Mara, but others turned to look, but were not interested in her. She went on behind them, more slowly, because a lot of people walk slower than one or two, and because it was very hot. The front of the crowd could hardly be seen through blowing dust: the wind was getting up, and dust clouds were swirling about and through them. She tried to make out the faces nearest to her: some she thought were from the boat. It was important to recognise faces, friends or enemies. She was stumbling along, thinking that she longed for a mouthful of water, and she had none; that if Dann were not as he was, then they both would now be travelling north in the skimmer, would be far away from this dying land … Someone was walking up behind her… was level with her … had moved ahead; and it was Dann, who did not smile or greet her, but only adjusted the carrying pole so that it again rested on her shoulder and the two cans swung between them. She said, ‘I have got to have some water.’ He said, ‘Wait, or when they see you’re drinking they’ll grab it all.’
They walked all through the hot day, while the pale dust clouds swirled about them, and when the red sun became a big reddish blur low down, the whole company began moving up into a low hill beside the road: they were all staying together, for safety. And while they were doing this, their attention distracted, Dann quickly rested the pole and handed Mara a can of water, standing close to her, shielding her from curious looks, and she drank … and would have gone on drinking, but he said, ‘Stop, stop, that’s got to last us.’
The smell of the water seemed to have reached some stragglers, who turned to look, but Dann had the cans back on the pole, and his knife was in his hand. On the top of the low hill, they found a big rock to protect their backs, and crouched there, close, the cans between them, while she whispered that the two men he had been afraid of had given her the little bag of coins. He was at once suspicious. ‘Show me,’ he said, and she did, and he let the thin, light stuff run between his fingers on to a rock.
‘It looks all right,’ he said.
She asked, knowing it was useless, ‘Dann, why did you run away? They were friendly. They wanted to help us.’ And she saw, astonished, how his eyes moved fast from side to side, heard his fast, frightened breathing, watched him hunch up, protecting his head – little Dann, in that long ago room on that long, hot night.
‘Bad,’ he said. ‘Bad men.’
He put the bag of coins back in her sack and looked for something that would burn. He found bits of old bark in a crack in the rock, and pulled down a bough from a dead tree. He went to his sack, was about to take out his axe, saw that if he did it would be the only one here, and he wouldn’t keep it long. He broke up wood with his bare hands, built them a fire, lit it with a brand taken from the nearest fire. He didn’t ask, just took it. A dozen small fires burned on the big flat rock that topped this rise, and around each huddled a few people, guarding their food and their water containers. One group had a pan and were cooking the dried leaves: the smell of the leaves, a memory of fresh green, blew about and around the hill, together with the dusty smoke.
Mara and Dann ate flaps of bread and shared a yellow root. Not far away the two whose last food they had taken sat with their backs to a rock. Mara asked Dann with her eyes if he would let her take them a root, but he shook his head.
And then everyone was lying down, and the fires were burning low. Dann was listening. He stood up and listened, went to the edge of the rock and listened again. Then he said loudly, ‘Someone should stay awake, someone should be on guard. And we should keep the fires going. There are lizards and dragons just down there.’ People sat up to stare at him: it was because he had called them we, had suggested they might help each other. Some lay down again and even turned their backs: Leave us alone. Others stayed sitting up, poked their fires, and one went to the edge of the hill, as Dann had done. Mara thought he looked like Kulik, and then that he didn’t. There were movements down the hill, something big and dangerous.
Dann said to Mara, loudly, meaning it to be heard, ‘Move in, the dragons will get the ones lying at the edge.’ Again, some took notice and moved in, so the fires burned between them and the edge, and others stayed where they were. The moon was up, large and yellow, and the shadows were thick and black from the rocks around the edge. Dann said to Mara, ‘Something could jump down on us from the top of this rock.’ And they went farther in, having kicked the fire close to the rock, so the heat and flames went up its face to the top.
‘I’ll sleep first,’ he said. Both were longing to sleep. Last night – was it really only last night? – they had sat half asleep on the market trestles, and since then they had been walking for hours. As always he was asleep almost before he had finished speaking, lying so the water can was against his body. All of these people had their most precious thing, water containers, against their bodies, between their legs, or in their arms.
Mara sat listening. Into her mind came the words, I am listening with every cell in my body – and was at once jerked full awake. Cell. All these words that she knew, but did not know why. Probably Daima said it: she often used words that went by Mara. Again Mara was seized with the hunger to know more, to understand: she wanted to know… And even while she was thinking that this hunger was like the need for water or for food and as strong, and always stronger, she was staring hard into the shadows that edged this place where everyone was asleep. All but one: a man sitting up beyond the last of the fires. There was something familiar about him, but she could not see him clearly. In the middle, lying between two adults, was a child. Mara thought that she hadn’t seen a child for … it was certainly months. She knew this child would not live – how could it? There were heavy movements in the rocks beyond the edging shadows. She looked quickly up because of a movement and saw the sharp head of a big lizard poking over the rock under which they had set the fire. The head disappeared, because of the smoke. She broke up more wood and fed the fire. That rock was not as dark as it was because of this fire but from earlier fires. She and Dann were not the first to have thought, This rock will make a safe place for our backs … then, later, that, An enemy could jump down on us from its top.
How many others? How far back? She did not know for how long people had been leaving their homes to move North … The man beyond the far fire was on his feet, leaning forward, listening. She thought he looked like Kulik, except that he was so thin. There was a moving and shoving in several places below them now. The moon was directly overhead. The dead white trees glistened. Rocks sparkled a little in the moon rays. She saw that a long shape, half in and half out of the shadows, was a lizard, and she leaped up and yelled as the man who might be Kulik whirled around, flailing his stick; but the lizard had taken up a sleeping woman in its mouth and was waddling off out of sight. She did not even scream. They could hear the crunching sounds of her being eaten, and the hisses and grunts that meant other predators were wanting their share. Even now not everyone was awake. Dann was. He stood up and said, ‘We should all get into the middle and make a big fire.’ The people awake looked at him but no one moved. They were all thinking, If we are crowded together it will be easier to steal from each other.
Dann said to her, ‘Back to back.’ Again they sat, like last night, back to back, he with the knife, she with her stick. She felt from the relaxing of his hard, bony back that he had gone to sleep again. She was not tired, but alert. It was foolish for her to sit staring out in only one direction, and she gently slid away from Dann, let him fall sideways; and now that he was asleep, her little brother, she could kneel by him, and feel how her love for him wrapped him around, just like long ago, when he was a baby, and then a small child. She also watched the man who might be Kulik walking up and down and around. He had a big stick. She saw him use it to lift up a water can from between the legs of a sleeper, but she coughed, and he let the can fall back. The sleeper did not move. She thought, That man is my enemy now. He went on walking, around and back and forth, sometimes glancing at her to see if she was watching.
She was fingering her upper chest. There was a little pinch of flesh there. She thought, But when my breasts come back, then I’ll be in danger. Then she thought, But if the trickle of blood comes back what shall I do? I shall have to be afraid of every man who comes near. Then: I am sitting here worrying about the monthly blood but a woman has just been eaten alive by a lizard. And I don’t care. Some of us are going to die or be killed, and there is nothing we can do.
She remembered the grave that held hundreds of people, near the hill of two nights ago. Hundreds, Dann had said. She began counting in her head: ten fingers. Then: ten toes. She knew that five twenties made a hundred but after that everything became difficult: only words, words that she used without understanding. It was silent now down the sides of this little hill. She was sleepy. Dann jerked up and said, ‘Sleep.’ She curled up and wished she could fall asleep the way he did, a closing of his eyes and – out. She heard sounds, knew that a wind had risen, and what she had begun to think was hunting lizards was the wind worrying and whining among rocks. She saw Dann standing over her, his knife in his hand, looking out at the dark. In the strong moonlight he seemed smaller, and easy to attack. The other man was staring at him past the fires. Was he thinking that Dann was only a boy and could easily be overthrown? Or was he Kulik and recognised Dann? But how could he? Mara had only just recognised him. And as for her, she still had breasts when he saw her last, and was a girl whom he tried to surprise behind walls and in corners. The wind was lifting the dust about and when it was blown into the low fires it burned, sending up sparks. The dust was what was left of plants, trees – or perhaps the bodies of animals. And people. Mara slept and woke with the light warm on her face. The fires were all out and the travellers on their feet, picking up their belongings. Dann put a piece of bread into her hand. She gulped a mouthful of water. Kulik – but was it he? – was watching them both. When everyone began filing down towards the track, he went first to make it clear he was the leader, and looking at Dann to challenge him; but like yesterday Mara and Dann came last. Near the track was a mat of dusty brown hair from the woman the lizard had eaten, with blood on it. The two robbed by Mara and Dann were not far from the end, walking stiffly, one foot after another, and seemed to be asleep with their eyes open. Mara thought, They had so little food left that what we took wouldn’t make all that difference, but she knew the two would not be walking like that, on their last legs, if they had eaten the food that was now making strength in Dann and her.
They all walked on, slowly, while the sun rose up, hot. Then Mara saw beside the road the little straggle of half-dead leaves on a brown stalk that told her that under it was a clutch of yellow roots. She showed Dann; but he did not remember how they grew. If these two fell out and were alone on that track it would be dangerous, yet all around now she could see the brown stalks and leaves. She called loudly, ‘There’s food here.’ Some people turned, turned back, indifferent. Others stopped. Mara took her digging stick from her sack, and dug with it in the hard earth, while Dann stood guard, and the others were stopping and coming back. She hoped that the roots would not be deep – sometimes they were as deep in the earth as she was tall. She reached the first roots at the depth of her arm, and pulled out the dusty brown balls, used Dann’s knife to cut one, and showed how the yellow liquid dropped from it. At once all these people were scrambling around among the dead grasses, digging with anything they could find. Into Mara and Dann’s sacks went ten of the roots, five each, after they had eaten as much as they could. Mara saw the two robbed ones, who were dying, simply sitting by the road: they did not have the strength to dig. Dann knew what she wanted to do, and this time did not stop her: everyone was so preoccupied with their digging they wouldn’t notice. Mara gave the two a root each, cut open, and saw that they had hardly the strength to suck them. Although it was Mara who had seen the tell-tale vines and alerted everyone, now she was being pushed out of the way and kept at a distance from them.
The man from last night was organising the effort, allotting the vines and the sharing out of the roots. He hardly looked at Mara and Dann standing by, watching, but when it was over, and the travellers were on the move again, he stood staring at them, glaring. He hated them. Whether he knew who they were, or didn’t; whether he was Kulik, or wasn’t…he loathed the two youngsters and intended them to know it.
There was a coughing, grumbling roar and from behind them came a skimmer, low over the track, turning up dust and chaff, and the raw earth from the root diggings that looked as if miners had been prospecting there. Everyone scattered off the track, and there were mutterings of hate, then shouts of rage, as the machine came level. In it were five Mahondis, all looking very serious, worried – but Mara could not see if her friend was there. The machine was low: if the travellers had wanted they could have pulled it down on to the ground. She knew the skimmer should be much higher, about treetop level; she knew that inside it must be comfortable seats…How did she know these things? She only just remembered travelling in them. It took a long time for the clouds of dust to settle: on either side of the track were drifts of pale, thick dust. As a child she had looked out from the windows of the skimmers at the Rock People and never thought how they felt about the dust, or how much they must hate the skimmers and everyone that travelled in them.
They all walked on, hardly visible to one another in the dust, and then up a rise, and saw that down the other side the skimmer was on the track, the dust already settling around it. All the crowd ran up to it: inside the Mahondis sat, frightened to death, afraid to get out and lighten the machine. If they did, they would be killed, they knew. And then the pilot struggled with his levers and gauges and got the skimmer up quite high, well above their reaching arms. It trundled on, making grinding and creaking noises, and then it fell – it crashed. At once all the travellers rushed up, peered in, reached in. Some of the Mahondis were dead, but not all; there were groans and cries and blood, but what the travellers were after were the provisions they carried. What food there was soon found itself distributed among the travellers – kept by whoever had grabbed it. Containers of water came out too, but there were only two small ones. And then the machine exploded, and the people near it were killed, together with anyone left alive inside. The skimmer lay in pieces all over the road and on either side of it, and black smoke went up. Ten of the travellers had been killed. The rest, thirty or so, stood shaking their fists and cursing the machine and the Mahondis. Mara knew she could have been among them: it might have been her head, or her arm, lying there in the dust. If she had accepted the invitation of the two men to travel with them, then she would be dead now.
She was waiting for Dann to say, Mara aren’t you glad I ran away? Aren’t you glad I said no? – But while he stood there, as always alert on his two feet planted slightly apart, gripping the pole on his shoulder with one hand and his knife with the other, he did not seem to be thinking anything of the kind. He did not respond to things as ordinary people did. Surely he ought to be thinking now of their escape? She said to him, pleadingly, ‘Dann – Dann?’ But he turned to give her his close, acute look, and then his narrow smile – and he was already moving away from the crash. Was it that he had been near death so often that he did not care about it?
Dann waited until all the travellers were back in their places: Kulik or, at any rate, the leader, at the head, the rest in their families behind, and then he and Mara at the very end. Behind them they could see that, across the space between here and the hill they had spent the night on, lizards and dragons were waddling. Big, fat, bulging-with-flesh beasts, the size of a big man. They had smelled the blood.
Now they were walking through flat country and the big, green trees were few, so the underground rivers must be dry or perhaps had never run here. Everywhere stood the pale, dead trees. At sunset, the time to stop, there was no hill or high place. They would have to stay the night in the open, with miles of emptiness around them, the moon showing where they were. It was still a bright moon, though only half of what it had been.
Kulik – but Dann said he thought it wasn’t Kulik – told everyone to get into a big circle, with their faces outwards and their sticks and weapons ready. He was taking command because he thought that last night Dann had been trying to be a leader, and he kept giving Dann hard stares that said, Don’t you try to challenge me.
There was nothing to burn, only a little grass. They would have to forget fires for that night. They did not listen to Kulik, because they could not trust anyone, and were again in their little groups. Near Dann and Mara were the couple that had the child, who looked about four but was really ten years old. It was very still in its mother’s arms. Her face was hard and angry. She carried the dead child well away from the crowd, which was already settling to sleep, and laid it on the earth. At once everyone was shouting at her, ‘Do you want the dragons and lizards to come for us?’ So she fetched it back, and sat over it while it lay on the earth with its eyes staring up from a dirty little face.
The yellow half-moon rose high up and the dark forms of the people lying on the earth seemed small, and like a scattering of boulders or low bushes.
When the sun rose the mother again carried the child far away from the travellers, almost out of sight. She came back running, stumbling, weeping. Mara wanted to say to her, Don’t waste water on tears, and was shocked that she could be so cold. If there are no children left, she thought, then what will happen? Perhaps I will have a child one day? But that seemed ridiculous, when she thought of her bony boy’s body. The staring eyes of the little child that had died of hunger haunted her, and she knew that she did not want to be like that mother, with a dead child in her arms.
That day was like the last, but there were no roots, and they did not see a river, not even a dry one, nor a muddy waterhole, nor any sign of water. That night they lay in the open again. The moon was now much smaller. Mara did not like to think of the dark of the moon, just ahead. In the morning the two people Dann and she had robbed were dead. The travellers simply walked away from the corpses, leaving them on the road. Three more days passed and three more people died. There was little food left. The yellow roots had been eaten, and the water was almost finished.
It was ten days since Mara and Dann had left the Rock Village: ten days’ walking and nine dangerous nights.
When they all stopped for the tenth night, before they slept, Dann told her to make sure the bag of coins that had been given to her was at the top of her sack, easily reached, and said, ‘This is our last night on the road. There are skimmers ahead – no, they don’t fly, but you’ll see.’ In the last light from the sunset he knelt and drew a rough map of Ifrik in the dust, a shape that seemed to move and flicker in the firelight, and made a mark for the Rock Village, and measured a width of three fingers north of it. Mara knew he was exaggerating their progress to comfort her, and when she smiled at him to say she knew this, he did smile back, and they laughed. ‘But you’ll see,’ he said again, and they lay down to sleep, back to back. In the night she woke to see Kulik – and it was he – bending over her. Now she understood why he had been so hard to recognise. On the right half of his face were two scars, not yet healed: one from his nose, just catching the corner of his mouth, and lifting it, down to his collarbone; the other from under his eye to under his ear. He was not merely thin, his big bones showing, but yellow and sick looking, even in this bad light. He had been just about to flick up her robe with his stick. She did not know if this meant he had suspicions about her, as a boy, or if he thought she might be Mara, or if he had somehow caught a glimpse of the knotted cord around her waist when a gust of dusty wind had blown her robe up. He saw she was awake, and grunted and moved off. He did this in the way they all used: he was unapologetic, not guilty, not even concerned that she had seen him. They could thieve from each other, threaten, even kill, and the next minute could be walking along the road a pace apart, or lie down to sleep within touching distance, if the danger was enough.
Dann was awake and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get away from him today.’ ‘It’s Kulik,’ she whispered. Dann said it wasn’t. She said he hadn’t seen Kulik for five years. He said he could never forget that face: he even had nightmares about it. She said, ‘Then you’ll have worse nightmares now.’
Next morning they each had a mouthful of water. The others had taken to staring at the two water cans hanging there on the pole, and Dann put all the water they had left into one can, which they hung on the pole, and the other can went into Mara’s sack. As they walked, the water slopped around in the can, and the people ahead kept glancing around to look at the enticing can. Both knew they would soon be attacked for the water, but at midday there appeared a skimmer on the crest of a rise, and around it were a group of ten youths, armed with knives and sharpened staves. The travellers moved off the road to keep well clear, but Dann signalled to her to hang back until the others had gone out of sight over the rise. Then he went up to the group, and the youth who seemed to be the leader let out a shout, and in a moment Dann and he were hugging each other, talking and hugging again. Of course: Dann had said he had worked with skimmers. Now the two men went off a little way and conferred. Dann came back to take the bag of coins from her. He counted out coins into this new – or old – friend’s hand. Dann motioned to her: Get in. This little machine was smaller than the one they had seen crash and burn. It had four seats. It was like a grasshopper or a cricket. Dann got into the pilot’s seat. Ahead the road dipped down in a long but steep slope to a string of pits that had once been waterholes, and rose up again to the next crest. At the bottom the group of walkers, who probably had not even noticed that Dann and Mara had not kept up, were plodding heavily on. The youths pushed the machine, which did not attempt to fly but only rolled down the slope, getting up a considerable speed. The youths pushed until they could not keep up, then went back to their station on the crest of the rise. Dann’s friend waved at the two, and then the others did too. Because the machine was making no noise, with its engines silent, it was only at the last moment the travellers knew it was there, and they jumped off the road, cursing and shaking their fists; and when they saw Mara and Dann in it, they ran forward to grab it, but the skimmer was going too fast by then. The impetus from the long run down got them to the top of the next rise, where another group of youths stopped it. Mara and Dann got out; Dann conferred with these youths, saying that he had paid for eight skimmers. It was clear they were not altogether happy with this, but they allowed the two to transfer to the next waiting machine. The one they had come this far on, would return with one of these youths as pilot.
Again, this group pushed them off, down another and this time steeper decline, and again the skimmer reached the top of the next rise, and was brought to a stop by another gang of youths. This was a relay service, using skimmers whose engines no longer worked, for travellers who still had the means to pay. How did they live, then, these bands of young men, each with their skimmer? – but Mara knew the answer. They lived by robbing travellers – how else? They took food, and water, and anything else they fancied – and Mara wondered for how many stages of this shuttle the authority of that first youth, Dann’s friend, would command respect. Soon, she knew. When this skimmer reached the third rise, the youths there demanded more payment. Dann still had a little clutch of the coins as a reserve, and he wasn’t going to part with them. And the gold coins were each many times too much. For the ride from the third stop to the fourth Dann paid one of the brown garments, which had the young men exclaiming and marvelling so much they took little notice when Dann and Mara got into the skimmer, and had to be summoned by a shout from Dann. Down they went, and up they went. All this part of the landscape was a system of valleys between crests, each ride from ridge to ridge about two miles. At the fifth stop they parted with another brown tunic. There were now four left. Dann said that the youths were getting far more than they deserved, for these garments earned in the markets to the east a small fortune each. What markets, what do you mean, the East? – Mara wanted to ask, but they were in the noisy machine. At the sixth stop the youths wanted the two to turn out everything they had in their sacks. They were not impressed with the name of Dann’s friend, nor that he had once been one of them. In the end they did not insist on their opening the sacks, but accepted the water can, which, again, they found such a wonder that it was only after some time Mara and Dann were pushed off from the ridge. This was a long, deep descent, and the machine rocked because of the speed, and Mara held on while the landscape rushed past on either side: the same old brownish grass, the same dead or dying trees. At the seventh stop the atmosphere was more friendly, for no reason they could see, and the youths were satisfied with a couple of the food fruits – the last. And now the last long dip down and then up, and at the top the youths were truculent and surrounded the couple with a circle of staves and knives and angry, threatening faces. There had been no travellers through that day, nor the day before, they said. The stations farther back grabbed all the good things – and now what were they going to be given? To say that the two had paid for this last stage would be asking for more trouble. These youths wanted food. There was no food. Then they said they would take the can and its water. They actually had taken it off the pole when Mara piped up, ‘There isn’t enough there to give you even a sip each, but it’s life and death to us.’ At this they forgot Dann and turned on her, jeering and laughing. ‘Listen to the kid.’ ‘What a pipsqueak.’ ‘He’s got a loud voice for such a little squit.’ And so on. They began jostling and shoving her – and pushed Dann aside when he tried to protect her. Then one said, ‘Oh leave him,’ and they all stood back. And then, just at the right moment, when the youths were wondering what to try next, Dann said, ‘I’ve got an axe.’ Now, axes were rare and precious. ‘Show us,’ cried the youths, and when Dann produced the axe were silent because of it. It was very old: the man Dann had got it off had said it was the usual ‘thousands of years old,’ made of a dark, gleaming stone, and with an edge that left blood on the thumb of the youth who tried it. It was, like the gold pieces when they were allowed to see the light of day, made with a craft and a care and a knowledge that no one knew how to match. It was worth – well, it was worth Mara and Dann’s lives.
The young men no longer cared about the two, and hardly noticed when they set off down the long descent. They were handling the axe, silent with awe of it.
The laborious walking down, with ahead of them a long ascent, told the two just how much the skimmers had saved them every day. The distance covered in the skimmers amounted to two or three days of the slow walking that was all the travellers could manage now, being so exhausted. Mara and Dann were in better shape than most of the others because they had had more water and a little food, but they were learning today that they were reaching the end of their strength. Then Dann said, ‘Wait, wait, we’re going to see something soon – I think. It was still running when I came down to get you.’ And as he spoke there appeared in the sky ahead a machine that Mara remembered: it was a sky skimmer, an old machine, and as it settled on the road it was rattling and shaking and roaring as if it might collapse there and then. Out stepped the pilot, a person in bright blue clothes, not a tunic or a robe but close fitting trousers and top, a vision of cleanness and neatness. It was a woman, Mara decided after her eyes had cleared from the surprise and shock of seeing this being from another kind of world. Her yellow hair was smooth and glossy, her skin shone, and she smiled at them.
Dann walked straight up to her holding out the gold coin, as he did before, keeping an edge tight between his fingers. ‘How far?’ he asked.
Before examining it she said, ‘I am Felice. Who are you?’
Dann did not reply, intent on the transaction; but Mara said, ‘Dann and Maro, from the Rock Village.’
‘You must be the last, then.’
And then she bent, bit the coin, while Dann still held tight, straightened and said, ‘It’s genuine, all right. I don’t see one of these very often.’ She waited, but Dann said nothing, and she said, ‘Well, ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.’
‘I found it,’ said Dann.
‘Of course you did.’ And she showed she was waiting for some tale by leaning there against her machine, all her very white teeth on show, and her eyes hard, but amused.
‘I didn’t kill anyone for it,’ said Dann, angry.
‘I know he didn’t,’ Mara came in, and this bright, shining creature transferred her attention to Mara. ‘He’s my brother,’ she said.
‘So I can see.’
‘That money was given to me by the woman who took us in when we were little and looked after us…’ And Mara, not knowing she was going to, began to cry. She was thinking of all that kindness, which she had taken for granted. She was thinking, Oh I wish I could be little again, and Daima could hold me. She could not stop crying. She turned away and tried to wipe the tears from her face with the sleeve of her dusty robe. This dirtied her face even more.
But Felice was kind, Mara knew, and without knowing she was going to, held out her hands imploringly to her.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Chelops,’ said Dann.
Her face changed. She was incredulous. ‘Why Chelops?’
‘We’re going North.’
‘You are Mahondis,’ she stated. ‘And what makes you think you’ll get any farther north than Chelops?’
‘But we do keep going north,’ said Dann.
‘Have you been to Chelops?’
‘Yes,’ said Dann, again surprising Mara.
‘Are you sure? You mean to tell me you just walked through Chelops?’
‘I…didn’t just walk,’ said Dann. ‘I saw a lot of police, and so I hid…and hid…and then made a run for it at night.’
‘You didn’t notice the slaves?’
‘I didn’t see very much,’ said Dann. ‘But I liked what I saw.’
Felice seemed too surprised to speak. She seemed to be thinking, or even in doubt. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you let me take you to Majab? It’s a nice town.’
‘Majab,’ said Dann, contemptuously. ‘Compared to Chelops it’s just nothing.’ As she still did not reply, and hesitated, and then began to speak, but stopped, he said, ‘I know you go as far as Chelops.’
‘It’s my base,’ she said. Then said, ‘I am employed by the Hadrons.’
This meant nothing to either Dann or Mara.
Felice sighed. ‘I’ve warned you as much as I can,’ she said. ‘Very well. But that coin: it would be enough to take the two of you to Majab. What else can you pay me?’
At this Dann scrabbled around in the bottom of his sack, without actually taking anything out so she could see it, and untied another gold coin, and brought it forth.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘If I were you I’d not let anyone know you’d got those.’
Dann gave the sort of laugh that means, You think I’m a fool? She was thinking they were foolish, but her face was soft and she smiled as she helped Mara in.
This was a six-seater, but the seats were broken and they had to sit on the floor. The machine took off with a feeble, coughing roar. All the same, it got quite high, enough for them to have a good, wide view down. It was a brown landscape, with clumps of grey rocks and, very occasionally, a green blotch that was one of the trees that had deep roots. There were dead trees everywhere. The machine was following the road. Below were several columns of walkers, like the one the two had been part of till this morning. As the machine passed overhead all the people looked up to see this rare thing, a sky skimmer, and while it was not possible to see their faces, all of them were hating the machine and cursing it.
They crossed a wide river running west to east, but there was not much water in it. At the least the mud flats on either side were not white with bones. Now they were approaching some mountains, and the machine did not increase its height – could not, that was clear. At the last moment, when it seemed it would crash into a tall peak that had glittering streaks down it from past rains, it turned to slide through a pass to the other side, where the plain went on, and on, everything brown and dry. After about half an hour, in the middle of the plain, there appeared below them a town, rather like the one behind them that was full of spiders and scorpions, but here there seemed to be people in the streets and there was a market.
‘Majab,’ whispered Dann. ‘That’s where the old woman was – I told you, who hid me when I ran away.’
‘You were here a long time?’
‘Two years. Then I went off with some people – East.’ He pointed.
‘What’s there – East?’
His face was so angry she was afraid of him. East was a town where he had seen monkeys, and people, in cages. He had seen the cages slung between work beasts, like the water cans on a carrying pole, people clinging to the bars and crying and begging, women and children as well as men, particularly children: they were to be sold in the towns along the coast.
‘Dann,’ said Mara, touching his arm to bring him back out of his anger. After a few moments he did sigh, then nodded at her: All right. And then in the dust on the floor of the machine he drew Ifrik again, put a finger where she knew he meant the Rock Village, and then walked his fingers to a spot that he whispered was Majab, and then to the next, which was Chelops.
They had been flying for about two hours when the skimmer began to descend. It landed on a high ridge; beyond it they could see only sky. The sun was red and gold and violet, sending rays across the sky.
Felice got out of the pilot’s seat and opened the door for them.
‘But this isn’t Chelops,’ said Dann. ‘You’ve cheated us.’
‘Chelops is over the ridge,’ she said. ‘Now listen to me. I am not supposed to say this. If they found out I’d said it…But don’t go into Chelops. Make a detour.’
‘For one thing we haven’t got any food and not much water left,’ said Mara.
‘Well I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what to say. I like you two kids. Well, if it’s possible, see if you can buy some food in the market up in the north-east. Don’t go through the centre.’ And with that she was back in her machine, and they watched the machine labour into the sky and go over the ridge, just skimming it.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dann. ‘I wanted to show you something up here anyway.’
And he began walking on, to the top of the ridge, where they could look down on Chelops. It was enormous. She had not imagined there could be anything like it. The light was going, it was dusk down there, but she could see tall black towers clustered together, though all dark, and a town spreading away from them, a big spread of houses, a wide scattering of lights.
Dann seemed familiar with this place. He said he had come over this ridge when he was walking down Ifrik to get to her, that somewhere close there was an old city, ruins he had heard people talk about.
They found a higher place, like the other nights, with flat rocks on it. There was no moon, but the stars glittered and seemed to rustle and talk. They ate the last piece of their bread, drank almost the last of their water, and lay down on a rock and looked up. The heat stored in the rock would warm them through the night, and above was the cold shine of the stars. He slept while she watched. She did hear scuffling and clicking from quite near, but these were not the sounds the dragons or lizards made. Then she slept. He woke her to show her an enormous beetle, yellow, with black feelers, running off to some rocks.
Before the sun rose they moved off their rock with its store of warmth and walked along the ridge that marked the descent into Chelops. ‘And here it is,’ said Dann, ‘it is where they said…’ He sounded perplexed. Ahead of them were buildings of all shapes, round or square or like bowls, but they had no roofs and were all of a piece, with round holes for windows. They were of a dull greenish or brown metal, sometimes two-storeyed with outside stairs, but were mostly one-storey. When the two stood a foot or so away from a wall they saw their reflections, brownish distorted pictures of themselves, deep in the dull metal. What was this metal that still reflected after so long? It was not rusted, or dulled, or dented or scratched. The smooth, dull walls enclosed spaces that were hot and airless, or, rather, the air seemed flat, like stale water: both of them were pleased to step outside into the heat. They went from one to another and found not a crack, not a hole, not a chip. Mara pulled out of her sack the tunic that could be worn for years and never show a mark, or a tear, never lose its dull sheen, and she said to Dann, ‘Look.’ She held the slippery glisten of the tunic near the wall of a house: they were the same; and she put the can for their water near a wall: the same. The same people made the houses, the tunics, the cans. The two walked about among the houses, the sun beating down on them, and the metal of the buildings did not absorb or throw out heat but kept a mild, indifferent tepidity, no matter where they laid their palms. This city extended along the edge of the ridge and back from it for a mile or so: lumps of buildings, dead, ugly things that could never change or decay.
Mara asked, ‘Did they tell you how old this place is?’
‘They think it is three thousand years old.’
‘Do they know what kind of people they were?’
‘They found bones. They used to throw their dead people down over the edge for the animals to eat. The bones were all broken up because they were so old, but those people were much taller than we are. They had bigger heads. They had long arms and their feet were big too.’
The two were dispirited, dismayed, even angry. ‘How did they make this thing,’ said Mara, suddenly emotional, and she hit the wall of a house, first with her fist, then with a stone; but there was not a sound – nothing.
‘No one knows,’ said Dann.
‘No one?’
‘Those old people were clever. They knew all kinds of things.’
‘Then I’m glad they’re dead. I’m glad, I’m glad,’ said Mara, and began shouting, ‘I’m glad, I’m glad – ’ and she was shouting away into the hot air all her years of feeling the slippery deadness of the material sliding around her, on her body, her legs, her arms.
Dann was leaning with one hand on a wall, watching her. What he said was, ‘Mara, you’re better, do you know that? When I saw you back there at the waterhole you couldn’t have shouted, or made this kind of – fuss.’ And he was smiling at her, affectionate, and with those narrow, sharp eyes of his for once ordinary – kind. And then Mara began to laugh. It was with relief. She felt she had escaped for ever the nastiness of that dead, brown stuff, and the unpleasantness that had made these houses. He smiled, while she laughed. She knew this was a moment new for them, of trust and relaxation, after such effort and danger. Did he know how rare it was for him not to be on guard?
‘The people who lived here,’ she said at last, summing up, ending their little moment, ‘they must have been monsters. How could they have borne it? To live all your life in houses that can’t change, with things that never break, with clothes you can’t tear, that never wear out?’ And she kicked a house, hard, so that her long toenails scratched the metal – or would have, if this metal could be affected by anything. For three thousand years these things had been here. And she remembered the ruins of the cities near the Rock Village with affectionate respect for them, their generosity in giving up what made them to people who came after, so that the houses of the Rock People were made of the stones and pillars of those people who had lived there so much earlier.
She squatted in the dust, took up a little stick, and said, ‘Tell me about numbers, Dann. Tell me about three thousand.’ And she laid her two hands flat on the earth: ten; and stretched out her two feet: ten again. He knelt in the dust opposite her, and with a stick wrote 10, then 20, looking at her to see if she understood. Then he went on: 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, saying the words as he wrote. And again he looked at her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One hundred.’ She had reached that point herself, though not to write it with these strange new marks. And now she could go on, with this little brother who knew so much more than she did.
He made ten marks side by side in the dust, at a little distance from each other; and under each, ten strokes; and under each of those, ten. ‘A thousand,’ he said, and sat back on his heels so she could have time to take it all in. How sweet it was, this being close here, alone, learning from him, while he taught her. Neither wanted it to end. They had not been alone with each other a moment all these past days. And now, in this deserted place, they were comfortable together, and not in danger, they were pretty sure – and then they saw the sweat running down each other’s face and remembered they had only a mouthful of water each and that they were very thirsty.
They stood up.
‘Where did you learn?’ she asked.
‘I was at school in Majab.’
‘At school?’ she asked. ‘How?’
‘I worked in the day and had lessons at night. But then I left and that was the end of school.’
‘What else do you know?’
‘Not much, Mara.’
They were standing not far from the rocky edge, and they went to it and looked down over the city, over Chelops. And now in the full daylight she could see clearly what had been impossible to see in the dusk. The whole city lay there, spread out, and they could understand its plan. The first thing you had to see was that roads ran in from north, south, east and west to the centre, which was an enormous, very tall, black building, dwarfing everything for miles around. The roads were like nothing Mara had even imagined. They were straight, wide, and were made of a smooth, dark stone – or so it looked from here. Nothing moved on those roads. Where they met at the central tower were four quarters, each filled with smaller but still important buildings, all exactly the same: six to a quarter, and each glum, threatening, solid, dark, with regular windows that the sun flashed off, like knives. There was no movement inside this central core of the city, which was defined by an encircling road, narrower, but the same as the quartering roads. A vastness of irregular, lively buildings of all sizes and shapes and colours began at the circling road, making courts and compounds and avenues where there were trees. The trees seemed to droop, but they were not dead. In the streets of this city a lot of people were moving, and vehicles too. There was a big market place that was not central, and there seemed to be others here and there.
‘This city was built to be the first city of the country.’
‘Of Ifrik?’
‘No, just of the country. It is a big country. It is from Majab in the south far up beyond Chelops in the north. We would need weeks to walk across it. It is the biggest country in this part of Ifrik.’
She was for the first time in her life hearing of a country, rather than of towns, or villages. ‘What are the people like?’
‘I don’t know. I came through it so fast because of all the policemen, and it was at night.’
6 (#ulink_4516ab5e-3975-53ff-8c75-a9ff2cb8b3e5)
Now they began walking down a steep slope of chalky sand, where long ago the people of the houses that looked like cooking pots had thrown their dead. There did not seem to be bones now – not on the surface, at least. The chalky white of the earth was old bones: she knew how bones became white dust. The white was rising all around them, and they were beginning to look like floury ghosts; and they laughed at each other, and slid down the slope, which became steeper and then so steep they had to step off to one side to a gentler slope, which was still made of white chalk; and then at the bottom there was green, and some living trees, and a little stream. It had once been a big river, but water was still bubbling up from somewhere, for it was not standing in holes but actually gently running. Clear water. Sweet water. And with a shout both flung off their dirty robes and were about to throw themselves in when they remembered their commonsense, and stood waiting at the edge, looking, for they did not know if there were water dragons or stingers or snakes. Dann took up his pole and began probing a pool. Here the bottom could not be reached. They moved to the next where the water spread and a sandy bottom showed. Dann pushed the pole into every bit of the pool, again and again. And then he flung down the pole and both of them jumped in. The cool water enclosed them, and they sank to the bottom, and lay on white sand, and then at the edge, their heads out; and their bodies felt as if they were drinking in the water, and Mara let the water run all over her dusty scalp with its little scruff of new hair. And then Dann produced from the bottom of his sack a little piece of hard soap, showing it in triumph, and they washed and soaped and scrubbed and then all over, again and again, till the soap vanished into the white bubbles that piled the pool.
They got out and stood looking at each other. Under all the dust and dirt had been Mara, had been Dann, and now they were there again. Their flesh was not firm and plump like the woman pilot’s, but at least the skin lay healthily on their bones, even on Mara’s, for she was no longer only bones and skin. And now at the same time they were shy and turned away. Dressed in dust they had not thought of covering themselves, but now they did. Mara averted her eyes from his thick tube and the two smooth balls in their little sac, and he glanced at her slit, with its fluff of hair, and looked away.
She could not bear to put on that filthy garment, so stiff with dust it was lying on the earth with her shape in it. Naked, she stepped back into the pool with her garment, and he too with his. And they rubbed and rubbed in the soap foam, the soap itself having dissolved away; and soon the water was brown and the white foam masses were pale brown too. Dann washed his robe with his back to her. It was a strong muscled back, and her body was as hard and strong. On her chest, above the knotted cord of coins, were hard round plates, like Dann’s, but back at the waterhole in the Rock Village there had been no flesh there, only bones. When they had washed their robes, they laid them on a rock to dry. Their pool was no longer an invitation, being so dirty. Dann tested another, and they lolled in it and floated in it, while the sun sucked the water out of their two robes. And then it was midday, and they were hungry. Mara mixed the very last of their flour with water, and cooked it on the hot rock, and they ate, and drank a great deal of water, out of hunger, though Dann said that soon they would eat, he was sure of it.
Then they put on their almost dry robes. Mara’s would never be white again, for it had been dyed by dust, and his was the same. But they were clean. They filled the water can from another pool and then, the carrying pole between them, the can hanging there, they set off to walk into Chelops, along the stream. In front of them soon was a barrier that they could not understand. It was several times their height, made of closely laced metal ribbons, covered with barbs like thorns, and rusty. There were holes in this fence where the metal had simply rotted away. There was a great gate, which they tried to push open, and then two men, big yellowish men with rolling, abundant flesh and cold yellow eyes, came running.
Dann shouted at Mara to run – but there was nowhere they could run, the fences went on and on. When a man grabbed Mara she fought, but her wrists were tied together with thin rope, which hurt. Dann too, though he kicked and twisted and several times got away and was caught, had his wrists tied.
Within half a day of entering Chelops, Mara and Dann were prisoners, charged with defiling the city’s water source, and for being inside a forbidden area, and for resisting arrest. On that same afternoon they were put to stand in front of a magistrate. Mara had been expecting someone like the guards, whom she now knew were Hadrons. But the man sitting on a little platform, looking at them, Mara thought, with curiosity, was not a Hadron. He was more like a Mahondi, but could not be because he was large and even fat. This was Juba, who soon would become Mara’s very good friend. Meanwhile he was seeing something that he expected to see several times a week: starved fugitives from the famine down south, whose first action was always to steal some food. These two had not, though they had no food at all. Juba never punished the thieves, merely sent them off to join the slave force. But in this case he had to find out what they were doing in the water pools. If they had come from the south then why not by the road everyone used? Why had they sneaked like criminals down over the escarpment?
Mara was doing the talking. Dann, from the moment the cord went around his wrists, had become listless and silent, and seemed to have given up hope. He stood beside his sister drooping, sometimes shivering a little, and would not look up.
‘My brother is ill,’ said Mara. ‘He hasn’t eaten enough.’
‘I can see that,’ said Juba. ‘You have committed a very serious crime. You don’t seem to realise how bad. It is a death sentence for defiling the water supply. And then you resisted arrest too.’
Mara said, ‘I didn’t know about an arrest, or resisting.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘The Rock Village.’
‘But you aren’t of the Rock People. You are a Mahondi.’
‘Yes,’ said Mara.
‘Where were you born?’
‘In Rustam.’
‘What is your name?’ Here it was again, a small tugging at her memory.
‘Maro.’
‘No, your family name.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are going to have to tell me how you got down into our water supplies.’
Mara had not wanted to mention Felice, but now she said, ‘Felice brought us to the top there.’
This seemed to disturb him.
‘Felice did? And how did you pay her?’
‘She was – sorry for us,’ said Mara. And knew she had said something that Felice would be questioned about.
They were put in a little room near the court while someone went off to find Felice. They were given food, at Juba’s order, and it was good, hot food, which made them feel better. Though Dann seemed not himself, and sat staring, and would not speak.
How was it possible? Mara thought. Could one night, one terrible night in a child’s life, mark him for ever? So that he would never get free of it? Even though he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – remember it?
When the messenger came back, he said that Felice was asleep when he got there, but said that she had given a lift to the two boys, since she was coming back to Chelops anyway. They had asked to be set down on the ridge and would make their own way down into Chelops. She had not taken payment from them. This was a relief, because when the guards had gone through their sacks, not very thoroughly, because they had to do it so often, they had actually found Dann’s cord of coins, but thought it was probably some sort of amulet or fetish, and had thrown it back into the bottom.
Juba sat there for quite a time, his head in his hand, thinking. He could understand why Felice – who had piloted him often enough on official business – had felt sorry for these two innocents. He knew quite well that he was not being told all the truth, but did not believe that truth for truth’s sake had always to be insisted on.
In the end, he simply said to the guards, ‘Take the cords off.’ And, while Mara and Dann rubbed their wrists, ‘Take them to the slave quarters.’ These were buildings in a compound where Chelops’ slaves were housed. Dann and Mara were slaves because they were Mahondis, who had ‘always’ been the Hadrons’ slaves. They were not at once put to work but fed double rations for a few days. They were sent out with the other slaves before either of them felt strong enough, but were given light tasks to begin with. Then they kept streets and public buildings clean, acted as bearers for the chairs on poles the Hadrons were carried about in, or pushed the old skimmers that were now ground vehicles, or did any other tasks that needed doing. The slaves were well fed, worked twelve hours a day, and one day a week wrestled and threw each other in a big hall used for that purpose. Male and female slaves slept in different buildings.
Dann and Mara had little opportunity to talk, for they were supervised by Hadron guards whose task it was to discourage any possible attempts at conspiracy.
Where they had come from was spoken of with contempt, which masked a dread that what had happened – was happening – ‘down south’ or ‘down there’ in ‘the deadlands’ or ‘the bad place’ or ‘the dust country’ or ‘the country without water,’ could happen here too. No one went south but officials, to Majab, when they had to.
The Mahondis were an inferior race and had always been servants and slaves.
The Hadrons had built this city, and many other cities in the country, called Hadron, which they had settled and had always administered.
Certain things were only whispered. No one lived in the administrative centre, those twenty-five grim buildings in the middle of the city, except criminals or runaway slaves or people passing through who did not want to attract the attention of the police. At some time in the past, when it was hard to find accommodation in the town, people lived there illegally; but Chelops had about a tenth of its earlier population, and many empty houses. Citizens were quietly leaving to go up North, fearing the spread of the drought. Water was not rationed, but the authorities punished those wasting it; there was food, but not as much as there had been. Both food and water supplies were in the hands of the Hadrons.
Moving about the streets on her cleaning duties, Mara recognised a good deal of what she saw. The trees, first. They were limp, some had dying branches, white stick-like limbs among the green, and there were many dead trees. The city had fountains, but there was no water in them, only rubbish, which Mara, with fellow slaves, was kept cleaning out.
The slaves were not all Mahondis, but all were fugitives from the famine and the drought. Some had already been here for years. Mara had believed that the Mahondis of Rustam had been all there were, but other Mahondi people had come from all over southern Ifrik, and some spoke of past comforts and pleasures – even high positions and riches.
Mara was tense, anxious, fearful, which climaxed every day when the tubs of water were brought in from where water was kept under guard and, when enough had been set aside for drinking, the slaves were expected to stand in groups around the tubs and wash themselves. Most stood naked, shedding the ubiquitous slaves’ robes to wash, but not all stripped, and Mara washed her legs and body up to her hips, bunching up the robe, and then sliding it down a little, but never showing her chest. Her worry was the cord of coins, but her breasts were already a bit bigger. The Hadrons who guarded them were looking at her and wondering. Something told them she was not male, though she thought she still looked like a boy. Then what she dreaded happened. While she was washing, manipulating the folds of robe to keep herself covered, a guard lifted them with his stick and kept his stick there, so she was exposed to everyone – fellow slaves who first were surprised, but laughed, and the other guards, who laughed, and came to have a good look.
Within an hour she had been told to fetch her sack, and without being able to warn Dann, who was out portering a chair for some bigwig, she was led across the town to a large house, where she was taken in at once to see its mistress. She had expected to see a Hadron, but the guards had told her no, she was a Mahondi in charge of the female slaves. At first Mara thought, How can she be a Mahondi? We are tall, slim people, while this woman is fat, and sits in her chair with her little, plump feet on a stool. It occurred to Mara for the first time that she had believed her people to be thin by nature, because she had never known a time when food was not short, even when she was little. So Mahondis could be as fleshy and as large as Hadrons. Mara was not sure she liked this.
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