Читать книгу Mara and Dann - Doris Lessing - Страница 7

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.’