Mara and Dann

5

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.