Mara and Dann

‘If you were going to hide money, Mara, where would you put it?’

Mara thought. ‘Not in the room where the water tank is, or anywhere near where the food is. And not in this room, because people can come in so easily. Not in the thatch, because grass can burn. Not somewhere out of the house, because people would see when you went to look for it. And not in one of the empty rooms, because people would expect that.’

A long pause.

‘Where, then?’ persisted Daima. But Mara could not guess.

In a corner of this room stood a bundle of big floor candles. The biggest ones were as thick as Mara’s chest. One that looked just like all the others was quite smooth at the bottom; but when you scraped off a layer and pulled out a plug of candle, there was a hole, and in it a leather bag with coins in it. They were gold, quite small but heavy, and there were fifty of them. Mara remembered that at home the People wore big, heavy ornaments of this stuff, gold, and she herself had been given when she was born a bracelet made of these same coins, which she knew was very valuable. Where was it now? But her old life in the great, airy palace in its gardens seemed every day more of a dream and harder to remember. And she had had another name. What was it? She asked Daima if she knew what her name and Dann’s had been, but Daima said no, she didn’t, and anyway it wasn’t a bad idea to forget them. ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ she said.

Often Mara climbed on Daima’s lap, but when Dann was asleep, because she didn’t want him to know that she often felt like a baby too. She hugged Daima, and felt the bones in the hard arms and the hard lap. Daima was not soft anywhere. Mara laid her face in Daima’s bony shoulder and thought about her mother, though it was hard now to remember her face, and how she was soft everywhere and had a sweet, spicy smell, who had hugged her with arms that had bracelets on them, and long black hair where Mara could bury her face. Daima smelled dry and sour and dusty. Dust, the smell of dust, the feel of dust on everything: soft pads of dust underfoot, dust piling up in the grooves the door slid along in, dust on the rocks of the floor, which had to be swept out every day into the dust outside. Films of dust settled on the food even while they ate it, and often winds whirled dust and grass up into the air and the sunlight became spotty and dirty-looking.

‘Perhaps it will rain,’ Mara implored Daima, who said, ‘Well, perhaps it will.’

Soon Mishka began giving much less milk. Some mornings there was hardly any. There was something in the way Rabat smiled and looked that made Mara ask if perhaps Rabat was going out at night to steal milk. Daima said yes, she thought so. She said to Mara, ‘Don’t be too hard. She has nothing to eat.’

‘Why doesn’t she go out and dig up roots, the way we do?’

Daima sighed and said that it was no good expecting people to do what they couldn’t do.

‘Why can’t she?’

Daima lowered her voice, though they were alone, and said, ‘She’s a bit simple-minded.’ And then, lower still, ‘That’s why the others have never wanted anything to do with her. And why she was glad to be friends with me.’ She gave the grim smile that Mara had learned to dread. ‘Two outcasts.’

‘Will Mishka give more milk when it rains?’

‘Yes, but she is getting old and it is time she was mated. Her milk will dry up altogether soon if she isn’t.’

‘Why can’t she be mated?’

‘Kulik owns the only male milk beast, and he won’t let it mate with ours.’

Mara was in such a tumult of feelings: she had just taken in that Daima’s only friend all these years was a loony woman; and now, how cruel Kulik was.

She went off into the room where her rock bed was, and lay on it, and turned her face to the wall and thought hard. She knew she could not tell Daima what she wanted to do, because she would say no. She waited until Daima had gone out with Dann to take some water to Mishka, and then she went through the village, smiling politely at people, to where she knew most of the men were in the hot midday. Against a disused rock house was a long seat made of rocks, shaded by some old thatch that had slipped down the roof. Along this bench sat about ten men, their hands on their knees, apparently half asleep. Among them was Kulik.

It was difficult to walk towards them, seeing how their faces grew hard as she got near. This is the look she had seen on the faces of Rock People all her life when any of the People were near. Their eyes were narrowed, their mouths tight and angry.

She made herself smile, but not too much, and stood in front of Kulik. She said, ‘Please, our Mishka needs to be mated.’ In spite of herself, her voice was weak and her lips trembled.

First there were looks between the men, who were surprised. Then they laughed: ugly, short laughter, like barks. Then they all stared at her, their faces hard again. Kulik, however, had a grin on his face, and his teeth showed.

Mara said, her voice stumbling, ‘My little brother, he needs the milk.’

Kulik narrowed his eyes, stared hard, kept his thin, ugly grin, and said, ‘And what do I get in exchange?’

‘I don’t think we’ve got anything. I could get some roots for you.’

More laughter from the men.

‘I wasn’t thinking of roots,’ said Kulik. Then slowly, and with his face so full of hatred for her she could hardly keep standing there in front of him, ‘Down on your knees, Mahondi brat, down on your knees and beg.’

At first Mara was not sure what he wanted her to do, but she dropped to her knees in the dust, and when she looked at him she could hardly see through her tears.

‘Now bend right down, three times,’ said Kulik.

Mara had to think again, but she bent down once, twice, three times, trying to keep her hair out of the dust. On the last time she felt Kulik’s big hand on her head, grinding her face down into the dirt. Then he let go. She straightened to her knees and, since he did not say anything, stood up. The dust was falling past her eyes from her head.

She said, ‘Please will you let Mishka be mated?’

And now a big roar of astonished laughter from all of them – except Kulik, who did not laugh this time but only grinned, and sat forward and said, almost spitting as he talked into her face, ‘You bring her when she is ready. I’m sure you know all about that from your hard work on the farms.’

‘I do know,’ said Mara. ‘I learned about how to mate animals.’

‘That would come in useful, to give orders to your slaves.’

‘Please,’ said Mara, ‘please.’

‘Bring your animal. But you must come alone. I’m not dealing with that old bag Daima. Alone, do you hear?’

Mara was angry that he’d called Daima an old bag, but she made herself smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And if the kid turns out to be male, I shall have it.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you – ’ and she ran off.

She told Daima what she had done, and Daima caught her hand to her heart and had to sit down. ‘Mara,’ she said, ‘Mara … That was so dangerous. I’ve known Kulik kill someone who stood up to him.’

‘What is a Mahondi?’

‘We are Mahondis. The People are Mahondis. Did he call you a Mahondi? Well, you are one. And me. And Dann.’

‘And he wants the kid if it is male. That means, we can keep it if it is female and have milk from her when she grows up.’

‘There are too many females,’ said Daima. ‘We can’t feed what we have. He wants another male because his is old and he can keep control of who has milk and who doesn’t.’

‘Perhaps Mishka will have twins.’

‘Don’t wish for that. We would have to kill one. How could we keep them fed? You know yourself how hard it is to find food for them.’

When Daima said that Mishka was ready, Mara put the rope around her horns and went through the houses to where the men sat.

She stood in front of Kulik with the beast and said, ‘Here is Mishka. I’ve come by myself, as you said.’

‘What makes you think I haven’t changed my mind?’ said Kulik, and went on grinning there, a long time, to keep her afraid in case he had changed his mind.

‘You promised,’ said Mara at last, not crying, for she was determined not to.

‘Very well, you come with me.’

He got up, in his heavy, slow way – like an animal that has decided to tread all over you, Mara thought – and went towards the enclosure where his male milk beast was, all by itself. Mishka began to jump and rush about at the end of her rope.

Kulik turned his head to grin back and say, ‘Can’t wait for it, can she? – you are all the same.’

Mara had no idea what he meant.

At the entrance to the enclosure, which was a small one – just room for one animal and a bit over – he slid back a bar and pushed in Mishka, and then picked up Mara and lifted her over so that she was among the legs and the horns. Then he leaned his arms on the wooden rail, grinning, and watched while Mara dodged about, as the big male beast nudged and pushed and edged Mishka into position, and she sidled and evaded, and came back … and all the time those great hooves were missing Mara by inches. Along the fence of the enclosure now were the men, standing there grinning and hoping that Mara would get a hard kick, or a poke from one of those sharp horns. It seemed to go on for a long time, the pushing and shoving in the enclosure, and Mara tried to get out through the rails of the fence; but the men pushed her back in, and this time she was just under Mishka’s head. The male was on Mishka’s back now and pushing Mishka down, but she was trying not to hurt Mara, keeping her head and shoulders away from the girl. At last it was done. The two beasts stood clear of each other. Mara was trembling so that she could hardly stand, and she felt her pee running down her legs. But she got the rope around Mishka’s horns and stood with her at the place where the opening was. For a good long while Kulik did not take his arms from where they lay on the rail. Then he moved back, lifted off the rail and stood aside. Mara led Mishka out. She did not look at Kulik or at the other men, who were standing there grinning and pleased with themselves.

‘Remember, it’s mine if it’s a male,’ said Kulik.

‘I promise,’ said Mara.

‘She promises,’ said the men to each other, in copies of her little voice, but lisping and silly, not as she spoke.

She took Mishka back to her place near the others, and stood for a time with her arms around one of the big front legs, because she could not reach any higher; and Mishka put down her soft muzzle and licked Mara’s sweaty, dusty neck for the salt.

Then she went to Daima and told her. Daima only sat with her head on her old hand at the table and listened.

‘Well, let’s hope she takes,’ she said. And Mishka did ‘take’: she was pregnant and she gave birth to a male. Dann could hardly be got away from Mishka and her kid. He adored the little beast, which would look out for Dann, who brought it bits of green he found in the grass, or a slice of the yellow root.

Mara said, ‘Don’t love that little beast so much, because we can’t keep him.’

And Daima said, ‘That’s right. He must know what the world is like.’

‘Perhaps it won’t always be like this,’ said Mara.

And then the beast, which Dann called Dann, was taken away by Kulik, who chased Dann off and said, ‘I’m not having any Mahondi brats, get away.’

Dann could not understand what had happened. He sat silent, puzzled, full of grief; but then it seemed some sort of change took place in him. ‘I hate Kulik,’ he said, but not like a little boy. ‘One day I’ll kill him.’ And he didn’t cry. His face was narrow and tight and suspicious and hard. He was not yet five years old.

2

On the low hill overlooking the village was a tall rock, precipitous on three sides and sloping steeply on the village side. There on the top of it sat Mara, looking down at a group of half a dozen boys playing a game of fighting with sticks. Dann was taller than any of them, though he was younger than some, at ten years old, and he was a quick, always watchful child, who dominated them all. Mara was almost grown, with her little bumps of breasts, and she was tall and thin and wiry, and could run faster than the boys, which she had learned to do from having so often to rescue Dann from danger. He seemed to have been born without a sense of self-preservation: would leap off a rock or a roof without looking to see where he was going to land, walk up to a big hissing dragon, jump into a pool without checking if there were stingers or a water dragon. But he was much better, and that was why Mara was up here, watching quite idly, not anxious and on guard as she had been every minute of her days and nights. Only recently had she understood that her long watch was over. She had been strolling from the hill to the village, listening to the singing beetles and her own thoughts, when she had seen Dann rushing towards her with a stick, then past her, and she had whirled to see him attacking a dragon that was following her.

‘You should be more careful, Mara,’ he had chided, and not at all as if he were mimicking her constant, Be careful, do be careful, Dann.

She had gone in to Daima and told her, and the two had wept and laughed in each other’s arms for the wonderful ludicrousness of it. And Daima had said, ‘Congratulations, Mara. You’ve done it. You’ve brought him through.’

This was her favourite place. Nobody came up here: not Dann, who liked to be always rushing about; not Daima, who was too old and stiff; not the villagers, who said it was full of ghosts. Mara had been here at all times of the day, and at night too, and had never seen or heard ghosts. The danger was the dragons, who were so hungry they would eat anything. That is why she sat on a rock that on three sides they could not climb up, while in front she could slide down on her bottom and be off as soon as she heard the angry hissing. Or she could wait up here, safe, throwing stones down at the dragons if they showed signs of climbing up. This rock rose out of a tumbling and piling of small, rocky hills, full of clefts and crevices where bushes and trees grew, and caves and cliffs and pits that were old traps, and in some places heaps of old walls and roofs. When she had played the What Did You See? game with Daima, she liked best to do this hill, because she was always finding new things.

‘And then?’

‘The pits have black rings, with bits of chain on the rings.’

‘And then?’

‘The rings are made of some metal we don’t have.’

‘And so?’

‘All the same, Daima, I think those pits are quite recent – I mean hundreds of years, not thousands.’

When Mara said hundreds, she meant a long time; and when thousands, it meant her mind had given up, confessed failure: thousands meant an unimaginable, endless past.

Up on those hills – for behind the one near the village were piled others – forcing herself between bushes and saplings, squeezing through gaps in boulders, sliding down shaly descents in showers of stones, climbing trees to look over places she could not penetrate because of thick undergrowth, what Mara had slowly understood – and it had been slow, years – was that this was not just, as Daima had told her, a ruined city thousands of years old, or hundreds, or what the villagers saw it as – a place to get stones for building – but layers of habitations, peoples, time. She had been standing between walls still mostly intact, though roots had brought down part of one into a slope of blocks where little lizards sunned themselves, and in front of her was a great wall, many times her height, and wider than Daima’s whole house, and there was not one rock missing from it. The whole wall was carved into stories and they were all about a war: the fighters in baggy trousers and tops and big boots, and they carried all kinds of weapons that Daima could not explain, saying only that once there had been weapons so terrible one of them could destroy a whole city. This wall was celebrating a victory: and certainly it was a description of how these ancient people had seen themselves and their enemies, for the faces of the victors were cruel and fierce and the defeated ones were frightened and pleading. At any rate, it was a story, on that wall, of how people had fought, and some had been killed. But on another wall in the same room, or hall, the blocks of stone were smaller and fitted closer, and were covered over with the fine, hard plaster, and the pictures were coloured. These were the same people, with their flat, broad shoulders and lean bodies, and narrow faces, and there was fighting again, but the weapons were different and so were the clothes. The same people, but from different times. That meant these people had been here for – hundreds? – of years. It meant that between the time of the plain carving of the stone and the time of decorating this smooth, crisp plaster with the coloured pictures, they had discovered the plaster and how to make it stick on rock, and how to mix colours that lasted for – how long? And on another part of the hill she found a part-fallen building with the inner walls carved, but it had earth halfway up the walls. Almost on top of these walls, as if the builders had tried to continue the old ones upwards, were other, newer walls, the white ones, with colours. This meant that the builders of the top building had not known of the building underneath. Earth had been washed away, so now you could see the two walls, one almost on top of the other. And this whole great area of hills and stones and rocks tumbling everywhere – Mara understood it all, quite suddenly. There had been a very big city of stone walls decorated with carvings. And there had been an earthquake. And on top of and between the half destroyed houses and halls another city had been built, much more beautiful and finely decorated. And that, too, had been tumbled by a quake, but this time the people had not bothered to rebuild. Why hadn’t they? What had happened to them? Where were they? Up here by herself, and even at night, though Daima hated her coming at night, Mara stood with these layers of the past all around her; and sometimes felt herself go cold and frightened, thinking of how they had lived here, all those people, building their houses when the earth shook and everything fell down … And living there again, decorating walls with such care, mixing colours, putting pictures of birds and beasts and feasts, as well as fighting and soldiers, on their walls … And then they had disappeared. People just like herself, she supposed: they had vanished, and no one knew about them. A little girl, overwhelmed by time, the weight of it, thoughts that crammed her brain and made it want to burst, she had climbed up on Daima and shivered and clung. ‘They’ve just gone, gone, gone, Daima, and they were here for so long … And we don’t know their names or anything.’

But these days she did not cling or cuddle up to Daima, for Mara was as tall as she was, and much stronger. Now when she held Daima she felt as if the old woman were the child and she the mother, and she marvelled that this huddle of thin bones held together at all.

Down below the little boys were fighting, a real fight. Often a play fight became that, the Rock People ganging up on Dann because they hated him, but so far he had not been hurt more than bruises and, once, a sprained arm. Mara watched and made herself stay still. ‘You must let him,’ said Daima. ‘You can’t protect him any more. He has to fight his own battles.’ And perhaps letting him fight his own battles had led to his being able to say to Mara, like a grown-up, ‘You should be more careful.’ Now she watched how Dann was defending himself against the kicking, flailing boys, and it was almost more than she could do to stop herself from running down to stand by him and fight with him. It seemed to her even now that her whole life had been only that: Dann, Dann; and that for years all her body had been able to feel was his trembling need for her. Now the fight was a whirl of sticks and legs and stones, and then Dann broke free and ran into one of the empty houses, whose roof had gone, and shouted down at the others from the top of crumbling walls. It was dangerous. A bit of wall fell away from under his feet and he jumped clear. The others did not follow but went off, all together. Dann leaped down, and was off into Daima’s house. He came out with two cans, and went running through the houses to where the milk beasts clustered under their old thorn tree. Their own beast now was not Mishka but Mishka’s daughter, called Mishkita. When Mishka’s milk stopped, Mara went to Kulik and asked that she should be mated again. This time he looked hard and long at her, and she could not read that look. Then he nodded and said, ‘Bring her when she’s ready.’ Mishka was mated with her own son, Dann, and gave birth to Mishkita. Daima had said, ‘Don’t go out by yourself at night, Mara. He’s got a soft spot for you. That’s even more dangerous.’ But Mara did go out at night, and when she saw Kulik smiled and nodded as if he were a friend and not an enemy, while all the time he was near her heart beat with fear of him.

Dann knelt under Mishkita, keeping a watch on those sharp hooves, and milked into the cans. He was quick and skilful. All the time he was looking around for fear of an ambush. He had once beaten up a whole gang of children teasing the milk beasts, and he said that if he ever caught them again they would find out what he could do.

This milk was all that Daima could eat now. If it didn’t rain soon there would be no more milk.

There was only a little of the white flour left, because a trader had come but he had said he thought it wasn’t worth his while if all they could give him was the yellow roots.

Mara had been making experiments. She found grasses that had small, lumpy seeds. She beat the thin, fragile heads of the grass on a stone, got out some grain and beat that on a stone. But for a whole day’s work there was only a cup of flour. She had a stroke of luck when she found, while digging for the yellow roots, a big round root the size of a baby’s head, which was filled with a dense white stuff. She cooked it and, risking that it was poison, ate, while Daima watched, ready with an emetic. But it was not poisonous and made a filling porridge. There were very few green leaves anywhere. They ate, though sparingly, the white flour, in case this was the last they’d see, the yellow roots, and this new white root. They ate sour milk and a little cheese. They were always hungry. Daima said that neither of them had had a square meal in five years and yet were shooting up like reeds after rain. They must be feeding on air, she said. ‘Or dust,’ they joked.

Two years after the children had come to Daima’s house there was a big storm. Not a cloudburst far away, so that brown water rushed in torrents under a bright blue sky. It was real rain. It was sudden and violent. The cisterns outside the houses filled with water, and everyone shared the water in the cisterns outside the empty houses. Daima and the children carried water again and again to the locked-up tank indoors. Soon, there was another storm. The dried-up, yellowish earth and the dead-looking grasses were bursting into life, and there were flowers, and the milk beasts grew fat, and the people lost their dried, dusty look. The waterholes became a river, and the wild animals stood about on the banks at dusk and dawn, and there was a trumpeting and bleating and howling and yapping from both rivers. All the villagers went up to the ridge to look: they had believed there were no animals left. Certainly there were only half of what had been. Because of the storm there were some baby animals born. Kulik and his sons went out to catch the babies: no one was strong enough now to hunt the big animals. They did not share the meat with anyone else in the village. The villagers made a channel for the water of the nearer river to flow into a low place, and there a guard was set, day and night, so the stingers and water dragons did not get into it; and in that pool everyone bathed every day, all at the same time, for safety. There was even a little friendliness shown to Mara and Dann, who took their turn, with Daima, guarding the pool.

And then – that was it. Because there had been two big storms in that rainy season, everyone waited for rain in the next, with cleaned-out cisterns and mended roofs. But there was no rain that season, nor the next, nor the next. That good season with the two storms had been four years ago. Again the waterholes were almost empty in the little river, and the big river had stopped running. Everywhere the bones of animals lay in the dead grass. Extraordinary events were reported. A water dragon, almost dead with hunger, had been attacked by a water stinger half its size; and when the villagers went down together to the waterholes they saw half a dozen stingers fighting over the half-dead beast. And just outside the village a couple of the big black birds that normally ate only seeds and berries attacked in full daylight a wild pig too weak to run away, tearing from its shoulders and neck big beakfuls of flesh, while the pig squealed. And these birds had taken to gathering not far from the milk beasts, to stare at them, moving closer and waiting, and moving in again; and Dann had run out shouting and throwing stones at them. They had flapped off, slowly, so weak they kept sinking and wavering in the air, letting out hoarse, desperate cries. The milk beasts were thin and weak and gave hardly any milk.

Perhaps this next rainy season? – everyone was saying. Or perhaps even another flash flood from up north.

There were fewer people. Only twenty still remained. Rabat had died. The old people had died, and three new babies. There was not one baby or small child in the village. Up north, so it was believed, things were better, even normal, and so many families had left or were leaving. Often the village was full of people, just for a night or two, because travellers from the south would arrive and simply take over the empty houses, demanding food from the villagers. They were mostly Rock People themselves with relatives, even distant ones, here, and so they could claim hospitality. But they found little food or water and went off again.

Once a gang forced their way into Daima’s house and found the old woman lying – and, they thought, dying – on the shelf in the outer room. They drank all the water in the jars and cans in that room, but went off. The children were hiding in the empty rooms at the back. And now Daima told them that there must always be just enough of the roots and flour in the front room for any marauders to think that this was all there was in the house, and they must be careful to keep the inner doors locked and the keys hidden.

Then one midday when everyone was lying down waiting for the heat to lessen, a crowd of travellers came, about twenty, and they stood in a close group while the villagers came out to see who it was this time. And, gazing and examining, they became silent. These were certainly Rock People: squat, thick-built, greyish in colour, with pale masses of frizzled hair. But their faces were all the same. At first in disbelief, then in quiet horror, the people standing around the travellers looked from one face to another, and then again … No, it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. Perhaps the villagers had become silly, their wits gone because of not having enough water and food … But no, it was true. Every face was the same, identical, with lumpy noses, long thin mouths, pale eyes under yellow brows, broad foreheads made lower still because of the frizzy bush above. The same in every detail. A moan, or groan, from the villagers. Then they began shouting. And then – Mara saw it while her heart went cold – Dann walked forward as if he were being pulled, one step after another, just as he had been when he saw the two brothers years before, unable to help himself, drawn by something he did not understand and did not know about. He came to a stop just in front of this little mass of people, which was also one person, or seemed to be, since their movements were the same and their faces each had the identical cold and hostile anger. And, as one, their eyes focused on Dann, the tall thin boy with the dusty black hair: a person so unlike them, and unlike anybody else there, that he seemed to them like an unfamiliar animal, a new kind of monkey perhaps. As if they were one person, their hands rose, and in the hands were sticks; and Mara raced forward and pulled Dann back, and the hands and the sticks fell, but slowly, and in the same movement. And now these people, who were like one person, were staring at the two children, who were not like any they had seen, being so knobbly and bony and staring back with frightened eyes.

Mara did not pull the boy into the house for fear this would bring this enemy after them, but stood at their door, behind some other villagers. She could feel Dann trembling, though now her hands were gripping not a little child but a strong boy whose head was nearly on a level with hers. He stood and shivered as he had years ago, shocked by a mystery: faces that resemble each other, eyes that are alike, while behind lie worlds as different as day and night. But here it was not two faces: there were many.

The newcomers went off, together, and the villagers dispersed, whispering among themselves as if afraid of provoking some new manifestation of this horror: people you could not tell apart, no matter how you stared and matched and compared. And Mara led Dann into the house where, like a small boy, he lay on his bed and hid his face.