babies: no one was strong enough now to hunt the big animals. They did not share the meat with anyone else in the village. The villagers made a channel for the water of the nearer river to flow into a low place, and there a guard was set, day and night, so the stingers and water dragons did not get into it; and in that pool everyone bathed every day, all at the same time, for safety. There was even a little friendliness shown to Mara and Dann, who took their turn, with Daima, guarding the pool.
And then – that was it. Because there had been two big storms in that rainy season, everyone waited for rain in the next, with cleaned-out cisterns and mended roofs. But there was no rain that season, nor the next, nor the next. That good season with the two storms had been four years ago. Again the waterholes were almost empty in the little river, and the big river had stopped running. Everywhere the bones of animals lay in the dead grass. Extraordinary events were reported. A water dragon, almost dead with hunger, had been attacked by a water stinger half its size; and when the villagers went down together to the waterholes they saw half a dozen stingers fighting over the half-dead beast. And just outside the village a couple of the big black birds that normally ate only seeds and berries attacked in full daylight a wild pig too weak to run away, tearing from its shoulders and neck big beakfuls of flesh, while the pig squealed. And these birds had taken to gathering not far from the milk beasts, to stare at them, moving closer and waiting, and moving in again; and Dann had run out shouting and throwing stones at them. They had flapped off, slowly, so weak they kept sinking and wavering in the air, letting out hoarse, desperate cries. The milk beasts were thin and weak and gave hardly any milk.
Perhaps this next rainy season? – everyone was saying. Or perhaps even another flash flood from up north.
There were fewer people. Only twenty still remained. Rabat had died. The old people had died, and three new babies. There was not one baby or small child in the village. Up north, so it was believed, things were better, even normal, and so many families had left or were leaving. Often the village was full of people, just for a night or two, because travellers from the south would arrive and simply take over the empty houses, demanding food from the villagers. They were mostly Rock People themselves with relatives, even distant ones, here, and so they could claim hospitality. But they found little food or water and went off again.
Once a gang forced their way into Daima’s house and found the old woman lying – and, they thought, dying – on the shelf in the outer room. They drank all the water in the jars and cans in that room, but went off. The children were hiding in the empty rooms at the back. And now Daima told them that there must always be just enough of the roots and flour in the front room for any marauders to think that this was all there was in the house, and they must be careful to keep the inner doors locked and the keys hidden.
Then one midday when everyone was lying down waiting for the heat to lessen, a crowd of travellers came, about twenty, and they stood in a close group while the villagers came out to see who it was this time. And, gazing and examining, they became silent. These were certainly Rock People: squat, thick-built, greyish in colour, with pale masses of frizzled hair. But their faces were all the same. At first in disbelief, then in quiet horror, the people standing around the travellers looked from one face to another, and then again … No, it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. Perhaps the villagers had become silly, their wits gone because of not having enough water and food … But no, it was true. Every face was the same, identical, with lumpy noses, long thin mouths, pale eyes under yellow brows, broad foreheads made lower still because of the frizzy bush above. The same in every detail. A moan, or groan, from the villagers. Then they began shouting. And then – Mara saw it while her heart went cold – Dann walked forward as if he were being pulled, one step after another, just as he had been when he saw the two brothers years before, unable to help himself, drawn by something he did not understand and did not know about. He came to a stop just in front of this little mass of people, which was also one person, or seemed to be, since their movements were the same and their faces each had the identical cold and hostile anger. And, as one, their eyes focused on Dann, the tall thin boy with the dusty black hair: a person so unlike them, and unlike anybody else there, that he seemed to them like an unfamiliar animal, a new kind of monkey perhaps. As if they were one person, their hands rose, and in the hands were sticks; and Mara raced forward and pulled Dann back, and the hands and the sticks fell, but slowly, and in the same movement. And now these people, who were like one person, were staring at the two children, who were not like any they had seen, being so knobbly and bony and staring back with frightened eyes.
Mara did not pull the boy into the house for fear this would bring this enemy after them, but stood at their door, behind some other villagers. She could feel Dann trembling, though now her hands were gripping not a little child but a strong boy whose head was nearly on a level with hers. He stood and shivered as he had years ago, shocked by a mystery: faces that resemble each other, eyes that are alike, while behind lie worlds as different as day and night. But here it was not two faces: there were many.
The newcomers went off, together, and the villagers dispersed, whispering among themselves as if afraid of provoking some new manifestation of this horror: people you could not tell apart, no matter how you stared and matched and compared. And Mara led Dann into the house where, like a small boy, he lay on his bed and hid his face.
Soon a neighbour came to say that these new people were going to stay for a while – ‘and that means until they have eaten everything we have got’ – and she had been told to come to Daima’s house to get food. And that meant, Mara thought, they were afraid to come themselves. And, yes, it was true: ‘They think you are ghosts. They think you are cursed.’
Mara produced half a dozen of the yellow roots, shrivelled but still good. And then she went out to make sure the beasts were safe. The newcomers had taken over empty houses at the end of the village. Mara decided to stay with the milk beasts. Late, when the moon was making shadows around the houses, she saw the shadows thicken and then lengthen like drops before they fall and separate themselves. They were the same-faced ones, moving furtively, crouching and running, and she stood up and shrieked at them, stamping her feet and whirling about, and they went scrambling off, shouting with fear that there were demons in this place.
Dann could not be kept in the house. He was always watching the travellers: leaning against a house wall or even standing quite near them, staring, his face squeezed up and his eyes puckering with the effort of trying to understand. They pretended to ignore him, but they were afraid of him. And soon they left, partly because of their fear and, too, they were hungry.
This event had an effect on Dann. He was restless, but then lay on his bed for hours, staring. He put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it, with the old squelching sound that drove Mara wild with anxiety and irritation. He did not join in the other children’s play, but did come up the hill to sit on the rock with Mara, when she asked him, to break his mood; but when there he only sat, staring down into the village. She said to him, ‘Dann, do you know why people who are alike make you afraid?’ But he did not: in his mind was a door shut fast against memories, and all he knew – if he knew that much, and was not merely experiencing – was that the people who were alike haunted him, challenged him, frightened him. It went on for some days, this new behaviour of Dann’s: listlessness, and a look of apprehension in those deep, dark eyes of his. He wanted to be with Mara, though he seemed not to know he had become a little boy again, reaching for her hand, or pressing close, when some thought she could only guess at made him tremble.
Then one evening two men came into the village, and they were Persons, People – Mahondis. They were directed to Daima’s house by the villagers. But they had not come to see Daima or find the children, of whom they had never heard. They had walked from a long way south of Rustam, hoping to find shelter in that town, because their country was all dried up and dead. But Rustam was full of sand, they said: sand storms had blown over it, filling the houses and burying the gardens. No one lived in Rustam now: no people, no animals. And between Rustam and here, while things were better than in the South, it was dry and there were stretches of country where the trees were dying. Among
