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
