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
