Mara and Dann (12 page)

But what was worrying Mara now was that they might also be able to say, ‘In those days there were insects, earth insects, the size of a thumb.' When Mara looked out over the plain where she had dug for roots she could see everywhere circles showing pale on darker old grass. The under-earth insects whose tall homes dotted the plain – though they hadn't when Mara and Dann first came: these great hard-earth heaps were new – came up from their tunnels at night to chew up the dry old grass with jaws like the pincers of stingers, though not as big yet, and the fragments of grass made these whitish circles. They must have watercourses running deep under their heaps for the earth of their galleries was wet. The villagers had even thought of how they could dig down through one of these insect cities until they reached water; but not only were they afraid of the insects that thought nothing of eating up a small animal in a few minutes, they did not have the strength left to dig, nor did they have anything better than wooden sticks to dig with.

These insects were rapidly growing larger. So far they did not seem to want to move far from their homes, but Mara had watched a column of them marching towards the hills of the old cities – so many of them you could not think of counting them: brownish, glistening, fat insects with their pincered heads – and she had simply run away. Every day she expected to see their brown columns trickling through the houses.

While the milk beasts were still alive these insects had been the villagers' greatest worry. A guard was put on the beasts, day and night, to watch the grass tussocks for the scorpions and the lizards and then, when they noticed how the earth insects were growing large and bold, for their columns.

One night this problem was solved for them. Travellers had come through, pushed the weakened villagers aside and driven off the milk beasts. Mara cried as she had not since Dann went away. She loved Mishkita, and now there was nothing left for her except Daima, who she knew would soon die. And yet quite soon they would have had to kill the milk animals, for they gave so little milk now and there was nothing to give them to eat. Mishkita's teats had been red and sore from being squeezed to get milk. And Mara had seen something that had made her
frantic with the sadness of it. Mishkita had spread her legs and bent her head under her body, careful that her horns would not poke the flesh, and sucked at her own teats. She was so desperate, for she was given only two or three of the yellow roots every day and it was weeks since she had been given a drink of water – it was when Mara had found the old water up in the hills. Mara had found herself thinking, as she stood with her arm over the beast's back, and Mishkita's nuzzle in her neck, licking, licking, because of the salt, Perhaps poor Mishkita will not be sorry when her life is over. And that made her think of her own: would she, Mara, be pleased if one day she were surprised by one of the big lizards, or found the earth insects scrambling over her as she slept? She thought for a long time about this. Every day was so hard, such a struggle, and she was feeling so weak and often so dizzy – and yet she thought, No, I don't want to die yet. When Daima dies I'll go north by myself and then  …

There had been another worry, the biggest of them all. One day, when there was still a little water left in the waterholes and she was not as thin as she was now, she saw a red thread of blood on her skin, on the inner thigh, and she thought, Something has stung me. But no, the blood was flowing from inside. She was at the waterholes when this happened. She went carefully back through the houses, holding the water cans so no one could see; but Daima had noticed and said, ‘Oh I hoped this would not happen. I thought perhaps you are too thin, there's no flesh on you.' She then told Mara what she needed to know. But what concerned her most was that Mara should never, ever, let a man near her, because for her to get pregnant was the worst thing that could happen. It would be the death of her – she was too undernourished, and the child would die too. Since then Mara had looked newly at every male, and at their instruments for making children, but she could not imagine not being able to defend herself. But while Mara thought about it, deciding there was nothing to be afraid of, with all the men so weak and hungry, she did keep an instinct of alarm alive for Daima's sake. For she had been so apprehensive, so frightened for her – Mara could not remember Daima's ever being so anxious.

Meanwhile, while the blood did flow there was a problem. The brown material did not absorb liquid. The mosses the village women used were all dust. Daima told Mara to tear up one of the beautiful old robes in the chest to use as pads, and Mara did, though it hurt to do it. She used secretly to let her mind linger over that chest of coloured
garments, when the ugliness of everything around seemed to be dragging the life out of her.

The blood ran for two or three days, stopped. It came again. And Kulik, who had had too many problems of his own to notice Mara, sensed what was happening. He was thin, he was gaunt, but he was not weak, and Mara found herself looking out for him. When he saw her he came up, grabbed her by the arm, grinned right into her face and said, ‘What are you waiting for, a Mahondi husband?'

She tore herself free of him and ran, but then the blood stopped, and he seemed to know that too.

Kulik had had two sons. One was killed by a water stinger, not at the waterholes but just outside the village. The young man's bones was all that they found. The other son went north with some travellers passing through. And then, but not long ago, Kulik went. He was the last to go from the rock houses.

Recently Mara had been thinking that if she did have a child – if the blood did come back – it would be something to love. For sometimes her arms ached to hold somebody. It was her little brother her arms remembered, she knew that, and now it was Mishkita, for she had so often gone to stand with her arms high around the beast's neck, her head on its shoulder.

Suppose – Mara thought – that she had become too weak to leave? She had never had this thought before: it had always been,
When
I leave. This frightened her.

On this afternoon, as Mara sat on the rocky perch, she heard the light, rasping breaths from the dusty shelf where Daima lay and she thought, I have heard that breathing before, when someone is not far off dying.

Mara longed to be out of this dark, hot place where she and Daima were like two prisoners. She was dreaming of water on her face and on her arms, and running over her body. She took up a can, from sheer habit, from the line of cans near the wall and went out into the glare, though it was less now, being afternoon. She could hardly see the plain with its pale dryness, where some dust devils circled lazily in the haze. There was a fire somewhere. In the dust were little flecks of black from dead, burning grasses. They were bitter on her tongue. One fell on her and she rubbed and, because it was still warm, greasy marks were left on her skin. The fire smoke hung in dark clouds away beyond the hills of the old cities. If the fire reached them, that would be a real conflagration,
for there had not been a fire there that Mara could remember, and there were all those dead trees and old scrub.

The spaces between the houses of the Rock Village were bare. The heaps of dust had been swept away by hot winds. Mara walked past the house where Rabat had died and where she now lay on her rocky shelf. Drying out had twisted those falsely smiling features into an angry sneer. There were scorpions on the roof but they could not get in. Mara went on slowly, listlessly, knowing she was straying about, not going directly forward. She could hardly keep her feet on the path to the ridge. No, she thought, she could not leave here; this is where she would die. It took a long time to reach the ridge from where she could see down to the lines of dead trees along the empty waterholes. She stood there resting, panting, her tongue dry between dry lips. Then she staggered down through the dead grasses. Among them were bones, but most of the bones were over the second ridge, on either side of the main watercourse. That is where the dying animals made their way, hoping there might be water left there. Every kind of bone was scattered about: big ones from the great animals that had died first because they needed so much water, to the little furry animals that had sometimes come up to the houses begging for water, before they died.

Mara did not stop at the first dry waterhole, the one where long ago Kulik had almost drowned Dann, nor the second, where lay the carapaces of two big water stingers, and the shells of turtles, and the bones of water lizards. Beyond was a stretch of clean white sand. She set down the can, which had not held water for months, and took off her tunic, and knelt on the sand. She came here, when she felt strong enough, to this bright, clean sand, to try to free herself of dust. For a long time she knelt there, running the fine white sand over her legs, then her arms, seeing how the dirty surface of her skin came away, leaving cleanness, and then she rubbed handfuls over her neck and her cheeks. The greasy lumps of her hair disgusted her, but she could not do anything to improve them, for the sand only stuck there. Pressing her eyes tight shut she rubbed sand over them and her forehead, again and again, and then lay on the sand and rolled her itching back and shoulders in it. She was rolling as she had seen animals do it, and at the thought she quickly raised her head to see if some scorpion or big bird, with its great talons and beak, or a lizard, had come for her; but no, the banks were empty. And now she knelt and looked down between her thighs to see if perhaps that trickle of red blood was back, but the lips of her slit were
pulled tight and wrinkled with dryness. Where she should be peeing was a burning that she had become so used to it seemed only part of the angry, hungry, itchy desperation of her whole body for water. She peed so seldom, and when she did it was dark yellow and so strong she could not drink it, though she had tried, thinking that here was some sort of liquid going to waste. She had watched the dark drops being sucked into the dust and at once drying, leaving a few rough edges around the little pit, like an anteater's hole.

She was kneeling there, rocking back and forth as Daima did, or had done – for pain and grief, eyes shut – when she heard thunder and opened her eyes to see clouds that were not smoke clouds. They were far ahead, on the horizon; but up there, in the north, was water, was rain: she was sure she could smell it. Slowly she climbed out of her little sandy desert and stood on the bank above the dried watercourse to look at the clouds: it was so long since she had seen lightning dance in banks of black cloud. Her skin craved and ached – soon, soon, drops of rain would fall and hiss on her parched skin … But she had done that before, stood waiting and watching rain on the horizon, but no rain had come. The clouds were growing bigger, gaining height over her. Was the thunder louder? She thought, If there are any animals left, they will be thinking as I am, and running as fast as they can to get here. But she could see no animals. Then she saw, as she had as a child, what seemed like the earth rolling down towards her, a brown avalanche; but now the flood was a low, brown creeping, and not very fast, not roaring and raging and throwing animals and trees and branches about, but it was coming, and would soon be here. At last she could drink her fill and fill the can and take it back to Daima, who had not felt water on her tongue or her lips, only the juice of the yellow roots, for days now.

The flood had reached her, and was slowly spreading out, but low down, filling the waterholes which bubbled and hissed, drinking in the wet, and billows of white foam almost reached Mara's legs, and she stepped back. This was nothing like the floods she remembered, when it had seemed the whole world had become water; but it was a flood, this was water, and she knelt at the edge and plunged in her face and arms and then her whole body, rolling in it as she had in the sand. And then there was a great clacking and clattering and the surface of the flood was carrying a white load, which was bones, the bones of so many dead animals. She had to move quickly back, for now there were trees too: not the green, fresh trees that had tossed and bounded on the surface of other
floods but the dead, white, fragmented trees of the drought. It was dangerous to be in the water or even too close. She stood back and waited for the water to carry the bones and trees past her. Then she saw, farther down, a big tree had stuck itself in a bank, and another came to rest against it; and behind this barrier were piling bones, loads of bones – a mass, a multitude – and she remembered how, long ago, she had seen the bones spilling out from under the bank on the big river she had come through with the two rescuers she had never seen again, or heard of. ‘Remember,' the man had said to her, ‘remember where this is.' But she had never been back to see if the bones were there or had been washed away again. Yet that place was no farther away than the short walk it had needed for the two strangers and Dann and her to get to the village. And now here was a new mountain of bones, with brown water rushing through them making them knock against each other. When the flood went down they would remain and the dust would blow over them and they would be hidden. People would think, This is just a river bank, until another flood … The clacking and clicking seemed to be less and the brown water was running more slowly. Up north the sky was blue, the hot, bright, antagonistic blue of drought, and soon the water would be gone. Desperate, she stepped into it, risking blows from the last of the bones, and splashed herself and drank and drank. It was muddy water, but she could feel her body soaking it in. Soon she was standing by water running low again and shrinking back into the waterholes; and her body was fresh and cool, and the filthy, dry paste of dirt had gone, leaving on her a film of the dust the water carried, a greyish film. She thought, I'm the same colour as the Rock People, but did not care. For she was thinking of Daima, and how she had not yet felt the water on her face and in her mouth. Mara was stronger now. With the sun setting in a blaze in the again hot, dry sky behind her she went home, walking well, looking at every step for insects or scorpions or anything at all making its way to the waterholes. And she did see some scorpions, the big ones, going in lines towards the water.