Mara and Dann

When she came back she washed them both again, while they stood in the shallow basin; and this time she washed their hair too, though it would not stay nice and shiny for long, with the dust swirling about everywhere.

Then Daima took the children out to where she said the milk beast was waiting – she had told Rabat she would milk it. Dann was clinging tight to Mara, so she could hardly walk. And she kept close to Daima because the milk beast was so enormous, and frightened her. Its back was level with Daima’s head, and she was tall. It was a black and white beast, or would have been if the dust wasn’t thick on it. It had pointed, hard hooves. Its eyes were clever and knowing; and Mara had never seen eyes like them, for instead of a soft coloured round with white around, these eyes were a strong yellow and had a black bar down them, and long lashes. She thought the animal looked wicked, but Daima had already slipped a loop of rope over its horns, and then the rope over a post, and she was kneeling right under the beast’s belly, where there was a bag that had teats sticking out like enormous pink fingers. Daima had a basin under the milk bag and she was using both hands to make the milk come out. It shot into the basin, which rang out like a bell, and meanwhile the beast stood still, chewing with quick movements of its jaws. It turned its head and put its nose on Daima’s neck, and then into Mara’s neck, and she cried out, but Daima said, ‘Don’t mind Mishka, she won’t hurt you. Now, sit down here.’ Mara squatted by Daima, feeling Dann right behind her, because he was afraid of the beast but needed her more. ‘Use both hands on one teat,’ said Daima. The hot, slippery teat filled Mara’s hands, and she squeezed, and a little milk came out; but Daima showed her how to do it and soon the milk was spurting. ‘There, you’ve got the knack,’ said Daima. ‘And she knows you now.’ Daima finished off the milking, until the bag hung empty, and the beast bleated and went off when Daima took the rope from her horns, picking her way among the humps and mats of grass to a group of milk beasts standing together under a thorn tree. They belonged to different people but they spent all their days together, and their nights too, in a shed, because the dragons came after them.

Daima had two cans of milk, one full and one partly full. They went to Rabat’s house and gave her the part-full can. She looked sharply into the can to see if she had her promised share, then smiled in the way Mara hated and said, ‘Thank you.’

Now it was the hot part of the day, and they sat in the cool half dark of the big room. Dann was sitting on the floor, his thumb in his mouth, pressed against Mara’s legs.

Mara saw that Daima’s eyes were full of tears, and then that tears were running down the creases in Daima’s cheeks. ‘It is funny,’ said Daima, speaking as if Mara were grown up, ‘the way the same things happen.’

‘You mean, your children, and then Dann and me?’

‘They wanted to play with the other children, but Kulik came and said, Keep your brats to yourself.’

Mara left Dann, and climbed up on Daima’s lap and put her arms around her neck. This made Daima cry harder, and Mara cried, and then the little boy began tugging at Mara’s legs to be lifted up, and soon both children were on Daima’s lap and they were all crying.

Then Mara said, ‘But your children are all right. They grew up. No one hurt them.’

‘Plenty tried to. And when I’d got them through it all, they went away. I know they had to. I wanted them to.’ Daima sat weeping, not trying to stop herself.

‘I won’t go away, I promise,’ said Mara. ‘I’ll never leave you alone with these horrible Rock People, never, never.’

‘I won’t go away,’ piped up Dann. ‘I won’t leave you.’

‘I’ll leave you first,’ said Daima.

Dann cried out, but Mara said, ‘She didn’t mean that she would leave us. She didn’t mean that.’

And the rest of the day was spent reassuring Dann that Daima did not mean to abandon them.

Now Daima said it was time to show Mara how to do everything. How to look after the milk beast, Mishka. How to make milk go sour in a certain way. How to make cheese. How to look in the grasses for the tiny plants that showed where the sweet yellow roots were, deep below. Which green plants could be picked to cook as vegetables. How to make candles. And soon Daima said Mara should know where the money was hidden.

‘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.’