Mara and Dann

‘A lot died when we had the drought disease. And some went north.’

‘Then it’s the same as in Rustam. It is half empty.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There used to be people coming through, both ways, going north, going south, and they told us what was going on. Now they hardly ever come. One was here two months ago. He said there was fighting in Rustam.’

‘Two months…I didn’t know there was fighting.’

‘I expect your parents were trying not to frighten you.’

‘That means they thought the fighting was going to stop.’

‘No, Mara, I don’t think they believed that.’

Mara sat silent. She said, ‘I don’t want to go on with that bit, I don’t want to cry again.’ And her lips were trembling. She steadied herself and said, ‘You have your food and water in a room that has locks. That means you are afraid they will be stolen. But if all the Rock People got together they could lift the stones of the roof away and take the food and water. That means they still have food and water of their own.’

‘We still have enough. But only just. And if it rained properly here, we could grow a crop and fill our storerooms and our tanks.’

‘I could see it hasn’t rained for a long time. I could see from how the trees looked. The trees we have left look worse than your trees, but your trees are dry.’

Mara was thirsty, talking about rain. She was used to being thirsty. But she was licking dry lips, and Daima saw, and poured her half a cup of the not very nice water.

Mara went on, ‘This house wasn’t built all at the same time. The rooms that have the stones with pictures were built first. The stones must have come from another house where the pictures went the same way.’

‘Good,’ said Daima.

‘Some rooms were built on later. Like this room.’

‘Good,’ said Daima again.

‘So once this village must have had a lot of people and they needed more room.’

‘It has far fewer people now than it had then. But that was ten years ago. It was before you were born.’

There was a good long pause here while Mara tried to understand that before you were born, because her life seemed to have gone back a long way, beginning with little, bright memories, mostly of her brother.

She said, ‘The pictures on the stones are not Rock People or the People. Other kinds of people live around here.’

‘Lived here.’

‘When?’

‘They think thousands of years ago.’

‘Thousands…’ But Mara could not take this in. Only a moment ago she had been trying to work out: Ten years ago is three years before I was born, and the three years had seemed to her a very long time.

‘They think as much as six or seven thousand years. They left old buildings up on that hill there.’

Mara’s eyes filled with tears: it was those thousands of years, like Daima’s always, that made her want to lie down and sleep, like Dann, who had gone to sleep because everything was too much for him.

Mara went on, ‘You are a Person. You are one of the People, and you live here and the Rock People let you. That means they are afraid of you.’

Daima nodded. ‘Good.’ And then, ‘But not as afraid as they once were.’

Mara could not work this out.

Daima said, ‘You’ve done very well. I’ll tell you the rest.’

‘No, no, let me try. You came here – the way Dann and I did. You had to run away.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that was before I was born?’

Daima smiled. ‘Well, yes. It was thirty years ago.’

‘Thirty…’ And Mara really could not go on.

‘I came here with my two children. My husband was killed in the fighting. We were travelling for many days, and we had to stop and hide because there were soldiers out looking for refugees. Twice I stole horses from the Rock People and we rode them for a while, and then let them loose so they could find their way back home. When we came to villages they wouldn’t let us stop, but these people here did not drive us away.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Because the year before the People punished them for attacking a sky skimmer that landed near here.’

‘Did they think you were going to punish them?’

‘They thought I was a spy.’

‘I don’t know that word.’

‘They thought the People had sent me so I could watch them and make reports.’

‘Then they must have hated you.’

‘Yes, they hated us. And the children had to be careful every minute of the day in case there was a trap. Once I had gone to the market – there was a market in those days – and left the children here, and they brought one of the dragons in. But the children locked themselves in an inside room.’

‘What did you do when you came back and found out what had happened?’

‘Nothing. I pretended nothing had happened. I let the dragon out and it went back on to the hill there.’

Mara could see from Daima’s face how much she had suffered because of her children’s being hated. ‘Where are your children?’

‘That is what I hoped you might tell me. They went to Rustam.’

‘But that is where our home is.’