The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

Clouds slid across the sky and without sunlight it was a dismal scene.

‘Why don’t we spend the night here?’ said Dann. ‘We’ve got plenty of food. And then you decide if you’ll come with me.’

This was taunting them; he had a small, not very pleasant grin on his face. They would have to come with him. Otherwise back on their island it would be said they had left Dann to challenge danger alone.

Durk said, ‘Yes, why don’t we sleep on it? And if the sea is bad tomorrow morning, then we’ll forget it – eh, Dann?’

Dann shrugged.

They walked back on an overgrown path and caught sight of the big white animals keeping level with them. They were pleased to get inside the house, start a fire with the driftwood that still was stacked in a corner, light the rush lights they had brought, and eat.

Durk asked Dann where he had been a boatman. He told them of the boat on the River Cong, the river dragons and the old woman Han, and the sun trap. They listened, sometimes exchanging glances, so that they could not be thought gullible, believing these tall tales. When Dann got to the place where the war had filled the water with corpses, he left all that out; exactly as, talking to children, he softened and made pleasant, so now he felt that this innocence should be spared. These were good, peaceful people who had never known war.

They slept, without a guard, knowing the shutters and the door were solid, though they could hear the animals roaming about and testing the entrances.

In the morning the sky was clear and Dann said, ‘If the sea is all right, I’m going.’

They walked to the landing place and this time the animals openly accompanied them.

‘They want us to help them across the sea,’ said Dann.

‘Let them want,’ said one of the lads, and the others agreed. Dann said nothing.

At the sea’s edge the waves were no worse than yesterday, choppy and brisk, but Dann went to the boat without looking to see if the others came too and pushed it out; then they did join him. They were sulky, resistant, and Dann knew they hated him.

Dann was soon rowing fast, straight towards the nearest cliffs. The sun was burning their faces and shoulders, and now they could see slabs of ice lying along the bottom of the cliffs, and they were rowing between blocks of ice like houses.

Still Dann went on. The noise was frightful today, a cacophony of ice complaints, and Dann shouted, ‘Stop!’ as they saw the cliff nearest to them shed its ice load in a long single movement like a shrug to remove a weight. Now they were close, too close, to a tall shining cliff face, bare of ice, though water was bounding down, off rocks, in freshets and rivers, and the sea was rocking and rearing so badly that the boat was in danger of overturning. They were clutching the sides and calling out, while Dann was yelling with exultation, for this was what he had dreamed of, and it was what he was seeing – there were the ice cliffs of Yerrup and the sounds they made as they fell was like many voices, all at once, shouting, groaning, screaming – and then, crack, another ice face was peeling off, and Dann found that the others had turned the boat and it was rocking its way back to the shore, a long, dangerous way off. ‘No,’ cried Dann. ‘No, I want to stay,’ but Durk said, across the noise, ‘We are leaving, Dann.’

And so Dann, in the back of the boat, sat staring at the retreating ice cliffs. And before they reached shore and safety, a large block of ice that shone blue and green and dusky pink was coming straight for them. To get out of its way they all had to row, Dann too, and then sat resting on their oars to watch it rock past.

They reached the shore and the waiting snow dogs.

Dann was white-faced and miserable. He wanted more, more, and closer, and he knew these men would not give him what he wanted.

He was thinking they were cowards. These were soft people, on these islands. Tender living had made them so. Well, he would talk in the inn of the wonders of the creaking and sliding cliffs, and use what was left of his money to pay others to go with him.

Dann stood on the shore, gazing at the cliffs, at the black places on the white cliffs, and wondered how long the ice had clung to those frozen sides, how long had it taken to form. He did not know, could not know; he was back in the realm of ‘long, long ago’ and the bitterness of it. He wanted so badly to know … surely answers could be found if only he could go further into the cliffs and then along them, and perhaps even climb up on to the ice and see – what would he see? For one thing, how did the snow dogs survive in all that wilderness of ice? How did they come down the cliffs? He stood and stared and the others, pulling up the boat and making it safe, sent wondering looks at him. There were tears on his face. This was a strange one, this Dann, they might have been saying aloud.

It was latish in the day, the sun would soon be gone behind the cliffs. It would be better to spend the night and go early tomorrow.

And so they did. They did not ask Dann for more of his tales, but first Durk, then the others, treated him gently, because of the unhappiness in his face.

‘Dann,’ said Durk, in consolation, as they lay down on their goatskins to sleep. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You saw what you wanted?’

And Dann said, as if to a child, ‘Yes, I did, you’re right, I did see them.’

Next morning, when they had eaten and left the house clean and tidy, they went out and a pack of snow dogs was sitting about, looking at them.

‘Are we going to give some of them a lift over?’ said Dann, and at once the others said, ‘No, we aren’t.’ And ‘Let them swim’ and ‘There’s no room in the boat’.

As they walked to the boat, Dann saw an old abandoned craft, large, that did not seem to be holed, or useless. Without asking the others, he put rope that he always carried with him into its prow and pulled, and then Durk helped. Dann and Durk pushed the boat on to the waves and Dann tied it to their boat.

The dogs crowded closer, seeming to know what was being done.

The young men got on to their boat and were ready to row, their faces, all but Durk’s, critical and sullen.

‘The dogs won’t stay on this island,’ said Dann. ‘They always want to go on.’

‘They’ll drown, if that boat sinks,’ said one.

A bold snow dog jumped into the boat, then another, and then there were five in the boat. Others hung back, afraid.

‘You’ll have to wait a long time,’ said Durk to them, laughing. ‘No one’s going to come back here if they can help it.’

But the big animals whined and moved about on the sand, and could not make themselves get on to the boat.

The first boat set off, all of them rowing, and the boat with the dogs followed on the rope.

The water was very cold. Surely any dog attempting that swim must drown?

The waves were tall and sharp, and seemed to be attacking the boat. The winds were belligerent. They had not gone more than a short way when one dog jumped into the sea to swim back. They watched it, but the waves were too high and soon they could not see it.

‘Drowned,’ said one youth and did not need to add, ‘I hope.’

Dann thought of his snow pup and remembered the little beast’s nuzzling at his shoulder.

Back at their landing stage they watched the animals leap off the old boat, swim to the shore and disappear into a wood.

Dann descended with Marianthe from their bedroom to the inn’s common-room, expecting hostility, but saw the young men who had gone with him being bought drinks and questioned about the trip. They were enjoying their fame, and when Dann appeared mugs were lifted towards him from all the room.

Dann did not join the five, but let them keep their moment. He sat with Marianthe, and when people came to lay their hands on his shoulders and congratulate him, he said that without the others, nothing could have been achieved.

But no one had ever gone so near the ice cliffs, until he came to this island.

And now Marianthe was saying that it was time for their room to be decorated with the wedding branches and flowers; it was time to celebrate their union.

Dann held her close and said that she must not stop him leaving – when he did leave.

In the common-room people were joking about him and Marianthe, and not always pleasantly. Some of the young men had hoped to take the place of her husband and resented Dann. He never replied to the jokes. Now he began to press them for another excursion. Had they ever seen the great fall of water from the Western Sea into this one? Marianthe said her husband wanted to make the attempt, but had been talked out of it. The feeling was that it would take days in even the largest fishing boat and it was not known if there were islands near the Falls where they could restock. But the real reason for the reluctance was the same: what for? was the feeling. Weren’t things all right as they were?

They were talking of a wildly dangerous event, which they knew must appeal to Dann’s reckless nature, and were satisfied with the trip to the ice cliffs: Dann and the fishermen and Durk were great heroes, and Dann did not say that compared with some of the dangers in his life it was not much of a thing to boast about.

He began going out with the fishermen; they seemed to think he had earned the right, because of his daring adventure to the ice cliffs. He learned the art of catching many different kinds of fish, and became friends with the men. All the time he was thinking of the northern icy shores and their secrets, hoping to persuade them to take him close again. He asked many questions, and learned very little. He was up against their lack of curiosity. He often could not believe it when he asked something and heard, ‘We’ve never needed to know that,’ or some such evasion.

The bitterness of his ignorance grew in him. He could not bear it, the immensity of what he didn’t know. The pain was linked deep in him with something hidden from him. He never asked himself why he had to know what other people were content to leave unknown. He was used to Mara, who was like him, and longed to understand. Down here on this lovely island, where he was a stranger only in this one thing – that these people did not even know how ignorant they were – he thought of Mara, missed her and dreamed of her too. Marianthe said to him that he had been calling out for a woman, called Mara. Who was she? ‘My sister,’ he said and saw her politely sceptical smile.

How it isolated him, that smile, how it estranged her. He thought that back in the Centre Griot would not smile if Dann talked of Mara, for he had lived at the Farm.