The Glass Mountains (13 page)

The woman grew gentle and took me in her arms, making me feel peaceful. Her bony arms around me had an almost soporific effect. “Dear girl, I can’t see everything. Neither can the others. It doesn’t matter who you speak to or how many. We only work in groups to keep ourselves amused while we hear the same questions over and over, day after day.” She smoothed my hair. “You’ve become a young woman. I know for you the death of a parent is monumental. I myself lost my parents when I was around your age. That’s why I was chosen to talk to you. We’re not without sympathy.
 

“But listen to my advice. I’m not asking you to forget your parents. On the contrary, I hope you dedicate your life to them, as I did to mine. But let me tell you both something. Out there in the stars you stare at every night, beyond the dust that sweeps across the fields, beyond the wars that have killed one million Bakshami, you will find you are capable of amazing yourself. It’s easy to be amazed by the world, the world is an amazing place, but it’s rare to be amazed by yourself and what you’re capable of and how much your heart can hold. Go and think about it. It’s hard to turn down a life like that.” She pushed me toward the door, holding me just a moment to say urgently, “Don’t turn down that life.”
 

All the elders watched as Tarkahna and I departed. When we walked through the waiting room, the veiled queen stood in a corner with her entourage. Everyone stared at her. But she stared into space, her face full of silent pain.
 

Someone who’d just come from an appointment collapsed on the floor in grief. He must not have been the first person to collapse after leaving the elders, and the receptionist calmly showed him outside.
 

I walked dazedly toward the saloons with Tarkahna. One parent half dead, maybe, and one a slave. That meant both alive. The sun’s rays, diffused by the day’s heavy dust clouds above the mountains, made the saloons look soft and especially hospitable today. We walked into the first one we came to. There were just a few people inside drinking, each person seeming lonelier than the last. I stood there, the loneliest of all. Tarkahna was a quiet girl, particularly considering who her father was. We sat deciphering the elder’s remarks in the lonely saloon. Few people visited the saloons before midday, but I’d heard they filled up steadily all afternoon until they became full of carousers at night before emptying out again when the sun rose.
 

“Some good and some bad, what does that mean?” I said.
 

“As much is true in the life of anyone.”
 

Tarkahna watched with fascination as a couple fornicated on a table. “Have you ever seen such a thing?” she whispered.
 

“No,” I said. “But who cares? I don’t even know them.”
 

“But, well, it’s interesting. It will be you someday, you know.”
 

“Then it would of course be interesting to me. But pay attention.”
 

The bartender was a tall, nondescript woman who kept wiping with a rag at the counters, chairs, and floor. One couldn’t keep the doors forever shut, but at the same time even if the doors to a dwelling were never opened, dust and sand would creep in somehow, covering the floors and counters and becoming caked on everybody’s oily skin.
 

“Excuse me,” I said.
 

“Yes?” She didn’t look up from her wiping. “Would you like a drink?”
 

“Yes, both of us would. To help us think.”
 

Tarkahna and I giggled as the woman brought us drinks. “And how will you pay for this?”
 

“I thought drink was free to native Bakshami.”
 

The bartender walked away damning the traditions.
 

We had one drink apiece and then fell asleep on the table. When I woke up I was outside a different saloon and facing the refugee camp where I lived. We had set up camp behind a dune, never a safe place since dunes could migrate quickly. But in this case the elders had told us to set ourselves up near the dune and dig as deep as we could, and then we would find water. So every day the refugees dug with dilapidated equipment belonging to the village.
 

Tarkahna lay beside me unconscious. The paths had become crowded.
 

“What a gift,” said a woman passing by. “To see two novice Bakshami girls intoxicated. Have another one, girlies, on me.”
 

I tried to speak. “I didn’t realize...” But I felt nausea engulfing me and closed my eyes. “...What were you saying?” Everyone in the world seemed to be laughing. I thought I heard millions laughing. I smiled weakly.
 

Someone took pity on us. “Which camp are you from? I’ll help you back.”
 

“I think I’ll stay right here, actually. In fact, I’ve decided most definitely to stay right here. Thank you for your assistance.” I closed my eyes and was asleep in an instant. I dreamed of trying to breed with a succession of strange but compelling men. But they were compelling for bizarre reasons, like lack of a limb or an extra eye. My loss of control with these men alarmed me even in my dream. When I woke up the paths teemed with revelers. At that moment, drunk and sick and surrounded by what appeared to be equal numbers of honest people and scum, I drunkenly dedicated my life to my parents. “I’m dedicating my life to my parents!” I shouted into the noise of the crowds. I would seek to redeem their suffering. And in making that decision, I somehow changed not just myself but the world that lay around me. Suddenly I had to admit there was something thrilling about the crowded paths.
 

Everybody on the paths tonight seemed either to know each other or to be introducing themselves to others. Lanterns burned outside each saloon, and whenever a door swung open I heard the sounds of voices laughing, talking excitedly, or fighting. Every so often, another novice Bakshami would collapse in the dirt. That’s why, after a while, nobody paid us any mind: Here and there the ground was spotted with Bakshami. I was nothing special.
 

It all reminded me of a debauched version of the holiday season in Bakshami, when each family in a village cooked food and set it out on a table in front of their house, making sure the table always stayed full. My family and I would take turns cooking or wandering from house to house, eating and drinking.
 

The wind blew up a cloud of dust, and many of these outsiders to Bakshami covered their eyes and exclaimed what I assumed were curses in their native languages. Sometimes the air in the hotlands cooled off considerably at night. On that cool night, sitting there in the dirt surrounded by people from all the varied lands of Artekka, I got my first whiff of what the elder had spoken of, and what I realized my brother Maruk had felt every day of his life. Though I mourned the despair of my parents, I also felt amazed by myself, by the thought that Mariska Ba Mirada, from a tiny village in a provincial section of Bakshami, whose parents had left her and destroyed their lives, should have come to be sitting here in the dirt in what seemed like the center of the world. I felt amazed by my power—I could leave this place and save my parents! I could do anything I wanted. I did not even know where Maruk was, and yet I felt his mind and heart become my mind and heart, his power become mine.

4

I sat for nearly an hour, watching the parade of patrons to the elders pass. Most wore versions of sweeping Bakshami gowns, but with accessories that exemplified the tastes of their homelands. Some wore our simple gowns with gaudy jewelry, others wore gowns in grays or beige rather than the colors native Bakshami wore. Still others tied scarves around their necks, or wore animal-hide hoods and pink shoes.
 

When the novelty of watching the parade passed, I pulled Tarkahna home. When I got to her family’s tent, Tarkahn became angry at me for the first time ever.
 

“What has happened and what have you two girls been doing?
You
, Mariska, whom I once held in esteem as the daughter of the mayor and whose mother sat on the interclan council, though what the council actually did I still don’t understand...”
 

I staggered away, waving to him as he chattered in amazement. The refugee camp reminded me of the camps we’d stayed in on the way to the hotlands, except that on the outskirts of this camp families had already built houses, with more being built all the time. The excitement of the saloons still filled my mind, and the camp struck me as drab and static. Everyone staying here had taken a chore or a job. I’d chosen to care for dogs. Each night people’s dogs lay outside their tents until I came by, and I attended to the ones under my care. Every night I carried around a lantern and first checked their feet for thorns or tears. I loved dogs’ feet, the way they possessed human qualities like toes and yet were completely alien. But of course I loved everything about dogs. They were the bravest, most hard-working, most uncorrupted of animals.
 

After I checked their feet I combed their hair with flea combs, and I checked their eyes for signs of disease. But tonight I went right to my tent with plans to go immediately to sleep.
 

I was surprised to find Jobei awake. His beautiful kind eyes stared at me not as if I’d just walked in but as if I’d just finished saying something that had injured his feelings.
 

“You stink,” he said.
 

“I was out late.”
 

“You have been to a saloon.”
 

“I went to see an elder.”
 

“And then to a saloon.”
 

“Yes, yes. But let me sleep.”
 

“I went to the elders today as well.”
 

“What did you ask them?”
 

“How to end the war.”
 

“What did they say?”
 

“They said the war may never end.”
 

“What? Of course it must end. If nothing else the Formans will kill everyone outside the hotlands and then desert Bakshami. Surely they won’t spend more time here than they have to. They’re bullies, but they’re also cowards. The weather will destroy their morale. They won’t stay ... I’m sick,” I said. He turned over and didn’t speak again to me, not that night or for many nights afterward. I tried to cajole him with treats and by taking special care of his dog, by tickling him and by begging for his understanding. His anger upset him so much that for several days he couldn’t get out of bed. And I knew why he was angry. As he lay brooding in bed, I had come to a realization: I wanted to be amazed by myself, and I could not amaze myself here in the hotlands.
 

So Tarkahna and I decided we must leave.
 

We dreamed of traveling out of the hotlands with anyone who might be leaving in the next couple of cycles, a thief or a saint, whoever was departing soonest. With the war, passage probably would be more difficult, and there was only one direction we could go in: to the east, toward Soom Kali, the Land of Knives. That was where Maruk had gone, and where I would now go. Within Soom Kali’s border lay a narrow strip of land much like Bakshami, dry and forlorn. Because this strip of land was sparsely populated, I thought it would be easy for me to walk through there and into Mallarr on the other side, and then on to Artroro. From there I would pay someone to fly me to Forma, where I would find my parents, assuming what the elder had told me was correct. Seeing all these people who’d come to the hotlands from all over the planet, and knowing they possessed the courage to make the trek here and leave again, I knew I could find the courage as well.
 

Our departure came more quickly than we’d expected. We’d figured that with the war only a few people would be venturing forth. But living in the hotlands was like being trapped in a fire for many of the restless patrons of the elders, and fourteen sunrises after we’d decided to leave, a large group of people who desired Bakshami guides said they would leave with us. It didn’t matter that we’d never traveled in the section they planned to walk through. They just wanted a real Bakshami.
 

Lokahn arranged for us to receive the promised jewels, though the sum turned out to be substantially less than promised. Apparently, no one ever took the elders up on this promise, so no one knew the truth. The truth was, there were far fewer jewels than the legends made one believe. Jobei, when he learned I would leave, mercilessly shunned me. So did Leisha, not because she was angry, but because she perceived that she and Jobei were a team now.
 

Tarkahna and I would be traveling with a queen, though not the one whose heart had been broken. On the night we planned to leave, we slept outside together, since both of our families shunned us. Both families held me responsible for leading Tarkahna astray. But she had been glad to depart. Like me, she saw no future for herself in the hotlands.
 

We sat up, too excited to sleep, and laughed over the practical jokes we would play, like collapsing the queen’s tent and training her dogs to obey only us. Like all Bakshami, Tarkahna and I had the idea, even knowing better, that there were two places in the world: Bakshami and outside Bakshami. Until we left Bakshami’s borders, everything would be the same. In the silence while we tried to fall asleep, however, we each retreated into our private fears.