The Glass Mountains (6 page)

Our house gone, we slept outside, covered only by sheets and flea netting. The wind grew surprisingly cool. I huddled close to my sisters and brothers, the dogs surrounding us in a protective circle. Once, I woke up and saw Maruk propped up on an elbow, staring at our house. “Maruk?” I said. “Maruk.”
 

But he just said, “Go to sleep. We have a long walk tomorrow.”
 

“Maruk?”
 

“What is it?”
 

“Have you seen Sennim?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Where is he? I want to know my future.”
 

“He is no longer in your future. His family left today.”
 

I felt a pang of sadness that Sennim and I would not mate, but my sadness did not come because of how I felt about him now but because of how I might have felt about him in the future. I knew I could never again take my future for granted. Things had changed so much that even if I did run into Sennim again, we would probably no longer be betrothed. The only constant in my life was my family, whereas before all things had been constants. I scooted closer to Maruk, so that I could hear his breathing better.
 

He closed his eyes and pretended to be breathing evenly but I knew he was awake. The moons had passed through the sky, and our houses no longer glowed with reflection. The houses made smooth dark shapes in the night, except for one, lit up inside, full of shadows moving and bustling, no doubt as a family hurried to get ready for their journey with us. Our house, farther away, lay in darkness. I clung to my doll. In Bakshami, a grown-up might play with dolls, and a young child might walk alone to a village several hours away. But I doubted I would want my doll in a year.
 

I stared at the sky and saw another ship pass overhead, the hum strange and distinct in the night. No one else saw the ship. Maruk had fallen asleep for real now.
 

In the morning we cooked roots in meat oil, our usual breakfast, and drank a cup of water with herbs. Some of the parents sat around discussing where the maps of the trail to the hotlands showed water, and whether it was better to go out of our way and take the less dry route, or whether, to save time, we ought to take the shortest distance. There were several lakes the long way on the map, but there was no telling whether or not they’d dried up. Lakes dried up and formed in Bakshami for reasons no one understood. Most people who traveled to the hotlands went the long distance, and apparently the ground along the shorter route was riddled with skeletons of the intrepid but foolish. Their gowns, once brightly colored, had crumbled and faded from the heat and wind. But the skeletons belonged mostly to outsiders. A number of Bakshami had gotten through taking the shorter route. On the other hand, more had gotten through on the longer route, even if some had perished there, as well. My grandfather had traversed the longer route going, and the shorter one back when he moved more slowly but also needed less water like all the very old.
 

“But we have children,” said one parent. “How will they survive the thirst if we take the short distance?”
 

“They’re used to going without water,” said another. “My daughter once went without water for seven sunrises.”
 

“Seven, yes, but what about twenty? And can your daughter do without for thirty?”
 

“I say if we plan right, we can make it the short way.”
 

“Our plans may all be useless if we’re bombed from above by ships.”
 

“Remember, this is a border dispute with the Formans. They don’t want the hotlands, they want more land at the border. Why should they bomb people trying to get as far as possible from the border?”
 

“I agree. Even in a ship, how many Formans are eager to fly over the hotlands? The air is too wild for ships to fly. And I heard a rumor that at least one ship that tried ended up catching fire.”
 

“Yes, even a bird might catch fire in those deserts.”
 

“I saw it happen once.”
 

“No! It’s only legend.”
 

“It burst into flames in midair.”
 

“No! How is it possible?”
 

“I don’t know. Perhaps the heat of the sun combined with the reflections of the Glass Mountains worked like a magnifier shooting out a hot ray of sun. A fluke for sure, but not an impossibility.”
 

My mother shook her head and leaned in to us children. “They comfort themselves with legends,” she said with distaste. But my father looked on with interest.
 

“When was this?” he said.
 

“Many years ago.”
 

“Why did you visit the hotlands?”
 

“To find a wife. Someone in my clan had told me there was a woman there who would suit me, and I her. We’ve been married seventy years now.”
 

“And now you’re returning,” someone else said. “You know, they say no one makes the trip to the hotlands twice.”
 

“You’re trying to spare my feelings. I’ve heard that saying, and that’s not quite how it goes. What they say is that no one makes the trip to the hotlands twice and lives. But my wife and I plan to arrive alive.”
 

There was a vote—each person in the village could cast as many votes as years lived. The long route won. Certainly there were hazards both ways. The animals one might encounter in the area of my former home had no interest in the taste of human flesh. But in other areas lived a type of wild dog that had never been mastered, even by the best trainers in the sector. Supposedly some of the Soom Kali who went to see the elders captured a few of the dogs and took them back to Soom Kali, where one got loose and killed fifty people before being stopped.
 

My parents were trying to attach a sled harness to Artie, but he began to growl at them. “Mariska, you put this on him,” said my father. “When is he going to learn to stop growling at everyone but you?”
 

I gently tightened the harness around my dog. “I’m sorry, Artie, but you’re going to have to work hard for a while.” Artie had always been a hard-working dog. He was so big everyone always wanted to use him to drag something or other. When I first got him he was the runt of the litter, but he’d grown as large as any dog I’d ever seen, with the strength of three dogs.
 

After the cool night, the next day’s weather surprised us by its ferocity. We donned the white hoods that came with every gown and set off, almost five hundred strong. Many villagers had already left; others arranged to leave in groups soon. Along the way we planned to pick up more people, members of our clan or members of the clans of our neighbors. Clan members were people you would die for, and who would die for you. The Ba Mirada was known as especially loyal. All clans were loyal to each other, there was no question of that, but some were more loyal, just as in Bakshami all afternoons were hot but some fiercely so.
 

Full of energy and eager to get as far as possible before the afternoon heat pierced our hoods and robes, we glided across the sand. At the next village we stopped to snack and to wait for a family readying itself to leave with us. The village looked much like my own, but with more trees and darker earth and sand in the ground. Seven aunts of mine lived here with their families, but they’d all left the day before. The girl Maruk was betrothed to had lived here, but she, also, had left. They probably were not betrothed anymore, either. Because the sun hadn’t reached its highest point, we decided to leave sooner than we’d planned and rest at midday when it got too hot even for us.
 

Katinka, already tired, cried when we started to leave, and my mother attached her to Artie’s sled. I didn’t want Katinka to have to walk more, but at the same time I hated to see Artie’s load increased. He already carried far and away the heaviest load, and I could see his fatigue. I would always put my family before anything, yet I can’t honestly say that I didn’t love my dog as much as I loved my family. Artie had walked by my side since my first dog ran away when I was barely out of infancy. Dogs rarely ran away, but that one had, frightened by unusually loud thunder during the brief storm period.
 

I walked near Tarkahn, who was talking to himself as always. I didn’t know where he got the energy.
 

“Here’s what I imagine,” he said to everyone in earshot. “When we get to the hotlands the elders will tell us where to settle. They’ll probably tell us to walk even more, to settle in some other land. We’ll create a new town closer to the Soom Kali border. The Soom Kali are animals, but they’re not buffoons like the Formans. They know they have no need to expand to Bakshami, a land where the population might be easily conquered but the climate can’t be conquered by human, beast, or sorcerer. Of course I say that knowing full well that in our own way our people have conquered the climate. I don’t mean to offend fate by saying that, I only mean that the way to conquer such a climate is to surrender to it as we have, but the Soom Kali are incapable of surrender...”
 

Meanwhile Maruk mumbled as he walked, and every so often he whipped his killing knife out of the folds of his orange gown. The material scarcely rustled during the maneuver. Leisha, usually high-spirited, dragged her feet more than anyone else I could see. Jobei moved along with both the determination and the resignation of one who knows his fate is inexorable. By being determined, he probably believed, he could at least exert his will. It was similar to what Tarkahn said about the climate. Jobei would conquer his fate not only by surrendering to it but by relishing it. Katinka slept. My parents walked together almost touching, silent. I, too, walked quietly, observing everyone else until my mind wandered and I dreamed of a vast waterland or, better yet, an iceland, where the people constructed houses of ice that sparkled in the sun the way our houses did, and where you could lick the sides of your ice house whenever you got thirsty.
 

I stared at the sand until it looked to me like the ice I’d seen in renderings. I began to love ice. I attributed religious and transformative qualities to it.
 

“Mariska! Mariska!” Maruk was yelling.
 

“What?”
 

“Hurry, you’re falling behind.” Almost everyone else now walked in front of me. Artie trudged by my side with Katinka in tow. She stared ahead, a weepy look to her face.
 

I climbed to the side of the sand sled. “Go, Artie!” Artie sped up until I told him to slow down so I could hop off. He’d taken me up near the beginning of the pack. A woman I’d never seen before wailed not far away. No tears fell, but she kept making noises almost like the mating call of a larabird, each wail starting out full and throaty and slowly becoming high-pitched and full of pain. I walked nearer her, watching, feeling politely yet patronizingly curious about this exhibition of pain that differed so much from my parents’ stoicism, in fact from the stoicism of all the other grown-ups.
 

Tarkahna leaned in close to me. Her hood had fallen down, and her long black hair was braided and wrapped several times in a circle around the top of her head, so that it looked like a shiny black cap. “That lady you’re watching is from my clan, but she’s not a native Bakshami.”
 

“Where is she from?” I couldn’t remember someone from another sector who’d ever actually moved here. Forma bordered us on one side and Soom Kali on the other three. And certainly no one from those cultures would ever choose to live here.
 

“She’s from Mallarr.”
 

“Why did she come here?”
 

“She mated with a Bakshami man.”
 

“Who?”
 

“I saw him only from afar. He played the drums like a demon. Such a man! He’d traveled to Mallarr to set up a trading station. She loved his peaceful ways and thought he planned to spend the rest of his life in Mallarr. But he got homesick, and she agreed to come back here with him. They had four children, and then he died of dust virus. Apparently his virus defenses weakened in Mallarr, and ever since he came here he got sick all the time.”
 

“When did he die?”
 

“Only one cycle ago.”
 

“Why doesn’t she take her kids back to Mallarr?”
 

“She likes it better here.”
 

“I thought only the natives liked to live in Bakshami.”
 

“My parents say she’s a rare woman. I say she’s rather odd.”
 

My friend hurried to break up a fight her dog had started. I walked close to the woman and her children but didn’t say anything. Actually the sound of her wailing unnerved me, and I could see it was starting to vex everyone within hearing. It almost made one feel that this whole expedition was hopeless before it had even got started. I waited for my family so that I wouldn’t have to stand so near the woman.
 

Walking with my backpack had already grown dreary. Usually when we traveled we didn’t take much, and our pets happily carried everything. But the pack on my back weighed me down. I couldn’t believe how heavy a few robes could feel. I thought of abandoning a robe, but I never considered leaving Artie’s chew-rock behind. At the same time I was starting to feel optimistic and excited at what we were doing. I dreamed this was Maruk’s and my chance to get to Artroro. Anyplace new already had started to seem nearer than my old home had. My dreams occupied me while I walked all day. Sometimes that day Tarkahna and I fantasized together.