Mara and Dann (67 page)

This was their situation. The house was large, and in good repair – the recently dead uncle had kept it so. Squatters had moved in, but left amicably when Shabis arrived. There was enough food in the storerooms to keep them going till the harvest. There would be a time, not of hardship, but of being careful, till the farm could be brought back to what it had been. The fields grew maize and corn, barley and cotton, sunflowers, melons and squashes; grew, too, grapes; and there was a grove of ancient olive trees that supplied the oil that stood in a big jar on the table. There were goats, the minikin relatives of the enormous milk beasts of the south. Soon they would have fowls, for eggs and for the table, and when there was enough money, would buy a couple of horses.

Now there was a general accounting.

Mara slid her hand under her gown and brought out the cord that had on it one gold coin, which she laid on the table. Dann set out his five gold pieces. Leta fetched her bag of coins from her sack, and said, ‘My quittance money.' Shabis said that he had arrived with very little,
and laid out a handful of small money. Daulis said that his contribution was the farm. And now they looked at Kira, with her heavy gold earrings, bracelets, rings. She was about to take off her bracelets, but Shabis said, ‘Keep them, we'll know where to come when we are short.'

Kira smiled, her lids lowered.

And now, the weapons.

Dann showed his knife, and Daulis produced a knife and a dagger. Shabis had his General's sword and small gun, which he said did not work but frightened people. Leta had a knife. Kira shrugged and said she relied on other people to defend her. Mara showed her knife and slid the poisoned serpent from her upper arm, and it lay glittering on the table as if it wanted to be admired for its workmanship.

Then she said, most passionately, ‘I shall never wear that again. I never want to see knives and daggers and weapons again.'

‘My dear Mara,' said Shabis, ‘what sort of time do you think you are living in?'

She slid back the snake.

‘So what dangers may we expect now?' asked Dann.

‘At the moment, probably nothing much. But as the Centre weakens and dies, the authority of the Tundra government will weaken too. Already we see lawlessness in places where people have learned that the Centre is – what it is.'

Now Daulis showed them a big room full of weapons of all kinds – not merely knives and daggers, but swords and lances, and the bows and arrows that had intrigued Dann, axes, and many different kinds of guns, which Mara recognised from the Centre.

‘All stolen from the Centre,' said Daulis. ‘In the last hundred years or so the things pilfered from the Centre have found their way all over Ifrik.'

Dann said, ‘Pilfer is a funny little word for stealing sky skimmers and road hoppers and guns and sun traps!'

Mara said that what she wanted from the Centre was to go there, spend time there, and learn.

Shabis said, ‘But Mara, you have farming skills and they are needed here.'

‘And besides,' said Daulis, ‘you two had better keep your distance from the Centre, at least for a time.'

‘But every day it crumbles a little more, it is disappearing. As soon as I can I'm going there. I am. I must.'

‘Meanwhile we must all know how to use at least some of these weapons. There are always madmen and thieves and people who enjoy killing to be reckoned with.'

Mara looked at Dann. He was looking at her. Both were thinking, they knew, of Kulik, who might not be dead. And Mara was thinking that now, just as often before, vague and possible dangers were taking a definite shape – Kulik, who was going to haunt them both – because of their uncertainty. Into her mind's eye came a picture: a skull among the boulders on the mountain, rocking or tumbling as the winds blew or as crows trod the bones looking to see if they had missed something; the skull turned its face to her and she saw the terrible teeth-bared grin that had been in her childhood nightmares.

She said, ‘Do you think we should have some kind of guard?'

‘Yes,' said Dann. ‘I'd feel easier.'

‘The dogs,' said Daulis. ‘That's what they're trained for.'

Next, they had to bring each other up to date with their stories.

Shabis, seeing that it was only a question of time before the other three generals arrested him on some charge or other, fled from Agre, and made his way North, in the same way the others had.

Shabis did not know how it had been with Mara, except in the barest outline, from Daulis; and having had this outline confirmed, said he wanted to know more later. ‘Everything,' he said. ‘I want to know everything about you. Just to set my imagination at rest. You have no idea the horrible things I was imagining, when you were with the Hennes.'

Daulis said that they all knew his story.

Dann told Shabis and Kira what had happened to him.

Now it was Kira's turn. She had run into Shabis in Kanaz, and he had looked after her on the journey here. Kira did not say much, but her eyes were on Shabis, and told Mara that it was not Dann Kira wanted, but Shabis. Mara felt this as a stab to her heart, and she thought that loving someone meant that a look, a touch, a sigh in the dark, could flood you with happiness or doubt. She had done better, she thought, when she had had a heart like a stone. She saw Shabis was smiling at her, knowing what she was thinking, wanting to reassure her. And Leta too, who always picked up the slightest nuances of feeling, was smiling at her,
It's all right, Mara.

And Mara was reassured, she knew Shabis loved her. But she could not prevent a bitter little thought: You don't know what Kira is like. She glanced at Dann to see what he had caught of this little play of
looks, thoughts, feelings, and he was looking at Kira and then, thoughtfully, at Shabis.

When the night came, they had not finished all they had to tell each other, but next day would do. ‘And next week, and next month, and next year,' said Shabis, ‘but now it's bedtime.'

Kira and Dann went off together – ‘Just like an old married couple,' said Kira, with a flirtatious look that included them all, but lingered on Shabis. Then Leta and Daulis went, but shyly.

Mara and Shabis sat on.

Shabis said, ‘And now I must tell you about the Chelops people.' His manner had changed, as if he, Shabis, had withdrawn himself, leaving a formal, almost cold voice and eyes where she could see only a man doing his duty.

From his spies, and from travellers, he had pieced together a story which he believed was more or less accurate. When the townspeople attacked the eastern suburbs, the slaves repelled them. Then the slaves rioted and most of the Hadrons were killed. The Kin collected together a company of themselves, including some babies and children, and slaves who were ready to go with them, and went east, meaning to reach the coast where there was a Mahondi Kin. They did not know a war was being fought in the area between Chelops and the coast. Some were killed, but some escaped, including a woman called Orphne and the head man, Juba. At this point Shabis hesitated, but went on, ‘Orphne is living with Meryx, and they have a child. They reached the coast.'

Mara was so strongly back, in imagination, in Chelops that, thinking of the people dead, she wept. And then, happy about Orphne, and both happy and unhappy about Meryx, she felt for the second time that day a pang of jealousy so sharp that she got up, staggered blindly to a couch, flung herself down and sobbed. Shabis came after her and, no longer withdrawn into a correctness that was meant to reassure her he did not want her to repudiate her old lover, put his arms around her and she clung to him. Soon he led her off to the bedroom that would be theirs.

This was not a busy time on the farm. The harvest had been taken in, the fields replanted, and the animals were inside good fences and needed only to be fed and milked. Mara undertook this work, and taught Leta how to do it.

The big house, spreading over a hill where you could hear the sea booming or sighing all day, all night, was like the end of tales she had seen in an ancient book in the Centre: ‘And so we all lived happily ever after.' But Mara's heart, which these days in no way resembled a cold stone, told her otherwise.

One night she was lying in Shabis's arms, listening to the sea, when she heard what she thought were the complaining voices of sea birds, but then knew it was Kira's voice, shouting at Dann.

Mara quietly got up, and went into the room where they so often all sat about, talking, and as she did so Dann came in from the other side. He was white, and angry. He flung himself down on floor cushions, hands behind his head, and Mara sat by him, and took his hand, which gripped hers then fell away.

‘She doesn't love me,' he said, and Mara said nothing. Then he turned to her, put his arms around her and said, ‘Mara, why can't we be together? We ought to be together … But now you've got Shabis.' And his arms seemed to go cold, and withdrew.

Mara said, ‘It's going to be hard for both of us, loving other people.'

‘I haven't noticed you have any difficulty loving Shabis.'

She sat by Dann, close, in the dark room where a sky full of stars showed through a big square window, with the so familiar feel of him, the smell of him, her little brother, her companion through so much; and she knew that she loved Shabis but she always would love Dann more and nothing could change that.

‘Who made these laws in the first place?'

She said, ‘I told you, Nature made them. I saw it all in the Centre.'

‘The Centre, the Centre – suppose I don't care about children and posterity?'

Mara sat silent, allowing herself to think of the happiness of loving Dann; and then this dream dissolved with the coldest of reminders, because from nowhere, or from deep inside her, came the words, ‘You'd kill me, Dann, if we loved each other. It would be so – violent.'

‘Why do you say that?'

She could only say, ‘I just think something like that would happen.'

He stroked her face, ‘I love you so much, Mara.'

‘And I you.'

‘Am I really such a violent person?'

‘Yes. And I am too. We have been made violent. And if we fought – it wouldn't be with words.'

‘You are sure of that, Mara?'

‘I'm not sure of anything.'

He began playing with her hair, long black hair, and she stroked his, so like hers. She put her arm under his head and her arm over his shoulders. So they reclined beside each other, as they had so often, and then she felt his hand fall, slide down her shoulder, and to his side. His eyes were shut; he had gone to sleep.

She sat holding him for a long time, and then saw a light move on the floor, looked up and Shabis was there, with a lamp which he set in a corner on the floor. He settled himself opposite them. He nodded to Mara: It's all right.

The big room was a different place, with the lamp spreading around it an intimate circle of yellow light. The square of starlit night in the wall, the sound of the sea, seemed to have retreated. A wildness had gone. Dann sighed, but it was more like a moan. Mara saw that his face was stained with tears, and then that Shabis had opened his arms to her and was waiting. After a moment – she could do nothing else – she gently slid away from Dann, went to Shabis, and was beside him as she had been by Dann.

‘Mara,' he said softly, ‘there isn't anything you can do.'

Soon she fell asleep, inside the comfort of his arms. And then Shabis, too, fell asleep.

It was cold. Dann started up, staring around him as he usually did on waking, for a possible enemy. He saw he was safe, and then that Mara was asleep in Shabis's arms.

He stood looking down at them. Mara seemed to shrink and shiver as through the window came a cold blast from the stars. He took a blanket and laid it gently over his sister. He hesitated, frowned, and spread it to cover Shabis as well. He went out, not into the room he shared with Kira, but into the night and down to the sea, the dogs at his heels.

Next morning at breakfast he announced that all this hanging about was driving him mad. He wanted to see for himself how the water from the Western Sea was splashing through the Rocky Gates into the Middle Sea, and then go north until he stood right under the ice mountains to find out if it was true they were melting. He wanted to walk down the dry side of the Middle Sea until he reached the water at the bottom and then walk all around the water line till he got back to where he started. He wanted to raid the Centre for things they could use here on the farm.

These excursions were vetoed because the farm work would soon be starting. Then Leta suggested that when the weather was better he should go and fetch Donna, whom they had agreed would be invited to live here. Daulis said it would not be dangerous, if Dann travelled at night and kept well clear of the Centre.

They could all see that Dann was on the point of demanding Mara should go with him, but he stopped himself.

‘Five Mahondis and two Albs,' said Kira. ‘A new kind of Kin.'

‘You are going to like Donna,' said Daulis.

‘I didn't say I wouldn't. I like Leta, don't I?'

‘Do you?' said Leta, laughing.

Mara said, ‘I think quite soon there won't be any Mahondis. I saw that in the Centre. Tribes – different kinds of people – they just die out.'

‘Soon?' said Kira.

‘Well,' said Mara laughing, ‘a hundred years.'

‘Not thousands, then?'

Mara was teased by them because
thousands
appeared in her talk as often as
The Centre.

‘I don't want to wait until the weather is better,' said Dann. ‘Why not now? And there's another thing: we are always talking about the next season, the next year. Suddenly, I'm a farmer. Being a soldier suited me better.'

Daulis said gently, you could say coaxingly, smiling at Dann – the others joked that if Shabis was Dann's father, then Daulis was his big brother – ‘I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't fighting to be done one of these days, General Dann.'