“A war?” we all said.
“I have predicted it,” he said grandly.
“But I won’t fight in a war,” I said. “I’m getting married, and then I’m becoming a dog trainer.”
“They need dog trainers in a war.”
I rarely challenged him, but now I did. “How do you know what they need in a war?”
“Because I plan to be a general, and I will decide what is needed. You can train my dogs for me.”
When my mother came in to braid our hair for the night, Leisha asked whether there would be a war. “There will be no war,” Mother said, the same way she sometimes said to the younger ones, “There will be no more horseplay.” She continued, “and if there was, I would put a stop to it.” She was supremely confident. The rest of us glared at Leisha for mentioning this supposed war to our mother.
We could all braid our own hair, except little Katinka, but we liked to spend this time with our mother, sitting on our bedmats as she sang soothingly and smoothed our wild locks. Every night, for as long as I could remember, she sang us a new song, a song different from and yet the same as yesterday’s song the way a day is different from and yet the same as the day before and the day after.
That night I sat up at the window, listening to the sand rain on the roof and watching the rings on the horizon slowly shift, fading and deepening in color, stretching and thickening as the dust blew toward the sky as if called by the heavens. I was struck as I had never been before with my world’s peacefulness, with the way the houses in the distance blended into the landscape as if they were not artificial but had pushed out of the ground like the immense glass hills of the hotlands that I’d seen in pictures. And I thought of everyone in my house sleeping as the light from the moons shone on their faces. If there was ever a war ... if there was ever a war ... and then I couldn’t think of anything more. There had never been a war in Bakshami.
The next day Grandfather didn’t come out of his room, and in a few hours a sweet smell wafted from his room and through the house, and we knew he had died. Death is a time of sweetness in Bakshami. We believed that after the deceased’s tomb and its contents eroded into sand, this sand all blew away toward the hotlands, where it became a part of the Glass Mountains, the most glorious sight in Bakshami.
In his room Grandfather had carefully laid out his possessions into six piles. In the pile he’d left me I found maps of several places, some familiar and some not: Artroro, Soom Kali, Restophlin, and Mallarr. He’d also included a note saying I might possibly go to some of these places, but not to others, depending. The sight of the maps scared me as much as it excited me, and the two warring feelings, fear and excitement, caused my stomach to feel such pain that I had to lie down for the rest of the afternoon, without even looking at the other things he had left me. I resented Grandfather because I didn’t think he was seeing, but rather was causing this future, this travel to places far away. And why a map of Soom Kali—the Land of Knives? It was the largest sector on the planet, and rumored to be the most violent. It was only the strength and proximity of Artroro that kept Soom Kali at bay.
“That he should give a child such a thing!” my mother said.
“It’s only a map of a place she’ll never see,” said my father. “And she won’t be a child much longer.”
“It isn’t a map of a place, but a map of danger,” replied my mother firmly. “I would not even have allowed him to give such a thing to Maruk.” My parents had resigned themselves to the idea that Maruk might someday face the dangers for which he longed.
Even my father, who revered his father, couldn’t disagree.
Mallarr was another sector; Restophlin was one of Artekka’s twelve sister planets. These planets were all settled by people from the same place, what we called the Hooded Galaxy, which I’d once seen from the only telescope in Bakshami. The galaxy was a pink-hued swirling mass of stars that seemed to bend over, like a hood over somebody’s head. At some point, all parents took their children on a pilgrimage to peer through the telescope to see the Hooded Galaxy, and to identify a few of the stars around which revolved the sister planets of Artekka.
The day after Grandfather’s death, my parents, who operated a glass-making shop in addition to their civic responsibilities, spent hours finishing up his burial case. My sisters and brothers spent the day contemplating his notes and the things he’d left us, in my case the maps and some trinkets and treats from each of the lands of which he’d given me maps. From Artroro he’d left me one half-eaten piece of dried fruit that tasted both fruity and nutty at the same time and stuck to my teeth in an extremely satisfying way; from Soom Kali a carved knife; from Mallarr a flea comb for my dog, whom I’d named after Artroro; and from Restophlin a box of diaphanous cloths of pastel colors. The knife, encrusted with a few jewels, was not a cooking knife but one of those useless glittery things that Maruk so favored. He collected fancy knives from other sectors and said that someday he would open a museum. I shook out the cloths one by one, handling them carefully.
But for days I didn’t join my siblings in studying our inheritances. I lay in bed in a fever of overwhelming fear brought on by Grandfather’s predictions and the threats of the Formans. In the past, nothing had ever changed in my sector; now it seemed that change would come. My entourage of friends, my handsome betrothed, might all be lost. And what would become of me, the mayor’s daughter!
Later, at the death ritual, I sat with Artie. I couldn’t understand why I felt so much loneliness at an event whose only purpose was to recognize the inescapable. I could see Grandpa clearly through the smooth parts of the glass tomb, and he looked not pale as I’d been warned he might, but as full of vigor as I’d ever seen him. I waited to hear his thunderous snore, the one I could sometimes hear even from my bed, and that my whole family had sometimes suspected was proof of the life force that would make him outlast us all. He looked as if he could be playing a practical joke—he’d liked to pretend to be asleep and then pounce on us children.
Death’s sweet smell filled the ritual parlor. I knew from other deaths I’d witnessed that the smell would grow stronger and stronger, lingering even after the body had disintegrated. Whenever I visited burial grounds the wondrous smell filled the air and brought a smile to the lips of all visitors. But even this smell didn’t appease my loneliness as I sat with my family in the parlor, listening to the speeches of Grandfather’s friends. Each speech ended with, “May Samarr’s grandchildren know peace always.”
At the end of the funeral we all played drums. Children in Bakshami learned the traditional rhythms as soon as they were old enough to control their hand movements. We played drums at solemn rituals, at celebrations, and sometimes just for enjoyment.
The brief rainy season was far away; still, rain fell in fast, harsh drops that night, the storm clouds obscuring the rings at the horizon. Afterward, the wind blew the rings away and cleared the clouds, so that the sky was black as our eyes. And one of the elders who lived in the village, a woman who’d been the oldest except for my grandfather, said that instead of going peacefully as one of dignity ought to, Samarr was putting up a fight; thus the storm.
The day after the ritual, tradition dictated that everyone talk about the bereaved. Yet talk of Forma dominated our lives, and the storytellers, previously the center of our nightly gathering, sat quietly and uselessly to the side.
“Let that be a lesson,” my father told us at home. “What’s of value one day may hold no value the next.”
My youngest sister, Katinka, whose translucent skin shone with the slightest tinge of sky blue and whose baby fat still clung to her smooth cheeks, said, “What about me? Will I have value tomorrow?”
“Yes,” said my father. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow after that, and after that. As long as your mother and I live, my children will be treasures of great value.”
3
The next evening before storytelling my parents sent Maruk and me to get some meat. I took some glass pots my par
ents had made and put a couple on my back and several in Artie’s backpack. Maruk did the same, except my dog carried twice as much as Maruk’s could, but Maruk carried twice as much as me. We took everything down to the meat-seasoner’s house and traded it for several slabs of dried and seasoned meat.
The meat-seasoner belonged to a distinguished clan, and he and my father were good friends. My parents had made arrangements for me to mate with Sennim, the meat-seasoner’s handsome son, shortly after I came of age. Maruk, too, was already betrothed, to a girl in another village. Maruk and Sennim were good friends, but despite our future together, I didn’t know him very well. We might have been friends had our parents not decided to mate us. As it was he made me more curious than all the other boys put together, but I didn’t know whether that was because I knew we would mate or because I liked him particularly.
There was less meat to be had than usual, and the seasoner said that since his supplier was late we should be judicious about how much we ate. There was nothing unusual about that—often there was a shortage of game. We ate mostly roots, anyway. But because of the fears about Forma, the shortage left me worried. We walked out with our meat into the sunny evening. Sennim had sat down casually in front of the house, as he often did, as if he just happened to be there while I happened to be leaving.
Maruk sat next to him, and I found a place on the ground a few measures away.
“There wasn’t much meat today,” I said. Sennim squirmed, as he always did when I was around.
“I can get you extra,” he said shyly.
“Really!” I said.
“She doesn’t need extra meat if others must go short,” said Maruk sternly.
Sennim caught my eye, to tell me that if I still wanted, he would get me meat. But now I felt annoyed with him, as if Maruk’s rebuke were his fault.
“Look!” said Maruk to me. “Another stranger.”
This time it was a man. Usually years went by between each sighting of a stranger. This one had dressed himself in the garb of Bakshami. He found it difficult to walk in the sand, moving clumsily, without even a vestige of grace.
He approached and eyed us critically—he seemed to think we were game to evaluate and capture. Instead of greeting this stranger effusively, as tradition dictated, I was surprised at how by tacit agreement we continued to sit nonchalantly. Later, we all agreed we’d disliked him immediately. He had a long face like the man the sand swallowed, and his mouth turned cruelly. At his side hung something hard and shiny that I instinctively knew to be a weapon.
Sennim yawned. “Can I help you?”
I scooted closer to the man, but Maruk pushed me back protectively. The man ignored us at first, pacing back and forth, falling and slipping and shielding his eyes. Finally he deigned to speak with us. “I’m a busy man,” he said.
None of us knew what to say to that. The man, while handsome, seemed tremendously vulgar, and the fleas seemed to like him quite well. Bug bites covered his face. But we felt such curiosity about him that we waited eagerly for his next words.
Maruk, of course, would take over talking with him. I looked at Maruk in admiration. I was the most mischievous in our family, Katinka the loveliest, Jobei the most generous, and Leisha the funniest. But Maruk was the most dauntless, and the most admired.
The man studied Maruk, then settled his eyes on me. “Perhaps the girl would like some dried fruit?”
Maruk scowled at me, so I reluctantly said, “I don’t like fruit.”
“It’s the best fruit from Artroro.”
My heart beat faster, and I knew it was instinctively copying the beating of Maruk’s excited heart as he heard the word Artroro. “Have you visited Artroro?” I asked. I didn’t believe a flea-bitten man such as he could be native Artroran.
“Young lady, I’m wanted in Artroro and every sector on the planet, except Pussan, where everyone is an outlaw, and Bakshami, where no one is.” He bent to pet Artie, but my dog bared his fangs.
The stranger eyed us with a sort of bored hopefulness. “I understand some of the elders have fortunes stashed away. A fortune isn’t much use to a kid, is it?” He scratched at a bump on his skin.
“Oh, I don’t know. If I stay in Bakshami, I can use a fortune as building material for a house. I’ll pound it into bricks. And if I don’t stay I can spend it in other sectors,” Maruk said.
The man continued to scratch, then began picking the scab on another bump. He nodded and pulled something out of a pocket. “Did you ever taste dried fruit from Artroro? Let me be your friend.”
Maruk hesitated. I knew his mouth watered over the fruit, as mine did. But he came along when Sennim grabbed my hand and led me away. Sennim had never touched me even by accident. The man’s eyes bored into our backs as we left.
Sennim, Maruk, and I parted ways about halfway between our two houses. Sennim had held my dry, flaky hand the whole way. He didn’t say goodbye to me when he left, just to Maruk. Sennim often ignored me, except to look at me slyly when he thought I wasn’t watching. When we officially began the romance ritual, we would smother each other in attention. But that was for later.
As Maruk and I walked back to our home, Maruk pranced about and pretended to be pointing the man’s weapon at rocks. He would soon be of age, but he acted like a child today. It was strange, I could see my brother’s infatuation with his imaginary weapon, the way his face grew serious and intent and the way a feeling of power made his eyes shine. This new kind of shine had always existed in him, needing only a weapon to bring it out.
He was prancing about in this way when we heard a low hum that seemed almost to surround us. It came from above. It was a ship, flying over our village in an aimless, roundabout fashion. The ship flew very low, as low as a lazy bird out for some ordinary afternoon exercise. On one hand I was Bakshami and raised to remain levelheaded, but on the other hand I’d never seen a ship before. Just by flying lazily above, it seemed to belittle and challenge all our traditions. I gawked, and Maruk pretended to point a weapon at the ship. Just as he did that, the ship vanished, and I felt for an illogical moment that he’d destroyed it.
“They broke our laws, they deserved to die,” said Maruk.
“But we have no laws.”
“They’re unspoken laws. The elders will agree, then they’ll refuse to give an audience to whoever sent that ship.”
“Maybe they don’t want an audience with the elders.” I could see in his face that such a concept had never occurred to him: Didn’t all outsiders want to speak with the elders if they could? And in fact such a concept hadn’t really registered with me either until I spoke. “We’d better get home,” I said.
On our way home, we passed groups of people talking about the ship. Most hadn’t seen it and looked doubtfully at those who had. “And then it just disappeared,” said one person. Another said, “It was as big as a dwelling.” As I watched Maruk walk calmly and gracefully, I felt I’d never admired him so much. But I didn’t know what good his calm and grace might be in a war. I didn’t know anything of the powers of Forma or any of the other sectors. My life previously had been my family, my dog, my daydreams, and my occasional thoughts of Sennim.
One question we heard everyone ask over and over as they talked about Forma was: Why? Why would anyone want to take over Bakshami?
In front of our own home several people stood out front talking with my parents. One of them was Tarkahn, whom my sister Leisha called The Man Who Never Paused. His quiet, giggly daughter Tarkahna was my best friend. She followed me a lot, and we giggled together over various jokes. Actually, Tarkahn did manage to finish his protracted sentences sometimes, but he always started a new one immediately. But Leisha liked to joke that he was still speaking the first sentence he’d uttered when he first began talking at the age of seventeen—most Bakshami begin talking by four. Leisha theorized that because he’d started so late, he had to make up for lost time. Tarkahn talked and talked and always finished his meal last because he was so busy talking
. But he was so good-natured that everyone loved him despite his reluctance to pause. Everyone always laughed when his wife related how Tarkahn talked in his sleep, in the shower and while having sex. Naturally he was a thin man, since he preferred talking to eating, even when he was hungry.
But now he stood quietly, lips moving, but quiet nonetheless, staring at the sky and pointing. I think the ship overhead surprised us all as much as one of our dogs speaking would have. Something we’d always known to be true was suddenly proved false. We knew that no one would invade our skies in the same way we knew that dogs could only bark, not speak, the same way we knew that Tarkahn would never pause in his speech. But now he stood there before my family and said simply, “I know what I saw.” His lips moved a bit, and then he recovered himself. “Of course it has to do with the Formans, and as some of you may know they have bombs in some of their ships, not that they would have any reason to want to drop a bomb on us, especially since we’ve always been a peaceful neighbor and never did anyone any harm, and, speaking I hope not just for myself but for all the village, I would certainly not be interested in seeing any harm befall anyone in the world, not even whoever was driving that ship, because I was always taught that to harm another person...”
I stood tucked between my parents, their gowns brushing my hands. The sky above us shone an effulgent blue, almost moonlike in its glowing quality. I could already see our moons in the afternoon sky, but because of the early hour they didn’t glow but possessed a transparent smokiness. So the sky was like the moons, the moons were like smoke, and the smoke I could see still rising from my parents’ glass firing ovens was like a sign of safety to me. When my parents sent us to visit relatives in another town, on our way back we always knew we were almost home when we saw the smoke from our house rising into the sky. Now, the smoke rose thickly; my parents had stopped working just a short while ago.