Everyone had a theory, and in a moment everyone was talking without pause like Tarkahn, everybody talking and nobody listening. I caught sight of the stranger Maruk and I had seen earlier, lurking about a distant house. He was showing his weapon to someone else and speaking earnestly. But when he saw me looking he turned and walked away, obviously trying to walk gracefully and failing by a wide margin. Then, above the cacophony of voices, we heard, the way my parents could hear us children no matter how much noise—a low hum from the sky. And so Tarkahn was silenced for the second time in one day, probably only the second time since he’d first started speaking as a child. The ship glided overhead, lower and then higher, lower and higher as it passed out of sight once more.
That night no one felt like eating. Instead everyone in town sat in storytelling groups, but rather than telling stories we talked about the ship. I fell asleep in my mother’s lap, something I hadn’t done since I was a young child. When I awoke I could see by the placement of the stars that half the night had passed. My mother always came silently into our room to check on us at about this time. When she was a child, her sister had died of a virus at exactly half-night, so she always came in around that time and stayed until shortly after, to make sure no virus suddenly stole our lives. It never occurred to her that she was too big to wrestle with a virus.
Some of the groups had broken up, and Tarkahn was walking home, talking to himself. My mother said to my father, “Dear, tell someone what your father said. It may be important.”
My father looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know whether my father was losing his mind as he died. But he left me a note, a long note, most of it rambling, and in it he said my wife and I should take our children someplace safe. But where that someplace safe is, he didn’t say.”
The other elder in town hadn’t spoken for several days, and no matter how much her children and grandchildren cajoled, she refused to speak. My parents and some others decided that a delegation of several villagers should go to the surrounding villages and talk to what elders they could find and ask advice. The interclan council met only once every few years, and the members lived at every corner of our sector, so it didn’t make sense to call them together. I lay in my mother’s lap with my eyes open, wide awake now. I felt strange, on the one hand cozy and precious, lying in my mother’s lap as I had not done in so long, and on the other hand apprehensive and fearful. I could not imagine what turn of events the ships might bring. I fell asleep, and in my sleep I walked with my grandfather again, laughing as he exclaimed, “I love the traditions but they drive me crazy!”
When I woke up next morning, everybody and everything lay in silence, except for a slight, almost familiar humming from above. In a sort of vigil, many of us had stayed out all night. We all looked up, to a smooth white ship, smaller and shaped differently from yesterday’s ship.
And in the silence I heard one voice, a voice I hadn’t heard in days, the voice of the only other elder in town, saying, “It’s time to leave.” They were the last words I was to hear her speak for a long time.
4
In the next few days, the ships passing overhead became common. No matter how common the sight became, I knew I would never lose the sense that something extraordinary was happening. At times Maruk and I caught sight of the stranger we’d seen on the day we saw the first ship. With his flea-bitten face and clumsy ways, he became a threatening yet unexceptional sight. No one got much sleep because of worrying, and the sounds of people debating what to do could be heard at all hours. At first we all believed the ships were reconnaissance vessels of the Formans, but we later realized the ships carried strangers of uncertain character like the flea-bitten man. His own ship apparently had landed unnoticed.
More strangers than I’d ever seen at once had descended on our village—maybe forty of them. When the contingent of our villagers returned from their survey of neighboring towns, they said outsiders had descended on those towns as well. The meat supply grew shorter, and the air became so dry that at night as I lay in bed the groaning of domestic dogs all around the village became as insistent and insane as that of the wild dogs one sometimes heard after dark. The residents of nearby towns were as confused as we were.
One morning, after a restless night of listening to groaning and of scratching my crusty eyelids, I could tell something was wrong. I saw by the sun that our parents had let us oversleep. And there was no smell of breakfast. Maruk got up at almost the same moment I did. But while I lay unmoving, wanting the world to revert to what it once was, he pulled aside the curtains and sat watching. When I got up I could see crowds of people gathered around something, craning their necks, aghast. After a while the group parted to let through a doctor, and shortly after her arrival several people helped carry a man away.
My brother ran outside, but later refused to speak. We ate breakfast in silence. Finally I burst out with, “What is it? What happened? Who was that?”
“That was a man from across the village,” said my father. “A Bakshami man. He’s still alive.”
“What happened to him?”
“Stabbed.”
“What?” I’d never heard of such a thing. I knew one of the strangers must have tried to murder the man, but I didn’t know why.
“The town is filled with scavengers,” said my mother. “None of you are to go out without your father or me.”
My father shook his head, signaling her to say no more. All day they prayed that this Bakshami man would not be the first to die because of the troubles with Forma, would not be the signal of many more deaths to come.
My parents made us children stay in the house all day, so we didn’t know what was going on outside. Every so often, my mother or father would go out briefly and return to talk softly with the other. The injured man died later that day. All that day and night we listened to the sound of drums beating for the death of the man, and also for whatever deaths might follow his.
My brothers, my sisters, and I didn’t have to wait long for a decision from our parents. They sat us down the next day for a meeting and announced that we were going on a trip, and that we’d be leaving tomorrow.
“Tomorrow!” we all said. Katinka started to cry, not that she cared when we were leaving, but I think our consternation upset her.
They told us they’d heard there had already been several skirmishes at the Forma-Bakshami border, and tens of Bakshami had been slaughtered, their skin burned off their bodies by the Formans, who thought it fitting that the people in the land of dustfire should be burned to death. Many who were spared were taken to Forma as servants. Others, in despair, left voluntarily for Forma, as they could no longer find food in their villages. We didn’t live close to the border; neither could one say we lived far.
“Are we moving to Artroro?” I said.
“We’re going to the hotlands,” said my father without emotion.
“The hotlands!” we all said.
Maruk’s face fell, but his adventurous spirit rose to the occasion. “Well, we can visit the wild village there. Are we going to consult an elder?” The village in the hotlands had no name, yet it was the most famous village in the sector.
“We’re going there because some elders in the neighboring villages have suggested it. Even Forman ships can’t penetrate the air above the Glass Mountains. The air above them is said to be as unpredictable as the heat is predictable.”
“But that’s only legend, it isn’t real!” said Maruk.
My father, who’d never raised a hand to any of us, slapped him hard across his left cheek. “In this house your parents will decide what is real.” We all sat in terror at how the threat from outside had moved into our own home.
“What will we be safe from? Safe from war?” I said.
“Safe from the future,” my mother said.
I pondered this, as did my brothers and sisters. Maruk hesitated to speak but finally said, “Doesn’t the future come no matter where you are? Does time stop in the
hotlands?”
My mother said that, in a way, she hoped it did.
“But how can we go tomorrow?” said Maruk. Every time he spoke he glanced to my father, out of both defiance and fear.
“How can we not?” said my mother. “It’s no longer safe here.”
“I don’t know when we’ll be back,” said my father.
I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been safe in my own hometown.
Maruk asked, “But why can’t the Forman army walk to the hotlands as we are?”
“Because they’re lazy, and they’re cowards,” said my mother passionately.
“You should pack only what you can easily carry yourself,” said my father. “The dogs will have to carry our necessities, either on the sand sleds or in backpacks. None of you has to worry about packing food and water. Furthermore, we’ll be taking some tents and the bedding if there’s room. And remember, no personal items in the dogs’ packs.” We kept ten dogs in my family. They were superb protectors and workers.
My father looked outside at the position of the sun. “We’ve decided you can stay up for half the storytelling tonight, but only on condition that you’re all packed before then. So you’d better get started now. There’ll be more time for questions later.”
“If we’re really going to the hotlands, there’ll be much more time for questions,” said Maruk dreamily, as if in a trance. “Days and days for questions.”
“Maruk, Mariska, Jobei, and Leisha, you must all make sure that Katinka has everything she needs in the way of clothes and personal items. And you are to divide what she needs among yourselves to carry. What she needs you must carry, and what she wants, she must carry. Now hurry, it’s important.”
But I couldn’t do what my father wanted. I lay down and groaned while Artie licked me, pawed me and generally tried to make me come to my senses. I writhed on the floor and vomited the food I’d eaten that day but had been unable to digest. My mother cleaned up around me but didn’t pay much attention to my groaning and writhing; she was not an indulgent woman.
The others had hurried into their rooms. They probably wished they could talk to each other, but there was no time.
By the time I joined them they had almost finished packing. My sisters and brothers did start to talk somewhat while they packed, but I didn’t—it took a lot of consideration to decide what to take and what to leave. Each of us owned a personal chest that our parents made for our first birthdays, when we’d survived the scourge of dust virus for five years. At that time it was traditional to become optimistic and give children a gift they might use for the rest of their lives.
I gathered together all the gifts my family and friends had given me over time, dolls and glass trinkets and so forth. Sometimes we spent hours playing with our dolls. My parents even joined in occasionally. They weren’t dolls only in the shapes of humans, but in all shapes. There were dolls of animals, dolls of moons and planets, dolls of colorful shapes sewn together, dolls of trees and flowers. But the dolls alone were more than I could carry by myself. I picked a few of my favorites and put them in my “take” pile. There were certain robes and gowns I preferred over others, and I placed these in my pile as well. But like the dolls, the clothes alone were more than I would want to carry a long distance. I chose the coolest gown I owned, the warmest, and one in between.
Jobei, who’d been watching me choose what to take, offered to help. “I don’t need much myself. Would you like me to take a few of your dolls?” Because we were all used to his generosity and had been taught not to take advantage of him, it usually didn’t take much effort to say no to his big-hearted offers. But this time I couldn’t bring myself to say no at first. I knew he would carry my dolls to the hotlands and back if only I asked. The others watched me. If I said yes, they might ask Jobei to carry things of their own, and then he would have nothing.
“No, I’ll just have to decide which to take.”
For Artie, I put in a flea comb and a couple of rocks he especially liked to chew on. I visually judged the weight of my pile and put the larger rock aside. Looking through my personal chest, I realized that even among my meager belongings, I wanted more than I needed. For instance, the many mementos of Artroro that people had given Maruk and he had given to me. Years earlier an aunt had given him a couple of pieces of dried fruit that he’d passed on to me and that I’d never eaten. The fruit had metamorphosed into hard black blobs.
There was a storybook about the Artroran strongmen and strongwomen, and a blank cloth to hang in the wind and stare at. This cloth was supposed to enhance the watcher’s imagination. A Ba Mirada clan member from a few villages away had given it to Maruk to help him picture Artroro, and he’d given it to me. These items had been among my most valued possessions, but I didn’t want them badly enough to carry them across the sweltering landscape of Bakshami. Artroro had never seemed so far away as it did now, when we actually were about to walk closer to it.
In the end I took three of my own robes, two of Katinka’s, one doll, one rock for Artie, and the knife from Soom Kali from my grandfather. Someone had carved a face full of fury on the knife handle, with jewels for eyes. I couldn’t tell what kind of luck it would bring me, but I knew it would bring me something. I looked at my brothers and sisters, to see whether I could learn anything from their decisions. But they’d come to the same conclusions as I had, just a logical assortment of clothing, and a couple of items that were special to them. In addition, we each brought a razor, to shave hair off our legs and bodies and discourage fleas. We kept our head hair long out of tradition. Only the rare rebel shaved his or her hair, making me wish at times that I could be more of a rebel so I could get rid of all my hair. Leisha brought her list of jokes, though she’d memorized all the jokes and told them to us so many times we’d memorized them, too. Maruk took seven knives, one for carving; one for his shaving; one for slicing game; one for eating; one for a tool; one for luck; and one for killing. So far as I knew Maruk had never killed anything, even the smallest furrto, but he always slept with his killing knife under his bedding because he said that’s what members of the Artroran army did.
When we’d finished we sat with our bags on our mats waiting for our mother or father to come and tell us what to do next. Leisha occasionally threw tantrums in between her joketelling, but we were all obedient by nature. Despite everything we had to say, we sat quietly: stunned, scared. I wished I had more to do, more to pack. I left our room to go to the front room, but stopped in the hallway when I saw the flea-bitten man talking to my parents.
“A war is coming,” the man was saying. He waved his wandlike weapon at them, so that I almost screamed, but he was waving for emphasis, not to threaten them. “You may need a weapon like this. Look, I’m not a killer. I could kill you and look for Samarr’s fortune, but I’m a peaceful man at heart. I have no quarrel with Bakshami or anyone living here. Oh, it’s the most horrible sector on the planet, but that’s not your fault. So come on, be reasonable.”
I ran to stand by my parents. “We saw him the other day,” I said.
“He’s a scavenger,” said my father. “And I don’t deal with scavengers.”
The man looked shrewdly at my mother. “You may feel differently.”
“We own no jewels,” she said. “We own only our dwelling, if you want that.”
“What are you saying?” said my father. “My parents built this home for us.”
“I am saying that a weapon like that may be of use. You’re forgetting the more practical elements of present circumstances.”
“We’ll be traveling with a hundred other families. We’ll be safe.”
“Safe from a hundred ships?”
“There are no hundred ships.”
I had never seen my parents disagree before, only overheard them a few times when they spoke louder than they realized from their room. So here it was again, the troubles from outside invading our home.
My mother turned to the man. “Samarr left us
no fortune. If he did, we would give it to you. Such things mean nothing to us. We’re leaving almost everything we own. Is there any price you would take besides these jewels that don’t exist?”
He squinted and winked at me so that it seemed he had a flea in his eye. “How about this one? Is she strong enough to work hard until I need her to bear children?”
“Leave now, or I’ll kill you,” my father said evenly.
“My dog will kill you,” I shouted.
“Wait,” said my mother.
“Mother, what are you doing? Did you hear what he said?”
“What he said is ridiculous, of course.”
“We have our honor,” said my father.
“And we’ll have no less of it if we can come to terms. But what if I do end up with less? What good is honor if my children die on the way to the hotlands?”
“We may die of thirst, but no Bakshami has ever died for lack of a weapon.”
“Lack of precedent is irrelevant in a changing world,” said my mother.
“Your intelligence honors me,” the man said. He bowed extravagantly to her. “All right, forget your daughter. I have a servant already in another sector. Do you have any of those fierce dogs?”
“They’re not fierce,” I said with disdain. “They just don’t like you.”
He scowled at me. “I don’t like this one anyway. Have you any children who are more pleasant?” Scratching at his face, squinting his eyes, the man looked around the room. “I don’t want your house. A home in a dying land is no home at all.” His eyes brightened. “Do you think Samarr might have buried something around here?”
“Who can say?” said my mother.
“Here’s the deal I’ll make you. To prevent you from running off with any riches Samarr may have hidden, you must let me check all your bags and then you must vacate the dwelling immediately. In return, the weapon is yours.”