The Glass Mountains Read online

  “Woman, are you mad?” my father said.

  “Perhaps so. But not so mad that I would make this deal without my husband’s agreement.”

  My father rubbed my face with his hand. “Are you scared, Mariska?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am, too,” he said. Then, to my mother, “You’re right, of course. What’s the point? He will take the house anyway, once we leave tomorrow. It’s best to bargain for a weapon that can save our lives. But I would have wished for more time to say my good-byes to the finest dwelling in the village.”

  So the deal was made, and the scavenger handed her a weapon. And just like that, we no longer possessed a house. Instead we possessed a weapon. Later we were to find out that half the village had purchased similar weapons, and that none of them worked. By some act of prestidigitation, they’d worked only in demonstration. After coming to terms, the man checked the belongings we planned to take, and we walked out into the dry, lukewarm night. As soon as we stood outside, I began to wonder whether I’d chosen to bring the right clothes, the right doll. But it was too late to change my mind.

  The wind was still and the air clear. Above me our moons hung across the sky. Lomos glowed orange-yellow at the horizon. We looked at our parents: where to?

  A number of people had gathered for the storytelling, so we posted nine of our dogs with our belongings and went to listen to the stories. Artie stayed with me. I looked around for the meat-seasoner and his family but didn’t see them. A couple of the better storytellers had already left town, but my favorite raconteur, Cray, remained. He stood off to himself a bit, his lips moving, his eyes darting, as he warmed up for his story. Cray was an average-looking man when he walked about town, but when he told stories he got a lunatic glint to his eyes, and you suddenly noticed the weird looseness to his joints and a nimbleness that transcended even the natural grace of most Bakshami. He ran suddenly to the center of where we sat with a few dozen others. His eyes were alight with lunacy, and his limbs shook with the looseness of a skeleton. He leapt in front of me. “Mariska knows this story is true!” he exclaimed. He leapt to someone else, the old woman who had never developed much seeing and knowing powers. “And the honorable Fu-fat knows as well!”

  Cray gazed up toward the sky, then eastward. “Toward the east lies one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, also the most barbaric: Soom Kali,” he intoned. He faced north, then south. “To the north and south the same: Soom Kali. To the west, Forma. We’re surrounded.

  “The Soom Kali are rumored not to need much sleep because they’re too busy learning to be warriors. Before people began measuring time, the residents of Soom Kali were some of the meanest and craziest inhabitants of the Hooded Galaxy. They chose our planet Artekka to populate because of the size and emptiness. They wanted the emptiest world they could find, a giant kingdom to rule and perhaps to destroy.

  “All the children of the original settlers in Artekka turned out to be as ferocious as their parents—except one, a boy born so good and kind his face glowed with benevolence and his smile enraged all those around him.”

  Cray’s face began to radiate benevolence.

  “The neighbors taunted him and his parents. They thought he was a weakling.

  “So, the kindest man in Soom Kali traversed through his life alone, moving from state to state, hoping to find one other kind person. He would hear a rumor that another kind person lived here or there, and he would instantly drop whatever he was doing and travel to where this other kind person supposedly lived. But when he got there, he would find out the story of this person was really a mangled story about himself, and so he’d ended up traveling all that way in search of what he already lived with and saw reflected in glass or metal every day. Meanwhile he worked in sewers and gutters and dangerous caves. Nobody would hire him for a better job, and nobody would frequent a business that he might start.

  “Finally, when the kindest man was two hundred years old, he made a mistake. He broke down and cried while working in a cave. He cried for only a short while, but that short inattention caused him not to notice that the air was running low. It was his job to warn the others. He thereby caused horrible deaths to several people who were lowly workers but respected nonetheless. For that’s the way it was in Soom Kali—one thing that must be said is that, except for their feelings about the kind man, they respected each other.

  “So the kindest man was brought to trial and condemned to death. While he was waiting to die, he decided to throw himself over a wall. This he did, and he fell down a cliff and into a hole so deep he continued to fall for forty days, until he’d almost starved to death. Soom Kali was said to have a vast network of tunnels beneath it, and when he stopped falling and found himself in a tunnel he assumed that he was in that network, which had been built during a civil war among the original inhabitants.

  “For a long time, he lived in tunnels, feeding the meager amounts of food he obtained by killing rodents to the cavedogs that befriended him. As I said, this all happened lifetimes ago, when there was more magic in the air than there is today. The magic made sparks in the rocks that helped him start fires when he was cold, and the magic cleaned the air of smoke when the fires died. Every day, with tools he made and by hand, the kind man dug more tunnels until after a hundred years he’d dug so furiously and blindly and in so convoluted a pattern that he didn’t know whether he was far from Soom Kali or right beneath it. Unbeknownst to him, he’d passed under seas and mountains, pastures and deserts, then circled here and there, back and forth, and now, when he emerged, he saw that he was in a vast desert land. He caught a glimpse of a beautiful blue wild beast, but as soon as he saw it, it was gone. It was a legendary flame beast, who moves with the quickness and grace of a flame across straw.”

  Cray pranced about, at times leaping over our heads and seeming to change direction in midair. It seemed as if he could fly one moment, and the next moment he became a flame in its fullest glory. When he calmed down he continued.

  “In the meantime he was able to catch some slower animals to eat, and to feed the loyal dogs that still accompanied him. The people of Soom Kali are unusually long lived, so he was still a reasonably young man by their standards. Every day he lived in fear that someone might follow him down a tunnel, so his new project became to close off the tunnel. After a year, he managed to accomplish this to his satisfaction. No one could get through. But then he realized that a part of him had hoped that someone would follow him, so at least he wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

  “He came to realize that his escape wasn’t a triumph at all, but another type of death. In order for his escape to mean anything, he thought, he needed to reproduce, so he tried with some dogs, but they miscarried, and with all manner of birds, trees, and lizards with no success. Finally he remembered the blue beast he’d seen, the wildest but most graceful beast that ever lived. Completely untamable. One day when he was hot, and low on water, and wondering whether he would die soon, he saw in the distance a blue cloud, and the cloud was a herd of desert flame beasts. He jumped on his sled, and his dogs pulled him across the sand, for even after all this time he couldn’t move very well in the sand. He managed to lasso one of the beasts. And that night, after a meal of fried rodents, and while the dogs howled to the moons, the kindest man and the wildest most graceful beast on the planet copulated. In four cycles, the graceful beast bore a child: the first Bakshami, descended from warriors and wild animals, with the grace to move over sand like a flame over straw, and with the kind nature to give hard-won food to another being who needs it.

  “I tell this story not just for the children but for the grown-ups as well, so that in the days and years to come, as all of you travel to the hotlands in escape of domination, you remember your kind spirit and untamable ways.”

  Cray’s eyes grew sad. “I won’t be coming,” he said. “Tomorrow I’m going into my dwelling and staying there until they take me out. I built that home myself. The spirits of five of my dead chi
ldren live there.”

  Way in the background I saw the flea-bitten man lurking. I looked around at my neighbors, with their dogs and packages and sand sleds, and I looked around at all our shining dwellings, reflecting the large round moon and misshapen small one, and I knew that whatever remained in those dwellings would soon be robbed by the flea-bitten man and his peers. I knew I might never set foot in my house again. And with a newly born hardness in my heart, I knew that my mother was right: At least we’d gotten a weapon in the deal.

  Part Two

  1

  When my brothers, my sisters, and I were all very young we traveled only with our parents. But dangers were few in Bakshami, and because Maruk had begun to grow older and stronger, if a journey was less than a couple of days we traveled only with him. Maruk was impulsive, but he was responsible, and also a sort of maverick general. That is, he liked being in charge, but he also respected the good qualities of his sisters and brothers and enjoyed delegating authority and exercising his independence. By the end of our projected journey to the hotlands, he would be old enough to build a house for himself, to become an apprentice storyteller, or, if he wished to do so, to mate with his betrothed if she survived the trip. Depending on hardships encountered, the trip might take as long as a year.

  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.