The Glass Mountains Read online

  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.

  “And then I’ll marry an Artroran man as big as a tree,” I would say while she giggled.

  “And he should have a pool as big as a house for you to luxuriate in,” she would answer.

  “We mustn’t marry anyone without a big pool.”

  Families from my village surrounded me, their dogs dragging sleds piled high with possessions. A couple of people had piled their sleds a bit higher than ours, and a couple had piled them lower. But no one seemed to have taken too much or too little. To take too little might mean starvation or dehydration, and to take too much was to strain the dogs so that they wouldn’t be able to drag anything. My parents had taken enough food and water, they hoped, for the trip to the first lake. At the first lake, we hoped, we would find more food and water. Hope! That was all there was. Of course, if we caught animals along the way, they would provide more moisture for us. And even I understood an unspoken part of the plan: Some people would die, leaving more dogs to carry supplies for those who lived. We all accepted this part of the plan.

  The dogs toiled obediently. Even the small ones, barely larger than furrtos, carried or dragged something, and even the smallest children, if they could walk, hauled a package on their backs. The Bakshami are hard workers and the weather has made us stoic.

  At the height of the afternoon heat we stopped near a tree. It was just one tree in the dust, but it was the first we’d seen in a while, and it felt refreshing to be able at least to see the slight shadow the green leaves threw on the ground and to imagine the roots reaching deep into the earth in search of water. We clustered around the tree in a circle, the dogs sitting as usual on the outside, too hot to play or fight except for an occasional short growl or truncated wrestling match. We ate dried meat and sipped water. Unlike people in other sectors, we perspired little and so needed less water. Our temperatures regulated themselves somewhat differently than people from cooler climates. Otherwise we wouldn’t have survived.

  The woman who’d been wailing sat quietly with her four children. Her hair, hanging in a braid out the front of her hood, was so light it was not really black but brown, and one of her children had distinctly brown hair. She was a tall girl about Maruk’s age, the only one of the children not crying.

  Everyone started to rise after we’d eaten. The dogs began to bustle, and one person began trudging, then another, until all but a few stragglers remained. As I got up I heard a slight hum and saw a ship in the distance behind us. Everybody stopped and watched as it caught up and flew over and past us. It was very disappointing to see how easily the ship covered ground when our walking had already grown so tiresome. But I knew from experience that a long journey was first hard, then easier, then twice as hard as it had ever been, then you grew immune to its difficulties, and then you were there.

  At nightfall, when the moons first began to push their way over the peaks of the small sand hills before us, we stopped and pitched tents against the winds that had already started acting up. The families hammered long stakes into the ground to secure the tents against what I already knew would be a severe wind storm. Through the tent window I could see the huge swirling dust storm that still lay ahead of us. We worked fast, burying in the sand whatever wouldn’t fit in the tents and then hurrying inside with our dogs.

  When the storm arrived, sand and pebbles buffeted the tent with a force we knew could slice skin. My family sat quietly, thankful that our tent was near the middle, surrounded by others, and at the same time knowing that in fairness next time we would have to take an outside spot. Maruk clutched at a map of Bakshami he’d brought. He studied that map the way Leisha studied her list of jokes, and he even slept with it. My mother lit one of the candles we sometimes used for rituals, and I watched the tent list perilously with the bursts of wind. Outside the window, I saw swirls of dust rise like apparitions. The tent tilted so much I felt certain that in a moment everything would fall apart—our tent and everybody else’s—and a hundred and some-odd families would go flying into the night air like the smallest pieces of sand in the desert. I closed my eyes, but that made the sound of the sand battering the tent seem louder, louder, as powerful as the wave of sand I’d once seen engulf a man, and I opened my eyes once more. This time I stared at the ground rather than the wind against the tent.

  We needed our rest, but we sat unmoving until the storm calmed down. When it finished, sand covered the window and we could no longer see outside. Then we got up and laid out our bedmats. They felt soft on the sand. I felt so relieved the storm had ended that for the first time all day, I felt safe, even cozy, there squeezed into a tent with my family, all of us
listening to the funny snores of our flea-bitten dogs as they lay at peace on their blankets. Artie always remained awake until I fell asleep, and though exhausted I combed out his fleas.

  “Don’t spend time only with him,” said my father.

  “But Artie hauls more than anyone.”

  “Just a bit more time then. The other dogs work hard, too.” He looked very sad for a moment. “A long time,” he finally said softly. “A long time.”

  I didn’t know precisely to what he referred, but I knew it wasn’t good. I had never seen my father look so burdened. My mother was firm, kind, extremely practical, but my father was the philosopher, more delicate and more outwardly emotional. He thought about every step he took, thought about it when his children or wife smiled at him and thought about it when they frowned at him. He evaluated how much food and water we needed and then evaluated whether his evaluations were accurate. On the other hand, generally whenever my mother finished evaluating something, that was that. On to the next thing. If her evaluations proved right, well, why was that surprising? And if she’d erred, she would simply start over again. But to worry, what a waste of time! She might check on us each night, but she didn’t worry about the viruses the rest of the time.

  I got under my covers. The sand sprinkled softly on the tent, making a comforting pitter-patter that I’d heard many times before. Artie came over and lay down across my legs, which I gently pulled out from under him. The candle had died on its own, and I wondered sleepily how many candles we’d brought. Then Maruk asked: “How many candles did we bring?”

  “Ten,” said my father.

  “Just ten, and we used one tonight?”

  “That’s right, it was important to have light tonight. You children are in charge of saving the wax and making new candles out of it. In fact, since you asked the question, Maruk, I put you in charge.”

  He nudged me and whispered, “And I delegate you.

  I kicked Leisha and whispered, “Maruk says you should make the candles.”

  I heard her whispering to Jobei, and I knew he would accept without question. “I’ll help you, Jobei,” I said softly.

  “Help him what?” said my father.

  “Make candles.”

  “I said that Maruk should do it.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Maruk.

  I could hear wailing from a nearby tent. It was the woman from Mallarr, and I could tell she tried to control herself, wailing softly so that you almost thought the wind blew. But we knew it was her.

  “Maybe you should talk to her,” said my father.

  “But she’s not in our clan,” said my mother. “I don’t want to interfere.”

  “But what the storyteller said—try to remember your kindness.”

  My mother had already settled in, so she rose wearily. She tried to leave the tent, but the sand had piled itself up around the door flap. My father and I helped clear it away without letting too much pour inside. Maruk and my other siblings had fallen asleep. After we got the flap open, I stepped outside with my mother and saw large mounds of sand, some of them with the round tops of tents sticking out the middle. The tops flickered from the candlelight inside them. Every time a slight wind blew, the mounds of sand rearranged themselves. But the wind had calmed down. My mother and I smiled at each other. The end of a sandstorm like this was a time of quiet joy. When my mother left to try to talk with the wailing woman, I got into my bed, but my father sat up, waiting for my mother. In a moment I could hear the soft voices of women wafting into the tent the way a scent might waft through the air. I fell asleep to those voices.

  2

  The days passed more quickly than one might think. While the trek itself was monotonous, the proximity of the families and the lack of privacy made us not bored with each other but fascinated. The smallest disagreement loomed large, and the minutest flirtation drew the interest of five hundred people.

  Much remained the same. Tarkahn still talked incessantly, the wailing woman continued to wail, and Leisha still told the old jokes. My mother had befriended the wailer. Her name was Ansmeea, and sometimes at the end of the day she sat with us in our tent and discussed matters with us. It was amazing how much there was to discuss. For instance, the subject of how today’s weather was different from yesterday’s and would probably be different from tomorrow’s; and of how the windstorm the night before was not the worst but perhaps the third from the worst we’d encountered so far; how no one had spotted a ship overhead for many days; how for all we knew a full-scale war had never started. But that last bit of gossip was proved false when a man traveling with twelve dogs and no people caught up with us on his sled. He’d left the border twenty days earlier, about the time we’d started our journey. At that time the Formans had already destroyed many towns near the border. A dog trainer, he’d owned forty dogs but had traded most of them for meat before beginning his journey. His dogs sat at attention as he spoke. When he motioned them down, they lay calmly, their eyes roving from their master for the first time. The man didn’t look much older than Maruk. He had a high forehead and delicate profile. Many dog trainers were mysterious and independent people, preferring the company of their dogs to that of their neighbors. They were generally both kind and firm, and nearly always loners.

  One night at storytelling, he said he had something to tell us. “I have news of your village. But it isn’t good news. When I left the border, at times I imagined I could hear screams in the distance, as if the war were always just an hour behind me. I hurried on, trying to put more time, more distance, between me and the war I imagined raged behind me. But when I reached your village, I found hundreds of Bakshami, with their packages piled on their dogsleds and their packs tied to their backs. What I mean to say is I found them dead. So I knew that while it was possible that the war raged behind me, I saw then that it had also raged in front of me. Yet all I could do was follow my map. Returning to the border meant certain death, while heading toward the hotlands meant only probable death.”

  And so we had the scant comfort of knowing we’d done the right thing to abandon our village.

  The next day the dog trainer was gone.

  We all thought that was very romantic, the way he’d come and gone alone. Maruk said when he grew up he would own a thousand dogs, and if he were ever killed in battle I could choose my favorite to keep, and the rest would go to his wife and children. That made me love Maruk more than ever, because I knew that one good dog might sometimes be worth a thousand other dogs. I knew I would always adore dogs. I loved the way sand stuck to Artie’s black nose and the way his oversized paws made him look half-puppy. In Bakshami we respected animals for helping to make our lives livable.

  Ansmeea and her daughters, except for the tall one, sometimes rode on sleds. I seethed when they rode on the sled pulled by Artie, who already carried such a heavy burden.

  No one else could escape the long trek we made each day. Back home if you really didn’t want to do a chore, you could plead sickness or fatigue, or you could even exert your stubbornness. But out here to refuse was to die. Those who got sick struggled to keep up with us, maybe spending time on a dog’s crowded sled, but they knew that if they couldn’t keep up they would die: We would not wait for them. If we didn’t keep going, we thought we might all perish. So for the good of everyone, we felt sympathy for the sick and the tired, but we didn’t wait for them. One day I offered to carry a sick man’s pack, and by the end of the day I was so tired I’d fallen well behind. Artie and Maruk walked beside me, but I refused to let anyone else carry my load, feeling that I’d made the commitment and should keep it. But I knew I couldn’t afford to help the man the next day. It didn’t matter. He died that night. I was so tired I fell asleep during the burial ritual.

  In the evenings after we ate, there might be brief storytelling periods, and there was always a group who played the rhythms. I joined them sometimes. Playing the rhythms, listening to them, gave our lives continuity. T
he rhythms were older than anyone alive and would be played after all of us traveling together had died. So by playing them, we felt ourselves to be a part of time, the way the howling of the dogs was a part of time, something dogs always had done and always would do. But we spent the bulk of our time walking quietly or sleeping. The rhythms, the howling, the storytelling, all were aberrations in the world of silence we lived in all day and most of the night.

  At night my exhausted mother continued to braid our hair and sing to us, and sometimes children from other families gathered around, braiding their own hair and listening to my mother’s songs. My father would ruminate on why events had occurred as they had in Bakshami. He would play the rhythms absently and speak an occasional thought about how the Forman attacks in no way undermined the longstanding Bakshami belief in nonalignment.

  “We’re the only sector on the planet that has never fought a war,” he said proudly. “If the Formans killed every one of us, it wouldn’t equal a fraction of all the people of Artekka that have been killed in wars over time.” Even as others began to have their doubts, my father clung to the belief that our way of life was superior to all others. I was still forming my beliefs. I agreed with my father, and yet I agreed with the handful of warmongers, too. What was wrong with my father’s theory was that if the Formans killed every one of us, our culture would disappear. But Bakshami was incapable of fighting a war. We were not just the only nonaligned sector on the planet, we were also the only sector that didn’t use advanced machines. We used the power of the sun and wind for all our needs, but we didn’t use electric lights at night. When it got dark, we told stories, and then we went to sleep. We did the same during our trek, except the storytelling didn’t last as long, and the sleep was deeper.