LITMIR.BIZ

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moment to lift his head; and when he saw the man standing there, he let out another howl, just like their dog when he howled at the moon; and again she put her hand over his mouth – not the one he had bitten, which was bleeding – but let him stare over it while she said, ‘It’s not the same man. It’s his brother. It’s not the bad one.’

      But she could feel the child trembling, in great fits, and she was afraid he would convulse and even die; and she forced his head around, back into her, and cradled it with her two arms.

      For days, but she did not know how long, the two children had been in a room in their own home while the other one, who looked like this man, questioned them. The other one, the bad man, and others in the room, men and women, wore the long black tunics, with red. The two children were the centre of the scene. All the questions had been asked by the bad man, whose face even now seemed to burn there, inside her eyes, so that she had to keep blinking to force it away, and see the face of this man whom she could see was a friend. The bad one kept asking her over and over again about her close family, not the Family, and in the beginning she had answered because she had not known they were enemies; but then the bad man had taken up a whip and said that if they did not answer he would beat them. At this, one woman and then another protested, but he had made them be quiet, with an angry look and a thrust of the whip at them. But the trouble was, she did not know the answers to the questions. It was she who had to answer, because the little boy had screamed at the sight of the whip, and had begun his clinging to her, as he was doing now, his face pressed into her. These bad people, who she was beginning to see were probably relatives, though not her own family – she seemed to remember faces – were asking who came to their house, who slept there, what their parents talked about with them, what their plans were. None of this she knew. Ever since she could remember anything, there had been people coming and going; and then there were the servants, who were like friends. Once, during the questioning there was a confused, angry moment when she had answered a question with something about the man who ran the house and took orders from her mother; but the bad man had not meant him at all, and he leaned right down and shouted at her, the face (so like the face she was looking at now) so close to hers she could smell his sour breath and see the vein in his forehead throbbing; and she was so frightened that for a moment her mind was dark, and was dark for so long that, when she saw again, she was looking up at the man staring down at her; and they were all alarmed and silent, and he was too. She could not speak after that: her tongue had gone stiff and, besides, she was so thirsty. There was a jar of water on the table, and she pointed at it and said, ‘Please, water,’ using the politeness she had been taught; and then the bad man was pleased at the new good idea he had, and began pouring water into a cup, and then back again, making the water splash, so that her whole dry body yearned for it; but he did not give her any. And all that went on, the whip sometimes in the man’s hand, sometimes lying on the table where she could see it, the water being splashed, and the man pouring it deliberately and drinking it, mouthful by mouthful, and asking, asking, asking the questions she did not know the answers to. And then there was a great noise outside of voices and quarrelling. The people in the room had exclaimed, and looked at each other, and then they ran off, fast, through the door into the storerooms, leaving the two children alone; and she had been just about to reach for the water when a whole crowd had rushed into the room. She thought at first they were Rock People because they wore the brown sack things, but then saw that no, they were People, her people, being tall, and thin, and nice looking. Then she and the little boy were lifted up and told, Quiet, be quiet, and they had travelled for hours through the dark, while the stars jogged overhead; and then she had been thrust into this room, the rock room, alone.

      Now she said to this man, ‘I’m so thirsty’; and at this his face had a look as if he wanted to laugh, the way you laugh when something impossible is asked for. She knew exactly what he was thinking; her mind was so clear then, and she could look back afterwards and see that face of his, the good one – like her parents’, kind – but on it that smile, Oh no, it’s not possible, because everything was so dangerous and more important than water. But that was the end of the clear part, the end of what she remembered.

      He said, ‘Wait.’ And went to where the room slab had been slid to shut out the night, full of enemies, pushed it along in its groove, and in a low voice said something which must be about water. How many people were out there? He came back with a cup of water. ‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘there isn’t much.’ And now the little boy tore himself out of her arms and grabbed the cup and began gulping and snuffling the water down, and then…the cup slipped, and what was left splashed on the rock of the floor. He wailed, and she put her hand on his mouth again and turned his face into her. She had not had even one mouthful but the man hadn’t noticed. This was because he had turned away at the moment the boy was drinking to make sure the door slab was in place. Her mouth was burning, her eyes burned, because she wanted to cry and there were no tears there, her whole being was so dry, she burned with dryness. And now the man squatted in front of her and began talking. And this was the part she tried to remember afterwards, for years, as she was growing up, for what he told her she most desperately wanted to know.

      The beginning she did take in. She knew – didn’t she? – that things had been pretty bad for a long time, everything getting worse…she must know that. Yes, she did, her parents talked about it, and she did know, as this man kept saying, that the weather was changing. It was getting drier but not in any regular way: sometimes it rained in the way it should and sometimes not at all or very little; and there was a lot of trouble with the Rock People, and there was a war going on between the different big families, and even inside the families – because, as she could see, his brother and he were on different sides and …

      Her little brother seemed to be asleep, slumped there against her. She knew he was not asleep but had fainted, or gone into some kind of fit of not knowing, because he could not bear any more; and the few mouthfuls of water had been enough to relax him into a temporary quiet, though he jerked and trembled as he clung heavily to her, limp, his arms heavy and dragging. She felt she would fall. She had been like this for days, in that other place, her own home, where the child had clung and shivered and cried, noisily, then silently, when the bad man hit him to keep quiet. And now he was still there, against her, and she was staring over his head into the face of the man which, she could see because it was so close to her, was thin and bony because he was hungry, and full of pain too, for his back must be hurting. He was talking, fast, straight into her face; his mouth was moving and she could not stop looking at it: it was as if every word were being rolled around inside his mouth and forced out… He was tired, he was so tired it was hard for him to talk, and to explain all these things. It was about his brother, Garth, the bad one, and his friends. It was about her parents, who had gone away somewhere because the bad ones had wanted to kill them. And she must be careful to look after the little boy… She thought she was going to fall. She tried to speak but found her mouth was gummed up, there was only a thick gum in her mouth, and she looked into this man’s face, the man who was saving her and her brother – she knew that much – and she saw a greying scum on his lips. That was why it was hard for him to talk. He was thirsty, like her. And now he grabbed her by both shoulders, and looked close into her face, and was demanding an answer – but this time not frighteningly, like the other one, but a kind of Yes from her, meaning she had understood; but she hadn’t, she was thinking about water. It seemed that the sounds of water were everywhere, splashing on the rock roof and the rocks outside, but she knew she imagined it; and suddenly she saw from the dark, exhausted face so close to hers that he had understood. And she managed to lift a hand and point to her mouth. He looked for the cup and saw it lying on its side on the floor, and the stain of spilt water. He picked up the cup and got up, slowly, went slowly to the door, because he was stiff now from the wounds on his back, pushed the door along, said something, while he supported himself on the wall with one hand. A long wait. Then the cup was handed back in. He brought it to her. It was only half full. She said to herself that she would not gulp and guzzle as her brother had, but she couldn’t help herself, and bent her head to the cup, hastily, greedily; but she did not spill any, not a drop, and as she drank the precious mouthfuls she saw the mouth next to hers moving, as his eyes watched every little movement of swallowing. He was thirsty, was desperate for water, but had given her those mouthfuls. And now he took the cup from her, slid it inside his tunic where the belt was, put

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