Mara and Dann

Now Daima asked, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," said Mara. The little boy said nothing. He was nearly asleep, where he stood.

"Before you go to sleep remember something," said Daima, bending down to him. "When people ask, you are my grandchildren. Dann, you are my grandson." But he was asleep, and Mara caught him and carried him where Daima pointed, to a low couch of stone that had on it a pad covered with the same slippery, brown stuff. She laid him down but did not cover him because it was already so hot.

On the rock table Daima had put a bowl with bits of the white stuff Mara had eaten yesterday, but now it was mixed with green leaves and some soup. Mara ate it all, while Daima watched.

Then Mara said, "May I ask some questions?"

"Ask."

"How long will we be here?" And as she asked, again, she knew the answer.

"You are staying here."

Mara was not going to let herself cry.

"Where are my father and mother?"

"What did Gorda tell you?"

Mara said, "I was so thirsty while he was telling me things, I couldn't listen."

"That's rather a pity. You see, I don't know much myself. I was hoping you could tell me." She got up, and yawned. "I was awake all night. I was expecting you sooner."

"There was a flood."

"I know. I was up there watching it go past." She pointed to the window, which was just a square hole in the wall with nothing to cover it or stop people looking in. It was light outside: the sun was up. Daima pointed through it, past some rock houses to a ridge. "That's where you came. Over that ridge is the river. Not the place you crossed, but the same one higher up. And beyond that is another river — if you can call them rivers now. They are just waterholes." Then she took Mara by the shoulders and turned her round so that she was facing into the room. "Your home is in that direction. Rustam is there."

"How far is it from here?"

"In the old days, by sky skimmer, half a day. Walking, six days."

"We came part of the way with a cart bird. But it got tired and stopped." And now Mara's eyes filled and she said, beginning to cry, "I think it must be dead, it was so thin."

"I think you are tired. I'm going to put you to bed."

Daima took Mara into an inner room. It was like the outer room without the big table of rocks in the middle, but it had couches made of rocks, three of them, built against the walls. It wasn't thatch here but a roof of thin pieces of stone.

Daima showed Mara which shelf to use and a little rock room that was the lavatory and said, "I shall lie down for a little too. Don't take any notice when I get up." And she lay down on a shelf that had pads on it to make it soft, and seemed to be asleep.

Mara on her rocky shelf, which was hard in spite of the pads, was far from sleeping. For one thing she was worrying about Dann next door. Suppose he woke and found himself alone in a strange place? She wanted to wake Daima and tell her, but didn't dare. Several times she crept off this hard shelf that was supposed to be a bed and crept to the doorway to listen, but then Daima got up and went next door. Mara had time to take a good look at her.

Daima was old. She was like Mara's grandmothers and grand-aunts. She had the same glossy, long, black hair, streaked all the way to the ends with grey, and her legs had knots of veins on them. Her hands were long and bony. Mara suddenly thought, But she's a Person, she's one of the People, so what is she doing here in a rock village?

Now Mara knew she wouldn't sleep. She sat up and looked carefully around her. A big floor candle made a good, steady light she could see nearly everything by. These walls were made of big blocks of rock. They were smooth, and she could see carvings on them, some coloured. These walls were not like the ones in the other rock house, whose walls had been rough. Overhead, the big stone columns that held up the stone slabs of the roof had carvings on them. There were shelves made of rock, and in the corner a little room, sticking out, and opposite that a door into an inner room, with curtains of the brown, slippery stuff. This room had a window, but there were wooden shutters, not properly closed. People could see in if they wanted. Outside now, people were walking about; Mara could hear them: they were talking.

Now Mara was sitting up, arms on her knees, and she had never thought harder in her life.

At home there was a game that all the parents played with their children. It was called, What Did You See? Mara was about Dann's age when she was first called into her father's room one evening, where he sat in his big carved and coloured chair. He said to her, "And now we are going to play a game. What was the thing you liked best today?"

At first she chattered: "I played with my cousin. I was out with

Shera in the garden. I made a stone house." And then he had said, "Tell me about the house." And she said, "I made a house of the stones that come from the river bed." And he said, "Now tell me about the stones." And she said, "They were mostly smooth stones, but some were sharp and had different shapes." "Tell me what the stones looked like, what colour they were, what did they feel like."

And by the time the game ended she knew why some stones were smooth and some sharp and why they were different colours, some cracked, some so small they were almost sand. She knew how rivers rolled stones along and how some of them came from far away. She knew that the river had once been twice as wide as it was now. There seemed no end to what she knew, and yet her father had not told her much, but kept asking questions so she found the answers in herself. Like, "Why do you think some stones are smooth and round and some still sharp?" And she thought and replied, "Some have been in the water a long time, rubbing against other stones, and some have only just been broken off bigger stones." Every evening, either her father or her mother called her in for What Did You See? She loved it. During the day, playing outside or with her toys, alone or with other children, she found herself thinking, Now notice what you are doing, so you can tell them tonight what you saw.

She had thought that the game did not change; but then one evening she was there when her little brother was first asked, What Did You See? and she knew just how much the game had changed for her. Because now it was not just What Did You See? but: What were you thinking? What made you think that? Are you sure that thought is true?

When she became seven, not long ago, and it was time for school, she was in a room with about twenty children — all from her family or from the Big Family — and the teacher, her mother's sister, said, "And now the game: What Did You See?"

Most of the children had played the game since they were tiny; but some had not, and they were pitied by the ones that had, for they did not notice much and were often silent when the others said, "I saw.", whatever it was. Mara was at first upset that this game played with so many at once was simpler, more babyish, than when she was with her parents. It was like going right back to the earliest stages of the game: "What did you see?" "I saw a bird." "What kind of a bird?" "It was black and white and had a yellow beak." "What shape of beak? Why do you think the beak is shaped like that?"

Then she saw what she was supposed to be understanding: Why did one child see this and the other that? Why did it sometimes need several children to see everything about a stone or a bird or a person?

But the lessons with the other children stopped. It was because of all the trouble going on, and people going away, for every day there were fewer children, until there were only Mara and Dann and their near cousins.