The Glass Mountains (34 page)

He whimpered more, and I knew his heart had broken. Instead of trying to get out, I lay weeping and fearful in my cave. Without guidance I was nothing. My life had always been laid out for me by those who loved me, and now, as far as I knew, no one who loved me still lived or knew that I lived. Who would guide me?
 

I played a rhythm with my fingers against the rocks, but I didn’t leave my hole. In this way I passed time until my fingers grew tired. Then, full of stale air, without hope and without feeling in my extremities, I decided to leave my hole. I’d almost forgotten how to will my hands and feet to move and cried out in pain as I stretched a foot tentatively out. When I finally emerged I found myself as frightened as ever and needed to fight the urge to creep back in. Still, as frightening as it seemed outside the hole, at least the air was fresher out there. So I continued crawling in the dark, feeling for other tiny caves in which Moor or my mother might have hidden. But I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was completely without human companionship.
 

Artie and I stumbled forward in the cave, and I realized that he whimpered from weakness. He normally ate a great deal and had not eaten for some time.
 

I would not have thought myself capable of greater despair than I’d already felt. But for some reason the despair I now felt over Artie’s hunger overwhelmed my fear and even my pain. I forgot where I was, or why or how, and felt only a pure despondency that engulfed me in a sort of shimmering hot light which was not of the rational world but of another world I had never visited. I curled up as tightly as when I’d inhabited my hole and watched this light all around me. I felt somehow that everything I’d ever done had led to this moment, a moment when there was nothing left for me: Moor and my mother missing, Father dead, and Shami even still falling to her death when my intention from the start had been to save everyone I loved. So how was it that somehow all of this was connected to what had come before, to playing games with my sisters and brothers, to watching my parents create ever more spectacular shapes and visions in glass, to lying against my parents at night and listening to Cray the storyteller as he regaled us with tales of what had once been and what had led us to be who we were and who we would become. Nothing he had ever told me seemed to lead here, to this dark cave. And all of this left me with nothing in the present, except a future as dark as my past had been filled with sunlight. So I wondered whether this was to be the direction of my life, this movement from light to darkness, and whether this was the logical end.
 

Artie’s paw groped at my face and roused me. Over and over again he started sticking his weak paw on my face and in my mouth. At first I thought he was trying to tell me of his great hunger, but then I realized what he really wanted: He wanted the meat on his bones to feed me. And with that frightening thought the hot shimmering light disappeared, and I was back in the dark cave, enveloped in cool close air and huddling against the warm body of my dog, our stomachs crying out for food. I listened to the cries until I grew faint. Then I got up and desperately dragged Artie through the cave.
 

When I grew tired I lay on him and felt his comforting breath lift my head up and down. But as my mind wandered I suddenly realized that he had stopped breathing.
 

“No!” I cried out. I crazily stuck my own hand in his mouth and then jumped up and dragged him some more and kept dragging until I collapsed. He had lost his life. For the first time in my life I sobbed, wasting the water in my body for tears and then desperately licking my tears to retrieve the water. I decided to die here with Artie. First I would give him a proper ritual. I groped around for stones and pebbles that I formed into a circle around him.
 

I passed the “night” in the soundless dark, frightened by the tiny sounds I imagined I heard, and felt so scared of being in the open that I again craved to return to my hole. When I couldn’t fall asleep I took two stones and with them played the first simple rhythms I’d learned as a child. The rhythms lulled me as much as I could be lulled, and finally I fell asleep.
 

When I woke, I considered dragging Artie’s body back to the crevice, where at least he might have company. But it was so dark I could not be sure that I might not fall in myself. And I couldn’t part with my dog. Nor, I found, could I stop when I possessed the energy to go forward. So I dragged him with me, feeling along the wall and going along the narrow tunnel. I walked until Artie’s body began to stiffen, and I dragged him still. All this insanity seemed not dreamlike but intensely real.
 

I had got used to a sickly fear that pervaded this tunnel and realized a person could get used to anything. But once, when I woke after a nap, I saw above me a tiny prick of light. I hadn’t seen it earlier—it must have been nighttime out. Suddenly I realized that the air was a bit fresher here, and the fear I felt less acute.
 

No matter how hard I tried, however, I couldn’t find a way to climb up toward that hole. Even if I could have, I don’t know what I would have done next. It was just that the prick of light drew me to it with its beauty and promise. Reluctant though I was to leave it, I knew I mustn’t stop. I had no idea where I might escape, and I didn’t want to risk falling to fatigue or starvation if I chanced to be only a day or two from escape. Every time I lay down I stared all around me, searching for another prick of light. When I didn’t see any others I wondered whether I’d imagined the light, just as even now I sometimes imagined for a moment that here or there I saw light.
 

Slowly, I became aware of something, a thin, fine smell that wove itself through the stuffiness. The smell, which I couldn’t place, seemed ravishing in its beauty. I felt intoxicated. There was almost no time left for me now. After every interlude of sleep it had become harder and harder to rise and to move. But this new smell energized me. I followed it until I grew dizzy with its beauty. I could place it now. It was the scent of fresh air, with bits of trees, with dirt, with animals and rocks and clouds all mixed into its lovely brew. Finally it grew so strong I stumbled forward as fast as I could, dragging Artie’s corpse. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the smell, so that no other sense but that of smell guided me. When I suddenly reached my destination all my other senses were stunned by what they found. I was outside.
 

I suppose it was all nothing special, just a dry canyon with a few trees, a sputtering string of a river, and an overcast early evening sky. But I lay down and rubbed my face in the dirt and slurped at the string of a river. I put handfuls of dirt in my mouth and chewed and smelled and felt the texture of life on my tongue. I happily spit out the dirt and started to wash out my mouth in the trickle of muddy water.
 

So my face was dirty and my mouth full of muck when I met a man I thought at first might be the guide my grandfather had spoken of. But he was the opposite of a guide.
 

He was a plain smooth-faced man hovering over the bodies of my mother and Moor, both of them unconscious, maybe dead, Moor bleeding from a bandage on his back.
 

“Are they alive?” I ran over and found them both bleeding.
 

“Are they your friends?”
 

“Yes, we were together in the caves.”
 

“I happened upon them,” he said calmly. “The caves are dangerous. You shouldn’t go in them.”
 

“We were chased.”
 

“Ah.” He half smiled.
 

“How long have they been here?”
 

“How can I know? I myself have been here only a short while. I bandaged the boy, poor thing, he’s lost so much blood.” His mild gaze fell upon Artie. “I believe your dog is dead.”
 

“I know,” I said angrily. “Don’t you have any ointments or something for them?”
 

“I’m a fisherman. But I have already given them some juices that will help. You must feed them some meat.” He nodded so subtly toward Artie that I was not sure he had nodded at all.
 

Both Moor and my mother had become skeletal, and both mumbled in their sleep. I started a fire and cooked some roots and could not stop myself from looking Artie’s way. He had been the most magnificent dog that ever lived. He had not died from starvation but from a mix of despondency, hunger, and, perhaps, a desire to provide me with food. I asked forgiveness and impaled him with a branch that I suspended over my fire to cook. The smell of this food roused Moor somewhat. When my dog was cooked I chewed his meat and put part of what I had chewed into Moor’s mouth, part into my mother’s.
 

And in this way I saved my mother and my beloved from starvation.
 

They didn’t quite wake up that evening, but I could see they were improving. My new companion sat up agreeably on a rock all night, not sleeping at all so far as I could see. Whenever I attempted conversation, he answered agreeably that I was quite right.
 

I passed a night as quiet as the day and in the morning woke before sunrise. My companion had already started a fire and begun cooking some roots. As he ate he stuffed his cheeks so full they both stuck out in humps that he chewed down in quick little bites. Every so often he would rapidly spit out bits of food that apparently were hard to chew.
 

The sun rose at the horizon. I was staring at the sun, just finishing up my roots, when I heard a snore and saw the man sitting upright with his eyes closed.
 

I cleaned up the breakfast remains and waited for further improvement from Moor and my mother.

2

“Did you clean up?” was the first thing the Hathatu-me man said upon waking. “I’m very tidy myself. Of course if you didn’t want to clean up, that would be fine, too.”
 

“I cleaned up.”
 

He stood up and threw dried bugs into his mouth, a whole handful, and he spit out the shells with dazzling rapidity. I watched with amazement as the shells flew out one after the other.
 

“That’s quite a trick,” I said.
 

“Yes, it is.”
 

“How come the Formans haven’t overrun your country? At least there’s a little water here, and greenery.”
 

“Oh, we pay them their money and that satisfies them.”
 

“The Bakshami should have paid them as well.”
 

“Bakshami is no longer.”
 

“Then it’s true the hotlands have been overtaken?”
 

“So it is said.”
 

“And the people?”
 

He shrugged. I felt no more sadness, just anger, at the Formans, at these passive Hathatu-me, and at my own people. The world had changed, and they had not possessed the will even to try to protect themselves.
 

“Do you think Forma will attack Hathatu-me despite the payments?”
 

“They likely will.”
 

“And you take it so calmly?”
 

“No more calmly than your people did, I believe.”
 

“But look what happened to us!”
 

“Like you, we are not a fighting people.”
 

“But you must learn to become so if you will survive.”
 

“Perhaps we won’t survive.”
 

“But how can you accept that so easily?”
 

“No more easily than your people did.”
 

We didn’t speak for a while. Then my companion glanced up at the sun. “I must go soon.” He looked at me with the mildest curiosity. “What happened to the three of you in there?”
 

“Chased by Formans,” I said.
 

He smiled serenely, an ordinary man with a simple, almost substanceless, manner except for an ever-present serenity. “That happened to a friend of mine once. The Formans are a strange lot.”
 

“You were born in Hathatu-me?”
 

He smiled and bowed his head somewhat.
 

“The Formans say they own you.”
 

“No human has an owner.”
 

“You’re too optimistic. Many of them own and are owned.”
 

He smiled agreeably. “Perhaps you’re right after all.”
 

“If you were a slave you would know it’s so.”
 

“I shall dwell on that.”
 

“Do you not hate the Formans?”
 

“My hatred wouldn’t make much difference, that much is certain.”
 

“I’ve never met such an opinionless man,” I said.
 

“Perhaps you’re right in what you say. Of course there is always the chance that you are wrong.”
 

His mere presence began to make me want to take a nap. I fell asleep and awoke to see him gazing mildly at me as he stood ready to leave. “Your friends are recovering,” he said. He pulled me up with a gentle but firm force, and took my hands. Up above I heard a familiar whirring, and when I gazed up saw several Forman ships flying overhead.