Mara and Dann

This was not a busy time on the farm. The harvest had been taken in, the fields replanted, and the animals were inside good fences and needed only to be fed and milked. Mara undertook this work, and taught Leta how to do it.

The big house, spreading over a hill where you could hear the sea booming or sighing all day, all night, was like the end of tales she had seen in an ancient book in the Centre: "And so we all lived happily ever after." But Mara's heart, which these days in no way resembled a cold stone, told her otherwise.

One night she was lying in Shabis's arms, listening to the sea, when she heard what she thought were the complaining voices of sea birds, but then knew it was Kira's voice, shouting at Dann.

Mara quietly got up, and went into the room where they so often all sat about, talking, and as she did so Dann came in from the other side. He was white, and angry. He flung himself down on floor cushions, hands behind his head, and Mara sat by him, and took his hand, which gripped hers then fell away.

"She doesn't love me," he said, and Mara said nothing. Then he turned to her, put his arms around her and said, "Mara, why can't we be together? We ought to be together... But now you've got Shabis." And his arms seemed to go cold, and withdrew.

Mara said, "It's going to be hard for both of us, loving other people."

"I haven't noticed you have any difficulty loving Shabis."

She sat by Dann, close, in the dark room where a sky full of stars showed through a big square window, with the so familiar feel of him, the smell of him, her little brother, her companion through so much; and she knew that she loved Shabis but she always would love Dann more and nothing could change that.

"Who made these laws in the first place?"

She said, "I told you, Nature made them. I saw it all in the Centre." "The Centre, the Centre — suppose I don't care about children and posterity?"

Mara sat silent, allowing herself to think of the happiness of loving Dann; and then this dream dissolved with the coldest of reminders, because from nowhere, or from deep inside her, came the words, "You'd kill me, Dann, if we loved each other. It would be so — violent."

"Why do you say that?"

She could only say, "I just think something like that would happen." He stroked her face, "I love you so much, Mara."

"And I you."

"Am I really such a violent person?"

"Yes. And I am too. We have been made violent. And if we fought — it wouldn't be with words." "You are sure of that, Mara?" "I'm not sure of anything."

He began playing with her hair, long black hair, and she stroked his, so like hers. She put her arm under his head and her arm over his shoulders. So they reclined beside each other, as they had so often, and then she felt his hand fall, slide down her shoulder, and to his side. His eyes were shut; he had gone to sleep.

She sat holding him for a long time, and then saw a light move on the floor, looked up and Shabis was there, with a lamp which he set in a corner on the floor. He settled himself opposite them. He nodded to Mara: It's all right.

The big room was a different place, with the lamp spreading around it an intimate circle of yellow light. The square of starlit night in the wall, the sound of the sea, seemed to have retreated. A wildness had gone. Dann sighed, but it was more like a moan. Mara saw that his face was stained with tears, and then that Shabis had opened his arms to her and was waiting. After a moment — she could do nothing else — she gently slid away from Dann, went to Shabis, and was beside him as she had been by Dann.

"Mara," he said softly, "there isn't anything you can do."

Soon she fell asleep, inside the comfort of his arms. And then Shabis, too, fell asleep.

It was cold. Dann started up, staring around him as he usually did on waking, for a possible enemy. He saw he was safe, and then that Mara was asleep in Shabis's arms.

He stood looking down at them. Mara seemed to shrink and shiver as through the window came a cold blast from the stars. He took a blanket and laid it gently over his sister. He hesitated, frowned, and spread it to cover Shabis as well. He went out, not into the room he shared with Kira, but into the night and down to the sea, the dogs at his heels.

Next morning at breakfast he announced that all this hanging about was driving him mad. He wanted to see for himself how the water from the Western Sea was splashing through the Rocky Gates into the Middle Sea, and then go north until he stood right under the ice mountains to find out if it was true they were melting. He wanted to walk down the dry side of the Middle Sea until he reached the water at the bottom and then walk all around the water line till he got back to where he started. He wanted to raid the Centre for things they could use here on the farm.

These excursions were vetoed because the farm work would soon be starting. Then Leta suggested that when the weather was better he should go and fetch Donna, whom they had agreed would be invited to live here. Daulis said it would not be dangerous, if Dann travelled at night and kept well clear of the Centre.

They could all see that Dann was on the point of demanding Mara should go with him, but he stopped himself.

"Five Mahondis and two Albs," said Kira. "A new kind of Kin."

"You are going to like Donna," said Daulis.

"I didn't say I wouldn't. I like Leta, don't I?"

"Do you?" said Leta, laughing.

Mara said, "I think quite soon there won't be any Mahondis. I saw that in the Centre. Tribes — different kinds of people — they just die out." "Soon?" said Kira.

"Well," said Mara laughing, "a hundred years."

"Not thousands, then?"

Mara was teased by them because thousands appeared in her talk as often as The Centre.

"I don't want to wait until the weather is better," said Dann. "Why not now? And there's another thing: we are always talking about the next season, the next year. Suddenly, I'm a farmer. Being a soldier suited me better."

Daulis said gently, you could say coaxingly, smiling at Dann — the others joked that if Shabis was Dann's father, then Daulis was his big brother — "I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't fighting to be done one of these days, General Dann."

"I agree," said Shabis.

"Well, Daulis, well General Shabis, defending a farm is not the same thing as defending a country."

"Perhaps it will feel the same when you've worked on it and made it your own," said Mara, intending to sound calm, and calming. She knew the others were anxious about Dann, his restlessness, his discontent. She felt differently. Here in this place, this one place, were two men, two Ma-hondis. Two men had haunted Dann all his life, the good one and the bad one, sometimes merging into one, always a threat. These two men, Daulis and Shabis, were good men, had absorbed that past, and Dann was for the first time in his life feeling safe. Besides, a very bad man lay dead on the mountain, and Dann had killed him, as long ago he said he would. Or believed that he had killed him, at least most of the time. He felt safe: and that is why he permitted himself petulance and complaint. Probably this was what it was like being a parent, knowing why a child was like this or that, because of some event or incident, even a little thing, that the child had forgotten; but you couldn't say to the child, who was growing up to be a person, doing his best to forget the bad things, "This is why you do this," "I know why you do that."

Kira said, "And what about me when Dann goes off?"

"It'll give you a rest from my impossible behaviour."

"You mustn't go for long, because there's going to be a lot of work, as I know, from Chelops. But we had slaves there to help."

Here Dann and Mara protested, "But Kira, we were slaves too," and, "You were a slave, Kira."

"What? Nonsense." And she went on protesting. She had decided to remember, as her truth, that she had had slaves to do her bidding — true to a point — and that she had not been one.

Mara insisted, "We were the Hadrons' slaves."

"Then how was it we lived so well and had everything we wanted? How was it we ran everything?"

"Did you run everything for the Hadrons?" Shabis asked.

"Most things. But we were their slaves. They had got so fat and lazy and disgusting." And now Mara cried out, remembering, "We must not let ourselves get like that, it frightens me even thinking about it."

"Better slaves than be like Hadrons," said Dann.

"I don't see what's wrong with having slaves," said Kira, "not if you treat them well."

"We aren't going to have slaves," said Dann.

"Then there'll be a lot of work, even for seven people."

There was another little scene, equally suggestive of the possible developments in the lives of our travellers.

After a week of storms, of crashing and roaring seas, the sun shone and the sea lay quiet. For the first time in days they were all on the verandah, stretching themselves in the warmth. The two big dogs were there too, asleep, the sun hot on their fur. They were so peaceful there, these great animals, so harmless, just as if, at nights, their growls, or a sudden outbreak of barks at some threat they saw or heard, did not often alert the nerves of the people in the house, so that they got up and stood at a window to see the dangerous beasts outlined black against the sea or sky, staring out, motionless, watching.

On the warm brick of a pillar were two little lizards, bright green, with blue heads and yellow eyes.

"Oh they're so pretty," said Kira. "I do love them so."

Mara and Dann grimaced at each other, and Kira saw it and said, "More songs without words. What is it this time, do tell us?"

"We told you about the big lizards," said Dann. "And anyway, I'm getting sick of it. We've been sitting here day after day talking about what we've done. I'd rather talk about the future."

"Good," said Shabis, "because we really must have a serious talk about our plans for the season after next. We need to allocate work."

"Well don't allocate any to me," said Kira. "I think I'm pregnant."

"Oh thanks for telling me," said Dann. "Well, congratulations."

"I was going to wait a day or so to be sure, but this seemed to be a good time." And she was genuinely surprised that he was hurt. "Oh, Dann, you're so touchy."

"I think I might be pregnant," said Mara.

"I suppose you did bother to tell Shabis," said Dann.

Leta said, "I'm not pregnant, but whores don't get pregnant so easily."

When she struck this note, all of them criticised her, as now. "Oh Leta, do stop it." "Leta, you know you must forget all that." And, from Daulis, "Please, Leta, don't."

"Anyway," said Kira, with the casual honesty that was the nicest thing about her, "I wouldn't have got anywhere without men. But I'm not going to call myself a whore."

"Could we just stop talking about the past?" said Dann.

"Very well," said Shabis. "You start, Dann. What kind of work do you think you'd be good at, on the farm?"

Dann ignored him, looked straight at his sister, and said, "Mara, tell me honestly, no, truthfully, the real truth: when you wake up in the morning, isn't it the first thing you think of — how far you're going to go today, one foot after another, another little bit of the way up Ifrik? And the two of us together? Even if the thing you think about after that is Shabis?"

Mara took her time, smiling at him, eyes full of tears. "Yes," she said, "yes, it's true, but."

"I just wanted to hear you say it," said Dann.