The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

And as Dann watched him, thinking of him as a friend – why did he feel he knew this Ali? – he heard shouts and the sounds of running feet. What he saw then made him drop over the edge of the cliff, though it was steep there, because he knew these people meant danger. A large noisy crowd and they were hungry, and some wounded, with old dried blood on them, and half-healed cuts. If they knew he had food they would kill him. He could see all this from that one glance.

He did not put his head up over the edge until they had gone on.

He knew Ali was quick and clever enough to hide from them.

And what was Griot going to do with this crowd of bandits when they turned up?

He saw near him a quite large path. Down he went between slabs of dark rock that had been smoothed by water, thinking that previous descents to the Bottom Sea had taken him half a day, but the Middle Sea was deeper here, for darkness fell when there was a long way to go. He ensconced himself for the night in a shelter for travellers, hoping he would not have company, but though he slept with his knife ready there was no knock, or intruding feet, or the strong smell of an animal. He stood outside the hut door as the sun rose, seeing that this part of the Middle Sea was full of islands, some whose tops were level with and even higher than the edges of the sea. And the islands were wooded, he could see that, easily now, and there were lights on them that went out as the sunlight grew strong.

He was thinking of those two who probably still lay by the side of the track, whom he had seen wavering towards him, as if blown by the wind, hatchlings in a storm – and why should he care more about them than so many others? But he did think of them. The crows or other raptors of the wild moor would have found them by now.

He let the sun flush his stiff limbs with warmth and took the path again. Many used it. Before he reached the edge of the Bottom Sea he saw another travellers’ hut. Wood. He had become so used to reed roofs, walls, reed everything that it was pleasant to see well-honed planks and solidly encompassing roofs of wooden tiles.

It was well past midday now. The sky blazed and the sea was very blue and full of sharp little waves. Very cold water – his fingers went numb at once. On the shore was a flat place where a post stood on the water’s edge. He saw two things; that it was submerged a third of the way up, and that fish traps were tied to it. The post was to hold a boat and so he had only to wait and there would be a boat. There was a bench. He sat and looked across at the nearest island from where he could expect the boat. He could be seen from there. Probably the boatmen kept a lookout and came over when they saw someone waiting. He drowsed – down here he did not feel fearful, or the anxiety of watchfulness. He was woken by a boat scraping at the landing place. In the boat was a youth and a snow dog, which leaped out and ran up the cliff. The youth said, smiling, ‘I give them a lift, to save them a swim.’

Dann asked in Mahondi, ‘How much to take me over?’ but the youth shook his head, and Dann tried Charad and then Tundra and heard, ‘What’s your money?’

Dann had handfuls of different coinages, and the youth nodded at the Tundra coins.

He was not asking much; Dann got into the boat and they set off.

What was the name of the island? Dann asked all the necessary questions until, when he said, ‘Are you part of Tundra?’ he encountered a hostile response: Dann saw that he was up against strong local pride.

The islands saw themselves as a unit and they had fought off any attempts to possess them, though Tundra had tried.

‘They’ve given up now. Tundra’s lost its teeth,’ he said, repeating what Dann had heard from Kass. ‘They are not what they were. We hear everyone’s had enough of Tundra government.’ They were in the middle of the crossing, the sunlight burning up off the water. It was hotter down here than it ever was up on the cliffs.

‘So I believe,’ said Dann, wanting to hear more, but not what he heard then.

‘They say that the old Centre’s got a new lease on life. There’s a new master now, one of the old line. General, they call him, but he’s Prince as far as I am concerned. We like the old ways, here. If there was a bit of law and order up there again things would be easier for us.’

Dann thought of saying, ‘I was recently in the Centre and that’s just gossip,’ but did not want to define himself too early – if at all. He liked not being known, being free, himself.

They reached the shore and saw a couple of snow dogs half concealed in some trees.

‘They wait and hope that one of us’ll give them a lift. They can swim, but it’s a good bit of a swim for them, with all that hair getting wet. Some of the boatmen give them a hand. I do, but others don’t. They’re harmless. I think that they never saw humans before coming here. They’re curious about us.’ And so he chattered, while they balanced on the waves and until they landed at a little town, already lit for the night. It was a cheerful scene, and under Dann’s feet was hard dry ground and there was a smell of woodsmoke. The boatman, Durk, said that that inn over there, the Seabird, was a good one, run by his parents.

Dann knew this was advice better ignored, in a town where everyone to do with travelling was in the pay of the police, but he thought he had nothing to fear now, particularly if Tundra’s agents were not welcome. He wandered for a while about the streets, enjoying the fresh sea air, and admiring the solid comfortable buildings of wood and stone. Plenty of stone for building here: there was solid rock just below the earth surface. No houses here were going to sink into marsh.

He found himself expected at the inn and spent the evening in the common-room, listening to the talk. A pleasant crowd, of people who all knew each other. They were interested in Dann, but too polite to ask questions. They watched him, though, as he ate his supper of fish, and a kind of porridge made of a grain he did not know.

How unlike they were to the Thores, though they too were a short people, a good head shorter than Dann. The Thores were stubby, with light bones and black short straight hair. Their skin colour – could one say of skin that it was greenish? Compared with the light warm brown of these people, yes. Dann had seen on Kass’s cheekbones a sheen of green, and blueish shadows in her neck. Now he saw this, in retrospect, looking at these faces where the brown had reddish tints. And their hair – black – was all waves and curls. What a cheerful crowd they were, and living without fear. Not a weapon in the room – except for Dann’s hidden knife.

They were pleased when he asked questions, which were answered from all over the room.

There were a thousand people on this island. All the islands lived by trading fish from this well-stocked sea. They dried it, cured it in many different ways and carried it up the cliffs to sell in the towns along the shore to the east. But the wars had ended all that and fish was piling up at their warehouses. They planned to try an expedition across the moors into Tundra’s big towns, though they must expect to be careful: there was disorder now the government was weak.

They also sold fishing nets made from marsh reed, fetched down from what they called, simply, ‘up there’.

They made cloth from a variety of the reed, and every kind of basket and container, some that could hold water. One of the islands was not hilly, was flat enough for fields, and grain was grown. All had goats, which gave milk and meat and hides. They lived well, they told Dann; and feared nobody.

Dann asked if it would be easy to make a journey from island to island until he could stand under the ice cliffs of Yerrup, for he longed to see them for himself.

It was possible, was the answer, but not advisable. The ice masses were so unstable these days you never knew when they were going to crack and fall. Sometimes you could hear the ice cracking even here, so far away.

Dann saw they had no conception that their way of life would soon change, and on some islands, the lower ones, end. Yet ‘up there’ everyone knew it. The inhabitants of the lower islands would move to the higher ones, and then to the higher ones still – did they know that under the waves that surrounded them were the ruins of great cities? No, they laughed when he mentioned this and said there were all kinds of old stories about that time.

These people did not want to know. And it was not the first time, after all, that he observed this phenomenon: people whose existence was threatened and did not know it. Would not. They could not bear it.

How long before the water rose and covered this pleasantly wooded prosperous island? In the morning he walked to the shore and went a good way along it. The water was rising fast. Not far along the coast houses stood in water, some submerged.

When he mentioned them at the inn there were jests and laughter, and he heard, ‘Oh, yes, we know, but it’ll last us our time, and our children’s.’

At the inn he shared a large room that had several beds. One of them was the boatman’s, Durk, who was a son of the house. Only couples had their own bedrooms. The corresponding room, for women, had a snow dog as guardian, sleeping across the threshold.

This was so comfortable, this inn, these people, but Dann was restless and told Durk he wanted to go to the end of this long island. Durk said there was no inn there, Dann that he was used to sleeping out. Durk was uneasy, and intrigued. ‘But it will be cold,’ he said.

Dann told him he would take with him goatskin rugs, and added, ‘I’ll look after you.’

He was seeing this young man as a youth, a boy, even, but they were the same age. Dann lay in the dark, seeing stars bright through the square of the window, thought of Kass and of his snow pup, and then of the hard dangerous histories of everyone he had ever known. Down here it was – but really, another world, safe. They were safe, at least for a time. They were comfortable and safe, well fed and safe, and Dann was seeing them as children, as a childlike people. He lay awake and watched the stars move. Durk was across the room, and a couple of other local youths. Most of the beds were empty: the wars ‘up there’ were disrupting movement. Sometimes people had come to trade who had walked a whole cycle of the sun to get there. Sometimes they stayed, enticed by the island’s way of life, and the safety.

Dann lay with his hand on his knife’s hilt, and thought for the first time in his life that perhaps he was mistaken to see people who were fed and unthreatened as inferior. What was wrong with living in what he thought of as a sort of easy dream? They were happy. It was a word Dann did not have much acquaintance with. Content. They did not lock their doors. No one kept watch on any of the islands.

Dann made himself lie quietly, loosened and at ease, not clenched and wary, and thought he might as well stay down here – why not? For one thing, he had promised Griot he would return. He had promised, so he must – soon, not yet. And there was the Farm, where Mara would have her child by now, and Kira, with hers – his. It was not Kira’s child he thought of as his, though, but Mara’s. Kira might be kin, but she was certainly not his kind.

In the morning at the communal table was a woman who said she was a refugee from the war nearest to here. She had arrived down at the shore last night, waited for someone to come, and had swum over. She was in a poor way, from lack of food, but her eyes burned with the intention to survive. She was claiming asylum. But if she fed herself up a bit she would easily get a husband, he was sure.

Dann set off, with Durk, his sack full of provisions, to see the island. He could not at first understand what it was he was experiencing, a refreshment of his whole self, a provisioning, like a fine and heady food. Then he did. He had not seen ever in his life whole forests of healthy trees, but only trees standing in dust, trees dying of dryness, trees that seemed whole and well until you saw a limpness in their leaves and knew that drought was attacking their roots. And here were trees of a kind he had never seen, dark trees that spired up, their boughs made of masses of thin sharp needles, sending out a brisk aromatic scent; and light graceful trees with white trunks that shivered and shimmered in the smallest breeze. There were bushes that crept about over the rocky earth, laden with berries. Dann told Durk of what he had experienced in the drought-struck lands of southern Ifrik, and saw that he was not being believed. Durk listened to him talk, with an appreciative grin, as if he were a storyteller who had embarked on a tall tale.

When they reached the end shore, with a further island in sight, Dann lay down to sleep on a mat of the springy low bushes, and Durk said he would too, as if this were a great adventure for him. Lying side by side, Dann in his cotton jacket, Durk covered by the goatskin rug, stars closer and brighter than they ever were ‘up there’, Dann was ready to fall asleep but Durk asked him to go on talking about his adventures. And that is how Dann found how he could keep himself on this trip, when he had so little money, and no means of getting any. There was no shortage of labour here, and it was skilled labour. Fishermen whose fathers and grandfathers had voyaged for fish, travelled in their little boats everywhere in the islands. There were specialists who dried and cured the fish. Others traded it, climbing to ‘up there’. Youngsters looked after goats, and women farmed grain. Dann’s skills were not needed.

When they returned to the inn, Dann said he would tell tales of his early adventurous life, in return for his food and his bed. That evening the common-room was full. Durk had gone around spreading the news that this visitor of theirs was a storyteller.

The big room, well lit with its fish-oil lamps, was crowded, and Dann stood by the bar counter and looked around, trying to judge how they would take his tales, and wondered which they would like best. He stood frowning, the long fingers of his left hand across his mouth, as if they were censoring memories. He was not like professional storytellers, who are affable and know how to hold people’s eyes, how to pause, make a suspense, come in with surprises, spring a joke at tense moments. They saw a tall, too thin young man, his long black hair held by a leather band, standing hesitating there, and that face of his, so unlike theirs, was full of doubt. But it seemed like pain to them.

Where should he begin? If Mara had been here, she would start a long way before he could, because his memories began when he ran away from the Rock Village with the two men who treated him so badly. There were children in the room, who had been promised stories. He could not tell about some of the ways he had been mistreated to children. He began his tale with the dust drifts and dried rivers, with the bones of dead animals lying in heaps where floods had carried them earlier. He saw the children’s faces grow dubious, and then a child began crying, hushed by its mother. Dann told of how he had hidden behind a broken wall and saw carried past on the shoulders of porters wooden cages that had in them captives from a war who would be sold in the slave markets. And a child cried out and its mother took him out.

‘I see’, said Dann, smiling in a shamefaced, desperate way, ‘that my memories are not for children.’

‘Yes, I think so too,’ said another mother.

And so Dann’s memories emerged softened and some became comic. When he heard his audience laughing for the first time he felt he could laugh himself, with relief.

Then things became serious again when he said he had met travellers who said that his sister was alive in the Rock Village, and he made his way south, when everyone was running north. He evaded the places where it seemed everything was burning, even the soil, saw the gold and red of the fires flickering through the hills, and found Mara, so near death she was like an old monkey, with filthy matted lumps of hair he had to scrape off with his knife, and skin stretched tight over her bones.

And now, as he told of their journey northwards through all those dangers, they all forgot he had none of the storytellers’ skill: he was speaking slowly, as he remembered, so deep in his past that they leaned forward to catch every word.

He reached to where he pushed the sky-skimmers up and down the ridges, and had to stop, to explain sky-skimmers.

‘They came originally from the museums of the Centre,’ he said, and described them. Machines that had been able to fly once, but, grounded from lack of knowledge and the fuel they needed, became conveyances for travellers able to pay.

They saw he seemed to crouch there before them, imagining how he had pushed the machines up and down the ridges – imagining Mara there, with him.

He stopped, seeing it was late and some children were asleep.

He lay in his bed. Durk, who was across the room, said, ‘Did all that really happen to you?’

‘Yes, and much more, much worse.’

But he had realised he could not tell them some of his experiences. They would be shocked and hurt by them.

In the day he roamed around, and saw off the western shore the white skeletons of trees sticking up from the sea and around each trunk the fish nosing. They liked these dead trees. Some still green trees were half submerged, the salt water whitening their branches.

He and Durk stood there together, and Dann said, ‘The water is rising fast.’

And Durk said, ‘Oh, no, you are exaggerating.’

At night Dann told of the water dragons and the land dragons, and heard his audience laugh, and had to say, ‘But you have lizards here, don’t you? – all kinds of lizard. So why not really big ones?’

But there was always a point in his recitals when his audience was not with him. They did not believe him. Their imaginations had gone fat and soft with the comfort of their lives.

What they liked best were tales of the Mahondi house in Chelops, and the girls in their pretty coloured dresses, preparing herbs in the courtyard, and how they tended the milk beasts.

He said nothing about the horrors of the Towers of Chelops. What he remembered hurt him to think of, and yet he knew he had forgotten the really bad parts.

He said how Mara had come into the Towers to rescue him, and how he had been nursed back to health by a woman who knew about herbs and healing. They could not get enough of all that, and he never told them that this idyll of lovely living had ended in civil war and exile.

Soon he was off again, with Durk, to another island, which was like the first, with small quiet towns, and inns that were full of people in the evenings. Durk said this ought to be a short visit, because he wanted to get married. He and his girl had been promised their room. The custom was that the new couple was accompanied after a celebration to their room, which was kept decorated with boughs and flowers for a full month. Then, if either wished to end it, there was no criticism or opprobrium, but if they stayed together they were considered bound and there were penalties for frivolous or lightly considered severance. But really Durk seemed content enough to linger on this island, where he had not been before. It was large, with a stream that provided sport and fishing: otherwise there were no novelties. All the islands were the same, Durk said, as far as he knew. Why should they be any different? He had not remarked, it seemed, that the islands being all the same suggested a long, stable history. When Dann pointed this out he was struck by it and said, yes, he supposed this must be so. He was so incurious, Dann was often impatient. Nothing in these beautiful islands was ever questioned. When he asked about an island’s history, the reply was vague: ‘We have always been here.’ What does that mean, always, Dann asked, at first, but then did not bother.

He, too, liked this island and then Durk pointed out that they had been here so long people were asking if they intended to make their home there. And Dann’s tales in the evenings at the inns were becoming repetitious. They moved on, and then again, from island to island, always moving nearer to the north shore’s ice cliffs. Durk did make rueful jokes about his girl – that she would have found another man by now. He stayed with Dann because, as he said, ‘You make me think, Dann.’ And on the last island there was plenty to make Dann think too.

In the inn there on the walls of the common-room were two maps, just as there had been in Chelops. But these two were of when the Middle Sea had been full of water, and of how it was now. Goatskins had been stitched together and stretched. On the first were islands, big ones, which were the tops of those that could be seen now, mountains reaching high up, to the level of the cliffs. Sticking out into the sea from the north shore were promontories and fringes of land. One was long and thin, like a leg. The person who had made this map ‘long, long ago’ had drawn little boats balancing on steep waves. At one end to the west were the Rocky Gates, but they stood apart, with sea between. On the other end, to the east, was the word ‘Unknown’. There were towns indicated all around this sea.

The other map was of the Middle Sea, as it had been before the Ice began to melt. Cities crowded all over the bottom – and they were here now, far down under these new waves. So these people did know that there had been cities – but when asked, some said that the artist must have had a fine imagination. Who was he, she – who were they? The maps were skilful, much finer than those back in Chelops, which had been crude. (And where were those maps now, after fire and fighting? Did they still survive, and did the new people see them and understand what they said?)

You had to have an eye to read a map – as Dann discovered when he found that Durk could not make sense of them. Dann stood there, with Durk, using a clean stick to show how this ragged shape was that island – ‘Over there – do you see?’ – this black charcoal line the shore. Durk was reduced to sighing wondering incoherence, standing there, watching Dann’s patient indicator. And he was not the only one. Others in the common-room, seeing them there, came to stand and marvel at the maps they had known all their lives but never understood, maps that had not been used to teach children. Those that could read them had not instructed those who could not. Here was this incuriosity again, that made Dann uneasy.

‘See here’ – and his stick pointed at where they were now, the group of islands scattered across the sea, from the southern shore to near the northern shore. ‘This is where we are now. Once these were just little bumps at the bottom of the dry Middle Sea.’ And will be again, he stopped himself saying, for this kind of thing was making people fear him.

Already his reputation as a know-all and a show-off was growing. His tales about his life – not everyone believed them, though they laughed and applauded.

As for Dann, his mind was hurt by the enormity of it all. Yes, he knew the Middle Sea had been full and fresh, and ships went everywhere over it, and now it was nearly empty; yes, he had joked with Mara about the ‘thousands’ and the ‘millions’ that it was not really possible for their minds to grasp, let alone hold. But now, standing on land protruding from the Bottom Sea that had once been deep under it, when the seabirds cried over the waves, and disappeared, that was how he felt: who was Dann? – standing here where …

Once this enormous gash in the earth’s surface had been filled with water. So, it had boiled away in some frenzy of heat, or it had frozen into a great pit of snow and then some unimaginable wind storm had carried the snow away? All at once? Surely, over – here he went again – thousands of years.

A sea, sparkling and lively, like the one he looked at now through the windows of the inn, but high above his head, at the level of the top of the cliffs where he had walked and would walk again and then – gone, gone, and his mind felt hurt, or something was hurting, and – he saw Durk, frowning up at the maps and turning a doubtful face to him. ‘Tell me again, Dann, it’s so hard to take in, isn’t it?’

Then, seeing his interest in the maps, the inn’s proprietress, the young woman, Marianthe, showed Dann something he did not understand, at first. Standing against a wall in the common-room was a large slab of white rock, about the thickness of half his hand, very heavy, covered on one side in a story. There were men, of a kind Dann had never seen, smiling faces with pointed curling beards, and expressions of crafty cleverness. They wore garments held with metal clasps, much worked. The women had elaborate black curls framing the same crafty smiling faces, and their garments were twisted and folded, and one breast was bare. They wore necklaces and bracelets, and ornaments in their hair. To look at them was to know how very far these people were above anybody that lived now – as far as he knew – and he had after all seen many different people. Perhaps it was these people who had made all the things in the Centre no one knew now how to use? Who were they? – he asked Marianthe, who said, ‘It was a long time ago.’ Neither did anyone know where the white slab had come from. That it had been a long time in the water could be seen; the sharp edges of the carved figures had been dulled. So it had been pulled up out of the water, at some time, somewhere, or fallen over the cliff with the melting ice.

Marianthe was as intrigued by the people on the slab as Dann was. And looking at her, it was at once evident how fascinated she was. She was tall, she was slim, she had black hair in curls around her face, for she modelled herself on the women carved on the slab. She was paler than anybody Dann had seen, who was not an Alb. And her face, though not fine and subtle like the smiling slab women, did have a look of them. She had a long, thin, always smiling mouth and long, narrow, observing eyes. She was the widow of a seaman drowned not long ago in a storm. She did not seem oppressed by this fatality, but laughed and made fun with her customers, who were mostly seamen, for this island was the base of the main fishing fleet. And she liked Dann, giving him not only his food and shelter but herself, when she had heard his tales of ‘up there’. She laughed at him, knew that he was making it all up, but said her husband had liked a good tale and told them well. Dann was telling them well by now, with so much practice.

Durk meanwhile went out with the fishing fleet. He was not jealous, but said that now Dann had found this easy berth, he should stay in it.

Dann was tempted to do just that. This woman was quick and clever, like Kira, but not unkind; seductive, like Kira, but did not use her power. How could he do better than stay with this prize of a woman, down here on the islands of the Bottom Sea, with the aromatic forests, and where it was hard rock underfoot, never marshy and sodden. But he had promised Griot – hadn’t he? Well, who was Griot that Dann had to honour a promise he felt had been pressured out of him? But Griot was waiting for him. And at the Farm Mara did too – although she did slide into another man’s arms every night to sleep.

‘Stay with me, Dann,’ coaxed Marianthe, winding her long limbs around him.

‘I can’t,’ he conscientiously replied. ‘There are people waiting for me to come back.’

‘Who, who, Dann? Are you married? Who is she?’

‘No, I am not married,’ said Dann – but could not bring himself to say, ‘I have a child – you see, there’s a child,’ which would have settled it.

To say that would have acknowledged Kira who, with every day, seemed to Dann more of a lump of showy charms displayed like a visual equivalent of ‘Look at me! Look at me!’. Well, he was very young when he first fell for Kira, he tried to excuse himself and knew he could not then have imagined a woman as delightful, as candid, as subtly clever as Marianthe. Whom he would have to leave … yes, he must … yes, soon … but not yet.

First, he wanted to see the ice cliffs that so haunted his mind and called to him. This island was the last inhabited one. Within sight, on the horizon, was another, a half-day’s rowing away, uninhabited, though it had been once, and abandoned because of the cracking and roaring of the falling ice. From there, he was sure, he could get close enough to see what he so acutely imagined. No one wanted to accompany him: they thought he was mad. Durk, though reluctantly, said he would go too. Young men taunted them for being foolhardy, a little envious perhaps, since none of them had thought of going. Dann and Durk went quietly about preparations, and then four others said they would go. Durk, who had actually been planning to use his little boat, was now glad to leave it in favour of a bigger one that needed several rowers. ‘But we need six oarsmen,’ protested the four brave ones and Dann said that he had earned his living once as a boatman.

Marianthe’s eyes never left Dann that last evening, and in bed she held him and said, loudly, to reach the ears of some god of the islands, that she was being expected to sacrifice another man to the sea. And she wept and kissed the scars on Dann’s body.

It was a clear morning when they left, six strong young men in the fishing boat, that had its nets and pots removed. Instead there was food and piles of goat rugs. They rowed all morning, to the north, to the island which as it neared showed itself standing clear of the waves, well-wooded and, in the sunlight, inviting. They pulled the boat up on a beach and went into the interior where at once they found an abandoned town that was already falling down. They put their gear into a house that had shutters that could be fixed across the windows, and a door that could be barred. They had glimpsed on the edge of the wood a snow dog, standing watching them – and then another. It was a pack, which had decided to stay here on this island and not make the effort to cross. And indeed, it was hard to see how the others had made the trip; it would be a dangerous swim for any snow dog, no matter how strong.