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Map v
Author's Note vii
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The scene that the child, then the girl, then the... 1
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On the low hill overlooking the village was a tall... 55
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It was almost dark in the room, because the door... 64
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The two stood at the door and looked into the... 82
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She walked away from the house, and never in her... 115
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Now they began walking down a steep slope of chalky. 134
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Now Mara spent her days in the fields with Meryx... 153
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Mara set off for the centre of Chelops watched by... 176
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In the ru
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This wide river did not have the force of its. 229
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Most evenings Shabis was not there; on reco
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Mara had not seen much more than what immediately... 262
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At first they marched through grasslands broken by clumps of. 271
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Then, unexpectedly, since no one had believed the rumours, a… 277
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Mara and Da
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It was past midnight when the girl gasped, "Here it... 290
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In the street a couple of men strode fast towards. 300
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Mara was falling asleep, and she was thinking, not of. 325
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On this last night before the river, Daulis said they. 356
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It was only just light. They were walking east, returning... 386
About the Author
One day last autumn my son Peter Lessing came in to say that he had just been listening, on the radio, to a tale about an orphaned brother and sister who had all kinds of adventures, suffered a hundred vicissitudes, and ended up living happily ever after. This was the oldest story in Europe. "Why don't you write something like that?" he suggested. "Oddly enough," I replied, "that is exactly what I am writing and I have nearly finished it."
This kind of thing happens in families, but perhaps not so often in laboratories.
Mara and Da
It is set in the future, in Africa, called Ifrik because of how often we may hear how the short a becomes a short i.
An Ice Age covers all the northern hemisphere.
I ca
Mara and Da
Perhaps it is the Neanderthals who will turn out to have been our truest ancestors, having bequeathed to us our amazing diversity, our ability to live in any clime or condition and, above all, our endurance. I like to imagine them, with their great experience of ice, posting a watch for the advancing white mountains.
April 1998
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The scene that the child, then the girl, then the young woman tried so hard to remember was clear enough in its begi
She was alone in the big, bare rock room. It was water she was looking for — surely there must be water somewhere? But the room was empty. In the middle of it was a square made of the rock blocks, which she supposed must be a table; but there was nothing on it except a candle stuck in its grease, and burning low... it would soon go out. By now she was thinking, But where is he, where is my little brother? He, too, had been rushed through the dark. She had called out to him, right at the begi
She was in a fever, hot and dry over her whole body, but it was hard to distinguish the discomfort of this from her anxiety over her brother.
She went to the place in the wall where she had been thrust in, and tried to push a rock that was a door to one side. It moved in a groove, and was only another slab of rock; but just as she was giving up, because it was too heavy for her, it slid aside, and her brother rushed at her with a great howl that made her suddenly cold with terror and her hair prickle. He flung himself at her, and her arms went around him while she was looking at the doorway, where a man was mouthing at her and pointing to the child, Quiet, quiet. In her turn she put her hand over his open, howling mouth and felt his teeth in her palm. She did not cry out or pull away, but staggered back against a wall to support his weight; and she put her arms tight around him, whispering, "Hush, shhh, you must be quiet." And then, using a threat that frightened her too, "Quiet, or that bad man will come." And he at once went quiet, and trembled as he clutched her. The man who had brought in the little boy had not gone away. He was whispering with someone out in the darkness. And then this someone came in, and she almost screamed, for she thought this was the bad man she had threatened her brother with; but then she saw that no, this man was not the same but only looked like him. She had in fact begun to scream, but slammed her own free hand across her mouth, the hand that was not pressing her brother's head into her chest. "I thought you were... that you were." she stammered; and he said, "No, that was my brother, Garth." He was wearing the same clothes as the other one, a black tunic, with red on it, and he was already stripping it off. Now he was naked, as she had seen her father and his brothers, but on ceremonial occasions, when they were decorated with all kinds of bracelets and pendants and anklets, in gold, so that they did not seem naked. But this man was as tired and dusty as she and her brother were; and on his back, as he turned it to put on the other tunic he had with him, were slashes from whips, weals where the blood was oozing even now, though some had dried. He pulled over his head a brown tunic, like a long sack, and she again nearly cried out, for this was what the Rock People wore. He stood in front of her, belting this garment with the same brown stuff, and looking hard at her and then at the little boy, who chose this 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."