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She had to move quickly back, for now there were trees too: not the green, fresh trees that had tossed and bounded on the surface of other floods but the dead, white, fragmented trees of the drought. It was dangerous to be in the water or even too close. She stood back and waited for the water to carry the bones and trees past her. Then she saw, farther down, a big tree had stuck itself in a bank, and another came to rest against it; and behind this barrier were piling bones, loads of bones — a mass, a multitude — and she remembered how, long ago, she had seen the bones spilling out from under the bank on the big river she had come through with the two rescuers she had never seen again, or heard of. "Remember," the man had said to her, "remember where this is." But she had never been back to see if the bones were there or had been washed away again. Yet that place was no farther away than the short walk it had needed for the two strangers and Da
In the dark, hot room Daima moaned, and her breath was hot and heavy. Mara took down the shutter and opened the door a little, and gave Daima a drink, and said it had rained up-country and there had been a small flash flood. But Daima was too ill to care now, and Mara washed her all over, slowly, for a long time, so the water could sink into that drying, cracking skin; and she rubbed cloths over her hair. And made her drink, again and again.
When the morning came, Mara would go up to the waterholes again, and perhaps over the next ridge to the river, to fill the cans and bring them back, to get more water into the cistern that was in the house, though no longer locked up, since there was no one to steal it. She would make the journey again and again till the cistern was full — but then Mara thought, What for? Daima will soon die and there will be nothing here to keep me. Mara was awake all night, standing at the door, looking into the dark and at the sky, where all the stars were out, washed clean and glittering. The very moment the light greyed she took up cans and shut the door tight, and went on, the only moving thing in that hot landscape, up the ridge to its top, and stopped to see what she could see. The flood had gone, leaving a film over everything, greying the white bones heaped up against the dead branching trees. The waterholes were filled, and around every one were scorpions, and beetles and spiders. Where had they been hiding all this time? She had not seen anything but scorpions for a long time. The stretch of sand where she had rolled yesterday was there again, a white glisten over a dark dampness. On the dead white trees along the watercourse the branches seemed clotted with dark crusts or bumps. Insects again, all kinds of them. Had they drunk what they needed and fled up the trees to get away from the scorpions?
Mara was hungry. Now she had drunk enough so that her whole body was sated, and the many aches and sorenesses were not one pain all over her body but could be felt separately — her stomach was shouting, was screaming, at her that she must eat, she must... But what?
Mara went on up the second ridge, and when she reached the top saw more or less what she had expected. There was a ru
The mud the water had carried down had sunk down to the bottom of the pools. She could see clear down through the water. Her ears were ringing. The singing beetles were there on the branches. She had not heard them for. She could not remember when she had heard them last. Another sound... surely not... it was not possible... Yes, there was a croaking from the edge of a pool. Some toad or frog had lived through the dry years under the hard, dry mud, and now, the water having softened the mud, the creature had climbed up through it and there it was, sitting on a stone. There were several. When the water went down — and it was going down fast — goodbye, that would be the end of them. The end, too, of the singing beetles. There would be silence again.
Mara stripped off the brown tunic and knelt by a pool. Slowly she sank into it, and rolled in it and lay there absorbing water; and then, when that pool was muddy, went to another pool and squatted, looking in. She could see herself, so thin, only bones with skin stretched over them. Her eyes were deep in her face. It was her hair — those greasy, solid clumps — that she hated. She could hardly bear to touch them. She was staring down at herself there in the water, and saw that next to her was someone else. For a moment she thought her reflection was doubled, but she raised her head and saw on the other side of the pool a youth, who was staring at her. Deliberately, he cupped his hands, dipped them in the water, and drank, keeping his gaze on her. He was naked. She saw there between his legs what Daima had told her she must be afraid of: the two young, round balls in their little sac, and the long thick tube over them — nothing like the wrinkled old lumps Mara had seen so often when the Rock People bathed. This youth was not as thin as she was. There was flesh on him. It had been a long time since she had seen skin fit so nicely over the bones of a face, or arms and legs that had a smooth softness to them. There was a quickness and lightness about him as he squatted there, balancing on his heels and letting the water trickle through his fingers. She was thinking, I ought to be afraid of him. She was thinking, He isn't one of the Rock People. And then she knew it was Da