by Tanith Lee
Never before had I been this side of them.
My companion had sat down. He said, easily, lightly, ‘Did you bring anything to eat, Claidi?’
Flustered, I produced the snacks Jizania suggested I filch from the Maids’ Hall kitchens, and set them before Nemian. He didn’t seem greatly impressed, but he ate them.
Then he lay back on the ground and I realized he was going to sleep again.
All this time, I’d thought perhaps going to sleep in front of us all in the Debating Hall had been an act, a sort of ploy to seem harmless. But now I think he really can just go to sleep at will, and he does.
He’s asleep now. I put out the candle because I was nervous of being spotted – from the walls – from the Waste. But it doesn’t look like the Waste here.
I watched him a while, but that seemed rude. He is very handsome. And – a stranger.
In the end I lit the candle again, what was left of it, and wrote this. I’m bewildered really. I don’t know where I am. Literally. Also, he looks wonderful, but I don’t know him at all. It’s all unknown. And the future. Even myself, now.
HELL?
Next day, I saw the Waste. That was simple enough. The sun rose in front of me, red-orange, hitting my eyes and the rocks behind me. The river burned red. Some birds were calling, in a harsh different way. Nemian was still sleeping, like an enchanted prince in one of the library books of the House.
Stiff and chilled, I got up, and walked towards the river, and in a little while I walked along beside it, until the land curved upward to the sun.
As I climbed this slope, I saw a shimmer on the air below the sun’s disc. And when I got to the hill’s top, I realized the shimmer to be other hills, far off. They were a parched whitish colour. To my right the river coiled away through the hillside and vanished – was gone. Just a steaminess left behind.
Between this area, and the far off, pale and dry-looking hills, was a huge and terrible nothing. I mean, obviously something was there. But the something was nothing. A stretch of land – or sand – or dust – with vague shadows in it; and tilted bits the sun was still catching, but no actual shapes. Like a tree, a shrub, certainly nothing like a building. Nothing I could recognize.
This seemed to go on for miles and miles, so much further than the Garden land about the House.
I looked back then, the way the exiles sometimes do in the paintings in the Black Marble Corridor.
Dawn bloomed honey and rose against the high walls I had left for ever. Birds were flying over them. It looked safe and gentle and beautiful. But it was a dream, and I’d woken up.
I looked out at the Waste again. I swallowed.
We ate the last of the snacks. There wasn’t much. Nemian had had most of it the night before.
He said, uncaringly, ‘We should have got further than this, but then, they won’t be eager to pursue us. They won’t bother, probably. Not out here.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll miss the balloon. But they wrecked it. Then again, I’d have needed ballooneers to get the thing going.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I said. I didn’t understand a word about the balloon.
‘I’m no engineer,’ said Nemian, seeming pleased he wasn’t. ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said, ‘always having everything done for you by your servants. We’ll be a fine pair. I hope you’ll be able to manage, Claidi.’
‘Oh, er – I’ll try.’
‘It isn’t going to be a bed of roses, on foot. And I suppose the only exercise you’ve ever had is dancing, or smacking your pet dog.’
My mouth fell open. This seems to happen a lot now. There are lots of things for it to happen over.
‘But I’ve worked all my life,’ I said flatly.
Nemian laughed. ‘At your poetry,’ he said, ‘at working out a riddle. Mmn.’
‘No,’ I yapped, ‘scrubbing floors, running errands, hand-washing linen, grinding face-powder, making—’
He was laughing. Glamorously, of course. His hair in the sun—
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s pretend you have.’
We went down to the river to fill the flask I’d brought, with clean if rather murky unfiltered water, doubtless with hippo droppings in it.
My mind was rolling about over what he’d said. Apparently Nemian thought I’d been a REAL princess in the House. I was royal, so I’d lived like royalty.
All this while, the walls of the House and the Garden were only about half a mile away, and I became more and more nervous that Guards would march out and arrest us. But no one came. Of course, they wouldn’t. However near, we were in the Waste, Hell-on-earth, lost and unreachable.
In the end we set out, up the hill again. At the top, Nemian gazed and sighed. He flicked a look at me.
‘If you get tired, Claidi, I’m not going to carry you.’
This was upsetting. Who precisely had rescued him? But I kept quiet now. I was used to keeping quiet before my betters.
On the down slope he spoke again, and used that Waste word: ‘For God’s sake, I never should have had to put up with this.’
After that we marched in silence, Nemian a little ahead of me.
When we reached the plain – if it was – the ground was like screwed-up parchment, sprinkled with powder.
Dusts rose from our footfalls as we walked. We coughed, and then the dust seemed to settle in our throats. We got used to it.
The sun was higher. Far off, the blistered ghosts of the hills. The House walls had disappeared. I’ll never see them again.
It was hot. Already.
I have become so used to holding anger at unfairness inside.
And then, well I’ve told you, I’m in love with him.
And also, here we were, and he seemed to know the way. (Did he?) I knew nothing.
But that first day, it was murder.
In my sack, now tied to my shoulders, the way wrong-doers carry their crimes in the House pictures, bounced this book. I hadn’t the heart to write in it, and anyway had no chance, and then was too worn out.
He’d been right. I might be tougher than he reckoned, but I’d never had to do anything like this.
The ground was so hard. That sounds stupid. But it was as if, every time you took a step, the ground whacked your feet, and the jolt shot right up your back. The sun thumped down on your head from the other direction.
The landscape was featureless, as it had seemed to be from the hill. There were a few nasty-looking rocks. (They did look nasty, like bad things changed into rocks that might suddenly turn back.)
I saw a lizard. It was pink with a black wiggle on its spine. Nemian never noticed, or he was just used to such sights.
There were some birds in the sky, too, big black ragged things. They seemed interested in us, but then veered away.
We had a rest by a particularly bad-tempered-looking rock at noon. We drank some water, and Nemian went to sleep.
I don’t often cry. It doesn’t do much good. But I felt rather like it. And then I thought of my parents having to make just this appalling trek. I hoped and hoped they’d succeeded, and got to somewhere, because presumably there was somewhere to get to—
If I hoped they’d done it, I must too. I wished, childishly, Nemian had been nicer to me. I wished, instead of saying he wouldn’t carry me (as if I’d have asked) he’d have said, ‘Claidi, you’ve saved my life. We’ll see this through. I’ll help you.’
But I gazed at his face, and once he had a dream or something and he stirred and frowned and shook his head on the pillow of his rolled-up coat. I leaned over him and whispered, as I used to with Daisy when she had worrying dreams, ‘It’s all right. Yes, it’ll be fine.’
I hope Daisy is. And Pattoo, and the others. I’ll never know, will I.
That day truly was awful. The land never seemed to alter. The far hills got no nearer.
The sun went over and behind us. At last a glimmering, gold-stitched sunset, with birds arrowing like the stitching needles, hundreds of them it seemed.
Then thankful coolness with the dusk, which quickly turned chilly.
We’d reached a weird place by then. Distance had hidden it that morning, or the slope of the land. There was a small pool in rocks, with a waterfall, quite elegant, the sort of thing they make in the Garden. But this pool was a dull ancient green, and the waterfall was the same colour.
‘How foul,’ said Nemian. ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch that water. It’s undrinkable. Lethal.’
I was thirsty, and starving hungry. Sometimes I’d been made to miss meals (like Daisy) but never all of them for a whole day.
We sat down near the pool. The fall made a soothing noise that somehow stopped being soothing, thinking of the poison. This was just the sort of filthy thing they’d always told me was in the Waste.
However, Nemian took a narrow enamelled box out of a pocket. Undoing the box, he offered it to me. There were little sugary stems in the box.
‘Take one,’ he said. ‘It has all the nourishment you’d get from a roast chicken with vegetables. Or so they always say.’ I did take one, cautiously. He did too. He ate it quickly and leaned back on the rock. ‘Not as interesting, definitely, as roast chicken. Or do you think it is?’
I crunched the little stem. It tasted spicy and sweet, like one of Jade Leaf’s candies. But once it was down, I stopped feeling hungry. And I wasn’t tired in quite the same dragging way.
We shared the last water.
‘I’m sorry, Claidi,’ said Nemian, as the blackening sky filled with whitening stars. ‘I’m not, right now, marvellous company. I’m angry at what’s happened – but then, I’m also glad, because I’ve met you. That was something – almost miraculous. You’re—’ he faltered and so did my pulse. ‘You’re a wonder, Claidi. Please forgive me for being such a dupp.’
I blinked. What was a dupp? Never mind. I was warmer. How bright the stars. He didn’t loathe or regret me.
I fell asleep listening to the poison pool, and dreamed I fell in, but Nemian rescued me. The sort of dream it’s lovely to have and embarrassing to tell. You know.
Next day, everything changed.
STORMY WEATHER
Sometime I must have half woken. The stars were bright red. I sensibly thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.
When I woke again, it was daylight.
Only, not really.
Nemian was shaking me. One should never wake anyone like that, unless it’s a matter of life and death. But I suppose this was, in fact.
Dust storms had come over the House, but mostly by then blown-out, repelled also by the changed atmosphere, the different climate-in-little of the Garden. They’d never been anything like this.
Slabs of air were tumbling on me like walls. They were marigold-colour or blood-red, and in between a shifting, spinning greyishness.
Spirals whirled. The light flashed off and on, then was gone, smothered in redness, then broke again like lightning.
You couldn’t breathe, or it felt as if you couldn’t. I’d put on an out-of-fashion dress for the escape, with a normal skirt. It had a sash too, which now I found Nemian had pulled off and was tying over my nose and mouth. He had done something similar for himself.
But our eyes – how the dust and sand particles stung. And there were spiteful bits of grit.
We crawled among the rocks, trying to find some sort of shelter, but the water was also splashing out from the fall and the pool as the winds stirred them, and Nemian bellowed that we mustn’t let this poisonous fluid even touch us. Then somehow we were outside the rocks and couldn’t, in the chaos, find them again.
The noise of the dust winds was fearsome. It sounded like something truly terrible, without pity or thought – which it was.
I’d grabbed my little sack – a reflex.
We staggered about, and Nemian grasped my other hand. I find it reassuring to report that, in this situation, I wasn’t thrilled when he did that.
He bawled at me we mustn’t become separated.
Heads bowed, we tried to push forward. The dust-winds slapped and punched us. Apparently, so I gathered from his yells, there had been another rocky place further on, which he had spotted as the wind started to build up. This might provide more shelter.
But it was useless. In the end, we crouched down, and covered our heads with our arms. Actually, in his case, only one arm, as he had put the other around me.
At another time, bliss, I suppose. But I was terrified. Not of what the storm could do, exactly, although he said after they can kill, and I believe him. Just of the sheer ferocity of it.
Then, with no warning, the winds – there seemed about six of them – dropped. They fell round us like dry hot washing, and the grit and tiny stones rattled along the ground.
We raised our faces, and saw the strangest – to me – sight.
In House books I’d stolen glances at, I had seen pictures of ancient cities that once had existed in the world before the Waste claimed everything. And this thing I saw now was surely such a city, or its remains.
The land had dropped gradually, and there was a sort of basin, and in this some tall towers with windows, or spaces where windows had been, and ornamented roofs with domes and pedestals. There were pillars too, a whole long line of them that might have stretched for a mile. Mostly there were walls, and carvings, or the bits that were left of them. There was one huge vase, with stone flowers still rising from it.
My eyes streamed, and everything wavered.
I said, ‘I never saw that from the higher ground.’
Nemian said, sounding irritated, ‘You probably couldn’t. The winds uncover things, just as they bury them.’
I’d thought the storm was over, but no. A second or so more, having shown me the city ruins as if to educate me, and the whole thing started up again.
How long it lasted this time I can only make a guess. It felt like hours. Finally I was lying on the ground. I cringe to say it, but I think I was whimpering. Well, maybe I wasn’t. Just grunting. Anyway Nemian was utterly still. And once everything stopped, I was afraid he’d smothered completely.
But he sat up, and shook himself, and combed handfuls of white and yellow dust out of his hair with both hands.
I have this ridiculous idea, only it couldn’t be, could it? He’d gone to sleep again. Didn’t dare ask.
I stood up, and shook out my skirt and my own hair, and then gave up. (I must, I thought, look like Nemian, as if I’d been damped and dipped in flour.)
When I looked around, the city ruin was gone again. The dip in the plain had become a mound.
Presently, about an hour later, when we walked up it, I stumbled on one stone blossom still sticking up from the buried vase.
Nemian made no mention of having taken my hand, or seeming to try to protect me. He scowled at the Waste, then his face simply became smooth and beautiful again. (His hair had lost its glory, though.)
He said, ‘Well done for bringing the water flask.’ (It was in the sack.) And then, ‘Reliable Claidi.’
But I’d grabbed the sack because it had this book in it. The flask, after all, was empty.
There were so many questions I should have asked, aren’t there. I bet you would have. You would have said, for instance, Where exactly are we going? And What will happen to me when we get there? And you might have insisted he knew that, though Claidi was perhaps half royal, she’d lived first as a dogsbody and floor polisher, and next as Jade Leaf’s maid-slave.
I didn’t ask or say anything much. I’m not completely making an excuse. For one thing, I was so tired. Compared to this tiredness, my other tired times in the House seemed nothing.
Someone else would have been upheld by a sense of excitement and optimism. But I felt exasperated a lot. With the Waste mainly. And with Nemian. And with me.
The sun got higher and hotter and more unbearable, and I was desperate to have a drink of water. One doesn’t realize how awful thirst is until something like this happens, worse than hunger.
After the buried c
ity was behind us the land was very bumpy, and yet totally the same. Crash went the ground, hitting my feet.
Far, far off, still no nearer, the pale parched hills which looked, anyway, most uninviting.
We reached a rock, one rock, but it threw a shadow. So we sat down in the shadow.
Nemian stretched out his long legs. His clothing had been perfect, but wasn’t now.
‘You’ve been very strong,’ he said to me, ‘not drinking any water.’
‘There isn’t any.’
I’d thought he knew.
‘Oh,’ he said. He frowned. ‘Didn’t you bring any?’
‘Yes. You – we drank it.’
‘Well, yes. But I thought there was more. I thought you understood, this might be a long journey. Didn’t the princess tell you?’
Had she? I didn’t think she had. I suppose it was common sense and I was just a twit. Then again, I couldn’t have carried much more. He would have carried it, maybe.
Nemian took the enamelled box out of his pocket. He offered me another of the sugary stalks.
The stalk was difficult to chew with such a dry mouth and scorched dusty throat.
But it did help. Even the thirst became more uncomfortable than sharply painful.
‘You see,’ said Nemian, ‘there is a town over there somewhere,’ he waved idly at the hills. ‘I saw it from the balloon. We can get transport there, perhaps. Unless they’re very unfriendly. Which they may be.’
I’d thought everyone and thing was unfriendly in the Waste. But Nemian had come from the Waste.
He closed his eyes. I heard myself say in a faint panic: ‘Don’t—’
‘Don’t? What?’
I wanted to say, Don’t go to sleep. Talk to me, please. But what right did I have to demand that?
When I didn’t add anything, he shrugged and – slept.
Glumly I sat there.
I tried to be brave. I tried to think he was wise to sleep, and I should try to as well. But the sugary spice-stalk seemed to have made me wide awake in addition to staying tired.