When Singay and Pema had heard the stories, each in the safety of their own home, they’d giggled and shivered like the rest. They shivered now, too, but the inclination to giggle was missing.
‘All right,’ said Singay slowly. I can’t let them see I’m scared – especially not Pema! ‘We’ll come to see your view.’
‘Though you might rather be alone?’ Pema suggested hopefully. I have to go if she’s going, but if I can find an out . . . ‘As it’s your last time, you might prefer some privacy?’
‘That’s right,’ Singay agreed, a little too quickly. ‘We’d be disturbing you.’
‘Ah!’ cried Rose. ‘You’re being tactful! Be reassured, my invitation is sincere.’ He beamed at them. ‘I know you’ll love it.’
Pema and Singay exchanged sidelong glances and gave in.
Happily, the Driver led them out of the room. Not so happily, they followed. First along another corridor, and then up a long, curving staircase of shallow steps.
The low steps made sense, just the right rise for the Driver’s little legs, but the corridor arched high above his head. Pema noticed the discrepancy but was too polite to comment on it. Singay had no such qualms.
‘You’re very short,’ she said, ‘but you made the ceilings really high. Why would you do that? Seems like a lot of extra work for nothing.’
Rose shrugged. ‘We built as the rocks suggested. Their memories are of enclosing shapes like this, beautifully vaulted bits of air. It feels good to them, the way the emptiness grounds them and yet they can lean into it.’
‘The rocks? They feel good?’
Here we go again, thought Pema and butted in quickly. ‘The light’s really nice too. How do you do that?’
‘It is pretty, isn’t it?’ said Rose. ‘And easily achieved. As I said before, some part of all rock memory goes back to the time when it was space debris. All we had to do was introduce a little luminescence from our comet. Quite straightforward. Of course, we’d never ask them to do anything unnatural.’
‘Of course not,’ murmured Singay, and Pema grinned weakly at her.
They climbed on in silence for a time. Then Pema tugged on Singay’s sleeve.
‘Look at the light now,’ he whispered.
The walls and ceiling and the long shallow steps were tinged with an amber glow, as if touched by distant fire.
Rose looked back at them with a big smile.
‘Almost there!’ he chirped.
As soon as he said that, they started to notice a grittiness in the air that made their eyes itch. Pema found swallowing difficult and Singay kept brushing at her face with her hands.
‘Welcome to the other side of the Mountain,’ said Rose with a flourish. ‘Welcome to my desert view.’
He ushered them up the final steps onto a great platform of stone that thrust out from the side of the Mountain into mid-air. Before them, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but sand, carved into billows and waves and towering dunes by the wayward winds.
‘It’s like skin,’ murmured Singay, touching her face again. ‘Warm skin. Like giants sleeping in the sun . . .’
Pema saw this was true. The sand was the colour of copper, the colour of skin, though richer and deeper than the skin of anyone he’d met.
‘Look.’ He pointed towards the west.
The sun hung there, a huge luminous ball in the sky, just lipping the horizon. Distant dust particles in the air sparked and swirled in shimmering ribbons across its face. Gold blurred with bronze merged with deep, rich scarlet.
They stood together on the great prow of rock, looking out with wonder.
‘Were the deserts like this before?’ asked Singay softly. ‘Before the meteor, I mean?’
Rose shook his head. ‘No. They were just sand then. Very pretty, in their own way, of course. But this desert has meteor dust sifted into it. From the most fragrant galaxies you can imagine. Even the tiniest percentage, spread as thin as you like – one particle to a million million – is all it takes. It’s magical, isn’t it? Just smell it!’
They did as he said. They breathed in deeply, and realised something that part of their brains had been noticing all along.
‘Nutmeg!’ exclaimed Pema.
‘That’s right,’ Rose agreed. ‘Makes you want to sing, doesn’t it?’
‘If you’re from space, how do you know what nutmeg smells like?’ asked Singay.
Pema rolled his eyes and sighed, but Rose didn’t seem to hear her question. He was rapt, as if trying to draw the view into his eyes to keep it forever. Singay chose not to ask again. For now.
It was getting too cold to linger long, anyway.
‘Time to go,’ said Rose. ‘I’m glad I had the chance to show you that.’
‘I’m glad too,’ said Singay. ‘Thank you.’
She really can be nice when she chooses, Pema was thinking to himself as he turned to follow them – when he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. He turned back, and stared out over the desert.
I guess it was nothing. And then, all at once, he saw it again.
There were lights, way out in the distance, flickering and shifting. They looked like low-lying stars, fidgeting on the northern horizon, or gigantic fireflies, or perhaps torches held high by a moving band of . . .
Monsters?
‘Hurry up, slow-worm!’ Singay called from the staircase. ‘I’m freezing!’
Pema blinked, and the lights were gone. Shivering from more than the cold now, he hurried to catch up with the others but, for reasons he didn’t understand, he said nothing to them about what he might – or might not – have seen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Descent
‘I can’t tell what time it is, but my stomach says it’s overdue for some sort of meal,’ Singay announced after they had been walking for what felt like hours. ‘Let’s stop for something to eat.’
‘There’s a way down inside the Mountain, all the way to Jungle Head,’ Rose had assured them. It was hard to believe any tunnel could be that long – it would take days – but the Driver must know his own Mountain.
Mustn’t he?
Now that they were underway, and the great adventure had truly begun, Singay was so excited she wanted to hug herself, but Pema just felt sick.
Singay looked at him. ‘It’s really good of you to be doing this, you know.’ She put her hand for a brief moment on his arm and then started to unpack the food. ‘Thank you.’ She didn’t see Pema’s face turn red. ‘Breadcake, Rose?’
But Rose shook his head with a smile. Instead, he picked up a loose bit of rock, held it to his nose and made a deep snuffling sound. The rock seemed to go oddly out of focus for an instant, then he put it down and reached for another. He caught sight of the stunned expressions on his companions’ faces and hesitated, the second rock halfway to his nose.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘What are you doing?’ Singay choked.
‘I was hungry. I’m eating.’ And he snuffed at the stone. Again the rock wavered weirdly, but when it steadied it looked completely unchanged.
‘You eat rocks?’
‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. The minerals inside the rock. That’s Driver food.’
‘You eat rocks? With your nose?’
Rose thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. You know, that really is a very interesting way of putting it. I eat with my nose!’ He looked quite proud of himself.
Singay spluttered breadcake crumbs all over herself and Pema laughed till he got the hiccups.
‘If only the Great Gow could see us now!’
‘Oh, how rude – talking with your nose full. I’m shocked and appalled!’
Rose waited politely till they finished laughing at their own jokes. ‘This Great Gow,’ he said, frowning. ‘What is that, exactly?’
And Singay and Pema told him, interrupting each other in their eagerness to get across the full awfulness of the Abbess. Sitting in a silv
er corridor, with a silver man, they found the Great Gow’s power to belittle and hurt already seemed far away and long ago.
One more strange thing, among so many.
Even the simple act of walking was different.
‘Isn’t this great?’ said Singay with a grin. ‘It’s so easy!’
It’s true, thought Pema. Moving down the endless gentle slope and shallow steps felt more like gliding than the kind of mostly vertical climbing he was used to. You could do this forever and never get tired!
But of course they did get tired, and when they did, they rested. When they were sleepy, they lay down and slept, and when they opened their eyes again, it was as if no time had gone by at all. There was no way of distinguishing day and night – the silvery light from the stone never changed.
For a while, a noisy river tumbled beside the path, making conversation impossible. Then it disappeared off into the rock again.
‘Listen!’
If they put their ears to the wall they could hear its muffled voice as it followed its own route downwards.
‘It’s going to the Sea, too,’ said Rose. His voice was bright with hope.
It’ll get there quicker than we will, thought Singay. She looked across at Pema and wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Quick, change the subject!
‘You’re so lucky!’ she blurted.
Pema looked surprised. ‘I am? Why?’
‘I’ll tell you why: no sisters. My house is bursting at the seams with girls and there you are being an only one. You probably have your own bedroom and everything!’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realised she’d said the wrong thing. She should have remembered that Rose had been ‘an only one’ and terribly lonely for years and years. And Pema . . . He’s thinking about his home. Snows, Singay, you’re stupid. You want him to think about adventure! Change the subject AGAIN!
‘Rose, tell us more about Homeworld.’
That worked. The Driver’s smile lit up and he began to talk. And as he talked, the tightness in Pema’s face eased. It was impossible not to be caught up in the wonder of it all. It was when Rose was telling them about the beautiful sunsets over the purple seas of Homeworld that Pema suddenly realised something.
‘Rose, I only just noticed – you speak the same language we do!’
Rose laughed. ‘We’d have trouble talking to each other if I didn’t! But of course we didn’t arrive speaking like you. We don’t really use language at all when we’re in space. Not being what you’d call an air-breathing people.’
It was a moment before he noticed that both Pema and Singay had stopped walking. They were staring at him, open-mouthed.
‘Not a . . . but, but how is that possible?’ spluttered Singay.
‘Oh it’s easy, really,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I learned your language from the rocks. It’s surprising, given what little use they have for such things, but a tiny portion of a rock’s memory is given over to oral data. Bird song, animal sounds, the noises of different kinds of weather – and, in passing, human speech. Just one of nature’s little oddities, but quite convenient, don’t you think?’ He beamed at her.
‘No, I meant how is it possible not to brea—’
There was a bend in the corridor and suddenly they were reunited with the river, bounding and shouting its way down the Mountain.
‘My goodness, we’re coming to a noisy bit again. It’s getting positively boisterous, that river, isn’t it!’
He grinned at Pema and trotted ahead. Is he joking? Pema wondered. But no matter how hard he watched in the days and nights that followed, he never saw the little man’s chest move.
When Rose told them about the route through the Mountain, Pema had expected that the tunnel would look the same all the way down. He was wrong.
‘Hey, Rose! This rock looks different. From the rock before, I mean. Look!’
Rose came up beside him. ‘Of course it is. You’re never going to be able to make an entire mountain out of one kind of rock. We used different rocks as they came to hand. With different experiences as well. Different memories to draw on.’
Pema frowned. What does that mean? he wondered. Surely rock is rock? But Singay had gone ahead of them and was calling back.
‘Pema! Rose! You have to see this!’
They caught up to her at a point where the corridor opened out into a wide space. The river re-emerged here and flowed calmly across the flat stone, winding in and out of the strangest forest Pema had ever seen.
‘What are they?’
When Rose explained about stalactites and stalagmites, the impossibly slow building up of raw rock, one drip at a time, one tiny grain of mineral after another, they could only stare.
‘To think all this was here, for all that time, right under our feet while we were running up and down the Mountain,’ whispered Singay to Pema.
He nodded. Dawa would love this! With a sudden stab, he saw his grandmother clearly in his mind, standing by their cottage, shading her eyes to see if she could see him coming back down the Mountain. Anger with Singay welled up inside him. It’s so easy for her! She WANTS to be gone from her old life.
Then Singay turned to him, smiling, her eyes shining, and he found he couldn’t be angry anymore.
As the days passed, the roof and walls and floor of their road kept changing, from speckled to banded, from red to grey, from marble-smooth to nubbly and rough. And as they walked, they talked.
He really loves his home, thought Singay as she listened to Pema tell about his gows and his grandparents and the cheekiness of his marmole. But deep underneath, she also thought, I know he’s changing his mind – he won’t go back. He’s going to come with us, I know it!
Since Rose had left his singing rocks behind, he decided to teach Pema and Singay some of the simpler harmonies of Driver music. The songs were wordless and based on different kinds of humming.
‘Though how a people who claim not to breathe can sing at all is beyond me,’ Singay muttered.
‘Really?’ Rose smirked. ‘Oh well, never mind.’
Pema hid a grin behind his hand.
By his rough reckoning, it was the fourth day of their descent. The rocks here were darker and the tunnel was lower and narrower.
‘Brrr, this is a gloomy bit,’ said Singay with a shiver. ‘Let’s sing.’
‘Right,’ said Rose. ‘Let’s do the humming song. After me, then.’
And they began.
They swung along at a good pace, humming away, concentrating hard on their parts – for even the easiest Driver songs were complex and convoluted, and there turned out to be many different ways to hum. They walked in single file: Rose first, then Singay, then Pema.
‘Nnnn . . .’
‘Mm-mm-mm . . .’
‘Ahhh . . .’
CRACK!
And the Mountain caved in.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Language of Rocks
Singay screamed and threw herself forward onto the floor. The noise of rocks ripping out of the roof, the grinding of stone pressing down against stone – it was deafening, terrifying. And then . . .
And then, nothing.
Dead silence, as if all the sound in the world had suddenly been cut off.
Panting with fear, Singay forced her eyes open. She saw a trickle of dust feather down from above. She saw a pile of rubble blocking the corridor. And she saw Rose.
He was standing there, statue-still, with a strange shine in his silver eyes. His hands were raised.
He’s holding back the rocks. She didn’t know how she knew that – she’d never seen anything like it in her life before – but it was as clear to her as her own name.
And then she realised what she wasn’t seeing.
‘PEMA!’
Horror rushed up her throat as Singay realised Pema was underneath the fall. I’ve killed him! He didn’t want to be here! I made him come!‘Rose – is he – is he . . . ?’
The alien light faded
from the Driver’s eyes. Without a word, he stumbled forward and began scrabbling at the boulders.
‘Let me.’ Singay pushed him aside and lifted stone after stone. She was afraid the whole heap would collapse, or slide forward like a rocky avalanche, but she was even more afraid of what she was going to find. Crushed, mangled, broken. The words kept yelling in her head. Pema, please don’t be dead!
‘There he is!’ cried Rose suddenly. ‘Pull him out – here, let me help!’
A space had opened and they could see him, stretched out on the ground. As they dragged him clear, Singay shuddered. He’d been lying in a narrow, Pema-shaped tomb, barely an inch of clearance above him. Jagged edges of rock reached for him on every side like teeth. His eyes were shut, and half his face was covered in blood.
‘What happened?’ Pema whispered, his voice hoarse with stone dust and shock.
She was so relieved to hear him speak, she wanted to cry. ‘Stay still. Let me have a look at you.’
Carefully, she felt his arms and legs to see that if there were any bones broken. She wetted a cloth from their water bottle and sponged the blood from his face, parting his hair gingerly.
‘Head wounds bleed a lot. They always look worse than they actually are. Aren’t you glad I did a stint in the infirmary when I first came to the Abbey?’ She knew she was sounding a bit mad, but she couldn’t stop babbling.
Pema tried to grin at her, but only managed a shudder as some of the icy water dribbled down his back.
Neither of them noticed the Driver.
Rose had turned an ugly white, and the bones of his face stood out with a sudden starkness. He turned away from them and, with shaking hands, reached into his robes and pulled out a glittery bag on a silver cord. He managed to untie the knot, then tipped the bag and let a little of the powder flow out over the back of his hand. It sank instantly into his skin, like water sucked up by thirsty soil.
And the silver bag was hidden away again. The whole procedure couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but even in that short time, the awful whiteness eased.
‘Well, that’s you,’ Singay was saying to Pema, rocking back on her heels to survey her doctoring. ‘Looking pretty good, too, I’d say.’
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