by J. S. Bangs
An enormous crowd had gathered, mostly men, but with a fringe of women and children looking on with frightened faces. Kest stood atop a boulder holding a staff upright. A ring of white-haired heads stood around him at the base of the boulder. Someone from the crowd was shouting at him in Kaleksha.
“Mandhi!” she heard someone cry. In a moment Shadle had grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. “What is your fool of a husband doing?”
“Saving Danadl,” Mandhi said.
“He’s got half the crowd against him,” Shadle said. “You hear what they’re shouting? They don’t want to follow the word of a young patriarch who abandoned Kalignas to live with Amurans.”
“We’re stuck here with you now,” Mandhi hissed. “We’re all on the same side.”
Shadle rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to convince me. Ah, listen.” Kest was talking again. “He says there are five hundred men in the village who can work, including the Amurans. It’s enough to dig the ditch they need, if they start soon.”
More arguing sounded between Kest atop the boulder and the people in the crowd. Shadle stopped trying to translate, standing on her toes to watch the back-and-forth. More Kaleksha women crowded in behind Mandhi, relegating her to standing blindly like a child, unable to see anything over the shoulders of the Kaleksha.
“One of the other elders will speak,” Shadle said abruptly. She pointed to the boulder, where Mandhi could barely see a white-haired head climb above the crowd and stand on the boulder next to Kest. He spoke in soft, powerful words.
“The os Bem will stand with the os Dramab,” Shadle said excitedly.
The old man got down. Another rose.
“The med Kamadli as well,” Shadle said. “They all will, now. I’m sure of it.”
The argument lasted a few moments longer, and then a cheer went up from the crowd. But the sound was more fear than joy. They began to disperse, moving off to the north. Mandhi started after Kest.
“Where are you going?” Shadle asked.
“To help,” Mandhi said.
“You’re going to wrestle rocks out of the earth?”
“I’m going to carry buckets of earth, if that’s what they need,” Mandhi said. “And there’s plenty of Amurans. At least I can carry messages.”
She pushed through the crowd and caught up with Kest a moment later, talking seriously with the other clan patriarchs. He acknowledged her with a nod and put a hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes’ walk they arrived at the place. A rocky stream bed came down from the mountains there. The stream turned to the right and continued through Danadl and into the bay, but there was a low rise to their left that separated the stream from the sea.
Kest pointed and explained to Mandhi. “Here. If we cut a ditch to divert the water directly to the sea, the stone will follow. But we’ll be digging two, three yards deep, and it’ll be a quarter-mile long. Hard work for one night.”
He took a moment to talk to the other elders. Then he repeated to Mandhi. “Bring the Amurans. We’ll need every man.”
They came. They were arranged in a pair of long lines the whole length of the planned diversion, from the stream bed to the sea, and they began to dig. Mandhi and the women brought them shovels and spades, then spoons, oars, pitchforks, buckets, pots, and jars. Anything that could break up the frozen earth, scoop it out, or dislodge a stone.
They came across great buried boulders. Mandhi directed the Amurans and the Kaleksha into teams, a half-dozen Kaleksha men straining to dislodge a stone, while the Amurans pulled on ropes wrapped around its peaks. The women carried away buckets of earth and piled it behind the workers, a secondary rampart to protect the village in case the molten flow overwhelmed the banks of the ditch.
Mandhi looked up the mountain slopes. The trickle of orange light had descended most of the way down the mountain. The trees were on fire, white steam from the snow on their branches.
Night fell. Women came by holding torches and lamps to provide light for the diggers. They had gotten a depth of four feet through the highest point of the ridge, but it was hard work breaking through the frosty earth and the black stones beneath it. The men’s faces were black with dirt, and their fingers were bloody. Mandhi brought rags to wrap around their hands.
“Bring the stones around!” She heard Kest bellow from his position near the beginning of the ditch. “Time to close off the stream!” He repeated his command in Kaleksha.
Mandhi sent ladies around to carry lamps to the place where the diversion met the stream bed, and she pointed the Amurans to where she wanted them to go. They came carrying the stones that had been wrested from the earth, and behind them women with buckets of soil. Kest directed them in making a rough, wide wall of stone about as high as Mandhi’s chest, walling off the river’s natural course. Then they began heaping earth atop it, making a rampart six feet high that turned the stream down its newly-cut valley. Children from the village came and jumped atop the soil, packing it down with their feet.
For a few minutes the icy trickle of water soaked into the dirt around the rock. Then the water began to turn aside and flow into the ditch.
“Follow it!” Kest shouted into the darkness where the men were working. “Where it pools, make the ditch deeper. And widen the walls!”
“Kest,” Mandhi said urgently. She ran after him and touched his elbow, then pointed up to the head of the valley. He looked.
The flowing stone had emerged from the trees and met the water of the stream. Its orange glow lit the scene in eerie, unnatural gloom. White billows of steam swirled as it crept forward down the stony stream bed.
Kest nodded. “Hurry!” he shouted.
Mandhi scampered after him and helped wherever she could, lifting up buckets of earth as men widened the walls of the ditch or dug out shallow places in the stream. The bottom of the ditch became a morass of freezing mud, barely warmer than ice, as the water from the diverted stream wetted its bottom. Mandhi carried messages from the Uluriya to her husband and on to the other Kaleksha. The nearly-full moon lit them with a pale streak in the hazy sky, descending slowly to the west.
“It’s there,” she heard one of the Amurans shout. “The stream flows all the way to the sea.”
She turned and ran to Kest. “I think we’re ready,” she said, nearly falling into his arms.
“We’d better be,” he said. “We have no more time.” He pointed upstream.
The molten stone had reached the place of their diversion. The forward edge pressed against the bank that they had raised. The rocks in the rampart rumbled, and the rock folded into cooling ripples. It began to slowly crawl down the newly-dug channel.
“Get out!” Mandhi shouted down the line. “Get everyone out of the ditch! Onto the side of Danadl!”
Kest repeated her in Kaleksha. The shouts echoed up and down the line, and in the torch-lit dim she saw men scrambling up the sides of the ditch and onto the banks, retreating from the slow advance of the fire.
“Now what?” Mandhi asked.
“Watch. Have the Amurans keep their shovels in their hands. In the worst case, we might be working right at the fire’s edge.”
As the flow trickled toward them, she felt the tremendous heat coming off of it. It turned water to steam with a hiss and made the stones crackle. It advanced. Mandhi and Kest backed away, far enough to avoid being scalded by the waves of hot air rising from the flow, but close enough to watch its advance.
It crept through the channel. Much thicker than water, in a few places it choked in narrow places along the ditch, and for a moment Mandhi feared it would rise to the edges of the ramparts.
But no. The pressure of the molten rock made the walls cave, and the orange gum lurched forward.
They were part of a crowd, now. They watched it all the way to the end, where the ditch opened onto the gray, gravelly shore two hundred yards to the west of Danadl. They watched it creep over the shore, until it touched the water and sent up a cloud of steam.
Che
ers sounded all around her. Kest crushed her in an embrace. She looked around—dawn had come while she had been intent on watching the stone flow, she realized—gray sunlight leaked through the haze overhead and lit their faces in strengthening light.
Kaleksha and Amurans embraced. Their hands and faces were black with earth, blood under their fingernails, tracks of sweat trickling down their foreheads. Joyous shouts of victory echoed in both languages. The sailors who knew a little Amuran congratulated their dark-skinned friends, and the Amurans kissed the cheeks of the Kaleksha giants. Echoes of celebration reached them from the huts and lodges of Danadl.
Kest rubbed his hand on Mandhi’s cheek. Both of them were gritty with dirt. The sweat down Mandhi’s back was starting to freeze now that she was no longer running up and down the length of the ditch.
“Let’s get inside,” Kest said. “Get around a fire, warm up, rest.”
“Heat some water to wash,” Mandhi said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so filthy in my life.”
“What did I tell you about bathing in winter?” Kest said. He laughed, wrapped his arms around her waist, picked her up, and crushed her into his chest.
She buried her face in the heavy wool of his cloak. He smelled of smoke and ash and fish and seawater and earth and sweat. He was alive. He was safe. It was wonderful.
* * *
“The decision has been made,” Shadle whispered in Mandhi’s ear. She was repeating the words of the elders of the clanmoot, who sat on four long benches at the front of one of the lodges in Danadl. Most of the os Dramab were crammed into the rear of the lodge with Mandhi, Kest, and Hrenge, with the Amuran Uluriya mingled among them, eager to hear the verdict of the clanmoot even if they couldn’t understand. Mandhi could follow maybe a tenth of what they said with her fledgling knowledge of the language. She depended on Shadle for the rest.
The old man who chaired the clanmoot cleared his throat. He continued speaking.
“Because you are many,” Shadle translated, “Kest and Hrenge, patriarch and matriarch of the os Dramab, you have the right to demand a wide place in which to rebuild your lodge and your clanhome. And because you and those you brought from Amur had the courage and the strength to save Danadl and all of the clans therein, we have chosen to give you such a place. You may have all of the land where Mabeg used to reside. The port of Mabeg, and all of the fields and forests around it as far as the foot of Kaleg are yours in perpetuity.”
“Mabeg?” Mandhi hissed. “Mabeg? But it’s—”
“Quiet,” Shadle said. “They also give you two hundred ewes and twenty rams, a gift of the clans of Danadl, and a pact of friendship with every clan that was in the city at the time of the second eruption.”
The old man pounded his staff on the ground three times. A shout of assent sounded from all of the clan elders gathered at the front of the room. Mandhi bolted to her feet and pushed toward to the front.
“Mandhi, wait—” Shadle began.
Mandhi ignored her. She shoved past the other clan leaders, slowly rising to their feet from the benches, until she found Kest and Hrenge sitting together at the end of the bench. Inexplicably, they were smiling.
“What did they just do to us?” Mandhi demanded. “They gave us Mabeg.”
“Yes,” Kest said. “A clanhome twice as large as what we had before.”
“But we saw Mabeg. It was an ash-covered waste. We can’t possibly live there!”
“Ah,” Kest said, and he chuckled. “You don’t understand, Mandhi. Where the ash of Kaleg falls, the ground becomes twice as fertile as it was before.”
“What?” Mandhi’s anger abated a little.
“Plus, plenty of room for herds of sheep. The first year will be hard, since it takes a few years for the grass to recover—or so Hrenge remembers from the tales of her elders. But there are unburned fields at the edge of the clan holdings, and with that many sheep… Mandhi, we’ll be rich.”
“Oh,” Mandhi said. Her anger dissipated. She suddenly felt dizzy.
“And finally,” Kest said leaning forward with a sharp grin, “though the port was burned, it can be rebuilt. It’s still the best natural harbor in Kalignas.”
“So we’ve done well.”
“We have,” Kest said. “Let’s go outside for some fresh air.”
They followed the crowds out the door of the lodge and into the stony central market of Danadl. It was crowded with Kaleksha and Amurans, talking to each other in low, excited voices. Spring had come to Kalignas, and the air was warm enough that the Kaleksha walked around without cloaks, showing their bare pink shoulders to the sun. The Amurans still huddled under wools and furs.
It wasn’t half as warm as what Mandhi expected of spring, but the snow had melted, and the leafless ashes and aspens on the mountain slopes had put out bright green buds. The haze over the sun had thinned, and on some days its rays were strong enough that Mandhi was almost warm. She took a heavy breath of the cool air and rubbed Kest’s forearm.
Sudran, the saghada of Davrakhanda they had brought with them, approached out of the crowd.
“I heard the verdict,” he said, bowing to Mandhi, Kest, and Hrenge. “It was explained to me that we did well.”
“We did,” Kest said. “There will be lots of work, but we can do it.”
Sudran nodded. “We will have rams? I have not been able to perform a sacrifice since we fled from Amur.”
“We’ll have rams,” Mandhi said. “And when we reach our new home, that’s the first thing we’ll do.”
A smile crept over Sudran’s face. “Good. Jasthi-dar also wished to speak with you. She asked you to come to her in her lodging.”
“We’ll go,” Mandhi said. She took Kest’s hand and they marched through the muddy streets of Danadl until they found the little stone hut where the queen of Gumadha lodged. The hut was no bigger and no finer than the rest of them, and Jasthi herself was dressed with a heavy Kaleksha wool cloak over her cotton sari. But she maintained a certain regal bearing, and she smiled pleasantly at Mandhi and Kest when they appeared.
She rose to her feet and gave them both a small bow. “You’ve gotten a favorable response from the clanmoot, then,” she said.
“You heard?”
“I can tell by your faces. This is a good time, then, to make my proposal.”
“Proposal?” Mandhi asked.
Jasthi nodded and sat back down. “I have been talking with many of the Amurans. Some of us do not want to settle here.”
“What?” Mandhi said. “Are you thinking of going back to Amur?”
“No,” Jasthi said flatly. “That land is a grave, and whatever men survive there would do better without us.”
“I agree,” Kest said.
“But I’ve spoken to many of the Amurans. Not the Uluriya, but those of us who follow dhaur. You are bound to the os Dramab, who obviously wish to remain in Kalignas, and your Uluriya will remain with you. But those of us who are not Uluriya are worried we would fit awkwardly into your new settlement.”
Mandhi folded her arms across her chest and waited for Jasthi to finish.
“I’ve been talking to the Kaleksha sailors,” the queen went on. “There are a few who know the way to the land at the east end of the Bounded Sea, where the slow people live. They say there are wide open spaces there, sparsely inhabited, where we could settle on our own. The journey is longer than the one to Amur, but the Kaleksha have done it.”
“The slow people,” Mandhi said incredulously. “I thought those were sailors’ tales.”
“Sailors tell true tales, sometimes,” Kest said.
“You know someone who’s been there?”
“No,” Kest said with a shrug. “But there’s many who know the way.”
“And we would like to take several of the ships,” Jasthi finished.
Mandhi let out a murmur. The ships were valuable, and she was loathe to give them up. But were they hers to keep? And what were they going to do with them? There would be no trade
with Amur.
“I don’t object,” Mandhi said. “Just so long as every Amuran knows they’re free to remain with the os Dramab and the Uluriya if they desire.”
“I won’t be forcing anyone,” Jasthi said. “In any case, the sailors said the time to sail to the slow lands is the end of summer. It would be months before we leave yet. We’ll trade everything we have in the boats to outfit the voyage. And,” she said with a raised finger, “if we have been allotted sheep, then those of us who leave want some of them, in proportion to how many will sail away with me.”
So it would cost them something. She glanced up at Kest.
“It’s only fair,” he said. “And there is no point in beginning this year with rancor.”
“Very good,” Jasthi said. “I’ll speak to those who have been interested. So much better if we can part amicably.”
They took their leave from her and returned to the hut they had lived in. When they were still ten feet away, Jhumitu ran up to the door.
“Daddy!” he cried, and began running across the gravel and mud toward them. With a grin, Kest bent and scooped Jhumitu into his arms. He kissed the boy on his cheeks and tickled him for a moment. Giggling, the child slid down to his adopted father’s hip.
Mandhi reached over and kissed his cheek. “We’ll be going to a new home, soon,” she told him. “Where you’ll have much more room.”
“And sheep to watch, and fields to run in,” Kest said.
“And brothers and sisters,” Mandhi said.
Kest’s eyes grew wide. He looked at Mandhi. “Is there something you wish to tell me?”
“No,” Mandhi said giggling. “Not yet. We’ll have to get started making them.”
She reached up and touched his bearded cheek. He smiled, eyes glittering, and he bent down and kissed her on the lips.
A Word from the Author
In seventh grade, I took a creative writing class at my middle school as one of my two electives. I was going to a small private school at the time, and this class wound up being even smaller than most: we were four extremely nerdy students and one enthusiastic teacher, which turned out to be just the right size for us. I still remember the students clearly, but most important were my teacher, whom I will forever refer to as Mr. Hartman, and my dear friend Brett.