Doris Lessing - Mara and Dann

"No, not like you. Daulis told me you two could look after yourselves. I can see he was right. But be careful, be on your guard." He went inside, came out with two heavy cloaks, twice the weight of the ones they had brought for cold, thinking they were thick enough to keep off any cold they could meet with, and handed them a bag of food. "There's some matches. Try not to need a fire. You can melt snow for water over a candle — I've put one in. There'll be a moon in a few minutes." And as they thanked him and moved off, they heard, "Be careful, you two." And then, when they had gone a few paces, "Don't come down too soon. Give that fellow a chance to get away. Keep a watch. It's three hours to the hut."

"It sounds to me as if this path up the mountain is the only place left for Kulik to look for us."

"Yes, and our friend the innkeeper knows that." But Dann was alive again, danger was invigorating him. And she felt better too, leaving the dank weight of the water-filled marshes behind.

The way led up through boulders of all sizes, which seemed in the dim light like crouching enemies; but the moon came up and showed the track, and struck little flashes of light off the boulders: crystals, embedded in the rock. A mist was gathering below them, and soon they were leaving behind a sea of white, lit by the moon, and they could see their shadows down there, like long fingers pointing to the east, moving with them. It was cold. Without the innkeeper's cloaks they would have done badly. Up they went, until they saw ahead a large hut, with beyond it the white of the snow that lay over the summit of the mountain. They were in a white world, the mist shining below, and above them snow and the big white moon shining on it. They ran past the hut to gather a little snow and taste it and marvel at it, for they had never seen the stuff before. The edges of the snowcap were little white fringes and lacy crusts on grass that crunched under their feet, and sent the cold striking up into their legs. Down they went to the hut, and knocked, afraid of what they might see, but when the door opened it was Leta and she was alone. They shut the door against the cold and embraced, the three of them tight against each other. They could see she had been frightened, alone, and how glad she was to see them. If she had known, she had said, she would never have come up, but she thought she would just touch the snow, and taste it, and then go down, but the dark came."I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm not like you. I don't know how to judge dangers — or distances." Inside the hut it was not much warmer than it was out. Leta had lit a floor candle, a little one, and had melted some snow to drink. They huddled on the floor inside layers of wool. Leta had a cloak from the innkeeper too. Even so they were clenched, trying not to shiver, and they ate the food, and huddled close, talking late, about the Centre, and what Mara and Dann had been offered. Dann was making a ridiculous story out of the old people's plans, and their long wait for their royal children, and the more he talked the funnier it got, until his eyes met Mara's and he faltered and stopped. "The truth is," he said, seriously, "if Mara and I had been different people, perhaps it could have worked. After all, everyone seems to think the Centre is a wonderful place, and they would believe what they heard."

"Everyone except those who know the truth," said Mara.

"Very few of those, still," said Dann.

Leta said, "We all heard about the Centre down in Bilma. We would have believed anything we were told."

"Even that a brother and a sister were making a new royal family?"

Leta laughed and said that if they knew what went on in Mother Dalide's, brothers and sisters making assignations, then Dann and Mara would not have been so surprised at Felix and Felissa.

And now they were so tired and chilled that when Mara and Dann lay down on the floor with Leta, as close as they could, spreading the woollen folds into three thicknesses, to cover all three, there was no danger in the closeness, only a need to shiver themselves into warmth. Dann said, "Don't you think we should keep awake and watch?" and Mara said, "Yes," and then they had fallen asleep. They woke in the morning stiff and chilly, and pushed open the door and saw that the mist still lay low below, but only for a certain distance. Beyond the edge of the mist the ground broke abruptly into a great chasm or canyon that stretched west and east as far as they could see. Once the Middle Sea had filled it: a warm, blue, lively sea that had bred civilisation after civilisation — whose artefacts and pictures crammed many halls in the Centre — and where ships had made great and dangerous journeys; but now all they could see were rocky declivities. But if they looked across the canyon, this enormous hole in the earth, there far away was a line of white, which they knew was not clouds, but the edges of the ocean of ice that had engulfed Yerrup. The three stood in that white landscape of mist and snow and stared at the faraway white, the bright sun making the sky sparkle; and they went back inside the hut and shut the door, to huddle there, feeling themselves to be nothing, their sense of themselves diminished by the white immensities, and above all by knowing how close they were to the terrible enemy, Ice.

But should they go down into the mist? It was so thick they could not see the path. They decided to stay up in the hut that day, although it was so cold and they dared not light a fire.

And now Dann pulled up his robe, so that Leta could see how well the scar had healed where she had taken out the coin, and said that since they had nothing better to do, and since he was so cold anyway he wouldn't be able to feel a thing, she might as well take out the rest.

"They have worked their way to the surface," he said: and there they were, five little rounds just under the skin.

Out came Leta's bag of healer's tools and herbs and she had rubbed the place with the herb that numbs, and had nicked out the first coin with her sharp little knife before Dann knew it.

"Are we sure we aren't going to need to keep them hidden?" asked Mara, and Dann said, "We'll be with Daulis soon."

"Why are you so sure of that?" asked Leta, and they could see her love and her anxiety.

"Because he'll want to find us," said Dann.

"And now don't look," said Leta, and Dann lay back and gazed at the roof of the hut: reeds from the marshes. She took her knife, rubbed herbs on to it, and cut. She eased out, easily, the four coins, and staunched the beads of blood as they welled up. Soon the bleeding stopped. The long scar was mostly white, like a very old wound, and the new raw bits would soon be the same. Leta went out, fetched a handful of snow, and spread it over the wound. She told him to lie still and soon he would forget he had ever had those coins in him. And so Dann lay, on his back, with a wool cape covering the bottom part of him, to the scar, and brought around to cover his chest and shoulders; and Mara and Leta squatted under the other cape, and they chatted and from time to time looked out to see if the mist had lifted. It had not. The coins, five of them, lay on a strip of cloth, shining, perfect, beautiful little things, with their tiny, incised pictures, back and front, of people who had lived so long ago.

"Is there any other metal that could have lived inside flesh for — how long Mara?.. well, it's years now — and never change or get poisonous?" said Dann.

"Silver," said Leta, "but it's not worth much."

"Gold has always been like nothing else," said Mara. "I saw that in the Centre..." and she stopped. She was saying, it seemed in every other breath, "I saw it in the Centre." She was already earning amused looks, but probably these looks would soon be impatient, even irritated. She said quietly, "I wish I could spend my life there, just learning, Leta. You have no idea, no idea at all, of how wonderful those ancient times were, what the Ice destroyed."