they stared into the sky and listened for the humming. I don’t know when the others fell asleep, but when I next woke the midday sun hung hot above camp. Usually, we woke before sunrise. Several other people still slept, and more appeared to have just arisen. After that we lost the meaning of what we did. That is, we no longer thought of the goal of reaching the hotlands, we just knew that every day we walked. Walking was what we did and walkers who we were. Except for Jobei, who retained his sweetness, we grew to have no other personality except our personality as walkers. When I opened my eyes I saw the sand on which I walked, and when I closed my eyes I saw myself walking on the sand. It grew too tiresome to hold my head up as I walked, so generally I watched the feet of the person in front of me.
Time passed in this way. A baby was born, but he died. Otherwise nothing much changed. At every lake, one or two or more stayed behind so that finally only thirty of us remained. Surprisingly, Ansmeea survived. We felt no sense of triumph at our achievement. We were nothing more than insects.
One of the lakes at which we’d expected to replenish our supplies turned out to be nothing more than a puddle, and we kept ourselves alive by drinking our own urine. We were trudging along in our zombielike way one day when Tarkahn suddenly exclaimed out loud, “Look, look!” It was the first time we’d heard his voice in months, so rather than look at what he pointed to with his finger we first looked at him, at his sunken face and twig of a finger. Then, across the flat expanse of sand, we saw a glimmering sliver like our silver moon Damos rising over the horizon in the evenings. It wasn’t Damos; it was the crest of Mount Artekka, the highest peak of the fabled Glass Mountains. I thought then that I’d never seen anything so intoxicating and beautiful as that sliver of shining hope, as that picture of our future rising over the horizon. And for the first time in months I felt emotion. I felt I loved Jobei and Leisha and all my fellow travelers; I wondered what had happened to my parents and Maruk and hoped I might hear news of them soon; and I remembered my home, and what a sanctuary it had been not only against the sun and heat but against all types of worry and cruelty as well.
We fell to the sand and kissed it, thanking it for letting us get this far. We walked with new ardor for the next few days, our mood elevating as the mountains before us rose higher. The mountains reflected sunlight, and at times the heat neared the unbearable, even for people used to great heat. But we couldn’t be stopped now. Our supplies had run low and we’d cut rations by a third, yet our energy grew rather than diminished. During the day Tarkahn’s voice rose to a snappy mumble, and he began to talk in his sleep again.
His talking heartened me on the one hand, because it showed his spirits were rising. On the other hand, his talking saddened me, because he talked about the recent past, and the recent past was gone. The recent past had not yet turned to dust and blown to the hotlands to become a part of the Glass Mountains. The world in which I had been raised was in limbo.
2
The Glass Mountains had always been and would always be. They contained everything and everybody that had ever existed in Bakshami, except whatever had been destroyed in the recent past. Here I myself would come to rest, after my bones had turned to dust.
As we walked I could see nothing but glass around us, reflecting the heat until my blood seemed to boil inside me. The mountains weren’t smooth, except in places. They were ragged, occasionally like prisms, and they weren’t really glass but a type of quartz. Clouds of dust occasionally covered the sky above them.
At night, however, the dust settled and the temperatures dropped. The stars shone all around. While in daytime I was surrounded by a thousand blazing reflections of the
Time passed in this way. A baby was born, but he died. Otherwise nothing much changed. At every lake, one or two or more stayed behind so that finally only thirty of us remained. Surprisingly, Ansmeea survived. We felt no sense of triumph at our achievement. We were nothing more than insects.
One of the lakes at which we’d expected to replenish our supplies turned out to be nothing more than a puddle, and we kept ourselves alive by drinking our own urine. We were trudging along in our zombielike way one day when Tarkahn suddenly exclaimed out loud, “Look, look!” It was the first time we’d heard his voice in months, so rather than look at what he pointed to with his finger we first looked at him, at his sunken face and twig of a finger. Then, across the flat expanse of sand, we saw a glimmering sliver like our silver moon Damos rising over the horizon in the evenings. It wasn’t Damos; it was the crest of Mount Artekka, the highest peak of the fabled Glass Mountains. I thought then that I’d never seen anything so intoxicating and beautiful as that sliver of shining hope, as that picture of our future rising over the horizon. And for the first time in months I felt emotion. I felt I loved Jobei and Leisha and all my fellow travelers; I wondered what had happened to my parents and Maruk and hoped I might hear news of them soon; and I remembered my home, and what a sanctuary it had been not only against the sun and heat but against all types of worry and cruelty as well.
We fell to the sand and kissed it, thanking it for letting us get this far. We walked with new ardor for the next few days, our mood elevating as the mountains before us rose higher. The mountains reflected sunlight, and at times the heat neared the unbearable, even for people used to great heat. But we couldn’t be stopped now. Our supplies had run low and we’d cut rations by a third, yet our energy grew rather than diminished. During the day Tarkahn’s voice rose to a snappy mumble, and he began to talk in his sleep again.
His talking heartened me on the one hand, because it showed his spirits were rising. On the other hand, his talking saddened me, because he talked about the recent past, and the recent past was gone. The recent past had not yet turned to dust and blown to the hotlands to become a part of the Glass Mountains. The world in which I had been raised was in limbo.
2
The Glass Mountains had always been and would always be. They contained everything and everybody that had ever existed in Bakshami, except whatever had been destroyed in the recent past. Here I myself would come to rest, after my bones had turned to dust.
As we walked I could see nothing but glass around us, reflecting the heat until my blood seemed to boil inside me. The mountains weren’t smooth, except in places. They were ragged, occasionally like prisms, and they weren’t really glass but a type of quartz. Clouds of dust occasionally covered the sky above them.
At night, however, the dust settled and the temperatures dropped. The stars shone all around. While in daytime I was surrounded by a thousand blazing reflections of the
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