Pema shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said, but silently he was repeating her words.
It’s all over.
There was nothing more to say, but when she took his hand, he didn’t pull away.
After a time, rescue boats began to appear, moving cautiously through the metal-laced water, looking for survivors among the floating bodies and on the wrecks of tanks and rigs still standing. The top of their tank gradually cleared. Impeccable (apparently not yet aware that he had been robbed) was one of the first to go, making sure up to the very end that he had at least three other people between him and the group he’d coerced here with him. Later they noticed Za and Zamin leaving, and saw that they’d teamed up with the Flatter man who’d originally urged them up onto the tank. And then the time came when the four looked around and found they were alone.
A single seagull had returned to the sky overhead, its desolate cry hanging in the air.
‘Pema, you should go now,’ said Singay. ‘Please. I don’t want you to watch.’ Her eyes were enormous and solemn.
Pema started to protest, but then he realised he didn’t want to be there either. He didn’t want to watch Singay changed from the girl he knew into something else. No, I mean SOMEONE else. I never thought of Rose as a thing. Why would it be any different with Singay? Am I becoming like those awful people at Cliffton, who hate anyone who isn’t just like them? He knew he didn’t hate Singay. He just . . . didn’t want to watch.
She was looking at him as if she understood every twist and turn his mind was taking.
‘Goodbye.’ Her voice was husky. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll mind my manners – I won’t talk with my nose full!’
Pema tried to manage a grin, and failed.
There was so much unsaid between them. She was the first girl he’d ever loved and he’d only just admitted to himself that he did love her and he’d never even kissed her.
And then she stepped up and kissed him.
It was the sweetest, saddest thing that had ever happened to him.
‘And I mean it, too,’ she added. Then she and Trout, who looked as if he were about to cry and could only half lift a hand in farewell, walked away to the far side of the tank.
And then it was Rose’s turn.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said the Driver plaintively. ‘I’m so full of feelings I can barely feel a thing – do you know what I mean?’
Pema nodded, thinking, That must be it. That must be what this numbness is about.‘It’s hard. Before all this, I’d lived my whole life knowing that everybody I’d ever met would, more or less, always be there. And then I met you and since then . . .’
‘It’s been final farewells and goodbye forevers, right, left and centre!’ Rose shook his head ruefully. ‘I’m really sorry about that.’
‘I’m not saying I’d have missed it,’ Pema said, trying to understand, ‘because I wouldn’t have. Not for anything. I’m just saying . . .’
‘It’s hard. I know.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘A handshake seems a bit formal. How about a hug?’ Pema suggested.
‘Yes. And some words. Just a few, but none of them should be goodbye or any variation of goodbye, agreed?’ said Rose.
‘No farewell or cheerio or anything like that.’
‘No, just . . . Travel well. Yes, just that and no more.’
‘All right. Shall we do it now?’
‘Yes. Now.’
Solemnly they hugged. Earnestly they said, in unison, ‘Travel well!’ Manfully they turned on their heels and walked away, straight of back and firm of purpose.
Pema had started down the metal staircase when he heard Rose’s voice, high-pitched with a new excitement.
‘I know – I could make a legend out of us. Us and the journey. A Driver legend! I’ve never made a legend before!’
It sounded just so like the old Rose, so enthusiastic and childlike, before the irradiant sickness had made him strange and sad, that Pema had to smile.
He was still smiling when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and a passing rescue boat hailed him.
‘Come on, lad! We’ve room for one more.’
He stepped into the laden boat and, for a moment, couldn’t understand why one of the men offered him his handkerchief.
It was only then that he realised his face was wet with tears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The Return
The journey north was slow, painfully slow, and weary. Pema carried a weight of loss that bowed his shoulders and made his legs heavy, but still he aimed himself at home.
Everywhere he looked, he saw people in flux, in the aftermath of the tremors and earthquakes. Some were rebuilding, mending, adapting. Some were on the road, looking for new beginnings. It was as if the world had been stirred up with a gigantic spoon.
So many people. So turbulent.
Now that the Mountain has stopped walking, there won’t be any new land for them, yet they’ll go on having children, becoming more and more, and using up more and more of what the green wedge has to offer. How long would it be before the pressure of numbers sent them onto the plateau, into the Jungle, into the High Lands, even into the desert beyond? Would they wait until they were desperate, and then act the way desperate people do? Sometimes his thoughts made him moan out loud. His fellow travellers gave him a wide berth.
He spoke to no one in all that press of people. He sometimes felt a jolt run through his body when he thought he saw someone he knew – someone like Bob from the Aubergine looming out of a crowd, or Dasu the dugg running past his feet – or thought he heard Lady Allum’s neighing laugh or Ma Likpa’s sharp shrilling. It was always an error, but he knew that if it had been true, he would have turned away without a word. And if a stranger or a place or a scent reminded him even for a second of Singay or of Rose, his chest tightened unbearably. He put all thoughts of them behind doors in his mind and turned the key.
He took boats when he could, and walked the rest. He ate when he remembered, though there was no savour in the food. At night his dreams were haunted with images of home and his grandparents and all the different ways they could have been hurt, harmed, obliterated. So many different ways. By day he did his best to push the images away and focus on the next step, the next league. But in his dreams they were always there.
One night, he woke from his restless sleep to a strange sight. He saw what seemed to be a shooting star in reverse, an arc of impossibly bright light angling up and away across the dark sky. It came from the direction of the Sea.
The last snow of winter was falling, soft and cold, as Pema climbed the final stretch to home.
The Mountain was safely grounded now, committed to the slow changes worked by wind and water and no other. Everywhere there were signs of the destruction Singay had seen in her dreams. Only Pema knew how much worse it could have been.
But what about his grandparents? Had Dawa and Wadipa survived the throes of the Mountain?
For so long he’d fought against the images in his mind, of them hurt or dead, of the farm swallowed up by a sudden chasm or buried under falling rock. The closer he got to home, the harder it became to push those thoughts away. Now, as he climbed the final path, he could barely breathe.
Snowflakes landed on his face like cold feathers.
They’ll be there. They must be there. I’ll be seeing them very soon.
But then what? What would he say to them? What could he say? They would never understand what had happened during all the months he’d been gone, and yet they deserved an explanation of his long absence. He’d sent them the letter, of course, right at the very start of it all, but that told so little – the journey had barely begun when he’d written that!
Time and again, he’d tried to put a story together in his mind, something that would satisfy them, reassure them, not upset them with its strangeness, but nothing he came up with rang true.
My chest hurts.
‘Pema? Pema?’
/> It was his grandmother, coming round the corner of the house, her arms full of pine branches for the gows. She stumbled forward and for a heart-stopping moment just stood there, a few paces away. Then she dropped the branches with a strangled cry and wrapped him in a hug. For the rest of Pema’s life, the resiny scent of pine would bring that moment back to him, in tiny flashes of its original warming intensity.
He hadn’t cried for so many leagues. Not even when he’d watched the Driver comet rising up into the sky and known, all over again, that Rose was gone and Singay was lost to him. He’d had no tears to give. But in Dawa’s hard, old arms, he cried like a child. And when she finally let him go, the doors in his mind were ajar, and the pain in his chest had started to ease.
Then Wadipa was there too. He’d heard Dawa call out from the garden. Pema couldn’t help noticing he seemed smaller and more bent, but there was nothing wrong with the strength of his hug.
‘Stop – you’re crushing the boy!’ Dawa scolded, laughing.
‘Come in, come in, what are you thinking of, woman, he must be famished!’ Wadipa’s voice was husky. ‘I’ll wager he hasn’t had a decent meal since he left. There’s someone else inside who’ll be happy to see you too. That is, if we can get him to wake up long enough to notice.’
‘Who . . . ?’ Pema couldn’t think who it might be, until he was bustled indoors and saw the basket, set in the cosiest corner by the fire. A mound of soft brown fur was curled up in it, rising and falling gently with each breath.
‘Jeffrey!’
His grandparents gazed fondly at the sleeping marmole.
‘One of the Sisters brought him down to us from the Abbey,’ explained Dawa. ‘We wondered if he’d stay with us, when he didn’t find you here.’
Wadipa snorted. ‘Of course he stayed! Why should he go and sleep in a cold hole in the ground when he can nest in front of the fire wrapped up in the remains of my old best shirt, with as many meals a day as his greedy heart desires?’
‘No, the marmole was waiting for you. He knew you’d be back.’ There was only the slightest hint of a quaver in Dawa’s voice as she said this. ‘You don’t think he’d have got this fat if there’d be anything for him to worry about, now, do you?’ She prodded Jeffrey with her toe and, eyes still tight shut, he wrapped himself around her ankle, as far as he could wrap himself, and pretended to savage it. It was obvious they adored each other, and Pema had a sudden pang of something that felt a lot like jealousy. Then the marmole disentangled himself and waddled over, chittering to be picked up, and Pema had him in his hands again, and felt the warmth of his fur, and smelled that sweet, fresh-grass smell.
‘I’ve so much to tell you,’ he said. As he began, the doors in his mind opened, one after another, and all the careful lies he’d been planning evaporated like so much mountain mist. He told them everything, rediscovering it all as he did so. The return journey had taken it away from him. Now he had it back again.
The story took the rest of the day to tell, and Pema knew he’d be answering questions for weeks to come. But for now, he was talked out. Dawa brought him another plate of food and watched him eat. He smiled at her.
‘I want to hear everything that’s happened here,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘But first, I think I’ll just sleep for a year.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dawa. ‘Finish that and off to your bed. It’s waiting for you. Just one thing, though. I know you said we mustn’t speak of the things you wrote to us. But the Sister – I can’t remember her name just at the minute, but she was the one who brought Jeffrey down to us – we showed her your letter, Pema. She was so worried about the girl, Singay, so worried and sad. We wanted to put her mind at rest.’
‘And did it? Was she upset? About the Mountain? And Rose and the Drivers and the rest?’
‘Now I asked her that myself. It seemed to me possible she might be distressed. But she wasn’t at all. I remember exactly what she said to me. She laughed, and she said, “Dawa, do you take me for a fool? Why would I be upset at finding that the world is even more amazing than I already thought?”’
Dawa patted Pema on the shoulder and smiled.
‘Off with you, now. Rest well.’
Wadipa and Dawa sat either side of the hearth, savouring the heat of the fire. Pema had gone away to his bed under the eaves. For the first time in many months, they were not alone in their house anymore. It felt strange.
‘Good to have him back,’ murmured Wadipa.
Dawa nodded, staring into the flames.
‘Did you notice, he didn’t once knock anything over? Or bang his head? Or drop a plate?’ he added. ‘Grown into himself, he has.’ There was a pause and then, ‘It was good to hear the rest of the story.’
Dawa nodded again.
‘You didn’t tell him about the Abbey. About it being destroyed in the quake.’
‘No. Tomorrow, maybe. Or the next day.’
‘Well, I’m away to bed. You’ll bank the fire?’ Wadipa got up stiffly. The cold seemed to be getting into his bones lately in a way it’d never done before. He hadn’t said anything to Dawa.
‘The gows’ll be pleased he’s back,’ he said.
Dawa gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly what had gone on in his head. She usually did.
‘I’ll be up in a while,’ was all she said, however. Then, as he left the room, she called after him, ‘It is good, to have him back.’
She looked down at the ragged shirt in her lap, then up towards Pema’s room.
‘For as long as it lasts . . .’ she added softly, but only the fire heard her words.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Scent of Nutmeg
It was some years later, and far from the cold, white peace of a High Land home. The air was gritty and hot and harsh, and for hours now it had been whipping itself up into a frenzy of noise and fury. It would be hard to recognise the younger Pema in the thin, battered figure who staggered forward through the screaming storm. He was wrapped to the eyes in the clothes of a desert man, and still the biting sand got through to scour his skin and make each grating breath feel as if he would never draw another. He had been travelling for a long time, and the sandstorm had come out of nowhere. He was at the end of his strength. When he fell forward onto his face, he didn’t get up.
Almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the storm blew itself out, and a spectacular sunset blazed up across half the sky. The hump of sand that was Pema didn’t see its splendour, or the way the light gilded the southern mountains, or the swathed figure on a camel that came towards him from the north. He might have not seen anything ever again, if the camel hadn’t sensed there was something still (just) alive under that particular mound and ambled over to investigate.
When Pema came to several hours later, it was dark night, he was lying on the ground wrapped in a stripy blanket, and the light from a fire revealed two faces peering down at him with keen interest. One was the camel’s, and the other belonged to a young woman.
She was a stranger to him. Of course she is, he thought blearily. I’m not likely to meet up with some old neighbour way out here.
She was beautiful. She had fair skin that showed almost translucent in the firelight. She had pale eyes the colour of winter milk, except for a startlingly bright blue ring round the irises. He’d never seen eyes like that before. She had hair like a mantle of night flowing around her shoulders. She leaned closer to him.
‘Who are you?’ she said. She smelled of nutmeg.
Pema laughed, a hoarse, slightly hysterical sound, and then managed to whisper, ‘I’m Pema. And I’ve been looking for you . . .’
THE END
Notes from the Author
Bhutanese-based Names
(Sharchokpa-lo dialect)
It’s strange, how ideas can lodge in your brain. Years ago I met a woman called Jamie Zeppa, who’d been living and working in Bhutan. She said that in the Sharchokpa-lo dialect, which she’d been learning, her name meant ‘beetroot’, a
nd she showed me a ragged, randomly organised booklet that was the only Sharchokpa-lo–English dictionary available at that time. When it came to writing Walking Mountain, I knew that the names I needed for people and places were in that booklet. She lent it to me and I spent a long train journey reading it and taking notes and grinning with excitement as I discovered each perfect word.
And, just so you know, Zeppa from Jungle Head is not like Jamie at all – they just share a name.
Borang – Jungley forest
Dasu – Ker’s dugg – his name means little
Dawa – Means moon, because the moon is made of cheese
Gata – Tea kettle
Geyma – Lost or thrown away – in other words, Granny Geyma is Granny Garbage
Jathang – Means the plains, which is where this people originally lived, before agriculture and the growth of settled populations drove them onto the plateau
Jopi – Pointed
Kerkerbabu (Ker for short) – Cricket
Klepsang Zale – To make a profit
Phophor – Puffed rice, so Madam Phophor is Mrs Puffed Rice
Ma Likpa – Cruel, not loving, not nice
Noksam – Sudden idea
Pema – Lotus
Shisha – Shepherd
Singay – Snow lion
Sister Grale – To like food
Sister Khalu – Bitter
Sister Loong – Stone
Sister Menpa – Doctor
Sister Shing – Wood
Sister Yi-mala – Means very roughly, ‘Blood? No!’
Wadipa – Cow
Za and Zamin – Boy and girl
Zeppa – Beetroot
Other Names
Amelia – Named after Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviatrix
Sister Hodges – The falconer, named after another famous falconer in another world
Trout – Named after the fish
Animals and Plants
Some of these animals and plants are unknown to us. Others are like, but also unlike, those we see around us. Some divergence is inevitable, because even when conditions are similar, evolution never produces exactly the same things twice.
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