The Glass Mountains

by Cynthia Kadohata

  I thought a lot about how my mother used to come in and comb our hair and check on us every night; every night, no matter if someone she’d loved had just died, if we’d displeased her that day or if she’d argued with my father. One night after she checked on us, I had heard her in an argument with my father. Later I found her standing on the verandah. I’d heard a noise and had gone to check. I’d never seen her look so sad and asked her what was wrong. “Every day you’re mated, you learn anew how hard it is,” she said, with some bitterness. I didn’t know what my father had done, but I knew it had hurt her terribly. My father was a wonderful man, but somehow he had hurt her. And after that night, though my mother still loved my father, and though her soul was still joined to his in a way that transcended the rational world, she never again adored him in exactly the same way she once had. Thinking of that now broke my heart for them. I wished their lives had been flawless, unblemished. I wished they had never suffered for even a moment.

  It was drizzling as we walked through a ragged community of houses fronted with huge trees, both fake and real rocks, and plain arrangements of flowers. Most of the lights inside the houses were off, but as we walked some sort of sensor lights snapped on at almost every house and bathed us in a warning glow.

  A busy, dirty road stretched behind many of the houses. In these drab houses, we knew, lived the wealthiest partials.

  I’d just come into season, and that night we lay in the drizzle and for the first time since Moor and I met we no longer just practiced breeding. We copulated with abandon, not knowing the consequences of giving birth on a planet we hardly understood; just as we’d come to Forma not knowing the consequences; and just as, despite all the predictions ruling the lives of the Bakshami, I hadn’t been able even to guess at the consequences of any of my actions since the day my family left our village. Mine was the opposite of most people’s lives on Bakshami, where the past was indistinguishable from the present and the future.

  We were close to the Forman border with a sector called Hathatu-me, a sector as inconsequential as Bakshami had always been considered. Forma had supposedly annexed it long ago, and supposedly a few Formans wandered through the countryside every day looking for trouble, but aside from the freedom fees paid by Hathatu-me to Forma, the two sectors had little connection. The people of Hathatu-me were so unemotional and irresolute that when Forma approached them about taking over, they agreed readily and without fanfare.

  Every day I saw partials throng the streets heading toward the rooms in the towns in which they worked, and all night they crowded the main streets, trekking quietly back to their homes. Theirs was a trek without purpose. They went home to rest so that the next day they could do more work.

  According to the Formans, all this work was part of what made them the most civilized people on the planet. I thought my people had worked hard, but next to the Formans we were laggards. Oh, we’d worked a sixth, a seventh, in busy times a fifth of a day, but this work was secondary to our rituals and our storytelling. Only our rituals and storytelling were exalted, and both of them involved our families, friends, and neighbors. But here the hardest working were exalted, so that people declared with admiration, “He certainly is hard-working,” and likewise declared with derision, “How lazy he is.”

  We were half a day from the farm of which we’d heard when the farm, in a sense, reached us. A man approached us on the road. He was short, with a small head and beady bright green eyes. With him walked several small children. “Where are you two going?” he said.

  “We’re searching for work, perhaps from a generous man like yourself,” said Moor. “We heard there’s a farm near here that employs many partials, especially Bakshami.” We spoke in this obsequious manner to any Forman who stopped us, for we’d quickly learned that this was the way partials were supposed to talk. So far the worst reaction we’d encountered had been a few loud insults.

  “Do you speak the language?”

  “Not well, but we will learn. We’re new here but eager to serve.”

  “I am Karrid. As one of the owners of the farm you mentioned, I am eager to teach such wretches as you. Come with me if you want to work.”

  We glanced at each other before following silently. I could see other partials watching us out of the corners of their eyes. That is, they didn’t look at us, but their awareness was aimed our way. I had not yet learned this trick of seeing what I wasn’t looking at. When I looked at something it was because that was what I wanted to see.

  “What are you looking at?” shouted the green-eyed man.

  I started. It was as if he had read my mind. “Why, nothing sir, I would look only at what you would want me to look at.”

  “I thought you were looking at my legs. Where did you say you are from?”

  “I’m a refugee from Bakshami, sir, and I beg your forgiveness for giving you the impression I was looking at your legs. I can assure you that if you didn’t want me to be looking at your legs then I was not.”

  “Go ahead and look,” he said grudgingly, and turned and walked with his children while we followed. I did look at Karrid’s legs now, and saw that one was shorter than the other, but he’d learned with great skill to walk in such a way that you could not tell without looking closely at the difference in length. In Bakshami there lived many famous wise men and women who limped. They were a sort of cult of elders, perhaps not more brilliant than the others but with different ideas about their powers. According to rumor, as the power of these limpers had grown, they’d willed themselves to develop physical deformities so that they never forgot their place as servants of the Glass Mountains and the traditions. And their limps reminded all that though their powers seemed unlimited they were but people like the rest of us. Of course, acquiring a limp was a somewhat wily trick, because the deformities of these elders made them seem all the more amazing to someone like me, who stared at them with the belief that the more deformed they were, the more brilliant.

  So as I stared at this man’s limp I thought he might secretly be a brilliant man instead of the simple one he appeared to be. He turned suddenly.

  “Ah, now you were looking at my legs.”

  “Sir, as I said before I was looking at your legs only if you wanted me to be looking at your legs. Otherwise I was simply walking, seeing the fields around us.”

  “You were either looking at my legs or you were not.”

  “I am a peasant in your shadow, and what I am doing, was doing, or will be doing, is influenced not by myself but by your preferences and desires and even by the shadows of your preferences and desires that chance to fall upon me.”

  He continued to walk. Moor said quietly to me, “You must stop looking at his legs. He doesn’t like it.”

  “I did not even notice till he himself brought it up.”

  “Well, please stop. My fortunes are now linked to yours, and if you give offense I shall be punished, too.”

  “The man is insane. He asks whether I’m looking at something I haven’t even noticed, and then he tells me to go ahead and look. But when I do, he turns upon me and demands to know what I am looking at.”

  “Whether he is insane or not has no bearing on whether or not he is our master.”

  “Master! Look at his size. I could beat him myself simply by spitting hard upon him and watching while my spit knocked him off his feet.”

  “And if you did as you say, what of the Forman security who would descend upon you and show you who is master of whom?”

  “Of that I know nothing,” I conceded. “I can speak only of this man.”

  As the sun fell I began to wonder whether Karrid expected to walk all night. His children made no noise the whole way, not once laughing in the way of children, not even asking simple questions of each other. Once I saw one look questioningly at another, and the second nod his head. And there were other glances and gestures, but all behind their father’s back. As time passed, the man grew more tired, his limp became more pronounced and I realize
d how much energy he expended each day hiding his impairment. We walked until his limp grew painful to watch, and in the darkness we finally reached a small stone structure, a modest version of the smallest Soom Kali homes.

  The man chased a few dogs out of a bed, motioning us to sleep there. We lay silently, uncovered and huddled together in the cool night. At first our dogs slept with the others, but finally we called Artie and Shami over to sleep on us and keep us warm.

  In the morning a child, one we hadn’t seen last night, came to wake us with vigorous shakes. I could see whose child it was in the expressionless green eyes, eyes of a boy destined to a life of drudgery.

  “What kind of work will we be doing?” Moor gently asked the boy.

  The boy lowered his head somewhat, and then looked over his shoulder once before answering. “We make bowls here,” he said without inflection. He added with the slightest emphasis, “Beautiful bowls.”

  Apparently the farm workers stayed in another part of the farm. And so Moor and I crafted bowls in that silent family. We got paid a pittance for one day, plus a meal. Every so often as we worked, Karrid would look at me suspiciously, but after a while I knew he grew to trust us because he no longer hid his limp from us but limped freely just as if we were a part of his family. I grew fond of Karrid, even as I knew his beliefs—he supported the invasion of Bakshami on the grounds that his leaders said it should be so.

  Each day was the same. It was the way of my old life except that this life was not mine. I was not meant to be here just as these people who had invaded a desert were not meant to live in a desert. Each day I used the brief time I had before I went to bed to ask around the farm for word of my parents. But no one could help me. In the mornings I got up and ate what someone had left us in the night, and then I went into the work room where I made clay bowls all day. In the evening, there would be morsels of food. I would hurry to eat before once again making the rounds, seeking news. I’d never known such immobility. My interest in breeding diminished quickly, as did all other interests. At the end of several days Moor and I had about enough to purchase a day’s worth of food, so that we could take a day off.

  We walked a long while to the far end of the huge farm and looked out upon the workers. The fields and workers stretched as far as I could see. I called to the one nearest me.

  “Are you Bakshami?”

  He gazed upon me suspiciously.

  “I only ask because I am Bakshami, too, and have come here in search of my parents.”

  The man returned to his work without reply, but another worker nearby answered instead. “What clan?”

  “Ba Mirada. My father once served as a mayor. My mother sat on the interclan council.”

  The man who hadn’t spoken before looked up with disgust. “I was a mayor, too, girl, can’t you see we’re busy.”

  But the friendlier man came nearer. “I know them. They work in the house.”

  “Both of them? Are both alive?”

  He nodded. “Good workers, I hear. They may own a house one day.” He pointed toward the largest house in sight. “They work in there, but don’t bother them now, you may get them in trouble. Go when the work day ends.”

  I tried not to get too excited lest the couple turned out to be someone else, but all day I imagined touching my parents, kissing them, lying in their arms, smelling them, hearing their voices. That evening after dark Moor and I walked over to the house and asked to see my parents. The partial who answered the door directed us to a series of disheveled dwellings in the distance.

  The dwellings were made of glass, and I knew Bakshami had constructed them. They had no doors, so when we approached the one where I was told my parents lived Moor and I walked right into the darkness inside. I heard nothing but the buzzing of insects.

  “Mother? Father?” I called, and heard more buzzing. “Father! Mother! It’s me, Mariska!”

  Slowly someone began to move, and a candle was lit. I ran toward my parents but stopped when I saw their faces full of horror. Instinctively I turned around to see whether danger existed, but no one stood there but Moor.

  “This is Moor-ah Mal. He’s my friend.”

  My father rushed to me and shook my shoulders. “What are you doing? How long have you been here?”

  “Father, we’ve come to take you home.”

  Though his hut was empty, he looked around himself with great panic and signaled me to stop talking. My mother hadn’t moved, just sat up from the floor staring in horror.

  “Father!” He slapped my face to silence me, then whispered, “We have no home. The Formans have taken over even the hotlands. We are lucky to have even this.”

  “But you are free to leave,” I said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Forma is a free country, I have heard it said. We have a ship.”

  “We owe money, we can’t leave.”

  “Father, if you leave these borders you will owe nobody money.”

  “I am an honest man. I am also a man of tradition. My father once predicted that only through obedience could I keep my family safe.”

  “Father, what are you talking about?”

  My mother came over now and led my father back to the mats. Then she turned to me.

  “You will get us all imprisoned,” she said. “We must follow the law.”

  “But we’re breaking no laws.”

  “It is against the law to discuss not paying your debts.”

  “Then we won’t discuss it, we’ll just leave.” She turned her back on me and blew out the candle and I heard her lie down on her mat.

  “Get out before I call someone.”

  “Mother? What is it? Have I done something?”

  She would not answer. Moor pulled me away, and we returned to our own room. The next day I worked all day and then afterward returned alone to my parents’ hut. But someone had constructed a stone door on their dwelling. I shouted for them, but the door remained closed. A few partials watched as I shouted at the closed door, but no one spoke to me. I frightened them, and they frightened me, though we were all Bakshami.

  That night as we lay in bed Moor warned me that we must return to Zem’s ship. The wind fell softly upon our faces, as if to tell us that it was time to leave.

  “I grow weary of this work,” said Moor. “We must either take your parents by force or leave without them.”

  “I as well am always tired,” I said. “I would rather walk to my death than work at this all my life. And yet I find myself pleased and proud when I receive my salary each day. And with every bowl I make I find myself calculating what fraction of my daily funds I have earned. I find these thoughts satisfying.”

  “We must resist that feeling.”

  “Why?”

  “When you give your dogs freedom, they become your slaves. When you give them rewards, they become slaves to the rewards. You have become slave to scant rewards, just like your parents. The Bakshami make easy slaves.”

  “I am no dog and no slave.”

  “Mariska, here where we work my muscles are atrophying, my speed is of little use, and my head suffers from tedium.”

  “I must wait. My parents will come to their senses.” I tried to remember where I’d heard that phrase, “come to their senses,” but I couldn’t remember. “I prefer a predictable life. Such a life has not been mine for too long now.”

  “We must leave this place,” he persisted. “We will be out of time soon. I crave sleep for the excitement of dreaming to compensate for my waking ennui. Your parents must make their own fate.”

  “I will not leave them.”

  “Then we will take them by force.”

  “I cannot force my own parents!”

  “We may have to knock them out.”

  “That is impossible for a Bakshami.”

  “Then it is impossible for them to escape because I see no other way.”

  “This discussion serves no purpose.”

  He didn’t answer, and in the morning
we made bowls again. I noticed it had become hard for me to get started in the mornings because my hands had grown stiff, unused to this sort of work. I noticed, too, that Karrid’s mate was unable to work because her hands were always stiff. One of the other workers told me she’d once been the fastest bowlmaker in the household.

  So all day I worked at my bowls, noticing the increasing perfection of my bowls, and feeling increasing pride in them. I lost interest in the outside world and thought only of my bowls. After work I always realized how bored I’d been all day, but during work all I thought of was my bowls, and even in my dreams I would see bowls and dream of making bowls that were more perfect than perfect. I put all the energy from my trek into making bowls. I thought about the bowls more often than about my parents. Slavery quickly becomes hypnotic.

  The others were obedient and quiet, almost without personality except for Karrid’s obsessions over his limp.

  One day Karrid came upon me so quietly I was shocked when I suddenly noticed him beside me, staring. “I heard you have been making trouble,” he said with surprising firmness.

  “My parents work here, but I wished only to speak with them, not make trouble.”

  “It’s too late to undo what has been done.”

  “But nothing has been done,” I said.

  “You have made trouble,” he said.

  He said nothing more, and this time when he walked away he held himself high and hid his limp, as if we were strangers again. Even I saw in his walk that we must leave, and though our exhaustion was severe that night, Moor and I prepared to depart.

  When everyone else had fallen asleep, we hurried through the night, moving toward the place where my parents lived, unsure what laws we might have broken or what penalties might await us if we were caught. We were only halfway across the farm when we saw that behind us Karrid’s home was now bathed in light. But no one seemed to be chasing us. Still, we hurried warily to my parents’ hut.

  The far end of the farm lay silent. In the black night the hut seemed dead, almost like a tomb. No matter how hard I pounded my parents would not answer. I began to believe they had moved. A few partial workers came out to see what the commotion was, but they immediately hurried back into their hovels. We now saw a motorsled in the distance.