Now the man said, "Quick, we must hurry," and hustled them to the door. The candle was left burning; then he remembered, took it up and held it high, looking around the room to see what had been forgotten.
The little girl who was now Mara looked back too, so as to remember the room, or what she could, for she was already anxious because of what she was forgetting.
As for the little boy, he would remember later only the warmth and safety of his sister's body, as he pressed himself into it. "Are we going home now?" he asked, and she was thinking, Of course we are; because all this time she had been thinking, We'll go home and the bad people will have gone and then. Yet that man had been telling her, yes, he had been telling her — while he squatted in front of her, talking and talking, and she had not been able to hear because of her longing for a drink — they were not going home. This was the first time the little girl really understood that they were not going back to their home. Outside, in the darkness, she looked up to see how the stars had moved. Her father had taught her how to look at stars. She was trying to find the ones that were called The Seven Friends. And they were her friends, her stars. She had said to her father, "But there are eight — no, nine," and he had called her Little Bright Eyes. Where was her father? Her mother? She was just going to pull at the elbow of the tall man who had come in with the clothes, and ask, when she understood that she had been told and had not heard properly. She did not dare ask again. She saw four of the people go off quietly, quickly, hardly to be seen in the brown clothes. Two were left: the man and a woman. She could hear by how they breathed, too loud, that they were tired and wanted to rest and sleep — yes, sleep... And as she drowsed off, standing there, she felt herself shaken awake and in her turn shook her brother, who was limp and heavy in her grasp. "Can you walk?" asked the woman. "Good," said the man while she hesitated, and he said, "Then come on." Around them were other rock houses. They were all empty, she could see, while being hurried past. Why was the village empty? How could they, the People, just go into a rock house and walk through a rock village without guards?
"Where are they?" she whispered up at the woman, and heard the whisper, "They've all gone north."
Soon they stopped. High in the sky above her she saw the head of a cart bird turning and tilting to look down at them to see who they were. She was terrified of these tall birds, with their sharp beaks and great feet and claws that could rip somebody to pieces. But it was harnessed to a cart and she was expected to climb in. The cart was used on the fields, and was a flimsy thing that rattled about and only carried light loads. She could not manage it and was lifted in, and then Dann was beside her, and the whole cart creaked and seemed to want to settle to the earth as the two big people got in. The cart bird stood waiting. The slave who looked after the cart bird, who they called the cart bird man, sat just behind the bird, making it start and stop with a whistle she had often heard them make. The man and the woman wanted the cart to go forward and kept saying, "Go, go," but the bird did not move. Mara whispered, "It needs a whistle." "What whistle?" "Like this." Mara had not meant her little piping whistle to make the bird go, but that is what happened. The cart was rushing forward and the great feet of the cart bird were going down hard into the dust and lifting up and scattering dust back over them all. Where were they going? Mara was afraid that these two people who were trying to help them did not know, but they were saying to each other loudly, because of all the noise, "There's the big hill," "That's the black rock they described," "I think that must be the dead tree." Weren't they supposed to be keeping quiet because of enemies? Anyone near could hear the rattling of the cart, though the wheels were running quietly through the dust. The little boy was crying. She knew he felt sick, because she did. And then Mara fell off to sleep and kept waking to see the cart bird's great head jerking along against the stars. And then, suddenly, the cart stopped. The cart bird had stopped because it was tired. It fell to its knees and its beak was open, and it tried to get up but couldn't, and sank back into the dust.