It was almost dark when they got to the crest of the Dayward Hills. Forgetting how far south they had gone, the men expected to look down on the Fields and the City. They saw only dusk falling on the lands, and the dark west, and the far lights of the City of the Sky beginning to burn.
They settled down in a clearing, for all were very tired. The children huddled together and were asleep almost at once. Ten Belen forbade the men to make fire. They were hungry, but there was a creek down the hill to drink from. Ten Belen set Ralo ten Bal on first watch. Ralo was the one who had gone to sleep, their first night out, allowing Bedh to escape.
Ten Belen woke in the night, cold; he missed his cape, which he had torn up to make bonds. He saw that someone had made a small fire and was sitting cross-legged beside it. “Ralo!” he said angrily, and then saw that the man was not Ralo but the guide Bedh.
Ralo lay motionless nearby. Ten Belen drew his sword.
“He fell asleep again,” the Dirt man said, grinning at ten Belen.
Ten Belen kicked Ralo, who snorted and sighed and did not wake. Ten Belen leapt up and went round to the others, fearing Bedh had killed them in their sleep, but they had their swords, and were sleeping soundly; and the children lay in a little heap. He returned to the fire and stamped it out.
“Those people are miles away,” Bedh said. “They won't see the fire. They never found your track."
“Where did you go?” ten Belen asked him after a while, puzzled and suspicious. He did not understand why the Dirt man had come back.
“To see my people in the village."
“Which village?"
“The one nearest the hills. My people are the Allulu. I saw my grandfather's hut from up in the hills. I wanted to see the people I used to know. My mother's still alive, but my father and brother have gone to the Sky City. I talked with my people and told them a foray was coming. They waited for you in their huts. They would have killed you, but you would have killed some of them. I was glad you went on to the Tullu village."
It is fitting that a Crown ask a Dirt person questions, but not that he converse or argue with him. Ten Belen, however, was so disturbed that he said sharply, “Dirt does not go to the Sky City. Dirt goes to dirt."
“So it is,” Bedh said politely, as a slave should, with his fist to his forehead. “My people believe that they go to the sky, but of course they wouldn't go to the palaces of the City there. Maybe they wander in the wild, dirty parts of the sky.” He poked at the fire to see if he could start a flame, but it was dead. “But they can only go up there if they have been buried,” he said. “If they're not buried, their soul stays down here on earth. It's likely to turn into a very bad thing then. A bad spirit. A ghost."
“How long have you been following us?” ten Belen demanded.
“A long way."
“Why?"
Bedh looked puzzled, and put his fist to his forehead. “I belong to Master ten Han,” he said. “I eat well, and live in a fine house, and am respected in the City. I don't want to stay with the Allulu. They're very poor."
“But you ran away!"
“I wanted so much to see my people,” Bedh said. “And I did not want them to be killed. I only would have shouted to them to warn them. But you tied my legs. That made me so sad. You did not trust me. I could think only about my people, and so I ran away. I am sorry, my lord."
“You would have warned them. They would have killed us!"
“Yes,” Bedh said. “But if you had let me guide you, I would have taken you to the Bustu or the Tullu village and helped you catch children. Those are not my people. I was born an Allulu and am a man of the City. My sister's child is a god. I am to be trusted."
Ten Belen turned away and said nothing.
He saw the starlight in the eyes of a child, her head raised a little, watching and listening. It was the one who had followed them to be with her sister.
“That one,” Bedh said. “That one, too, will mother gods."
II
Chergo's Daughter and Dead Ayu's First Daughter, who were now Vui and Modh, whispered in the grey of the morning before the men woke.
“Do you think she's dead?” Vui whispered.
“I heard her crying. All night."
They both lay listening.
“That one named her,” Vui whispered very low. “She can follow us."
“She will."
The little sister, Mal, was awake, listening. Modh put her arm around her and whispered, “Go back to sleep."
Near them, Bedh suddenly sat up, scratching his head. The girls stared wide-eyed at him.
“Well, Daughters of Tullu,” he said in their language spoken the way the Allulu spoke it, “you're Dirt people now."
They stared and said nothing.
“You're going to live in heaven on earth,” he said. “A lot of food. Big, rich huts to live in. And you don't have to carry your house around on your back across the world! You'll see. Are you virgins?"
After a while they nodded.
“Stay that way if you can,” he said. “Then you can marry gods. Big, rich husbands! These men are gods. But they can only marry Dirt women. So look after your little cherrystones, keep them from Dirt boys and men like me, and then you can be a god's wife and live in a golden hut.” He grinned at their staring faces and stood up to piss on the cold ashes of the fire.
While the Crown men were rousing, Bedh took the older girls into the forest to gather berries from a tangle of bushes nearby; he let them eat some, but made them put most of what they picked into his cap. He brought the cap full of berries back to the soldiers and offered them, his knuckles to his forehead. “See,” he said to the girls, “this is how you must do. Crown people are like babies and you must be their mothers."
Modh's little sister Mal and the younger children were silently weeping with hunger. Modh and Vui took them to the stream to drink. “Drink all you can, Mal,” Modh told her sister. “Fill up your belly. It helps.” Then she said to Vui, “Man-babies!” and spat. “Men who take food from children!"
“Do as the Allulu says,” said Vui.
It was some comfort to have a man who spoke their language with them. The soldiers now ignored them, leaving Bedh to look after them. He was kind enough, carrying the little ones, sometimes two at a time, for he was strong. He told Vui and Modh stories about the place where they were going. Vui began to call him Uncle. Modh would not let him carry Mal, and did not call him anything.
Modh was eleven. When she was six, her mother had died in childbirth, and she had always looked after the little sister.
When she saw the golden man pick up her sister and run down the hill, she ran after them with nothing in her mind but that she must not lose the little one. The men went so fast at first that she could not keep up, but she did not lose their trace, and kept after them all that day. She had seen her grandmothers and grandfathers slaughtered like pigs. She thought everybody she knew in the world was dead. Her sister was alive and she was alive. That was enough. That filled her heart.
When she held her little sister in her arms again, that was more than enough.
But then, in the hills, the cruel one threw away Sio's Daughter, and the golden one kept her from going to pick her up. She tried to look back at the place in the bushes where the baby lay, she tried to see the trees there so she could remember the place, but the golden man hit her so she was dizzy and drove and dragged her up the hill so fast her breath burned in her chest and her eyes clouded with pain. Sio's Daughter was lost. She would die there in the bushes. Foxes and wild dogs would eat her flesh and break her bones. A terrible emptiness came into Modh, a hollow, a hole of fear and anger that everything else fell into. She would never be able to go back and find the baby and bury her. Children before they are named have no ghosts, even if they are unburied, but the cruel one had named Sio's Daughter. He had pointed and named her: Groda. Groda would follow them. Modh had heard the thin cry in the night. It came from the hollow place. What could fill that hollow? What could be enough?