The Glass Mountains Read Online Free Page A

to a kid, is it?” He scratched at a bump on his skin.  
    “Oh, I don’t know. If I stay in Bakshami, I can use a fortune as building material for a house. I’ll pound it into bricks. And if I don’t stay I can spend it in other sectors,” Maruk said.  
    The man continued to scratch, then began picking the scab on another bump. He nodded and pulled something out of a pocket. “Did you ever taste dried fruit from Artroro? Let me be your friend.”  
    Maruk hesitated. I knew his mouth watered over the fruit, as mine did. But he came along when Sennim grabbed my hand and led me away. Sennim had never touched me even by accident. The man’s eyes bored into our backs as we left.  
    Sennim, Maruk, and I parted ways about halfway between our two houses. Sennim had held my dry, flaky hand the whole way. He didn’t say goodbye to me when he left, just to Maruk. Sennim often ignored me, except to look at me slyly when he thought I wasn’t watching. When we officially began the romance ritual, we would smother each other in attention. But that was for later.  
    As Maruk and I walked back to our home, Maruk pranced about and pretended to be pointing the man’s weapon at rocks. He would soon be of age, but he acted like a child today. It was strange, I could see my brother’s infatuation with his imaginary weapon, the way his face grew serious and intent and the way a feeling of power made his eyes shine. This new kind of shine had always existed in him, needing only a weapon to bring it out.  
    He was prancing about in this way when we heard a low hum that seemed almost to surround us. It came from above. It was a ship, flying over our village in an aimless, roundabout fashion. The ship flew very low, as low as a lazy bird out for some ordinary afternoon exercise. On one hand I was Bakshami and raised to remain levelheaded, but on the other hand I’d never seen a ship before. Just by flying lazily above, it seemed to belittle and challenge all our traditions. I gawked, and Maruk pretended to point a weapon at the ship. Just as he did that, the ship vanished, and I felt for an illogical moment that he’d destroyed it.  
    “They broke our laws, they deserved to die,” said Maruk.  
    “But we have no laws.”  
    “They’re unspoken laws. The elders will agree, then they’ll refuse to give an audience to whoever sent that ship.”  
    “Maybe they don’t want an audience with the elders.” I could see in his face that such a concept had never occurred to him: Didn’t all outsiders want to speak with the elders if they could? And in fact such a concept hadn’t really registered with me either until I spoke. “We’d better get home,” I said.  
    On our way home, we passed groups of people talking about the ship. Most hadn’t seen it and looked doubtfully at those who had. “And then it just disappeared,” said one person. Another said, “It was as big as a dwelling.” As I watched Maruk walk calmly and gracefully, I felt I’d never admired him so much. But I didn’t know what good his calm and grace might be in a war. I didn’t know anything of the powers of Forma or any of the other sectors. My life previously had been my family, my dog, my daydreams, and my occasional thoughts of Sennim.  
    One question we heard everyone ask over and over as they talked about Forma was: Why? Why would anyone want to take over Bakshami?  
    In front of our own home several people stood out front talking with my parents. One of them was Tarkahn, whom my sister Leisha called The Man Who Never Paused. His quiet, giggly daughter Tarkahna was my best friend. She followed me a lot, and we giggled together over various jokes. Actually, Tarkahn did manage to finish his protracted sentences sometimes, but he always started a new one immediately. But Leisha liked to joke that he was still speaking the first sentence he’d uttered when he first began talking at the age of seventeen—most Bakshami begin talking by four.