The Glass Mountains Read Online Free Page B

Leisha theorized that because he’d started so late, he had to make up for lost time. Tarkahn talked and talked and always finished his meal last because he was so busy talking. But he was so good-natured that everyone loved him despite his reluctance to pause. Everyone always laughed when his wife related how Tarkahn talked in his sleep, in the shower and while having sex. Naturally he was a thin man, since he preferred talking to eating, even when he was hungry.  
    But now he stood quietly, lips moving, but quiet nonetheless, staring at the sky and pointing. I think the ship overhead surprised us all as much as one of our dogs speaking would have. Something we’d always known to be true was suddenly proved false. We knew that no one would invade our skies in the same way we knew that dogs could only bark, not speak, the same way we knew that Tarkahn would never pause in his speech. But now he stood there before my family and said simply, “I know what I saw.” His lips moved a bit, and then he recovered himself. “Of course it has to do with the Formans, and as some of you may know they have bombs in some of their ships, not that they would have any reason to want to drop a bomb on us, especially since we’ve always been a peaceful neighbor and never did anyone any harm, and, speaking I hope not just for myself but for all the village, I would certainly not be interested in seeing any harm befall anyone in the world, not even whoever was driving that ship, because I was always taught that to harm another person...”  
    I stood tucked between my parents, their gowns brushing my hands. The sky above us shone an effulgent blue, almost moonlike in its glowing quality. I could already see our moons in the afternoon sky, but because of the early hour they didn’t glow but possessed a transparent smokiness. So the sky was like the moons, the moons were like smoke, and the smoke I could see still rising from my parents’ glass firing ovens was like a sign of safety to me. When my parents sent us to visit relatives in another town, on our way back we always knew we were almost home when we saw the smoke from our house rising into the sky. Now, the smoke rose thickly; my parents had stopped working just a short while ago.  
    Everyone had a theory, and in a moment everyone was talking without pause like Tarkahn, everybody talking and nobody listening. I caught sight of the stranger Maruk and I had seen earlier, lurking about a distant house. He was showing his weapon to someone else and speaking earnestly. But when he saw me looking he turned and walked away, obviously trying to walk gracefully and failing by a wide margin. Then, above the cacophony of voices, we heard, the way my parents could hear us children no matter how much noise—a low hum from the sky. And so Tarkahn was silenced for the second time in one day, probably only the second time since he’d first started speaking as a child. The ship glided overhead, lower and then higher, lower and higher as it passed out of sight once more.  
    That night no one felt like eating. Instead everyone in town sat in storytelling groups, but rather than telling stories we talked about the ship. I fell asleep in my mother’s lap, something I hadn’t done since I was a young child. When I awoke I could see by the placement of the stars that half the night had passed. My mother always came silently into our room to check on us at about this time. When she was a child, her sister had died of a virus at exactly half-night, so she always came in around that time and stayed until shortly after, to make sure no virus suddenly stole our lives. It never occurred to her that she was too big to wrestle with a virus.  
    Some of the groups had broken up, and Tarkahn was walking home, talking to himself. My mother said to my father, “Dear, tell someone what your father said. It may be important.”  
    My father looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know whether my