SandDune reads in 2024 - Part 1

She woke the Lyon, asleep in the garden, with a touch of her mind, and sent it padding to the gates to cast a golden, warning eye at the intruder. But the shouting continued, urgent incoherent. She sighed, exasperated, and sent the Falcon Ter instructions to lift the intruder and drop him off the top of Eld Mountain. The shouting ceased suddenly, a moment later, but a baby's thin uncomforted voice wailed into the silence, startling her. She rose finally, walked through the marble hall in her bare feet, out into the garden, where the animals stirred restlessly about her. She reached the gates, of thin iron bars and gold joints, and looked out.

An armed man stood with a baby in his arms and Ter Falcon on his shoulder. The man was silent, frozen motionless under the play of Ter's grip; the child in his mailed arms cried oblivious. Sybel's eyes moved from the still, half-shadowed face to the Falcon's eyes.

'I told you' she said privately, 'to drop him off the top of Eld Mountain'.

A flash of blue and yellow in the gloom and what a sight he was! The weight of the candle caused a sudden drop in altitude and there was a sharp intake of breath from the contessa as Claude's chest feathers skimmed the black lake, but then he rose. Oh,how magnificently he rose! He circled the square twice until the flight path had been worked out and the landing zone calculated: 10 feet ....9 feet .... Straighten, straighten ... decrease speed.
You can do it, whispered Ulysses.
You can do it, whispered the contessa.
Ulysses shouted to Signor Lami to stand back and suddenly Claude disappeared through the open window. There was a sound of broken glass. Anxious seconds passed.
You sure the man opened the window? said the contessa?
(He had. It was simply that he was surprised by the appearance of so large a parrot he dropped a wine bottle.)

''I am sure your legal knowledge is of the highest excellence,’ said the Marquess with a disdainful smile. ‘But in this instance it will not be needed. The deed says, in the plainest manner, that the grant of the island is made, not in perpetuity, but merely “so long as the Order of Ennodawg shall continue”. But where is the Order now, Mr Hughes? I think you will not dispute that the monastery is in ruins and has been so for the last fifty years? What has become of its gardens, its cattle, its furnishings? Gone, burned, stolen, decayed. Where are its monks, pray?’
‘In China,’ said Mr Hughes unexpectedly.
‘What?’ The Marquess, for once, was quite taken aback. ‘In China?’ he repeated. ‘What do you mean?’'

Before lessons they did The News. Cushla hated doing The News, but the headmaster insisted. He said it encouraged the children to be aware of the world around them. Cushla thought they already knew too much about the world around them. Davy stood up, always the first to volunteer. His red jumper was dark with damp at the shoulders and neckline.
There was a bomb in Belfast, he said.
He says that every day, said Jonathan, who sat beside him.
Well, today he's right. Thank you, Davy, said Cushla.
Jonathan got to his feet. It wasn't in Belfast, he said. A booby-trap bomb that was intended for a British Army foot patrol exploded prematurely, killing two boys near the border. They died instantly.
Booby trap. Incendiary device. Gelignite. Nitroglycerine. Petrol bomb. Rubber bullets. Saracen. Internment. The Special Powers Act. Vanguard. The vocabulary of a seven-year old now.
Well done, Jonathan, said Cushla.

Their rest finished, he led them out upon the road again. To encourage them upon the way he broke one of the chocolate bars accurately into four pieces and gave it to them. Three of the children took their portion avidly. The fourth shook his head dumbly and refused. ‘Merci, monsieur,’ he whispered. The old man said gently in French: ‘Don’t you like chocolate, Pierre? It’s so good.’ The child shook his head. ‘Try a little bit.’ The other children looked on curiously. The little boy whispered: ‘Merci, monsieur. Maman dit que non. Seulement après déjeuner.’ For a moment the old man’s mind went back to the torn bodies left behind them by the roadside covered roughly with a rug; he forced his mind away from that. ‘All right,’ he said in French, ‘we’ll keep it, and you shall have it after déjeuner.’ He put the morsel carefully in a corner of the pram seat, the little boy in grey watched with grave interest. ‘It will be quite safe there.’

He felt a cramp in his stomach. He was a guest, but the host had trespassed. And he too had trespassed, and transgressed, with the host's daughter. Whose then was the crime? The spectre of his ignorance rose now before him. He thought he knew their public codes now, more or less — but the private ones? He had thought himself in the bosom of the family, capable — almost — of sitting in a chair in the study. He had thought it made no difference. But if he was the father's subject, how could he be the daughter's husband? One did not study one's sons-in-law.

At every chance that presented itself during the pauses in our conversation I studied her, and I knew that she was doing the same to me. I supposed that we were in the same situation; this was the first time that I had met a girl of the working-classes socially, and the first time that she had had tea with a lady.

She knew she was valued for being a good hunter, but what Ea craved was to be normal. To spin like everyone else was the key to fitting in, and if she could only hear the music of the ocean like everyone else, she too would be able to tune in and do it. She was fast, healthy and wanted so badly to succeed – but she had never heard the music. Spinning was the Longi’s art form, it was dance, athleticism, most commonly just for entertainment and sport, but it also held a spiritual element. It was union with the ocean itself and everyone who experienced that state even once, shone with authentic Longi joy

They had all had the statutory piece of plain bread and butter, followed by as many pieces of bread and jam as they pleased (the Duchy did not approve of butter and jam–‘a bit rich’, her uttermost condemnation) and then there were flapjacks and cake, and then there were raspberries and cream–all washed down by mugs of creamy milk that Mr York had delivered from the farm that morning.

“Where are the rest of the people who . . .”
Mack doesn’t know how to describe them. Sung-Soo’s eyes lose their joy.
“They died. I’m the only one left.”
Mack takes the pack from his shoulders and puts it on his own back; then we both take an arm, wrap it over our shoulders and hoist him up between us. There’s barely any weight to him at all.
We head back toward the colony, and I can’t help but look up at God’s city, just like Sung-Soo does but with less wonder.
I’m used to it now, but it still draws my eyes up.
It stretches above the colony like a huge forest of ancient baobab trees tangled around one another, forming an organic citadel. The outer membranes of the structure are black, to absorb the most sunlight, and at this time in the morning the nodules at the top of the structure are spherical.
“To manage the heat,” he says, nodding. “My father taught me some of my grandma’s knowledge.”
Mack’s silence feels like a fourth person stalking us through the grasses.