Stone Spring (29 page)

He always aimed his blows down and away from his face, to avoid the danger of flint shards flying into his eyes, for he had seen the damage that could do; his hands bore the scars of tiny stabbings and scrapes, but he could live with that.

Gradually the flint nodule was whittled down to a core, the pile of roughs beside him grew, and the golden sand before his legs was covered with flint shards. He knew that when he stood up he would leave the pattern of his legs on the sand, outlined by the bits of flint. He always took care to sweep sand over such mess, to avoid the children cutting their feet on it.

While he was working, others had drifted down to the beach. Fisherfolk laid out nets to dry, or pushed out boats to follow Kirike and Heni. Rute and Jaku came down to set up drying racks for Kirike’s anticipated catch. They nodded cheerfully to Josu. Their daughter Arga wasn’t with them today. But they had Kirike’s dog, Lightning. He was a yappy thing who came straight over to Josu, tail wagging vigorously, and he grabbed a corner of Josu’s apron and began tugging it. He’d have had the whole lot in the sand if Josu hadn’t held on. ‘Get away, you daft dog! You always do this. Get away with you!’

Jaku whistled, and threw a brown tube of seaweed into the sea. Lightning immediately let go of the apron and bounded off after the weed, barking shrilly, splashing into the water.

Josu was left in peace; he resumed his work with relief.

Despite such disturbances he felt content with his life, especially on such a day as this. He’d lived out his whole life in Etxelur, had rarely travelled much more than a day’s walk from this very spot, and he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Oh, he was aware that some of his stock had gone missing recently - some of the better flint cores too, fresh from the lode on Flint Island. He wasn’t bothered. People had always played tricks on him, especially children. They mocked the way he walked. They’d pinch his tools, or call him names, or push him and run away faster than he could catch them. But children usually grew out of it. And if it got too bad, he could always turn to Kirike or Heni or Rute who would soon get to the bottom of it, and all would be right again, until the next time.

He’d been lucky to be born here. There were people like the Pretani who would have drowned a crippled little boy at birth. He was thirty years old now, there were few older than him in all Etxelur, his work was treasured, and he had no complaints. Nothing troubled him. Not even the fact that he’d never found a wife, had no children . . .

There was a deep roaring sound, a rumble.

Josu looked around, confused, faintly alarmed. The sky was cloudless. Gulls cawed noisily. He looked up to see the birds flying overhead, not wheeling and squabbling as they usually did, but heading inland, fleeing the sea. And Lightning was barking shrilly, not in play. The dog, his fur glistening wet, stood on the sand looking out to sea.

A few paces away from Josu, Jaku straightened up from the fish rack he’d been tying together. ‘What’s wrong with that dog?’

Rute shielded her eyes against the sun. ‘Look out there.’ She pointed out to sea.

Josu looked that way. The sea looked flat, calm - just as usual, save for a single dark line drawn across it, like a charcoal scribble. A wave, steadily approaching the shore. It didn’t seem so remarkable. Then Josu saw a figure before it, frantically swimming towards the shore, perhaps a child. The wave towered over the swimmer, and calmly engulfed her.

Jaku murmured, ‘By the little mothers’ blessing—’

It seemed unreal to Josu, a scene from a dream.

Rute pulled apart the fish rack. ‘We’d best get off the beach. Lightning! Here, boy!’

‘It won’t come this far up,’ Jaku said.

‘I’m not going to wait to find out. Oh, help me with the rack, you idiot, don’t just stand there. And whistle for the dog.’ She glanced over at the toolmaker. ‘You too, Josu. I think it would be safer.’

‘Yes.’ Josu looked again at the sea. The wave was growing taller yet, as if water was piling up on water, standing on its own shoulders, the faster surface layers overtaking the lower that were dragged back by contact with the land. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose my tools.’

But Rute was not listening. She was already moving away, picking on Jaku, calling for Lightning.

Belatedly, Josu started to move. He wrapped up his tools and his cores, and the new flakes in their separate skins. Then he bundled his packets and his water skins and his apron in the hide blanket. He was rushing, and was making a mess of his packing.

The dog was still barking, close by. He could hear people shouting. All around him children were running, away from the sea.

And the wave climbed up the beach. It wasn’t like a wave but a slab of water, as if the whole sea had risen up. He could taste the spray.

Josu stood hastily, his bare feet scattering flint shards. He didn’t have his boots on, but there was no time. He began to run, holding his bundle before him. But he went down, his withered leg betraying him, and he spilled his goods over the sand. He scrambled to pick them up, his tools, the packet of cores.

The water fell on him, a huge weight that smashed down on his back and pushed him down into the sand. For a heartbeat he could feel his bundle under his body. But then he was driven forward, scraping over the sand, and he lost it all.

He was turned on his back. He could see the light, far above, the sun’s disc fragmented by the surface of the water, like a shattered flint nodule. But the water was turbulent, full of mud and seaweed. He coughed, gasped, and the water forced its way into his mouth, his throat. The pain was huge, like a great fist slamming into the core of his being.

So it was over, so suddenly. He felt a stab of regret about all the flint pieces he hadn’t been able to finish.

The pain soon receded, a tide going out.

Ana and the others watched from the dune crest.

It wasn’t like a tide. It was a single great wave; she could see its arc right across the bay, breaking on the beach and then running on, past the usual high water line, higher than any tide, even pushing into the long grass that fringed the dunes. People who had already fled from the beach had to run further inland.

Arga, silent, slipped her hand into Ana’s.

Novu was staring like the rest. ‘I never saw an ocean before I left Jericho. I don’t know anything about oceans. Is this what oceans do?’

‘I never saw anything like this,’ Ana murmured. ‘Or heard of it.’

‘Strange events,’ murmured Dreamer. ‘Things nobody ever saw before, or since. This was how our world ended.’

‘Shut up,’ Ana hissed, holding tight to Arga.

Novu pointed. ‘Look. I think it’s going down.’

As rapidly as it had risen the sea level was dropping, as if draining through a hole in the world. The water ran back down the beach towards the ocean, or it pooled in hollows in the sand and the rock banks, creating smooth ponds bright in the sun.

People tentatively emerged from the dunes. They showed each other marvels - seaweed heaps high on the dunes, a dolphin stranded and gasping.

Arga tugged Ana’s hand. ‘Do you think it’s over?’

‘No,’ Dreamer said. ‘Look. It’s still going out. Too far . . .’

The strange tide kept drawing back, far beyond the usual low water mark, and Ana saw a plain of glistening sand emerge, and strange rock formations she was sure she’d never seen before. All over the exposed floor there was movement, silvery wriggling.

People started walking, then running, down the beach towards the new strand.

‘Look!’ Arga said, excited now, pointing. ‘Fish! There’s fish everywhere! We can just go and take it. Come on.’ She tugged Ana’s hand.

Dreamer said, ‘No. This is very wrong. We should stay—’

‘What’s that?’ Novu, shielding his eyes, was pointing out to sea.

And now Ana saw what the retreating sea had exposed, far from the usual shore: an earthwork of raised ridges, circular, their flanks draped with the deep green of seaweed. Water glimmered in the ditches between the circles.

‘It’s like something from a priest’s story,’ Arga said. ‘Is it real?’

Ana said, ‘Let’s go see. Come on!’ Hand in hand they ran down the dune.

Dreamer called, ‘No! Come back! Something is wrong - oh, please come back!’

But Ana only ran faster. Soon she and Arga were running on sticky mud that only moments ago had been sea floor.

40

Ice Dreamer, running with Novu, struggled to keep up with Ana and Arga. She was burdened with her baby, a precious warm bundle sleeping in her sling, and she had yet to recover her full strength from her hard winter. Novu was slow too. His pack of stones, a self-imposed burden, was heavy on his back, and he was tiring quickly. The wet clinging mud of this exposed seabed, pulling at every footstep, wasn’t helping.

The sun’s light poured down from a misty washed-out sky.

‘Everything is wrong,’ Dreamer said in her own tongue.

‘What? Oh, this heat! It’s like being baked. And this sand, sticky as snot.’

‘It’s going to be just as difficult to run back.’

He frowned. ‘Do you think we’ll have to?’

‘I don’t know. But then, I don’t know why the sea has suddenly gone away.’

The girls were mercifully slowing, distracted by wonders.

Water poured off rock formations that were thick with life. Exotic plant-like creatures, brightly coloured, withered as they dried - sponges and sea serpents, the girls said. A fish dangled from a rock, clinging to it with its mouth. Crabs stirred, their flat bodies pale orange and pink, burdened by huge claws. Even the sea-bottom mud was dense with living things, mussels and cockles, the casts of worms, and strange fish that clung to the mud with flattened bodies and both eyes on one side of their heads. Everything was draped with seaweed, dark vivid green, that steamed and gave off a rich salty stink. It was difficult to walk without stepping on something squirming for life, or dead already.

Dreamer stared down at extraordinary animals with no heads but five pointed limbs, stirring in the mud at her feet. Dreamer had never seen such beasts in her life. ‘The gods were at play when they made these.’

‘It’s so strange,’ Arga said. ‘It’s as if it all fell down from the sky.’

‘In a way it did,’ Ana said. ‘We’re walking on the sea bottom. The fish swim in the water as birds fly in the air.’

‘And if the air went away,’ Dreamer said grimly, ‘we too would be lying in the dirt, gasping for breath like these fish.’

Ana glanced at Arga. ‘Dreamer, you’re frightening her.’

‘Good! Then listen—’

‘Tell it to my father.’ Ana twisted away and ran off after Arga, further from the shore.

There was no choice but to go on after them. ‘Come,’ Novu said grimly to Dreamer. ‘Look, take my arm.’

They continued their plod across the clinging sand, following the girls.

And the inverted world got stranger yet. They came to the wreck of a boat, a huge one, much bigger than Kirike’s, or any Dreamer had seen in this place. Little survived but its wooden frame, blackened, and rotted, with barnacles clinging thickly. The remains of a reindeer-bone harpoon was still attached to a loop by a strip of rotted hide. Ana and Arga stared as they hurried past, at wooden ribs like the skeleton of some vast animal.

Then they came to a stand of trees, bare of leaves and with their roots exposed, standing drunkenly in the mud. They were big heavy oaks, perhaps centuries old when they died. They stood beside what looked like a river valley, a broad stripe in the muddy landscape, populated now only by remnant puddles of sea water. Dreamer saw neat heaps of wreckage, posts and pits and what looked like sewn skins. They might easily once have been houses, just like those Ana and her family lived in now.

Giddy with the heat, Dreamer shook her head and tried to think. Did sea creatures build houses? Did oaks grow underwater? Surely not. She remembered Kirike’s talk of the precious lode of flint, creamy and flawless, lost under the risen waters of the bay south of Flint Island. Maybe, then, today was not the first time the sea had behaved strangely. Maybe before, perhaps long ago, it had risen up and covered over these trees, these houses, like that precious flint lode.

Ana and Arga were slowing again.

Ana said, ‘It’s still far away. The earthwork, the curving ridges. They must be bigger than we thought, and further away.’

‘Good,’ Dreamer snapped as she came up, panting. ‘At last you’re talking sense.’

‘If the sea hasn’t come back by tomorrow, we’ll come out again and explore properly.’

Arga looked doubtful. Sea-bottom mud coated her lower legs, brown-black and clinging. ‘But it might not be here tomorrow. After all, it wasn’t here yesterday,’ she said reasonably.

Ana pointed. They were close to a dune-like feature, a ripple of sand on the wet seabed. ‘Look - let’s climb up here. We’ll be able to see, even if we can’t reach it today.’

‘All right.’ Arga sounded relieved. Maybe under all the bravery she too had been scared by the strangeness of the day. She ran over to the dune and immediately began to climb, getting down on all fours to scramble up the muddy slope.

Ana followed her, and then Novu and Dreamer, more cautiously. If crossing the plain had been hard, this was twice as difficult, for the mud was slick and sticky. By the time they reached the crest they had all fallen more than once, and were smeared with black mud down their fronts.

From the dune’s narrow crest, panting hard, Dreamer could see the sweep of the sea-bottom plain. The true shore was far behind them, frighteningly far, blurred by mist, with those big arcs of the holy middens standing proud. All over the exposed seabed people worked, hauling away fish and crustaceans and seaweed. Children were playing, splashing and rolling in the mud, using huge dead silvery fish to play-fight. All this on a plain that had been deep under the sea this morning.

Ana and Arga were peering further north. And in this day of strangeness and wonder, a new marvel revealed itself to Dreamer.

The earthwork ridges were sweeping circular arcs that curved away from her view - cupped one inside another, like the rings in a tree trunk. She tried to count them - one, two, were there three? She was not high enough to see clearly. Water glinted, pooled in the ditches between the ridges. Though the walls were streaked with mud and draped with seaweed and fish corpses, they were too regular to be natural, no work of wind or rain or ice.