Stone Spring (40 page)

With their steady labour, the people had already removed a significant fraction of the water in the bay.

‘You see? With the dyke and the built-up causeway we turned the bay from an open stretch of the sea into a sealed bowl. And we’ve been emptying that bowl, one sled after another. Now those children are playing in mud that just months ago was at the bottom of the sea.’

The snailhead frowned. ‘It is hard to believe.’

‘And look in the centre of the bay,’ the priest said, pointing. ‘Can you see - it’s just breaking the water—’

‘Like an island.’

‘Yes. That is Etxelur’s flint lode. Once the finest flint anybody knew about, finer even than what we mine from the island. Lost to the rising sea for generations.’

‘But no more.’

‘But no more. Soon we will be able to walk out from the shore, all the way out, and mine it as our ancestors did.’

‘You are not just keeping the sea out. You are taking your land back.’

‘Yes.’

‘It is mad.’

‘Probably.’

‘It is magnificent.’

‘Certainly. And it’s all because of you snailheads, and your logs, and the work you contributed—’

There was a scream, from the other side of the hill, behind them.

Knuckle turned immediately. ‘Cheek?’ He ran back up the grassy slope.

The priest scrambled to his feet, and laboured to follow through the long grass. As he reached the summit, he stared in disbelief.

Zesi stood over the highest reservoir. She had an axe in her hand. She was breathing hard, and, turned away, was looking down the southern hillside.

The reservoir, which had been brimming, was drained.

Knuckle ran forward, past her, and on down the hill. ‘Eyelid! Cheek!’

Jurgi climbed the last few paces to stand beside Zesi, and he began to understand. She had taken her axe, a heavy thing with a flint blade, to the lip of the reservoir, where it drained into the rivulet. And when she had breached the reservoir all its water was released at once. A mass of water had surged down the rivulet and pooled at the hill’s base. He could see how the force of the water had displaced the rocks of the river bed.

And blood was splashed over those rocks.

‘I did it because of Ana,’ Zesi said, breathless, looking shocked at her own handiwork. ‘Because nobody would listen. I did it for everybody in Etxelur—’

Eyelid was in the river, soaked with water and blood, pulling at the rocks, calling Cheek’s name over and over. Knuckle ran on down the hillside to her.

The priest was appalled. ‘By the mothers’ tears, Zesi, what have you done?’

57

The next morning Ana sent word that she was calling a gathering.

By noon, all of Etxelur had come together on the beach before the Giving platform. The snailheads were here too.

Jurgi, slipping through the silent crowd, made sure he stood close to Knuckle. The snailhead was white with anger and hatred - just as he had been almost exactly a year ago, when he had lost his brother.

On the stage itself stood Ana and Zesi. Ana had her arms folded. Zesi, standing alone, wore the same skin tunic she had yesterday; she looked as if she hadn’t washed, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept.

Everybody was utterly silent. In the background was a wash of noise, from the lapping sea, the gulls crying.

When Ana decided everybody was assembled she began. ‘We are here because of what my sister has done—’

‘I did it for you,’ Zesi blurted. She turned to the people. ‘For all of you. I wanted to show you how fragile this thing you’re building is. How much danger you’re putting yourselves in. How much effort you are wasting—’

‘Shut up,’ Ana said softly.

Zesi immediately complied, trembling. Jurgi felt a twinge of fear at Ana’s power, her authority even over her rivalry-ridden older sister.

Ana said, ‘Today we consider what was done. Not why. The why doesn’t matter. Let Knuckle and Eyelid come forward.’

But Eyelid, weeping, stayed with her family.

Knuckle strode forward. He spoke to Ana, his Etxelur language crude and thickly accented. ‘Last year, brother died, because of this woman. This year, niece dies. Because of this woman.’ Muscles bunched in his neck, and his hands were clenched into fists so tight that blood trickled from palms pierced by his fingernails. ‘Punish her your way, but punish her so she never forgets what she did. Never forget my niece.’

Ana walked up to Zesi.

Zesi cowered. ‘I didn’t mean it! Can’t you see? I meant to protect you. I never meant to harm anybody! Do you think I intended for this to happen? Oh, you fools, listen to me . . .’

But she fell silent before Ana’s cold gaze.

When Ana spoke it was softly, yet the priest was sure everybody present could hear. ‘Zesi, my sister, you are dead to us. Dead as the child whose life you took. Dead to those of Etxelur. Dead to all our allies. Dead to the snailheads.’ There was a growl of agreement from Knuckle’s people. ‘We will not feed you, we will not look at you, we will not speak to you, for you are one with the dead. Go from this place; you do not exist here.’

As she uttered these words the priest watched Ana’s face. It was hard and cold as stone, ancient and implacable. It was the owl’s unblinking stare, the priest thought suddenly, the stare of her deathly Other. Ana was barely sixteen years old.

Zesi looked shocked. But then a spark of her old defiance returned. ‘Fine. I’ll go. I’ll go back to Albia. I’ll take my son. Kirike is the son of the Root. He has a place there, and will win one for me. The moon take you to its ice heart, Ana . . .’ But Ana did not react, and a new horror broke over Zesi’s face. ‘My son. Where is Kirike?’

‘He is of Etxelur,’ Ana said. ‘You are as dead to him as to me. Don’t try to find him. Go. I can no longer see you.’ She turned away.

As one, the crowd before the platform broke up and moved away, murmuring quietly. Knuckle had his arm around Eyelid, who was weeping steadily.

Nobody was looking at Zesi, as if the curse Ana had laid on her had made her truly invisible. She pursued Ana as she walked off the stage. ‘Ana! You can’t do this! My baby - give me back my baby!’

Her agonised pleas filled the priest with darkness and dread, and he wondered what consequences would flow from this moment.

58

The years passed, and the world followed its ancient cycles, seasons succeeding each other like intakes of breath.

For Northland, there was no repeat of the calamity of the Great Sea - not yet anyhow. But the ocean rose steadily, fuelled by melting ice and the very expansion of its own water mass in a warming clime. It bit away relentlessly at the surviving land and there were surges when it was assisted by storms or landslips. Before the sea’s advance anything living on the land had to retreat, if it could, or die. Humans too, their lives brief compared to the sea’s long contemplations, had to make way for the water.

That, at least, was how it used to be. Now the northern coast of Northland was acquiring a kind of crust, of works that defied the sea’s advances.

And the humans who lived there, though as always they grew and aged and died to be replaced by new generations, weren’t going anywhere.

59

The Fifteenth Year After the Great Sea: Late Spring.

Qili, following the northern shore of Northland, walked steadily west, as he had done for many days.

The sea was a blue-grey expanse to his right, stretching to the northern horizon, and he saw fishing boats working far out, grey outlines against the sky. On the wrack-strewn beach gulls and wading birds worked, squabbling noisily. The day was warm, less than two months short of midsummer, one of the hottest days of the year so far, and the sun was high in a clear sky. Qili had his boots on a bit of rope slung around his neck, and he walked in the damp sand that bordered the sea. The cool wavelets that broke over his feet eased the ache of callused soles, but did nothing to relieve the weight of the pack on his back, grubby and stained after his long walk from home at the mouth of the World River, far to the east.

He rounded a headland of gravel that spilled from the feet of eroding dunes, and the view to the west opened up. And he saw Etxelur, birthplace of his grandfather Heni, for the first time in his life.

It was just as his father’s visitor from Etxelur had described. There was Flint Island lying just offshore, and there the bay cupped by the island’s bulk and the gentle hills of the mainland. With land and sea mixed together, an estuary-dweller like Qili could see at a glance how desirable it was as a place to live.

But there, cutting across the sea, stretched between island and mainland, was a line, dead straight and bone white. It was clearly unnatural, sharp and straight in a world of curves and randomness.

All along the Northland coastline he had glimpsed similar works, walls to keep the water out, channels to let it run away, many of the works fresh cut from the earth. Everywhere people were working the land to keep it from the clutches of the sea. A part of him quailed at the thought of this reshaping of the world. Yet, standing here before the great dyke, he felt a spark of wonder. He was seventeen years old.

A pair of birds flew over his head, casting sweeping shadows. Their outspread wings had a clear white stripe along their brown surfaces, and behind sharp bills they had bright red necks; their call was a low-pitched ‘whee-t’. He watched, entranced.

‘Phalaropes. We call them phalaropes.’ The words were in the traders’ tongue.

Two women were approaching him, coming from the west. They were bare-footed, dressed in simple dyed-cloth tunics that left their arms and legs bare. The older woman, perhaps in her early twenties, had a serious face and blonde hair tied back behind her head. The younger, perhaps younger than Qili, was more exotic, her hair thick and jet-black, her features strong, her skin a rich brown. Her tunic was open at the waist, and he saw a marking on her belly: three concentric circles and a single radial stab, disappearing into the wrap around her loins. She was taller than he was. He’d never seen anyone quite like her. She was undoubtedly beautiful, but intimidating.

As they reached him they stood apart, and he saw that both had bone-handled stone blades hanging on loops from their leather belts. If he had been meaning to attack them, he could not have reached both with a single movement. That was a reasonable precaution, strangers were often unfriendly, but he had no such intention. And he couldn’t take his eyes off the weapons’ blades, shaped from a rich, creamy, pale brown flint. Back home only the big men and the priests would wear such things. Was Etxelur really as rich as they said?

The women were watching him, waiting to see what he would do. He smiled and spread his hands, showing they were empty.

The older woman asked, ‘You speak the traders’ tongue?’

‘Not well.’ He glanced up. ‘Phalaropes. We call them red-cheeks. They are early this year. Often not seen before . . .’ He stumbled on the word.

‘Midsummer? No. My name is Arga. This is Dolphin Gift.’

‘I am Qili. I come from a land east of here, at the mouth of the World River. You are from Etxelur.’

‘How could you tell?’

‘Well, I can see it,’ he said, gesturing to the island. ‘Just as has been described. And I recognised the marking on your stomach,’ he said to the younger woman. Dolphin scowled at him. He said, ‘It was the same marking as on the cheek of our visitor.’

‘What visitor?’

‘His name was Matu son of Matu. He said he was from Etxelur. And he said he was searching for sons of Heni of Etxelur.’

‘I see he found you.’ Arga smiled, and her face was transformed, a smile as wide as the moon.

‘I am Heni’s grandson, not his son. I never met Heni.’

‘But you have come to celebrate his death and life.’

Dolphin Gift said, ‘That’s a long way, just to see the end of some old man you never knew.’ Despite her looks, when she spoke she had just the same accent as Arga.

‘My father is too ill to travel. He is quite old - thirty-three.’

Arga nodded. ‘We think Heni was fifty! He said he stopped counting once he passed forty, and there is nobody left alive who can remember his birth.’

‘I come for my father, who remembers Heni with affection - even though he rarely saw him.’

‘That was Heni for you,’ Arga said. ‘Always out on his boat.’

‘And I come for myself, for I am curious to see Etxelur. Everybody knows about Etxelur. The traders come here from across Northland, across Albia and the Continent, to bring their goods to you in exchange for your flint - so I have heard, anyhow. But I never met anybody from Etxelur before Matu son of Matu came in his fishing boat to our estuary.’

‘Well, here you are,’ Arga said. ‘I’m glad we happened to meet you. Anyone of Etxelur would have made a grandson of Heni welcome. Walk with us.’

‘I’ll carry your pack.’ Dolphin held out her arm.

He didn’t need his pack carrying, but something in her manner didn’t encourage argument. He slipped off the pack, and she picked it up with one hand.

They began to walk towards Etxelur, along the beach. The women kept to either side of him, just out of his reach, showing residual caution.

Arga said, ‘When poor Heni died we sent Matu out in his boat off to the east, while his brother went west, hoping to find Heni’s sons. For we didn’t want to lay Heni in the midden without family present.’

‘You honour Heni, to do so much.’

‘Heni helped Dolphin’s mother give birth to her, out in a boat rolling around in the middle of the western ocean. And he saved my life when I was swept out by the Great Sea.’

This took some translation. ‘We call the big wave the Gods’ Shout.’

‘Without Heni I wouldn’t be standing here now, I wouldn’t have loved my husband, I wouldn’t have had my two children.’

Qili frowned, puzzling out a sentence that was long and convoluted in the traders’ tongue, which, rich with words but with crude grammar, was better suited to simple exchanges. ‘Your husband?’

‘Died, some years ago.’

Dolphin said morbidly, ‘Killed trying to deal with a failure of one of the dykes.’