Stone Spring (13 page)

‘Fish?’

Chona laughed. ‘If I need you I’ll call.’

Novu quickly found a deep, snug cave beneath the cliffs at the back of the settlement, too low to stand up in. It was clean enough, though he did find one dry, coiled turd, maybe left by one of the playing children. He scooped this up in a handful of dirt - it actually smelled of fish - and threw it away. And as he did so he noticed more of those odd fish carvings, this time in the roof of the cave, out of the way of the wind and rain.

He went down to the river and, having drunk his fill and taken a discreet piss, he returned with a bowl of water and an armful of dead branches. At the back of the cave he gathered stones to make a hearth, and dug the ember from last night’s fire out of his pack.

As he was nursing his fire, two children peered under the overhang. Both boys, maybe eight years old, they looked oddly like Cardum, both round and jowly with thick black hair. They threw in a parcel of some kind, shouted what was evidently an insult, and ran off, giggling.

‘And you’re the same!’ Novu yelled back.

The parcel turned out to be a couple of plump fish, fresh from the river, wrapped in thick broad-lobed leaves. He had no name for their kind, but he had learned how to prepare fish. He briskly skinned and gutted the fish. He buried the waste, not wanting to offend anybody by throwing it out or to attract rats by leaving it lying around. He dropped handfuls of dirt into his bowl of water, making clay, and plastered it over the fish, moulding a compact lump that he dropped on the fire.

After he’d fetched in more water he sat back, leaning against the wall, waiting for the fish to cook.

His cave looked north, and as the sun set the daylight sank down to a bare grey-blue. His eyes adapted to the dark, and he saw how the glow of the subdued fire was picking out the carvings on the roof of his shelter. He felt oddly content. Food, warmth, peace. It was a relief, for once, to be alone. The rush of the river filled his head, like the sound of his own blood flowing.

But it didn’t last long. Chona came crawling in. He sniffed loudly, making himself cough. ‘That smells good. Enough for two?’

‘Maybe. And if not, I suppose I’ll go hungry again, will I?’

Chona just laughed. He settled against the cave wall, shucked off his boots and pulled a skin over his legs. ‘Getting colder.’

‘So why didn’t you stay in the house of, umm—’

‘Cardum? Too crowded. Crawling with kids and farting men and complaining women. Ate my fill of his fish, though.’

Novu wondered how much of that was true. That coughing might have something to do with it. Nobody wanted a sick man around their kids.

‘Their women aren’t bad, if you can stand the smell. I’ll swear they sweat fish oil. There’s one in there I had my eye on last time, a niece of a niece of Cardum’s, I think, plump little thing—’

‘Just how you like them,’ Novu said dryly.

‘Got the impression she was willing to trade a little comfort for a jade bead or a pretty shell . . . Well. She’ll be ripe for a couple more summers. How’s that fish doing?’ Without waiting for a reply he lifted the fish off the fire and cracked open the baked-hard clay. The flesh, tender and steaming, fell apart in the clay fragments, and Chona took healthy handfuls.

Even when he had done there was plenty for Novu, and he ate, ravenous as he always was after a day of travelling.

‘So,’ Chona said around mouthfuls of food. ‘Think you’ll sleep well tonight?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘You’ve been dreaming, the last couple of nights on the road. You came near to a punch in the head a few times.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You were worse when we left Jericho, you know. Have to be deaf not to hear you. Thrashing and muttering. All that anger at your father.’

Novu felt resentful at being probed like this. ‘Look - you’re going to sell me. You take the very food out of my mouth. Have you got to poke at my spirit as well?’

Chona laughed. ‘You’re developing a bit of fire in the belly, aren’t you? That might help when I sell you on. Tell me why your father hated you that much. I mean, the thing about the thieving was just the final excuse, wasn’t it?’

‘We never got on,’ Novu said. ‘I wasn’t like him. Vain and greedy. And on the other hand I wasn’t a tough hunter type, like some of my cousins. I played alone a lot—’

‘Making bricks.’

‘As I got older we started having fights. I’d challenge my father in front of my mother, his brothers. Once he took me to a meeting of his friends. Maybe you know some of them. I think, looking back, he was trying to help me. If I could get to know these people, maybe I could be accepted by them. Be like them some day.’

‘Be like him.’

‘Yes. But they were just a bunch of stupid fat old men to me, with their sea shells and bits of jade and obsidian and gold dangling from their necks and ears. Well, I made a fool of my father. I made them laugh at him.’

Chona grunted. ‘He won’t have enjoyed that.’

‘That was over a year ago. Since then he’s been harder on me. You saw it. In turn I played up more. It just got worse and worse. I was stupid to steal from him. Now I can see that he was making plans to get rid of me. Just waiting for the chance.’

‘And waiting for the right bit of obsidian to exchange you for.’ Chona belched, and lay back on a skin. ‘I can see how it went. He feared that you’d become a rival. Position is everything to your father, position among all those other jostling idiots in Jericho. Like goats in a herd, but not as intelligent. That’s what I use to sell him stuff, you know. Impress your friends! He feared you were going to undermine all that.’

‘I probably would have,’ Novu admitted. ‘I’d have enjoyed doing it.’

‘Well, there you are. So he got rid of you. Brutal, but effective. Bad luck for you.’ He settled his head on his arm. ‘I’ve eaten too much. Well, we don’t have to walk for a couple of days.’ And with that he rolled on his side, loosed a fart that filled the cave with the essence of fish, pulled another skin over his body, and wriggled to make himself comfortable.

Novu leaned back against his wall once more. He tried to ignore the uneven, unsleeping breath of the trader, and listened again to the crackle of his fire, the rush of the river.

The last daylight was all but gone, and as his eyes opened to the dark, he saw more detail in the roof carvings. There were oval shapes, like eggs, chipped into the rock, each about the size of his own head. He thought he saw what looked like a face carved into each egg, circles for eyes, a crescent for a downturned mouth. But surrounding the face and running down the body were overlapping circles and plates that looked like scales. Half-human, half-fish. Maybe that was how the people of the Narrow saw themselves, their very spirits mingled with the fish that gave them life.

Chona coughed and stirred. He squirmed, his back to Novu, and pushed one hand inside his skin leggings. Novu saw his upper arm working. Novu had seen this before. The trader was a man who, so contained and controlled, hid a powerful lust. He had probably been dreaming of this niece of a niece of Cardum’s for days, and was now denied her.

It wasn’t long before the trader’s body shuddered, and relaxed. Then, at last, Novu was left alone, with the river, and the fish-people of the cave.

17

More than a month after the Spring Walk, Ana had the idea that they should take a party up the valley of the Little Mother’s Milk to the old summer camp.

It was a suggestion born out of desperation, after another night of arguments in the house, another night of four-way stresses between herself and her sister and the Pretani brothers, in a house that, despite being the largest in Etxelur, seemed much too small. Ana didn’t even understand what was happening any more. Did Gall still want Zesi, or not? And what about his brother? Zesi and Shade barely spoke to each other in the house, but Ana saw the looks that passed between them - looks of guilt and lust, or so she read them. Would Gall stand by and let his little brother have Zesi? It seemed unlikely. And where did Ana herself fit in? She had thought Shade was attracted to her, not Zesi. Did Shade still feel anything for her - if he ever had? Did she care if he did or not? Ana could hardly bear the baffling tension.

What made it worse was that it was still more than a month and a half to the summer solstice, and the Giving celebration. That seemed to be emerging as a major landmark in everybody’s mind. It was always the summit of the year anyhow, the longest day, after which the slow run-down to another winter began. And at the Giving the question of her father would come to a head. Although the solstice would be less than a year since Kirike’s disappearance, everybody seemed to feel that if he wasn’t back by the time of the feast, and Zesi, defying custom, took over his role as the Giver, it would be a kind of closing of Kirike’s story.

Ana didn’t want to face that. But another part of her longed for the day to come, for the Pretani were going home after the Giving.

A month and a half was too long to wait. And so she suggested a trip up-river as a way to use up some energy. The idea was greeted with a snarl from Zesi, but a day later, after a quiet word from the priest, her sister grudgingly accepted that it was a good idea after all, and the word was passed around.

Not long after dawn, the people gathered around Zesi’s house, a few adults and many children, and with soft murmurs and laughter they set off.

It was a short hike from the Seven Houses to the estuary of the Milk, across scrubby grassland carpeted with buttercups. Ana walked with Arga and Lightning, neither of whom seemed troubled by the atmosphere among the adults. The sun rose, the mist burned off with the last of the dew, the birdsong was loud, and Ana was soon warm through. Given all her problems, she felt unreasonably happy.

But it didn’t help that both the Pretani boys had decided to come along.

Zesi seemed in a foul mood from the beginning. Burdened with a heavy pack, she set a tough pace, as if the walk was something to be got over with, not to be enjoyed. Some weren’t capable of keeping up the pace: the kids, and a young flint knapper called Josu, cousin of a cousin of Ana’s, who had been born with a withered leg. Soon the group was strung out, and a couple of the older men quietly moved to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the stragglers.

They reached the river, and by the early afternoon they were following a narrow valley that cut through sandstone bluffs, heading roughly west. Zesi led the tramp upstream, following a well-worn path by the bank of the river.

In places the forest, birch and hazel scrub, came pushing close to the water’s edge. The bank itself was crowded with willows, which could grow as much as a hand’s length in a month at this time of year, and old alders, trees that liked the damp. The alders’ branches were heavy with catkins, some of them as long as Ana’s hand. She could see the scars left where wood had been harvested in previous years; the cut trees were recovering, new growths pushing out of their root systems. Alder was useful for the frames of houses, for it stayed supple even after being dried out.

And in the shade of the very oldest trees white windflowers clumped, bluebell carpets shone, and elusive pied flycatchers flitted, spectacular splashes of black and white. People took the chance to gather birds’ eggs. It was a rich, charming place.

But Etxelur folk, used to the coast’s open spaces, weren’t comfortable in the confines of the narrow valley, and Ana thought it was a great relief to everybody when they reached the site of the summer camp.

Here the valley opened out to a wide plain, bounded on either side by low, rounded hills cloaked with grass and forest. The river itself spread out, as if it too was glad to be free of its confinement. The main channel here was shallow and winding, cutting through a floor of turf, heather and scrub, but in places the flow split into two, three or four braids that combined and recombined, and wide marshy areas glimmered in the low sun. All along the valley the green skin of the floor had been eroded back by the changes in the river’s course, to reveal bone-white gravel spits.

The old camp itself, set back from the river, had been abandoned since the last visit two years ago. Only one of the houses Ana remembered still stood, a collection of poles leaning against each other with the remains of a covering of skin and thatch. In a few more years, Ana thought, even these ruins would have disappeared into the green, and you’d never know the camp was ever here. People touched the land lightly.

People dumped their packs and began the pleasant work of restoring the camp. Two men chose a site downwind of the houses and close to the forest’s edge to dig a fresh waste pit. Another man checked over an old urine pit, lined with stone. He jumped down into it and began raking out dead leaves; later he would seal it up with fat.

Further back was a stand of forest, with an open area where new young trees were sprouting. Ana remembered that this area had been cleared by fire the last time they had camped here, and she thought she saw the pale, wide-eyed face of a deer at the edge of the thicker forest. That was the point of the clearing, to encourage the growth of whippy young hazel shoots and fresh plants, and so to attract the animals.

When Gall saw the deer he immediately sprinted away, spear and club in hand. The deer vanished.

Arga grabbed Ana’s hand and Shade’s. ‘Come on! I’ll show you the river, Shade. I bet you don’t have rivers like this in Pretani.’

With grudging glances at each other, they both ran with the girl towards the river.

The sun was still high, the summer sky washed out, and the colours of the landscape, blue water and white gravel and green grass, were bright. Lightning, hot, thirsty but full of life, ran at their heels, yapping. Ahead of them a heron, invisible before it moved, took to the air and flapped away, its narrow head held high.

They came to a gravel bank, and the dog disturbed an oystercatcher from her nest amid the stones. The bird rose, red beak bright, peeping indignantly, and flapped away. The dog splashed into the river, shook himself to make a spray, and his pink tongue lapped busily at the cool, air-clear water.