Stone Spring (41 page)

‘Dykes. Matu explained that word. I am curious about the dykes.’ But they said nothing more, for now. He glanced at Dolphin, who walked with her head hung low, staring at the shallow craters her feet left in the soft moist sand. ‘I am curious about you too,’ he said at length. ‘You don’t seem happy to have found me.’

Dolphin glanced at Arga, who looked away. ‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s about Arga and my mother. Ice Dreamer, she’s called - you’ll meet her.’

‘Ice Dreamer.’ This was a name like none he had ever heard.

‘She’s not from here. My mother thinks I don’t keep the right company.’

‘She’s talking about a boy,’ Arga said.

‘A man,’ Dolphin snapped. ‘We aren’t children, Arga. My mother has Arga supervise me when she can’t, to make sure we don’t start humping on the beach—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dolphin.’

‘You’re the one being ridiculous. Everybody else my age has got babies. You had a baby when you were thirteen.’

Qili said, ‘I have two children myself. They’re boys aged one and two.’

Dolphin wasn’t listening. She snapped at Arga, ‘Kirike and I are getting old waiting, while you fools keep us apart!’

‘You’ve no need to wait,’ Arga said. ‘Just find somebody else.’

‘You see,’ Dolphin said to Qili. ‘She takes my mother’s side. She always does.’

‘I just want to avoid upset,’ Arga said. ‘And I agree with your mother that if you and Kirike were together there would be nothing but upset.’

Qili frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because of the past,’ Dolphin said bitterly. ‘Long story. All to do with who Kirike’s mother and father were. The past! All because of the stupid things our parents once did. Sorry. You walked a long way to arrive in the middle of an argument.’

Qili shrugged. ‘We have arguments at home. At least here they are different arguments.’

Arga asked, ‘So what do you argue about?’

He hesitated, and decided to be honest. ‘Mostly about whether to trade with Etxelur.’

‘Really?’

‘Some people find you scary.’

Arga considered that, then nodded. ‘Sometimes I find us scary. Well, you can make your own mind up, because we’re nearly there.’

60

They approached the mouth of the bay. He could see the wall between island and mainland clearly now, a white, smooth-surfaced barrier against which the waves lapped.

‘Come,’ Arga said, ‘I’ll show you where we live.’

She led him up a sandy slope and behind a row of dunes. The dunes had evidently been battered by the Gods’ Shout; they were misshapen and the marram grass was not yet fully regrown. He had seen such sights all the way along the Northland coast. Behind the dunes, visible beyond low hills, was a grassy plain that extended off to the south.

And, tucked in just behind the dunes, a row of low hillocks stood, round and neat, perhaps twice as tall as he was, their slopes covered with grass. They were not natural, he saw immediately, with a jolt of shock, they were too regular for that. Houses stood on top of these mounds, heaps of kelp thatch over frameworks of stout logs. A low wall stood around each house, gleaming white.

Arga saw him staring, and smiled. ‘Everybody reacts the same, the first time. Come and see.’

Steps had been cut into the side of the nearest mound. Arga climbed these effortlessly. Qili followed, the grass cool under his bare feet. In turn Dolphin Gift followed him, still carrying his pack.

‘This is where you live,’ Qili said to Arga.

She nodded. ‘The house I share with Ana herself.’ The door flap was a leather sheet with the characteristic symbol of Etxelur etched into it, the three rings and the radial tongue. ‘We started building these mounds right after the Great Sea. Even before the dykes. It was Ana’s own idea. Up here, the worst floods can’t get us - even if the dykes were to fail, which they won’t.’

He bent to inspect the wall. It ran right around the house, sealing it in, yet it was low enough for him simply to step over. ‘Does this keep out the water too?’

‘No. It’s just for show.’ She showed him what the wall was made of - square-edged blocks, stuck together somehow and coloured white - and he learned words that were new to him, and new to Etxelur too, he found, brought here by a man from far away: brick, mortar, plaster. ‘To make the bricks we haul clay from the valley floor on wooden sleds. It is mixed with straw and cut into blocks and left to dry in the sun. To make the plaster we burn limestone in hot pits until it disintegrates into powder. This we mix with water and pour it over the walls, shaping it with our hands. It dries to give this smooth white cover. Well. I think Ana is at the flint lode in the Bay Land this afternoon. Would you like to rest now?’

He shook his head. ‘I’d be better to wash off the travel dirt with a swim, but that can wait. I’m keen to see Ana - and the rest of Etxelur.’

‘Good. Come on. Leave your pack.’ Arga began to make her way down the mound’s slope.

‘And you can leave me behind too,’ Dolphin said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

‘You’ll stay with me,’ Arga said with a mild authority, ‘until we’ve found your mother.’

With a snarl of disgust, Dolphin followed Arga and Qili back down the path.

Arga led Qili through the collection of mounds, each topped by houses and scraps of wall, and rows of sun-drying bricks on the ground. The people they met, pursuing their daily lives, seemed friendly enough to Qili, and when they learned he was a grandson of Heni they made him welcome. The children ran everywhere - there were always children, wherever you went - and they smiled or pulled faces at the newcomer. Everyone seemed fluent in the traders’ tongue, even the children, but their language was sprinkled with many unfamiliar words.

They climbed the dunes and paused at the summit. From here, looking north, Qili could see a strip of beach, beyond which lay a grassy plain studded with sparse trees - a gentle bowl shape, rising towards the sides, and its floor rippled with low hills, like dunes. This bowl of grass and trees and ditches was sheltered by the hills to the south, the bulk of Flint Island to the north - and to the east and to the north-west by two walls, both shining with plaster, that stood proud above the land.

‘The dykes of Etxelur,’ he said. They looked much more impressive than when he had seen the dyke from the ocean side, covered up by the sea.

‘Exactly,’ Arga said. ‘And if you listen closely you’ll hear the sea breaking against their outer walls. Walk with me.’

They walked down the dune, crossed a strip of sandy beach to mud flats, and then they came to the plain. The ground was soft, the soil rich, and criss-crossed by narrow channels.

‘This is Etxelur Bay,’ Arga said. ‘Or it was. Now we call it the Bay Land. When I was born this place was at the bottom of the sea.’

This had been described to him by Matu son of Matu. Seeing it was quite different. He gaped, unable to believe.

‘When the ground was first exposed it was muddy, salty. Well, you’d expect that. Once we cleared away the seaweed, the first things to grow were plants from the salt marshes. But in time the rain cleared the salt away, and we helped it by breaking up the soil, and the grass started to take. Then the trees, willow and alder at first - well, you can see that. I suppose they are better able to stand whatever salt is left in the soil than others. One day there will be birch and oaks here, growing where we stand.’

Qili found it hard to understand what he was seeing. ‘Grass and flowers and trees,’ he said. He looked down, peering through the long, sparse grass. ‘Soil. But under it, in the earth—’

Arga knelt down, pulled aside the grass and dug her hand into the ground. She pulled up rich black crumbling earth, but when she broke it up in her fingers Qili saw it contained fragments of sea shells. She grinned at his wonder. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to meet Ana. Wait until you see the flint lode.’

They walked forward, past willow trees and over gentle dune-like slopes.

‘Don’t mind her,’ Dolphin murmured to Qili. ‘She’s like this with every visitor we get. She has to show off. Maybe it’s because she was there when it was first getting built.’ She yawned elaborately. ‘Believe me, if you grew up with it, it doesn’t seem so special. You get used to it.’

But as they neared the northern dyke’s land side the wall loomed high over Qili’s head, perhaps three times his height, smooth and strong, excluding the sea itself. Qili, cowering in its shadow, wondered how anybody could possibly get used to living in a place like this.

61

When Qili emerged from Arga’s house the next day, the weather was if anything even brighter, even more cheerful. He heard a melodic, bubbling cry, and looked up to see a pair of curlews flapping overhead in their usual leisurely way, with their pale bellies and distinctive curved beaks, perhaps on their way to the marshy ground to the west.

Too beautiful a day for a funeral, he thought. But already people were emerging from the houses on the mounds and making their way towards the coast.

Arga and Dolphin Gift followed Qili out of the house. They wore simple smocks and cloaks, their hair had been plaited into tight coils, and their cheeks were marked with the ubiquitous rings-and-slash symbol, painted on with a mixture of ochre and goose fat. The house belonged to Ana, he had come to understand, as the senior woman in her family. But last night Arga and Dolphin had stayed with Qili, and Arga’s children had stayed with a friend to make room for him. Meanwhile Ana, and Dolphin’s mother, Ice Dreamer, had visited Etxelur’s priest to discuss the ceremony for Heni.

They walked together down the mound’s steep slope, and set off once more towards the beach. They joined a sparse crowd that converged at the abutment of the dyke that spanned the mouth of the bay, running north to Flint Island. Dolphin anxiously scanned the crowd, evidently looking for somebody.

Close to, Qili was able to see the detail of the dyke’s construction. Rows of fat wooden piles contained a core of rock and sand and mud. Further out into the water this foundation was buried under rock, with a facing of mud bricks coated with white plaster. On its dry side the dyke was a wall three times the height of a person, brilliant white, smooth-faced - but on the other side the sea lapped not far below its edge. Arcing across the bay mouth, unnatural and intimidating, the dyke oddly made Qili think of death; pale as bone, it divided the living world in two.

And he was going to have to walk across it, he realised now. The people were funnelling towards the abutment and starting to stream onto the path across the top. Children ran ahead, shouting, chased by barking dogs.

As they walked forward Arga said to Qili, ‘We always use the dyke on occasions like this, to get to the island. Saves getting your feet muddy on the Bay Land. Of course before the dyke was built you had to walk all the way around the bay . . .’

Qili found it hard to listen, as he followed her steady pace.

Soon he was out on the dyke itself, with a drop down to the Bay Land to his left, and the sea lapping not far below the lip of the wall to his right. It was an extraordinary experience, a little like walking a cliff edge, or as if the whole world was unbalanced and tilting over, and he had an odd fear of falling. Once a child jostled him, rushing past; Qili, stumbling, was glad of Arga’s supporting hand.

‘Kirike! Kirike!’ Suddenly Dolphin was jumping and waving.

A man a few paces further along stopped and turned, waved back, and pushed back through the sparse line. When he met Dolphin they embraced. He was tall, strong-looking, darker than most of the Etxelur folk, many of whom were pale and redhaired or blond.

Arga tutted loudly. ‘I suppose I was never going to keep them apart today.’ She said in a lower, gossipy tone, ‘Kirike is Ana’s nephew. But he’s half Pretani. And it wasn’t a happy chain of events that led to his birth. Ana’s sister - his mother - was called Zesi. Not here. Dead, probably. A long story - you don’t want to know.’ Arga sighed. ‘But, look at them. I don’t know if Ice Dreamer is doing the right thing in keeping them apart. Nothing Dolphin does now with Kirike is going to change the past, all the feuding and the blood that was spilled. And look at the boy! As handsome as an aurochs bull and about as smart - I’ll swear he’s more Pretani than Etxelur. But what a piece of meat he is. Why, if I were a few years younger . . .’ She had a dreamy look on her face.

Qili was embarrassed by this display of elderly lust. Arga must have been twenty-one, twenty-two at least.

To Qili’s relief they stepped out on the dry land of the island. They walked around the shore to the north beach, where two great middens, each curved like the crescent moon, stood on the dry ground above the tide mark. The one closest to the sea was smoothly faced and intact, but the other was damaged, eroded and breached, with shells and stones and mud spilled on the sand.

‘This is our holiest site,’ Arga murmured to Qili as she led him through the throng. ‘Where your grandfather will be interred. But you can see that the Great Sea didn’t spare the holy middens, even. We kept one as the Sea left it, to remember. The young complain sometimes, for they can’t see the point of all the hard work we do. But this is the point, our most sacred place smashed to pieces, and there was nothing we could do about it.’

Qili faced the sea, which stretched untamed to the horizon, and breathed deeply of the salty air. He saw a group of eiders gathered to nest on a heap of offshore rocks that protruded above the receding tide. They were picking at molluscs with their beaks, or resting in the sun, preening and sleeping. Qili had always rather admired eiders. They liked exposed places, and braved the rough seas around the rocky shores, places they didn’t have to share with anybody else.

He was glad to be at the shore. He welcomed the openness and the lack of enclosure compared to the strange artificial bowl of the Bay Land. It felt more like home. But even here people were rearranging the world; two more dykes, both incomplete, pushed out to sea from the land, with heaps of logs and stones at their abutments.

He was brought to Ana and her closest companions, who stood before the middens. He’d met them all yesterday at the flint lode. Ice Dreamer was here, an older, greying, more elegant version of her vivacious daughter Dolphin, and Novu, the peculiar, dark, squat man from the Continent, and the priest, Jurgi, bare save for a strip of leather around his loins, his tattoos bright, his hair dyed blue, and his wooden teeth gleaming in his mouth. Today he had the upper jaw of a wolf dangling on a thread around his neck. Novu and Jurgi stood close together, Qili saw, their arms brushing, their fingers loosely cupped. They were old, Novu in his thirties, Jurgi even older in his forties.