Stone spring

10

This morning they were to begin the Spring Walk south to the oyster beaches of the Moon Sea. It was only a few days before the equinox.

Etxelur was inhabited by six extended families, including Zesi’s, some tens of tens of people, all of whom Zesi knew by name. More than half of the people who lived here would be travelling today, men, women, and many, many children, walking south across the hills they called the Ribs of the First Mother to the rich coastline of the Moon Sea. Those left behind included the very young and their mothers, the old and ill, and others with urgent jobs – fisherfolk who needed to patch their boats and mend their nets ready for the new season, others who were already out hunting the grey seal who came ashore to breed, or climbing the sandstone cliffs further along the coast in search of nesting sea birds and their eggs.

The people started to gather early on the dunes overlooking the Seven Houses. Zesi heard the children playing in the long grass even before she first emerged from her house, carrying the buckets full of the night’s piss to empty into the stone-lined fuller’s pit. And by the time she and Ana and the Pretani boys had prepared their travelling kit, the dunes were crowded. All here because of Zesi.

As the discussions about the Spring Walk had firmed up, it had been Zesi who had taken a leading role, Zesi who had drawn out agreement, Zesi who had settled small disputes – Zesi around whose house the walkers now gathered, eager for the off. Her missing father had left a big hole in the community. In Etxelur women owned the houses, and made many fundamental decisions. But men made day-to-day choices, about whether to go fishing this month or hunt inland.

After half a year of making decisions on behalf of her vanished father, Zesi sometimes felt exhausted – wrung out, chased. But she admitted to herself she was having fun playing this dual role, of man and woman. Sometimes, when a boat was sighted coming in from over the horizon, a flurry of excitement would whirl around the settlements: could it be Kirike returning at last? The look of painful hope on poor Ana’s face on such occasions was distressing. But Zesi was beginning to think her own feelings about her father’s return were much more complicated – and when she felt that way guilt stabbed at her.

She kept her patience as everybody fussed, but the sun was higher than she would have liked before they were ready to go. At last she nodded to Jurgi. The priest stood high on a dune with his bull roarer, a bit of bone on a rope he whirled around his head to make a tremendous screaming noise that had the smaller children running to their mothers and the adults cheering.

And then they were off, with Zesi in the lead and Jurgi walking in his place just behind her, both of them singing the ancient songs of the land ways – and each quietly reminding the other which way to go where the path wasn’t clear. The people chattered loudly, and some of the children sang a song in praise of the little mother of the land. The two Pretani boys, who wouldn’t let themselves be excluded, whooped and hollered aggressive hunting songs of their own.

Zesi thought she could feel everybody’s relief to be off on this adventure after the long winter. Even the dogs ran and yapped in excitement, even Lightning who had spent the winter pining for his owner, Kirike.

They headed south, making for the valley of the river they called the Little Mother’s Milk. Away from the coast the land rose and became a sandstone fell, bleaker and more exposed. In places huge layered rocks lay tumbled, as if dropped by giants.

The sun was bright, but a spring mist hung in the air, glowing with light, masking the plains of the far horizon. To either side of the trail, littered with loose, pale sand worn free of the soft underlying rock by footsteps human and animal, the heather had begun to grow, thick and short and green. Zesi found some hawthorn as she walked along, and absently plucked the buds, still early, bright green. They had a rich, nutty flavour when she chewed them. And the first pileworts were out, a bright and early flower with shining yellow petals. She pointed this out to the priest, for it was a good treatment for piles, and worth collecting.

But the country was troubling her, as she sang her songs with the priest. It had been some years since the last walk, and while the trail was easy to find it seemed to Zesi that in some places the ancient songs of the land, with their lists of landmarks and directions, did not match what she saw before her eyes.

The ground was boggier than it used to be, and new ponds pooled in hollows. Here was a stand of trees she remembered playing in as a child. Now the birch were leafless and dead, though a couple of alders survived, and where she remembered fern and grass there now grew samphire and cordgrass. When she dipped her finger in the muddy water that pooled around the surviving alders, she tasted salt. Very strange.

At last the path led them down into the valley of the Milk, steep-sided and cloaked with wood. The pace slowed as people spread out to look for water or to hunt, or bled the birch trees of their sap for resin for rope-making, or inspected fallen trees for flint nodules dragged up out of the earth by the roots.

Zesi was relieved when Gall ran off into the first dense bit of forest they came to, stabbing spear in his hand.

The younger Pretani, Shade, however, stayed close by, walking with her. He was taken with the holloways they followed, paths close to the river that had been worn into the earth. They were channels choked with debris, plant growth, tree roots, last year’s leaves, and pools of brackish water. The people kicked them clear as they walked.

As the sun started to go down they stopped to make shelter for the night, close to the river. People worked busily, collecting wood for lean-tos and for the fires.

Zesi sat at the edge of a pond and set to work using a flint knife to dig out a stand of bulrushes. Later she would char their thick stems on the fire, and they would suck out the starchy interior.

Shade was still close by, as he had been all day. He had an endearing awkwardness, as if he was never quite sure what he should be doing.

They spotted hares chasing each other through the long grass. Two big animals faced each other, their long black-tipped ears bristling, a male and female, and they stood up on their back legs and boxed with their front paws – mad with lust, Zesi thought, for it was that time of year.

Watching the hares, Shade spoke to her shyly. ‘This land is very old,’ he said. ‘So old your feet have worn tracks into the earth.’

‘We follow the tracks our ancestors made when they first walked here, following the little mothers as they made the world. Where’s that brother of yours? He’s been gone a long time.’

‘He is a great hunter. Sometimes, at home, he is away for days, alone. He won’t come back without a kill. You’ll see… The walk is useful.’

That word made her laugh. ‘Useful? How?’

‘The children are learning how to live on the move. In the forest. As your ancestors might once have lived. They are learning old skills, that might be needed again.’

She grunted. ‘You sound like our priest. He likes to say how useful things are. You sound like an old man, not a kid.’

His cheeks burned under his sparse beard. ‘I am older than your sister!’

She tried hard not to laugh. ‘Does Ana treat you like a kid?’

‘She treats me badly. I don’t know why. I-’

‘I can tell you why.’ The voice was Gall’s. Suddenly he was here, a massive presence silhouetted by the low sun. Zesi saw that he had something heavy and limp draped over his shoulders. He was breathing hard, his tunic bloodied. ‘Because you’re a skinny runt. Here, little boy, I bought you a present.’ And he threw his burden to the ground.

It was a deer, a young female, and pregnant.

‘Be a man,’ Gall said. ‘Finish it off. This is your chance to show cold-faced Ana you’ve got balls – and I don’t mean those shrivelled-up nuts she sees you washing every morning, hah!’

Zesi could see the swelling of the doe’s belly clearly against its slim form. Panting, salivating, exhausted, obviously terrified, it tried to stand. But the backs of its legs were matted with blood, and every time it rose it fell back to the ground.

There was something fascinating in the deer’s agony, Zesi found herself thinking. And the power Gall had over it.

Gall was watching her, amused.

‘This is not how we hunt, Pretani. A quick kill, an apology to the beast’s spirit – that’s our way. Not this, not a half day of agony for a creature like this, all to play a kind of joke on your brother.’

But maybe Gall saw something darker in her, under her bluster. He winked. ‘Fun, though, isn’t it?’

She turned to Shade. ‘Go and get the priest. The deer is his Other.’

Shade ran.

Zesi got to her knees beside the frightened doe. She stroked its neck and held its head. ‘There, there. I am sorry. It will be over soon. Soon, soon.’ The deer seemed to calm, its eyes wide.

Gall scoffed. ‘I think we’re more alike than you want to admit – what a beauty you are when you are bloody-’ ‘Out of my sight, you Pretani savage.’

He held his place for one more heartbeat. Then, growling obscenities in his own tongue, he walked away.