Stone spring

11

They climbed out of the valley of the Milk, and crossed higher, hilly land.

It took days to cross the First Mother’s Ribs. But by the fifth afternoon you could smell the salt in the air, and hear the cry of the gulls. The children clambered up ridges and climbed trees, competing to be the first to spot the water.

The sun was low in the sky when the group broke through the last line of trees, and the Moon Sea lay open before them. Here the rocky ground tumbled down to a shallow beach. The tide was low, the beach of this inland sea wide and glistening. Far off to the west Zesi saw movement – probably a seal colony. And even from the treeline you could see the oysters like pebbles on the beach, the promised gift of the moon.

The day had been unseasonably hot, and adults and children alike, worn down by days in the forested hills, dumped their packs, threw off their heavy cloaks and ran down the slope towards the water. Some folk made their way along the coast to an area of salt marsh, a place of thick, sloppy, grey clay, cut through by a complicated network of creeks and channels and small islands, all washed regularly by the tide. Here they spread out, inspecting sea aster, golden samphire, glasswort: plants that liked salt and fed on what they trapped from the tidal flows.

Shade stood uncertainly with Zesi at the head of this beach. ‘We have walked from sea to sea,’ he said.

‘The people who live hereabouts have legends of when this wasn’t a sea at all, but a lake. Fresh water. Then the salt gods pissed in it, and everything died, until the fish swam in from the sea…

Shade was only half-listening. A boy of the forest stranded out in the open, once more he looked out of place. Zesi felt she had warmed to him after the incident of Gall’s deer. ‘Come. Take off your boots. I’ll show you what to do.’

She took his hand, and pulled him across the beach.

They reached wet, muddy sand that sucked at their bare feet, slowing them. Shade stared at the exposed seabed, where worm casts glistened, and the shells of oysters jostled. ‘You timed this walk,’ he said. ‘You wanted us to get here when the tide is low.’

‘Not just low but at its lowest, as it is at the equinoxes, in spring and autumn.’

‘This is your victory over the moon.’

‘In the end she will take us all to her cold bosom. But today, just today, we can steal her treasures… Here. What a beauty!’ She picked up an oyster, wider than her outspread fingers. ‘Look. It’s easy when you get the knack. You place it on a rock, like this. Flat side up. Then you take your knife and work it into the hinge, and just prise it open. Careful! You don’t want to lose any juices.’

He stared at the animal exposed inside the opened shell. ‘Then what?’

‘You eat it!’ She picked up the oyster and sucked it into her mouth, letting the salty juices flow after. ‘Here. Find another one, and try yourself.’

He was good at the manual art of opening the shells, but the first he tried to eat made him gag, and the juices ran down his face. The second he swallowed, but pulled a face. By the third he was smiling. ‘It’s salty. It’s strange – it’s good. The first splash of salt, and then the flesh, it bursts in your mouth, it’s almost sweet.’

‘It’s best not to eat them much later than this, not until the autumn. They spawn in the summer, and the flesh can be white and tasteless… Oh, look! Your brother is trying one.’

Jurgi the priest had taken it on himself to teach Gall. With bold gestures Gall tipped up his shell and sucked down the meat, only to spit it out on the ground. ‘Urgh! Are you feeding me your snot, man?’ Gathering up his blade he stomped off up the beach.

‘Don’t laugh,’ Shade murmured to Zesi.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You really aren’t much like your brother, are you?’

‘Do you think that’s good or bad?’

‘What do you think?’

He sighed. ‘Well, you’re right. I’m not like him. That won’t do me any good at home. Gall is stronger, a better hunter. Smarter in some ways. More cunning. More decisive.’ He grinned, and stood up. ‘I never ate an oyster before, but I have been swimming. I can hold my breath like a seal. Watch me.’ He ran off into a sea that was soon lapping over his legs, and then he dived forward and began swimming with strong strokes.

The priest came over, sand clinging to his bare torso, his blue hair wild. ‘He likes you.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m just not as hard on him as his brother is. Or Ana, come to that, who I think he likes.’

‘Ana has her problems. Perhaps now your grandmother is safely in the midden – we will see. The day has gone well. The weather is mild, and we arrived at the time of the low tide.’

‘The gods have been kind to us.’

He grunted. ‘Kind with the weather. The timing is thanks to you and your planning. The gods offer us gifts all the time. It’s up to us whether we are capable of taking them or not. Look over there.’ He pointed along the beach, to the west.

The sun was low, there was heat haze, and it was difficult to see. She made out movement. She had noticed it before; she thought it was a seal colony. It wasn’t. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘People.’

‘Yes.’

‘I never heard of us meeting people on this beach before, at this time.’

‘I asked Kano the knapper to go and have a look. You know he’s a fast runner. He says they’re friendly enough, and speak the traders’ tongue.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Snailheads. From the south. Many of them.’

‘Snailheads! Why aren’t they at their own beaches?’

‘I don’t know. There are snailheads coming to the Giving feast in the summer. Maybe we can ask them about it…’ He sounded distracted; he was staring out to sea.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Shade. I saw him thrashing around before. He went a long way out. Now I can’t see him at all.’

She frowned. Save for a few children playing at the water’s edge, the sea looked empty. ‘He said he could swim well. He could hold his breath.’

‘He’s a forest boy. Do you believe him? Perhaps he was trying to impress you.’

‘Oh, for the love of the mothers…’ She stood and quickly shucked off the rest of her clothes. ‘You’d better go find his brother, priest. Men! There’s always something.’

And, without looking back, she ran down to the sea. The beach sloped shallowly, even beyond the water’s edge, and she had to cross perhaps fifty paces of clinging, tiring, muddy sand before the water was past her knees. Then she threw herself forward into water that shocked with its chill, and began to swim, heading out the way she had seen the Pretani boy go.

At first the water invigorated her, but she was fighting the current of the incoming tide and soon tired. She stopped and trod water, and wiped the salt water from her eyes and mouth, her hair clinging to her neck. The sea around her glimmered in the low sunlight, and the shore seemed a long way away. ‘Shade! Shade, you Pretani idiot!’

‘Yes?’

The voice was so close behind her ear that it startled her and she lost her tread. She fell back in the water and got a mouthful of brine that made her cough.

Shade took hold of her under her armpits and steadied her, laughing. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No thanks to you. You worried me.’

‘I told you I was a good swimmer.’

‘Well, I didn’t believe you.’

‘And I can hold my breath. Look-’

‘Don’t bother.’ They were holding hands now, circling. ‘How does a boy from the wildwood of Albia get to be a good swimmer?’

‘It’s a joke of the gods.’ He was smiling, his face and beard clean of dirt, his smooth skin marked only by the hunting scar on his cheek. ‘A swimmer in the forest. You may as well give a salmon legs. But I don’t mind. I suppose I’ll never be able to hunt like my brother, or lead men in battle, or boss women around. But at least I can swim.’

His hands were warm in hers, his eyes bright. Their legs tangled, and they moved closer together. She could feel the warmth of his thigh between hers, and then she felt his erection poking at her stomach.

He pulled back. ‘I’m sorry-’

‘Don’t be.’ She pulled him to her. His face filled her vision, shutting out sea and shore and people. The world seemed to recede, taking with it all her responsibilities, her mixed-up sister, her fretting over her father, the workload she guiltily enjoyed. All that existed was the water, and this boy.

She took his shoulders and lifted upwards, clamping her legs around his waist. With a gasp he entered her, and their lips locked.