Stone spring

13

It was the middle of the day before Heni returned from his latest walk down this strange shore to visit the Hairy Folk.

Kirike, sitting by their upturned boat, saw him coming from the south, walking along the shingle just above the tidal wrack. Heni was carrying his boots slung around his neck, and his big bare feet made the stones crunch. In one hand he carried a folded skin, heavy with gifts from the Hairy Folk. He looked dark and solid in the brightness of the day, the light of the sea.

Kirike had kept the fire going with logs from the dense pine forest just above the beach. Now he threw on a couple more of the big clams that were so common here. He had a little bowl of mashed acorn, gathered from the oak groves further south; he sprinkled some of this on the flesh of the opening clams for flavouring. The clams were huge oceanic beasts like nothing at home. He was collecting the shells, a heap of them on a string to take home, to make Ana and Zesi marvel.

Heni rolled up, panting hard, and dumped his pack by the fire. He stripped off his coat, cut from the fur of a bear. The lighter skin tunic he wore underneath was soaked with sweat.

‘Urgh! By the moon’s shining buttocks you stink,’ Kirike protested.

‘There’s heat in that sun. It will be a hot summer, I tell you. At least it will be here, wherever we are.’ Heni threw himself down. He gulped fresh water from a skin, took a shell and scooped up a big mouthful of clam flesh.

Heni was Kirike’s cousin, a little older than Kirike at thirty-four. His head was a mass of thick black hair and beard, and his nose was misshapen from multiple breaks – he was an enthusiastic fighter but not an effective one. They had grown up together, playing and mock-hunting on the beaches of Etxelur. At first Heni had been the leader, the guide, at times the bully who forced Kirike to learn fast. As Kirike had grown he had eventually overtaken Heni in maturity, and now Kirike, as Giver, relied on Heni as his closest ally. Kirike couldn’t pick a better companion to have got lost at sea with. But today he did stink, and Kirike pulled a face.

Heni grunted and took another oyster. ‘Well, you’d be rank if you had to sit through another blubber feast with those Hairy Folk.’ You always had to eat with the strange dark hunters down the beach before they’d consider a trade. ‘Mind you, the turtle soup was good, in those big upturned shells.’ He winked at Kirike. ‘And that little woman with the big arse caught my eye again.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘This time she submitted to a little tenderness from old Heni. We snuck off into one of those funny little shacks they have.’ Houses made of skin stretched over the ribs of some huge sea beast. ‘We didn’t get to threading the spear through the shaft-straightener, if you know what I mean, but-’

‘You sure which hole was which under all that hair? You sure it’s even a woman? I’ll swear she’s got a better beard than I have.’

‘Yes, but you’ve got bigger tits as well. She’s not that hairy. They just wear it long, that’s all. Gives you something to grip onto.’ Heni lumbered to his feet, stood over their boat, rummaged in his leggings, and with a sigh of satisfaction pissed over the skin of the hull. When he was done he lifted the boat by its prow so that his urine ran in streaks. The boat was a frame of wood and stretched skin. You could clearly see where they had patched it during the winter months here on this beach, with new expanses of deer hide, scraped and soaked in their own piss. ‘Look at that,’ Heni said. ‘Not a leak.’ He eyed Kirike. ‘So if the boat’s ready… time to go home? You’ve been saying all winter that you’d try to be back for the Giving.’

Kirike looked out to sea. As always when they spoke of going home he felt a deep dread stealing over him. ‘Maybe a few more days,’ he said. ‘Collect a bit more meat. Work on the boat some more while we’ve got the chance. Put some more flesh on our bones before we face the ice again…’

‘There’s no reason not to leave now,’ Heni said bluntly. ‘Look. I understand. Or I think I do. Remember, it was me who went out in the boat with you in those first days after Sabet died.’

Sabet, Kirike’s wife, had died as she laboured to give birth to a dead baby the previous summer. The baby wasn’t expected; he had thought that Sabet had put the dangers of childbirth behind her years before, when Zesi and Ana were born, and they were safe. The shock, the sudden end of his long marriage, had broken his heart.

‘You weren’t much use then, I’ll tell you that,’ Heni said.

‘I know. But I didn’t want to be anywhere but in the boat. All those people, the women, Sabet’s sister, her mother, the girls… If I thought I could have got by in the boat without you I would have done.’

‘Well, I was there. And I was there when that storm pushed us west. That gave you an excuse to stay out for a few more days, didn’t it?’

‘I couldn’t help the storm.’

‘No. But then you said we had to sail north.’

The storm had caused them two days and nights of non-stop bailing: no paddling, no sleeping, no eating, you pissed where you sat and drank and ate one-handed, and with the other hand you bailed. When the storm had blown over they had no idea where they were. They were out of water, had lost their food, their catch and their fishing gear, and the boat leaked in a dozen places. It was obvious they’d been driven west, for that was the way the storm had blown them. South: that was the way to go. If they’d headed south they would have hit the shore of Northland, or maybe somewhere on the Albia coast. Then, even if they didn’t recognise where they were, they could rest up, fix the boat, and shore-hop east until they reached home.

Instead Kirike had insisted they sail north. ‘We went over it and over it,’ he said now. ‘I just had this feeling we were closer to land to the north than the south.’

‘Pig scut.’

‘I thought I saw a gull flying that way.’

‘Pig scut! There was no gull, except maybe in your head. But I let you talk me into it.’

‘We found land, didn’t we?’

So they had, a cold shore littered with strange black rocks, where the ice had almost come down to the sea. There had been no people there. No wood either, no trees growing, though they found some driftwood on the strand. But there were seals who had evidently never seen people, for each of them was trusting and friendly right up until the moment the club, delivered with respect, hit the back of its head. They had rested up in a shelter built of snow blocks, ate the seals’ flesh, fixed the boat as best they could with sealskin and caulked it with the animals’ fat, and then paddled off.

And they headed west, not east.

‘The current ran that way.’

‘Some of the time.’

‘We might have found land. People to trade with.’

‘We found ice! We slept on floating ice, and fished through holes in the ice. My piss turned to ice.’

‘Nobody ever went so far west before! We were strong, we were healthy. Who could have known what we’d find?’

‘All we found was ice…’

Over weeks of westward sailing, they had hopped from ice floe to ice floe across the roof of the world. Then the land curved south, and they had passed the mouth of a wide and deep river estuary, ice-bound in the winter. At last they had settled on this shore with the big clams.

Kirike said, ‘Maybe this is Albia, but if it is it’s like no bit of Albia I ever heard of, even from the traders. If they had clams like these we’d have known about it.’

‘We’re nowhere,’ Heni said. ‘A land with no name on the arse of the world. Where the funny-looking people don’t speak a shred even of the traders’ tongue. Well, we have to go home some time. If we can make it back. And what about Zesi? What about Ana? Your daughters don’t know if you’re dead or alive – or me, come to that.’

Kirike blurted, ‘Every time I see them I will think of Sabet.’

Heni nodded gravely. ‘Yes. That is true. But do you think your daughters won’t be missing their mother too?’

‘Sun and moon, it’s like talking to a priest.’

‘So are we going home?’

‘All right! Tonight we’ll turn the boat over. In the morning, as soon as it’s stocked, if it’s not actually storming-’

‘Well, about time.’

‘So what did you get from the Hairy Folk? Apart from a tit-grab from your bearded lover.’

Heni opened up his pack, to reveal bone and polished stone. ‘I traded our last bits of obsidian for this stuff.’ He pulled out a fine slate knife. ‘Look at the edge on that.’

Kirike picked up an awl made from what felt like a tooth. ‘I wonder what animal this came from.’

‘They told me. We don’t have a name for it. Like a big fat seal, with long teeth that stick down.’ He mimed with two pointing fingers. ‘And look at this harpoon. See the toggle? Look, you pass a rope through here, it runs out when you throw the spear, and then you can just pull the weapon back.’

Kirike rummaged through the gifts. ‘But no food. No dried meat, none of those acorn biscuits they make-’

‘Who needs food? Kirike, it’s spring, we’ll be sitting on an ocean full of fish.’ The tooth harpoon was on a loop of cord; he slipped it around his neck. ‘Imagine the show we’ll make when we paddle into Etxelur with this lot!’

But Kirike, looking over Heni’s shoulder, was distracted. To the north, beyond the sandstone bluff that stuck out to sea at the end of this bay, a thread of smoke rose. He stood up. ‘Fire.’

‘What?’ Heni turned to see. ‘That’s not the Hairy Folk. They’re down south, the band we’ve been trading with anyhow. ’

‘Then who?’

‘I don’t know. Makes no difference. Not if we’re leaving tomorrow, or the day after.’

‘Unless they jump us in the night, burn the boat and steal our stuff.’

Heni frowned. ‘Another distraction, Kirike?’

Kirike grinned. ‘Call it a precaution. Let’s go see.’

Heni grumbled, but he had to give in. They packed Heni’s booty and their other gear under the boat, and they each slid a knife of good Etxelur flint into their tunics.

Then Heni pulled on his boots, and they walked north along the beach towards the bluff.