Stone spring

16

Some days later they reached the shore of a sea. The strand was crowded with groups of people, but they were fisherfolk, eccentric and inward-looking, and not very interested in Chona’s goods.

While they camped by the water Chona had Novu hunt for pretty shells to trade.

At length they reached the outflow of a great river. The estuary with its mud flats, reed beds and threading water channels was densely populated, for it allowed access both to the sea and via the river and its valley to the forests to the west. Chona did not linger here, for, he said, this mighty river was one of the great trade routes that spanned the Continent. So he and Novu headed west, following tracks that paralleled the river.

This was not like the river close to Jericho. It was a broad, rich stream, muscular in its grand flow, and its banks were green, fringed by marshes and reed banks with woodland rising beyond. There was life everywhere, frogs and toads croaking in the shallows, whole flocks of birds nesting and feeding in the reeds, and deer shyly emerging from the forest fringes to drink. Slowly Novu gathered a sense of the huge, rich Continent that stretched to the west of here, on and on, and how this tremendous river drained its very heart.

And there were people here – there could scarcely not be, given how rich the land was, people scattered in small communities along the riverbank and sometimes further inland. They all lived off the land and the bounty of the river. Sometimes Chona would visit them, do a little trading. Some days they rode in their boats, paddled against the river’s flow, in return for a few of Chona’s shells or bits of stone.

All these people were human beings who had babies and grew old. But apart from those basics they could differ in every detail of how they lived their lives – how they built their houses, how they adorned themselves, how they celebrated birth and death and coming of age, how they arranged their marriages. And, most striking to Novu, they differed hugely in their languages. You could walk for a day along the river to find yourself coming upon yet another community whose tongue was utterly unlike anything you’d ever heard before. He built up a picture in his head of a vast landscape of forests and rivers and grassland, populated by these little communities of people, each of them all but isolated. It was only the traders who travelled far, with their bundles of trade goods, smiling and nodding their way across the landscape.

But nowhere did Novu find a place that was remotely like Jericho. Maybe his father was right in his boasting, that Jericho was something new in the world, and the pride of all mankind. As the days passed and they headed ever further west the land changed its character, becoming more mountainous. Now the river was constrained by steep banks. The walking was hard work on the sloping ground near the river, and they had to climb to find easier tracks.

Then, one morning, the country opened out, and Novu was treated to a spectacular view of a gorge, deep but narrow. The river cut like a blade through cliffs of pale, banded limestone, coated with ragged forest that in places descended almost to the water’s edge.

Chona grunted, shifting his pack. ‘This place is called the Narrow, in a hundred tongues. Look, we climb up over this next bluff, and then we’ll come to the camp where we’ll stay for the night.’

The camp, when they scrambled down to it, turned out to be a roughly flat area by the river where robust-looking houses sat, built on frames of thick tree trunks. All this was in the lee of a steep cliff whose bare rock was covered with odd, fish-shaped carvings. Chona, evidently knowing the place, led Novu in. They were met by the usual gaggle of curious children, and by one or two suspicious stares from the women.

Everyone seemed to be working on fish. The silver bodies were heaped everywhere, fresh caught, or were being gutted or scraped or skinned, or hung up to dry out, or were wrapped in river mud and baked slowly in pits. Wicker baskets and bone harpoons hung on racks and on the walls of the houses. Novu saw boats pulled up on the rocky shore and out working on the river, whose roar was a constant, not unpleasant background to the human noises of the settlement.

Well, it was clear how the folk of this place made their living. After so long by riverbanks and sea coasts Novu had thought he had got used to the stink of fish, but in this place it was ripe and high. There were no dogs, though, and that was unusual.

At last Chona came to a house he recognised, and called a name in another new language. Out came a burly, bearded man of perhaps thirty-five who reminded Novu, oddly, of his father. But this man was dressed in what looked like deerskin, carefully softened, cut and stitched, and he had a hat thick with fish scales on his head, which would have appalled Magho. He greeted Chona with apparent pleasure, but he pulled back when Chona had one of his coughing fits. With gestures, he invited Chona into his home.

Chona turned to Novu, and pointed to the cliff face. ‘You’re sleeping over there. You’ll find hollows and caves and such. No animals; the people use them for winter stores, and I think the children play in there.’ He looked around. ‘It’s a rich place to live. You can see it. They hunt in the forest, where there’s deer and aurochs and boar, and then there’s the river itself. Fish, the river, it’s everything to these people, you know. They bury their dead with their heads pointing downstream, so the river can take their spirits away. And, of course, anybody coming this way, like me, has to pass this point. So old Cardum and his friends can just sit here and let the food and the wealth flow by, and trap it in their nets like salmon. This is no Jericho, but they’ve been here a long time, and they’re rich in their own way. A boy like you might feel at home here. Well – go fix yourself up. Cardum says he’ll have his kids bring you supper.’

‘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.