Stone spring

29

It was a half-month after the midsummer Giving that the party for the wildwood hunt gathered outside Zesi’s house.

When Zesi emerged, her tied-up pack in her hands, the Pretani were already there, ready to leave. The dozen hunters, bristling with spears, were laden with sacks of salted meat and the fruit of the sea. The food was a gift from Etxelur, from Kirike. The most precious gift of all was a small sack of herbs, unguents and seeds, prepared by the priest, a souvenir of the dreaming house, sophisticated beyond anything the Pretani could produce. On a late summer morning that was already hot, the Root stood outside the house, arms folded, massive in his skins, silent and unmoving as an oak tree. The Root would lead the walk. The Pretani would have it no other way. Kirike stood with him, talking quietly.

Shade stood by his father, face blank, eyes downcast. He wouldn’t look at Zesi.

And now Jurgi the priest walked up to the party, pack on his back. Zesi felt her temper burn.

Zesi, the chosen challenger from Etxelur, was allowed one travelling companion. Her father had brusquely rejected her selection of various hard-bodied, hot-headed young men. To her horror and amazement he chose Jurgi – a priest, who had gone through none of the challenges and rites of manhood, who hunted only for exercise, who had never had a woman.

‘Yet he is the one,’ Kirike had said, stern and unmoving.

‘It’s supposed to be my choice!’

His blue eyes were bright with anger. ‘You’re lucky I’m allowing you to go at all. You have no control. It is said that in my absence it was as if the community was being led by a child. And by lying with the Pretani boy you brought shame on us all, and caused anger and death to be brought into the heart of the Giving – death at the midsummer solstice. You know I’m not one for omens. Pray that the little mothers are more forgiving than I am.’

‘But Jurgi is scarcely a man at all!’

‘He’s a better human being than you’ll ever be. I trust him to keep you safe, and from doing more harm.’ And he had walked away, refusing to discuss it further.

Zesi had seethed. She knew better than to argue when she was beaten. But now that old anger and humiliation returned.

Jurgi wore a simple cloth tunic, leggings and boots of softened deerskin, and as well as his pack he carried a hide cloak, warm and waterproof, tied over one shoulder. He wore none of his priest’s finery, his face was scrubbed clean save for the circle-and-line tattoo on his cheek, and the thick greasy blue dye in his hair had been washed out leaving it a natural brown. He looked normal until he grinned at her, showing his wooden teeth.

‘Just don’t shame me, priest.’

‘I’ll do my very best.’

A few more of the folk of Etxelur were gathering now, to see off the party. Ana came out of the house and took Zesi’s hands. ‘I wish you weren’t doing this.’

Zesi glanced over at Shade. ‘And I wish things were different. I wish Gall still breathed, disgusting fool that he was.’

‘It was all the fault of the Root’s scheming. We shouldn’t let it come between us.’

Zesi looked hard at her sister, for the first time in a long age. Ana had always just been here, in the background of her life, not objectionable, never very interesting. But now she was growing into a woman. She was thinner, paler than Zesi – less beautiful, Zesi knew. But she was more serious, more dependable than Zesi was, probably. A better person. And in the middle of this mess, a better friend than Zesi deserved. Zesi hugged her, impulsively. ‘I’m sorry.’

Ana, hesitant, hugged her back. ‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. For all I’ve done, and for all the horrible things I’ll do in the future, that will hurt you one way or another. For that’s what I’m like, you know.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ Ana said dryly, making Zesi laugh. ‘But we’ll always be sisters. No matter what we do we can’t wipe that away.’

‘I wish I had your wisdom.’

‘And I wish I had your eyebrows. Now go, and keep safe.’

Arga came running up, followed by a bouncing Lightning. Arga was crying. ‘I slept late! I nearly missed you!’ She grabbed Zesi’s waist, and Lightning jumped up at them. ‘If you’d gone before I could say goodbye-’

‘It’s only a couple of months.’ But Arga looked up, her round face streaked with tears, and Zesi saw that two months was a long time in such a young life. ‘I’ll be back before the summer is done.’ Gently she pushed Arga away. ‘I’ll teach you dolphin riding.’

‘Ha! Or I’ll teach you, more like…’

The Root rumbled in his own tongue, ‘Are we done? It would be good to get past those sand dunes yonder before the sun goes down…’

So they set off, the Root and his son leading the hunters, and Zesi and the priest following. The Etxelur folk waved and clapped, and for a while Arga and an excited Lightning ran alongside the little column.

Zesi glanced back at Ana and her father. It struck Zesi that Kirike hadn’t spoken to her all morning, hadn’t embraced or kissed her – hadn’t said goodbye. Even now he didn’t so much as wave.

She turned and walked up towards the dunes. They marched steadily south.

The coastal plain gave way to rolling hills, and for the first few days they followed faintly defined trails through banks of heather and bracken. The high moorland was thick with billows of gorse, prickly green and yellow, and with broom, a subtly gentler shade. The thorn bushes bore white blossom, and buttercups with big heavy bright yellow heads dotted the grasslands. Ground-nesting birds rose at their approach, piping their indignation.

Once, on a ridge, Jurgi pointed out vast herds far away, cattle or deer, like the shadows of clouds on the earth. The priest said, ‘The Pretani are ferocious hunters, but if there were a hundred times a hundred more of them they could never empty the world of game.’

As they walked, Zesi was aware of Shade all the time – all the time – as if he was the centre of the world, and the brightest thing in it. And in the night, when he lay just paces away from her, she ached for him deep in her belly. But she dared not speak to him, even come close to him. If he was drawn to her in the same way she saw no sign of it. Perhaps the murder of his brother, all because of her, had burned out whatever he felt for her.

The Pretani, men of the forest, were uncomfortable in open country, and they eyed the world around them suspiciously. Each night when they made camp it always had to be under trees, even if they stopped at some copse long before the sun was down, and wasted travelling time.

It was only when they rounded the vast salt marshes at the eastern neck of the Moon Sea, and walked west into a landscape coated more thickly with forest, that the Pretani started to look happier. Still, this wasn’t like the oak wildwood of their home; here birch dominated a more open forest, with groves of juniper and alder and rowan and cherry. Occasional pines grew tall, with lichen clinging thickly to their branches. Zesi knew that forest like this cloaked much of the southern reaches of Northland, all the way to the south coast where the snailheads came from. The going was easy, the forest open enough to let in plenty of light, and the Root led them confidently through an undergrowth of fern and bracken and vivid moss carpets.

That first evening in the forest, when they camped in comforting gloom under the trees, Zesi sat with the priest, preparing a meal of salted meat with mushrooms fried on a hot rock in the fire. The Pretani had picked the mushrooms for them, knowing what was safe to eat here and what was not. The scent of the burning birch logs was strong and resinous, and the flames licked bright orange.

Zesi heard the drumming of a woodpecker, loud and regular.

Jurgi got up, took a stick, and hammered on a tree trunk. The woodpecker stopped drumming and came fluttering into sight in the high branches of the tree, a big bird, black and white with a splash of red on its underbelly. ‘It drums to attract the females. Thinks I’m a rival.’ Jurgi dropped the stick and waved his fingers. ‘Fly away, little man. I’m no threat. Unlike these Pretani.’ He sat with Zesi again.

‘It occurs to me,’ she said, ‘that I don’t know any of their names. The Pretani, aside from Shade and the Root. I know everybody’s name in Etxelur.’

‘They run things differently in Albia. The Root and his sons matter more than anybody else, save maybe their priests. What they say goes. Everybody else just has to obey-’

‘Like a child.’

‘No, not that. You may guide a child’s behaviour, but you expect her to grow into an adult who will make her own decisions. No, the other Pretani are like dogs, like Lightning. Who must always do as they’re told, all their lives. I know it’s odd but it’s the way they are. And they’re not unique. You should talk to Novu.’

‘Who? Oh, the rock maker.’

‘Brick maker.’ He used Novu’s own word. ‘I think it’s similar where he comes from.’

‘Why would anybody want to live like that?’

‘Because it works. The Pretani seem to control a lot of their country. And it suits the top men. Look how big the Root’s belly is.’

That made her laugh.

She watched Jurgi as he sat at ease, bare to the waist, cross-legged, picking bits of meat and mushroom from the hot rock. She thought back to how she had looked at Ana as she had set off from Etxelur – as if she had never seen her sister before. It occurred to her that she rarely looked at people. She was too busy blundering through life, in pursuit of something or other. People were a means for her to achieve her goals, or they got in the way. ‘You’re doing well,’ she said now. ‘On the walk, I mean.’

He grinned. ‘Thanks. I’m enjoying learning how to hunt from the masters. The range of signs they look for, the animals’ scent, piss, scut, saliva, signs of feeding, broken twigs… Even a bent blade of grass tells a story. And they don’t just track the animals, they seem to try to guess how it thinks, where it will go, the decisions it will make. Remarkable. No wonder the Pretani eat so well.’

‘I thought you’d turn back in a day, or I’d be carrying your pack after two.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m a priest. Priests don’t have to do a lot of walking, or carrying. But I was a boy before I became a priest. I won a lot of the kids’ challenges at the Giving feasts – this was when you were small, I guess you wouldn’t remember. Once I was chosen I gave all that up. People don’t want to find themselves being beaten in some race by a priest – or, worse, to beat him. It complicates relationships.’

‘How were you chosen?’

‘Old Petru touched my shoulder one day. You remember him, the priest before me? He told me he saw I was more interested in people than in hunting or fishing.’

‘In people? Not in the spirits?’

‘Petru said the way to hear the spirits is to listen to other people. I think he was right. And listening is the point of having a priest in the first place.’

‘Is it?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He studied her coolly. ‘Even when no words are spoken, there is always something to listen to.’

That confused her, and she went on the offensive. ‘I still don’t understand why my father was so keen for you to come with me.’

He glanced over at the Pretani. ‘A man of Etxelur beside you when you sleep will make you seem less available to our hosts.’

‘I don’t need some man to fight for me.’

‘I understand that. As does your father. But he doesn’t want you fighting at all. There has been enough fighting. That’s why he chose me. I am a man, but not a man who fights. Now, are you going to eat the rest of that mushroom or not?’

She took some more mushroom, but the flesh was heavy, tasteless. Suddenly it made her nauseous. She left the rest to him.

The nausea didn’t go away. That night she slept badly, her stomach churning.

And in the morning, in the dawn light before most of the Pretani woke to begin their ritual of comparing overnight erections and noisy pissing, she found her belly convulsing. She staggered to the root of a tree and threw up, expelling half-chewed lumps of fungus. Jurgi rubbed her back until the vomiting was over, then gave her a wooden cup of water. He wasn’t perturbed; oddly he seemed to have been expecting this.

It had probably been the mushrooms.