Stone spring

30

The Root, following well-defined tracks, led them south until they broke out of the woodland and reached a coastal strip just north of an immense estuary. This was the mouth of a river pouring from the south-west, such an immense flow that the sea was discoloured by fresh water far from the shore. The Pretani called this the Great River.

Zesi knew where she was, roughly. All of Northland was like a great neck connecting Gaira and the eastern lands to the peninsula of Albia to the west. Just here that neck was close to its narrowest; only a few days’ walk south of here was another mighty estuary, fringed, so she had heard, with cliffs of dazzling white rock – the homeland of the snailheads.

They walked on, skirting the mud flats of the river mouth, disturbing flocks of birds. On the salt marsh sea lavender grew, attracting buzzing bees, and redshank and curlews fed busily. In the distance Zesi often saw threads of smoke rising, and flat-bottomed boats sliding over the glimmering waters: folk of the marshes living off prawns and crabs and eels and birds’ eggs, as such folk did everywhere. She felt a flicker of curiosity. Would these isolated folk speak the same kind of language as the Pretani, or Northland folk, or another sort of tongue entirely? But the Pretani marched on without stopping, and she never found out.

Now they followed trails that ran south and west, parallel with the river and pushing deep into the heart of Albia. Willow grew by the water’s edge, and where the river widened into a flood plain trees grew sparsely, mostly hazel and alder.

But it was on the higher land away from the flood plain that the true forest started to take hold, dominated by oak and lime, with groves of hazel in their green shade. Some of the oaks grew huge, much larger than any tree Zesi had seen before, with massive wide trunks that towered up to dense tangles of branches. You had an overwhelming impression of age, of weight, of stern solidity. Zesi could see why the Pretani’s imaginative lives were so dominated by such trees.

But she found the country difficult, claustrophobic. Away from the scraps of higher ground the great trees grew so thickly they formed a canopy that excluded the light, and at the oaks’ feet little grew save ferns and mushrooms amid a litter of dead, crisp-crunching leaves. Sometimes she would hear the rain hiss on the leaves far above, but barely a drop would reach the ground. The most attractive places were, oddly, places of death. When one of the great trees fell, perhaps struck by lightning, it could bring down its neighbours and open up a stretch of the canopy. In the brief gift of sunlight plants and saplings grew feverishly around the wreck, competing to reach the canopy before it sealed over again.

It was always quiet here in the gloom, with the birdsong restricted to the canopy far above. She rarely saw animals or their signs – deer and wild boar, perhaps a squirrel scurrying in the higher branches, badger setts, mouse holes around tree roots. But the Pretani hunters were usually successful when they went on a raid.

And the nights were strange, the forest full of the cries of birds and animals she didn’t recognise. Sometimes in the dark she heard shuffling, twigs cracking and leaves rustling. There were bears in these woods; the Pretani told her all about the size of their claws.

The Pretani were at home here. In the forest shade, with their dark fur cloaks and massive frames, they were like figures carved of oak wood themselves. As they walked they looked out for the hives of wood ants, huge brown mounds that could be as tall as a person. The Pretani would shove their arms into these and bring out handfuls of big wriggling insects that they popped into their mouths and ate like berries.

Jurgi said the hives reminded him of Novu’s rapt descriptions of Jericho.

On their third day in the forest, with the sluggish river a few hundred paces away, they came to a particularly gnarled tree, obviously very old. It was not tall, but its branches were a tangle, its flank scarred by the stumps of fallen limbs. Its bark was cracked and punctured, and the trunk was pocked by deep holes.

The Pretani seemed to recognise the tree. The hunters dumped their packs by the roots and dispersed to empty their bladders, set up lean-tos. The Root slapped the tree’s bark, and walked around it as if checking it was healthy.

Zesi murmured, ‘He treats that tree like an old friend.’

‘The very old trees are special,’ Jurgi said. ‘The priests come to them for certain types of plants and fungi and insects that flourish nowhere else. And then there’s the very age of the thing. Look at it, bent like an old man – a witness to generation after generation. These Pretani aren’t altogether without sensitivity. ’ He sighed, and began to unfold his and Zesi’s packs.

Zesi walked off into the forest, looking for wood for the fire. She came to a younger oak with a broken, dangling branch. It would come away with a hard tug, she decided, and would make a good mass to be dragged back to camp.

She thought she heard something overhead, a rustle in the leaves. She glanced up but saw nothing but shadows.

She got her hands over the branch and shoved it down. Its joint with the tree creaked.

‘No.’ It was Shade. He came walking from the camp. ‘The branch isn’t dead.’

‘It’s broken.’ She knew that the Pretani, obsessed with the spirit of the oak, would only use its wood on their fires if it was already fallen. ‘See? It’s nearly come away from the trunk.’

‘Yes, and it may fall soon, but for now it’s still alive.’ He pointed at green leaves at the end of the branch. ‘If you bring that back to camp-’

‘The Root will shove it down my throat.’

‘Something like that.’ They stood there, on either side of the dying branch, facing each other. It was the first time they had been alone since leaving Etxelur – the first time, in fact, since the day of the Giving, the day of Gall’s death.

He turned away.

‘Wait.’ She grabbed his arm, the bare flesh below his elbow. The feel of his skin was vivid, a shock, like a sudden spray of cold sea water here in the dense heart of the forest.

He didn’t look back, but he didn’t pull away.

‘Please. It can’t be wrong for us to talk.’

‘But what we did was wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘You were for Gall. It would have united our house with yours. That’s the way my father plans. He thinks of long times ahead, of his children and his grandchildren and how they will fare in the future. He thinks like a tree that will not die. We are young; we think with our bodies. You were not for me.’

‘Oh, yes, I was,’ she said hotly.

‘No.’ He turned. ‘Maybe it all drove me crazy, a shy forest animal. The way the light is in Etxelur. The sea, the huge sky. You. I forgot that I am Pretani.’ Gently, he pulled his arm away. ‘You’ll see when you know us more. We aren’t as like beasts as you think.’ He touched the damaged oak, laying his hand on its bark reverently. ‘The tree is the centre of our world. We are named for its parts. It feeds and sustains us and holds up the sky. We believe that somewhere a mighty tree connects the deepest dark of the earth with the highest reach of the sky, where branch and root reach around and tangle up with each other, so that all is one.’

She wished his hand lay on her as it lay on the trunk of the oak. ‘You sound like a priest.’

He smiled. ‘Wait until you see our priest! He lives in a tree, I mean in it, in a chamber carved into the trunk…’ There was another rustle high in the trees. He glanced up, frowning.

She didn’t want this fragile intimacy to end. ‘I wish we could run away. Just go.’

He stared at her. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Why not? We don’t need people. My father spent nearly a year on a boat, just him and Heni. We are young, healthy. We can hunt and build houses for ourselves. Let’s get away from here, find a land of strangers, trade with them. Anything is better than this – to be close to you but not able to touch you.’

He shook his head, grinning. ‘But we have responsibilities. And-’

‘Look out!’

Strong palms slammed into her back, and she was thrown face down in the leaf mulch. She heard a creak of wood, a sharp crack. Something heavy smashed into the earth beside her.

Winded, she raised herself up on her elbows.

Jurgi the priest was on his back, unmoving. A rotten, lichen-choked branch lay across his belly, and there was an ugly gash on his forehead.

‘Priest? Priest!’ Shade knelt down and inspected Jurgi, feeling at his neck for a pulse. Then he took Jurgi in his arms and stood, lifting him, groaning as he took the priest’s weight. He glanced back at Zesi. ‘Are you all right?’

She stood up. She was winded, and her palms were bruised from breaking her fall, and there were leaves in her hair. ‘I’m fine. What happened?’

Shade kicked the fallen branch. ‘He knocked you out of the way of this. Saved your life, possibly. Come on, let’s get him back to the camp.’ One of the Pretani hunters, a man called Alder, turned out to have an instinct for medicine. Jurgi was put on his back on a bed of leaves. Alder checked his breathing, dug his fingers into Jurgi’s mouth to be sure there was no danger he would swallow his tongue, and dribbled sips of water into the priest’s mouth.

Then he went to work on the wound. He had a roll of treatments, pastes and dried herbs, not unlike the priest’s own medicine bag. He cleaned out the wound with water and a bit of skin soaked in some clear liquid that made Jurgi, still unconscious, start and moan.

‘The wound is deep but clean,’ Alder said to Zesi. ‘I do not believe it needs leeches. My treatment has stopped the bleeding. If it starts again we will use embers from the fire to staunch it. I do not believe it needs sewing up. I will leave the wound open. That is our custom, so the spirit of the air can caress it. Tomorrow I will bandage it with an oak-leaf compress. His head will be sore-’

‘You’re right about that,’ murmured Jurgi. Waking, wincing, he stirred on his pallet.

‘Lie still,’ ordered the Pretani. ‘I will make nettle tea. That will ease the ache. But lie still. That is the best treatment.’

‘Thank you.’

When Alder went off for the tea, Zesi held Jurgi’s hand. ‘I didn’t know he knew medicine,’ she said. ‘That Pretani.’

Jurgi grunted. ‘Nor did I. But I knew a man like the Root wouldn’t travel far without a medicine man. I-Ow!’

‘Don’t move, you idiot.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Shade said that falling branch would have crushed my skull if you hadn’t shoved me aside.’

Lying back, he squinted up at the trees, the canopy darkening as the light faded. ‘I’ll tell you the oddest thing. I thought I saw something move up there, above you. Climbing in the trees. A big animal… It pushed the branch and made it fall. I think. It might have been shadows. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘You saved my life.’

‘Then I’m doing what your father asked me to do, for both of you.’

She stared at him, puzzling out his meaning. ‘ “Both of you…” ’ Her hand flew to her belly.

He tried to smile. ‘You didn’t know, did you? Or maybe you did, deep down.’

She didn’t want to follow him down this path. ‘There’s nothing to know.’

‘Of course there is. The women knew, back in Etxelur. Ana suspected, I think. Even Arga. And Ice Dreamer, who’s just had a baby of her own. Think about it. When was your last bleeding?’

‘I was never regular. I never count the days-’

‘Think about your sickness in the mornings! How many of the Pretani’s wretched trees have you marked with your vomit? You just didn’t want to know, because it gets in the way of your goals.’

‘Shut up,’ she snarled. And then she squeezed the hand of the man who’d probably saved her life, and, it seemed, her baby’s. ‘Sorry. You’re right. You know me too well. But – my father let me come on the wildwood challenge, even knowing I was pregnant?’

‘Could he have stopped you?’

She touched her stomach again, through the layers of deerskin. ‘It is Shade’s, you know. It can only be his.’

The priest said softly, ‘You don’t have to tell him. We can complete the challenge and get out of here, get back to Etxelur, before the baby shows. And…’

‘What?’

‘I have treatments. If you want to lose the baby – it is best when it is small. It is not pleasant, but not painful. We could say you are ill, infectious. Go into the forest for a day-’

‘No. Not yet.’ She glanced over at Shade, who was talking quietly to his father. ‘I need time to think this through.’

The priest lay back, his eyes closing. She could see purple gathering around the wound on his forehead, an almighty bruise coming.

The Pretani medicine man came across with a bowl of nettle tea. He glanced down at Jurgi, closed the priest’s mouth with one finger under the jaw, and walked away. Zesi grabbed the bowl herself and sipped the tea, relishing the way its heat stung her tongue.