Stone spring

38

Ana hurried back down the dune, followed by Novu.

Something spilled from Novu’s pack, glinting.

‘It’s my fault,’ Arga blurted. ‘I was trying to help. I was opening the packs. Look, I opened yours, Ana! I was just trying to get to the food and the embers and stuff, and the water bags. I didn’t mean anything.’

Novu, panting, his arms folded around his body, had a complex expression on his face; his eyes flickered, as if he were a trapped animal looking for escape. ‘You should have asked.’

‘It’s just a pack.’

‘It’s mine.’

‘I didn’t know he had all that stuff in there!’

Ana frowned, baffled. ‘What stuff?’

Dreamer gestured. ‘Take a look.’

Ana leaned down. The crudely sewn deerskin sack was stuffed with stones: flints, mostly, but a few shining gleams of obsidian, spilling out onto the sand. She tipped the sack up so the rest fell out.

Novu darted forward. ‘Hey! Careful. You’ll damage the pieces.’

Ana looked at him, and began to sort through the stones. Some of them were unworked lumps of flint, even complete nodules, and some finished tools. ‘I wish Josu was here; he would know this stuff. But I can see this is good quality.’ She picked up an axe-head, finely worked. ‘And I think I recognise this. I used it once; I borrowed it to cut wood, and I remember leaving that chip in the blade… I think it is Jaku’s.’

Arga nodded. ‘Yes, that’s my dad’s.’

‘All of this is mine,’ Novu said with a touch of desperation. ‘I worked for it all! You saw my house, Ana. The pieces on the shelves. This is what I do. I work for stones.’

‘No one could work this hard,’ Dreamer said dryly.

Ana rummaged through the rest of the pieces. It was quite a collection. There were knives and spearheads, and many intricately carved blades, no larger than a fingernail, that could be stuck in bone shafts to make scrapers and awls. Most looked fresh to her, as if they had yet to be used.

And she found one big axe blade made of a sheet of beautiful, milky brown flint shaped to a perfect symmetry. You could barely see the marks of the hammer, so fine had the knapper’s work been.

Dreamer gasped. ‘That’s beautiful.’

‘Yes, it is. And it belongs to Jurgi. The priest. He wears it on special occasions, like weddings and the Giving. This is old, and very precious.’ She looked up at Novu. ‘There is nothing you could do that would make Jurgi give you this blade. Why, it’s not his to give. The priests have held it for generations, passing it from one to the next. And you took it, and hid it in your house, your pack? Why are you carrying it now? Were you afraid somebody would find it?’

Novu started pacing, muttering in his own language. When he spoke aloud he lapsed into a mix of the Etxelur language and the traders’ tongue. ‘It’s not like that. You don’t understand.’

Dreamer looked stern, but oddly weary. ‘What is there to understand? You’re a thief, Novu.’ She used a traders’-tongue word. There was no precise matching word in Etxelur.

Ana was slowly working it out. ‘You must have gone into houses when the people were out, and just taken things. Flints, tools. Whatever you liked. You even went into the priest’s house, and went through his bags, the sacred, ancient stuff.’

‘It was easy,’ he said lightly. ‘The man’s gone wandering off in the forest, hasn’t he? There’s nobody in his house.’

Ana could see emotions chasing across his face. He liked to be cheeky, to be daring, elusive, unpredictable – although he had hinted that it was those qualities that had caused him to be thrown out of his home by his father in the first place. He was trying to laugh this off.

But then, before their three serious faces, something seemed to snap. He sat down suddenly, his legs folded up, his elbows on his knees, his head hanging.

Exchanging glances, the others sat more slowly, facing him.

‘All right. Yes. I took the stuff. Even though I know what you’ve all done for me.’ He lifted his head. ‘You, Ice Dreamer. You spoke to me when I first showed up here.’

Arga put in, ‘And I showed you how to set hare traps.’

‘You did,’ he replied solemnly. He turned to Ana. ‘And you, Ana…’

Ana couldn’t face him. She burned with a kind of embarrassment. How could she have been so stupid as to waste her time on this man?

‘Please, Ana. Look at me.’

‘I owe you nothing.’

‘No.’ Beaten, he dropped his head again. ‘All right. Let me just tell you why I did this. I didn’t do it to hurt you, any of you. I did it because I had to. This is what we do, in Jericho! We have stuff. We collect it and keep it, we buy it and sell it. And if you don’t have stuff you have no power, you have nothing, you are nothing. Oh, by the blood of the bull gods, I have turned into my father! I despised him for this…’ He looked at Ana and spoke with a blunter edge to his voice. ‘Look, you have been kind to me. But I think you adopted me – like raising a lost puppy. That was what you needed. But I’m more than that. I’m a man of Jericho.’

‘You could have told me how you felt,’ Ana said.

‘Would you have listened? Could you have understood? Well, maybe you could. You’re better than me; that’s obvious.’ He straightened up. ‘So what now? Shall we go back? Maybe we should wait for your father to get back from his fishing… I’ll leave tonight. I’ll find somewhere. I learned how to live away from people, when I was walking with the traders.’

Dreamer glanced at Ana. Arga looked hugely distressed.

Neither wanted Novu to go, Ana saw. And she realised that if she fixed this mess, here and now, she could persuade her father to accept her solution later. ‘Take the stones back,’ she said impulsively.

‘What?’

‘Give them back to whoever you stole them from. And don’t sneak around doing it when they’re out. Do it to their faces. Apologise.’

He rubbed his chin doubtfully. ‘One or two will kick my arse. Your uncle Jaku for instance.’

‘You’ll deserve it. And when Jurgi gets home, tell him what you did. He’ll probably kick your arse too. And never do this again.’

‘I swear I won’t.’ He looked at her uncertainly. ‘It might not be enough. They might throw me out anyway.’

‘I’ll have to speak to my father. I can tell him I’ll watch you until you’ve got through this madness, and you can be trusted.’

He regarded her. ‘You’re so angry. Why are you helping me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said hotly. ‘Maybe it’s because I’ll look less stupid this way.’

He laughed. ‘Well, that’s a good enough reason. I’ll owe you everything, Ana. My whole life, maybe.’

Dreamer said sternly, ‘Just remember that.’

Ana glanced at her cousin. ‘Arga? Do you want to say anything?’

But Arga was frowning. ‘Can you hear that?’

‘What?’

The girl stood up, looking around at the open ground. ‘Rumbling. Like aurochs running. Or thunder.’

Dreamer said, ‘I hear it. Coming from the sea, I think.’

Gulls flew overhead, a sudden low flurry of them erupting from behind the dunes, cawing loudly, heading inland.

Dreamer murmured, ‘Unusual weather makes me nervous. We say it is the anger of the gods.’

Ana said, ‘If we climb these dunes we can see. Come on, Arga.’

Young and fit, Arga led the way, scurrying up the dune slope. Ana followed. Novu hastily packed away his stones, and Dreamer picked up her baby.