Stone spring

41

The second wave had upended the boat.

Kirike swam up into sunlight. He coughed, spewing water from deep in his throat. After too long underwater his limbs were shaking, his chest aching, his heart hammering. His head was full of fear, for himself, for his daughters and his family, even for Heni.

But, exhausted, for now he could do nothing but roll onto his back, floating in the water, the hot sunlight beating on his face.

Something touched his hand. It was a frond of seaweed. The sea was silty and full of debris, the weed and plants that usually clung to the rocks of the seabed. And a cod floated on its side, a big one, apparently perfect, stone dead.

‘Grab hold.’

The familiar voice came from behind his head. He glanced back, shielding his eyes. He saw a hand, strong, streaked with blood, reaching out to him. Heni’s. He took it.

He was hauled backwards out of the water and landed on his back in the boat, like a huge fish, lying in water that pooled in the bilge. He sat up. He had lost his boots, he realised, a strange detail. But the boat was intact, though it rode deep in the water.

Heni was working, lashing their nets and harpoons to the boat’s frame with lengths of line. He was as soaked as Kirike, he had lost his battered old hat, and blood spilled from a deep cut on his arm. ‘Nice swim? Well, there’s work to be done.’

‘What work?’

‘A bit of bailing might help.’

Kirike found a wooden bowl and started scooping out the water. He was ferociously thirsty, his mouth and throat burning from the salt water, but their water skins had vanished.

He glanced around. There was no sign of land. ‘We’ve gone further out to sea.’

‘Good thing too. The further out we are, the safer we are.’

‘From what?’

‘From the next wave.’ He glanced at Kirike. ‘There’s been two so far. Why not a third?’

‘Right.’ Kirike bailed harder. ‘So we paddle south until we hit the coast-’

‘North,’ Heni said bluntly. ‘I told you. The further out we are, the safer we are.’

‘We’re going to have to talk about that.’

‘Maybe. For now, bail.’

So Kirike bailed, throwing water over the side of the listing boat, into a sea littered by the corpses of fish, lethally shocked by the passage of the huge wave. The huge wave crashed down right on top of Arga, knocking all the air out of her lungs.

Suddenly she was tumbling in dark water, and her head was full of a deep roaring noise. She let the sea take her. She knew she couldn’t fight the water, which rushed and churned, not like any sea she’d swum in before.

And she knew not to breathe in. She could hold her breath as long as anybody. She had won the deep-diving at the Giving. If she had beaten everybody that day she could beat this strange sea now. It was just the sea. She had swum in the sea since before she could remember.

She tried not to think about Dreamer and Novu and Ana, who had run off leaving her behind when the wave came. Ana had had to take the baby. It wasn’t her fault. She’d had no choice. Arga thought of the sunlight, her parents Jaku and Rute who would be snug in their house, safe from the raging sea.

At last the water calmed. She settled to the bottom, onto a layer of rocks. There wasn’t much light. The water was full of sand and broken seaweed fronds, and bits of fish net and smashed wood. A shoe floated by her face, small, sewn from a bit of doe skin for a very young child.

And a man drifted past her, eyes wide, mouth open, bubbles streaming from the nostrils.

Now the panic came, the struggle for air.

The current turned. It felt as if a huge invisible hand grabbed her. She knew all about currents in the ocean and their dangers. But she’d never felt an undertow like this. She was dragged backwards, scraping painfully over the rocks, dragged further away from land, and her mother. When the second wave hit, smashing into her back with a thunderous roar, Ana kept running. She had the baby in her arms, and she couldn’t afford to fall over. It was futile to fight the huge strength of the wave, but she could run with it, struggling to stay upright in its grasp, feet paddling at the sand and rocks, the baby clutched to her chest.

All over the beach people ran, or fell and thrashed in the water. Some got tangled up in the fishing nets that were still draped over the beach. They would die if they could not free themselves. She knew all these people. She knew their names. She couldn’t help them. All she could do was try to keep the baby out of the water.

And the wave drove past her and on up the beach, higher than any tide, pounding into the bank of dunes that fringed the beach, causing landslips like huge bites. To her left she saw the middens where only months ago she had buried her grandmother. The sea swept over their smooth curving faces as if the ancient structures were no more than ripples in the sand. Still the sea drove on, pushing even beyond the dunes and into the grassy meadow beyond. Before the rushing water, laden with detritus, houses folded like toys.

Ana saw one woman swept off her feet and driven headlong into a stout alder trunk. She bent backwards like a twig. It was another image that Ana knew she would never forget, if she survived this day.

But the water’s strength was fading, at last. She could feel the surge weaken.

She stood still, panting as the water drained around her legs. She had come fifty, a hundred paces beyond the old shoreline, but she was still standing in waist-deep water, from which protruded trees and the leaning remains of fishermen’s huts. Above her head gulls wheeled and cried. Her arms aching, her legs battered and sore, soaked and gasping for breath, she longed to fly up with the gulls and be safe. She wondered how the world looked from up there.

‘Ana! Ana!’

She saw Novu waving, from a bank of alder not twenty paces ahead of her. He was clinging to a tree. Ice Dreamer was beside him, slumped against the trunk. It was very strange to see trees in full leaf sticking out of sea water.

Clutching Dolphin, Ana splashed that way. She almost fell, tripping over a tangle hidden under the water. ‘Dreamer, here, I have Dolphin, I saved her…’

Dreamer, her hair a soaked tangle, lifted her head. Blood ran from a cut on her brow. She seemed barely conscious. But she smiled, reaching for the baby.

Novu took Ana’s arm. ‘Listen. Grab a branch, or a trunk. Help me hold onto Dreamer.’

‘Have you seen Arga? I had to leave her-’

‘Ana!’ He all but yelled in her face, his eyes so wide she could see white all around, his mouth gaping open, blood and snot running from his nose. ‘Listen to me. It isn’t over. When this wave goes back it will pull just as hard out to sea, and will try to take us with it. So grab a branch!’ He helped her hastily. ‘Like this. Get behind the trunk and hook your arm over.’ He wrapped his own arm around her, and held onto Dreamer with the other arm, and braced himself against the tree trunk. ‘Here it comes. Get ready…’ The tug grew smoothly, pulling at her feet and legs, almost seductively. She heard people scream, and the water roared once more. ‘Hang on!’ Novu yelled, the spray splashing over his back. ‘We can get through this. Just hang on!’