Stone spring

46

It was approaching low tide. The causeway should have been crossable, a strip of muddy ground gleaming above the surface of the sea. But the causeway too had been wrecked by the waves, erased as a child might tread over a line drawn in the sand.

So they walked further along the island’s beach until they found a boat, stranded high above the normal water line. Just stretched skin over a wooden frame, it was light enough for the three of them to carry down to the water. There were no paddles or bailing buckets.

They crossed close to the line of the causeway, where the water was shallowest, and launched the boat. They had to paddle with their hands, while water gradually seeped in through the skin seams. Lightning jumped onto Ana’s lap to escape the bilge water, whining, the fur on his legs drenched. The crossing became a grim race between their slow passage and the boat’s sinking.

Once on land they walked around the curve of Etxelur Bay, skirting the boggy tidal flats. Even here there was damage, the ancient wooden walkways broken and submerged, the dipping willow trees uprooted, and that blanket of pale mud and sand lying over everything. Ana saw no sign of the birds that normally inhabited the marshes, the buntings and lapwings and curlews. They had either fled inland or were dead. The only birds that moved here today were gulls, pecking curiously at the churned-up mud.

Suddenly Novu ran forward, clapping his hands. ‘Get away! Get away, you monsters!’ Gulls flapped into the air before him, big heavy birds, grey and white and black, squawking in protest.

Ana was startled. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘They were working on his face. His eyes.’

The corpse lay twisted, half-buried in the mud and the pale new sand. One hand stuck up in the air, fingers clenched. The mouth was open, and a bloody fluid leaked from the eye sockets. Lightning ran forward, curious, but Novu held him back by the scruff.

Ana felt Dreamer take her hand. ‘Do you know who this is?’

‘I think so,’ Ana said slowly. The face was muddy and squashed up. ‘I think this is Lene. Used to play with Arga, though she’s a few years older. A her, not a him, Novu. There are words we say for the dead. And the body – there’s no midden to place the bones.’

Dreamer murmured, ‘We’ll have time enough for that. Come, child. Let’s see all of it first.’

So Ana let herself be led on around the bay, towards the Seven Houses.

They started to see more bodies. They found more people drowned in mud, hands and questing faces thrust up into the air, adults and children blanketed by the white sea-bottom sand. Ana did not have the stomach to dig out their faces to see who they were. A child had been thrown against a rock wall, her head crushed like a hazelnut shell. A man’s face had been scraped away entirely, leaving eyes that gleamed like oysters in bloody bone.

‘People are fragile,’ Ana said.

‘All life is fragile,’ murmured Dreamer. Her baby on her back, she held Ana’s hand firmly.

They were approaching Ana’s own house now. The dog could smell home, and he bounded forward, tail wagging, barking.

Novu came to walk on Ana’s other side, offering silent support. ‘I envy the dog,’ Novu said. ‘He lives in the present.’

Ana said, ‘I don’t envy him what he’s soon to find.’

The Seven Houses had been flattened, as if kicked over and stamped down, and then covered by a dumped layer of the pale sea-bottom sand. A few broken support posts stuck out of the mud blanket, scraps of ripped seaweed thatch. The big communal open-air hearth was barely visible, a scatter of stones and scorched earth under the sand. Ana could see from the pattern of the mud flow that the water had come from the east, forcing its way from the sea up the narrow estuary of the river they called the Little Mother’s Milk.

Dreamer pointed. ‘That was your house, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. There should have been nobody home…’ She found what looked like the door flap. She shook it clear of the clinging white sand, and pulled it back. The ground beneath was wet and smelled of salt. Her heart hammered. She knew it was unlikely, but she had half-hoped, half-feared, to find some trace of her father.

Dreamer found something of her own: one of the big spear points she had worked so hard to complete. It was still attached to its short, stout pole to make a stabbing spear. Dreamer hefted this now, brushing pale mud from it, staring at it as if she’d never seen it before.

‘Ana – Ana! Oh, it is you, thank the mothers…’

They all spun around. A man came running towards Ana from the direction of the houses that had stood further west along the coast. He was barefoot, and the left side of his face was a mass of bruises. Ana knew him. A little younger than her father, he had fished with Kirike many times.

She ran to meet him, and embraced him. ‘Matu!’

‘Thank the mothers,’ Matu said again, panting, speaking too quickly. ‘We thought we were the only ones left!’

Dreamer asked, ‘Who is “we”?’

Matu pointed. ‘My wife, the boys. We all survived. They’re back that way, poking around the ruins of our house. My grandfather built that house. Nothing left, nothing… We clung onto a tree while the first waves surged. I nearly lost my grip on the youngest.’ He blanched as he spoke, terrified even by the memory. ‘Then we climbed the tree, and hung on when the big wave hit. It was morning before we dared climb down! We went home but the houses were smashed, and there was nobody else here, and we thought we were the last.’ He grinned, a big beaming smile that split his grubby, bruised face. ‘And now here you are! I shouldn’t have lost my faith in the mothers.’

‘You’re not injured?’

‘None of us are, not badly.’

Dreamer shrugged. ‘That is the whim of the great sea, it seems. You die or you live; there is no in-between.’

Matu asked Ana, ‘So what should we do first?’

Ana frowned. ‘Why are you asking me?’

He seemed taken aback. ‘Well, the children are hungry – we are all thirsty – there are the dead to think about.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘The weather has been kind. Perhaps the little goddess of the sea thinks she is in our debt, after what she allowed to happen yesterday. But that won’t last. We have to think of shelter.’ He looked at her expectantly.

She could think of nothing to say to him.

‘Look!’ Novu turned and pointed south, inland. ‘I could swear that’s a boat! But – a boat coming over the land?’ It was indeed a boat, carried overland by a party of men. The boat was more or less intact, though its skin was torn in places. The men were snailheads, Ana saw, and they were led by Knuckle, who jogged at the head of the party. It was a very strange sight, even on this strangest of days.

The party reached the Seven Houses. The men were all panting, sweating hard. Knuckle, naked save for a loincloth, wiped his brow and grinned at them. He said to Ana in the traders’ tongue, ‘We heard the wave. We found people running away from it. We hurried this way, towards your coast, and we found this boat – up a tree! Very far from the sea. Something has happened to the world.’ He mimed with his hands. ‘Very big. Very strange.’

‘Yes,’ Ana said. ‘Big and strange.’

‘We thought you would need this.’ He gestured, and she saw now that the boat was not empty; it contained sacks of food, fruit and dried meat and hazelnuts. One of Knuckle’s men reached into the boat for a sack of water, which he splashed over his hot face and into his mouth.

‘Thank you,’ Ana said. She couldn’t think what else to say. This generosity would save lives.

Matu reached. ‘Oh, please – the water.’ He switched to the traders’ tongue. ‘I apologise. Water. May I give some to my children?’

Knuckle frowned. Then he reached into the boat and threw a skin to Matu. ‘We brought water for us to drink, while we ran. Not for you. What about your springs, your lakes?’

Dreamer said, ‘Salt in them. Perhaps the big waves poisoned the ground. We’ve had nothing to drink.’

Knuckle’s eyes widened. ‘We will help you. Tell us what you need, what to do.’

And Matu turned to her again, expectantly, clutching his water bag.

Ana shrank in on herself. ‘You’re asking me? I don’t know. If my father was here, or my sister-’

‘But they’re not,’ Dreamer murmured. ‘You are the Giver’s daughter. Who else are these people to look to? Yesterday you saved my baby’s life, you made a decision, at what might yet be a terrible cost. And earlier, it seems so long ago now, you made the decision to spare Novu for his theft, you showed wisdom. You can do this, Ana.’

Still Ana shrank back until she felt she could shrink no further, unable to feel, able only to react. The woman broken on the tree. Arga’s cry, when Ana let go of her hand. Her father, lost again. They were all looking at her, Matu exhausted and desperate, the snailheads.

‘The basics, then,’ she said slowly, in the traders’ tongue so all could understand. ‘Water first. Without that the living will die. Knuckle, leave the food here. Send half of your men back with the boat, to where the water is fresh. Have them bring as much as they can. They can carry it in the boat. The rest of them – Matu, go to your family first, and then lead Knuckle and the rest. Find the living. Everybody who has been spared, bring them here. Knuckle, we need shelter for the coming nights. Anything will do. Use the ruins of these houses to make lean-tos.’

Knuckle and Matu nodded.

Novu asked, ‘And us?’

‘And we three will consider the dead. Everybody knows the dead and the living cannot mix. That way lies disease. Our way is to lay out the bodies on the platforms and let the birds and the worms clean them, then we put the bones in the middens. We have many more bodies than the platforms could have held, even if they were not wrecked by the sea. For now we will place the bodies on the ruins of the middens, with the bones of our ancestors. When the birds and worms are done, we will build the middens over them. And Etxelur will continue.’

Matu said, ‘Oh, it will continue all right. Thank you, Ana. I’ll take this water to my family.’ He hurried off, and Knuckle followed. Some of the snailhead men emptied out the boat, and set off back inland.

Dreamer patted her shoulder. ‘Well done,’ she whispered. She tucked the stabbing spear inside the straps of the sling that held her baby. ‘Let’s start.’ The tide was coming in by the time they had made the crossing back to Flint Island and reached its north shore. More debris was washing up, Ana saw, more tree branches and roots and lumps of sod, and darker, unmoving shapes on the sand.

She climbed up onto the broken-open midden. She glanced around at the ancestors’ bones, exposed and scattered by a wave which had shown as little compassion for the dead as for the living.

She heard shouts from the beach. Novu was jumping in his excitement and pointing out to sea. Close by, Lightning was exploring another limp body.

It was a boat, Ana saw, still far out, being paddled by two figures too remote to make out. That could be her father – but his hadn’t been the only boat out yesterday.

She slid down the midden’s broken flank, and hurried down the beach. She refused to get excited, not until the boat had made it to shore.

And, closer by, she saw what Lightning was so interested in. It was a human body, washed up from the sea, limp and unrecognisable. The dog barked in his excitement, wagging his tail.

The boat landed. Novu helped one of its occupants pull it up the beach. The other occupant, smaller, slim, jumped out and came running towards her, hobbling on a damaged leg.

And as Ana neared that broken body she saw the red, tightly curled hair, the strong arms splayed in death, and she knew who this must be. She felt as if she died too in that moment, her human part withering away, leaving only a hard black core.

She was barely aware of it when Arga, stinking of salt, her skin burned by the sun, hurled herself into her arms. ‘It’s all right,’ Arga said, burying her face in Ana’s chest. ‘You had to save the baby… It’s all right…’ Heni stood grimly behind her.

Lightning was whining, licking the dead man’s salt-crusted face, trying to make his master wake up, as he always had before.