Stone spring

52

When Arga was deeply asleep on a pallet beside the dog, Ana, needing air, pushed her way out of the house.

She waited just outside the house for a while, letting her eyes adapt to the dark. She was surprised by the deep cold outside. Since Heni had brought Arga home the weather had changed, the murky air and cloud cover clearing away. Now the sky was a blanket of stars, frost coated the ground, and a sliver of moon offered a little light. Her breath steamed before her mouth, catching the colourless moonlight, and she pulled her skin wrap tighter around her shoulders. She could really have done with a thicker layer, but she didn’t want to go back into the house to face more of Zesi’s glares.

A spiderweb stretched from the centre pole of the house down its flank; it was heavy with dew that had frozen in the cold snap, so that its threads were thick with ice crystals. But she could not see the spider that had built the web. Perhaps the cold had driven it away. Cold brought beauty and death in equal measures.

She walked away from the house, and climbed the bank of dunes just to the north. These had been wrecked by the Great Sea, and the going was harder than it had once been. But tonight there was a crust of frozen sand that crunched under her feet, making the way a little easier.

When she reached the ragged ridge of the dunes she walked west. A thousand moons reflected from the ripples of the bay, to her right, and she could see the hulking forms of boats, upturned on the beach above the high-water mark. In the very early days after the Great Sea people had been forced to sleep under their boats, for lack of any other shelter. Tonight, she knew, as on every calm night, a few boats would be out, for no fishing weather could be wasted this hard winter, day or night. Meanwhile, to her left the land lay sleeping under a fine blanket of frost. The new houses of the people were shapeless heaps, shadows in the dark. And she could see the mounds she had ordered to be built, rising up from the plain. For now they were just heaps of earth, but they would show their worth when the next flood came.

The more she walked, the more the world seemed to open up around her, the stillness of the sky and the land, the calmness of the sea. She concentrated on the soft crunch of the frosty grass and sand under her feet, and the different texture of the light at night, the moon shadows that made dips and gullies seem deeper, the lack of colour that changed her sense of distance. It was as if she was walking in a different world altogether, a world separated from the clutter of the day.

Something rustled in a patch of long grass.

She stood still. She made out a round, pale body, long ears, a single black eye looking warily at her. It was a snow hare, already in its winter coat. She felt unreasonably glad to see it, for the Great Sea had left the land depopulated of its animals, even its birds – even the owl, her own Other, whose hooting calls were rarely heard this winter. But the hare was a great survivor.

After an instant of sublime shared stillness, something startled the animal. It bounded away in a spray of loose sand and frost. She glimpsed it once more, zigzagging across a meadow, compact and strangely graceful.

‘I’m glad it didn’t find my trap.’ The soft whisper came from Matu, bundled up in thick furs; he clambered awkwardly up the dune face. ‘Wouldn’t have enjoyed killing a snow hare.’

Ana was disappointed that she was no longer alone, but she smiled. ‘You’re out late.’

‘Just checking the catch. Anyway it’s not that late. Fishers know how to track the passage of the night by the stars.’ He looked around the sky and pointed. ‘See the Bear?’ This was a distinctive pattern of seven stars that resembled a bear in a crouch. ‘When his body is pointing that way, the night is still young, and morning’s far away. That’s how it is tonight. Of course tomorrow night the positions will be a little different, and the night after that, different again. We experienced fisherfolk know the sky’s secrets.’ He smiled, gently mocking himself, for she knew that, like her, he had never been out fishing before the Great Sea forced him to.

She said, ‘Ice Dreamer comes from a land far from here. But her people, too, call those stars the Bear.’

‘Do they?’

‘So she says. Perhaps it really is a bear, thrown against the stars in some long-gone age.’

He squinted up at the stars. ‘It doesn’t really look much like a bear, does it? You could think it looks like something else, a dog or a deer, and call it that. Perhaps our people and Ice Dreamer’s knew each other before. Maybe we were once the same people, who have separated, carrying the same stories over the world.’

‘And maybe everybody talks too much about stupid things that don’t matter.’ This was Zesi’s harsh voice. She came walking along the dune ridge, following her sister’s footsteps.

Ana’s heart sank. So much for her quiet walk in the night. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you. I said we needed to talk. Besides, Arga woke and asked for you. Poor little kid depends on us now, you know.’

‘I know.’ Ana refused to be made to feel guilty. ‘She knows I never go far-’

‘No. You stand around out here and talk, talk, talk…’ Zesi was wearing only a tunic, not even a coat, so her belly showed, prominent. The hairs on her bare arms were stiff with the cold. ‘What are you talking about now – star patterns? People who wandered around in the deep past?’

Ana said, ‘Ice Dreamer’s legends are all of a different kind of past, where-’

Zesi put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t – care – what that woman says. I’ve had enough of her. And Novu, that other stranger you spend all your time with. What a waste of time it all is! Stars and legends! Mounds of earth! Bones under the sea! The people should be fishing. Hunting. Gathering the last acorns and hazelnuts – oh, I’ve heard enough. Tonight has driven me to a decision. This is what I want to tell you. In the morning I will speak to the priest, and some of the others, and talk about what we must do to get through the winter – and who must lead.’

‘You’re going to challenge me?’ Ana, astonished, laughed.

Matu was not a man who grew angry. But now he faced Zesi and said sternly, ‘In those first days after the Great Sea, when those who survived envied the dead, Ana made us want to live, by not giving in, by keeping going. Perhaps others could have taken that first step. Her father if he had lived. Perhaps you, if you had been here, Zesi. But it was Ana. We remember that. And you should show her respect.’

Zesi snorted, the breath streaming from her nostrils. ‘Respect? For her? Don’t make me laugh.’ And she turned on her heel and walked away, along the ridge of the dune.

Ana sighed. ‘Come on, Matu. Let’s get back in the warm.’