Stone spring

53

The next day dawned clear and frosty, and at noon there was just a hint of warmth in the sunlight.

‘A promise of the spring to come,’ Ice Dreamer said. ‘Or a memory of the summer past.’ She sat on a bundle of furs heaped up on the dunes over Ana’s house, lifting her face to the light.

From here Ana, sitting with her, could see much of the bay, and the grey outline of Flint Island. Dreamer’s baby sat up on her lap, gurgling and smiling. They gathered around Dreamer, Ana and Arga and Novu, sitting on the ground in the brief warmth of the sun. They worked as they talked; they had a heap of hazelnuts to shell.

Dreamer’s face was strongly shadowed by the sun, and age showed in the lines around her eyes and mouth, and in the grey streaks in her tied-back hair. Yet she was still beautiful, Ana thought, strong and beautiful. No wonder her father hadn’t been able to abandon this woman when he found her on that distant shore. Kirike’s and Dreamer’s was one story among many cut short by the Great Sea.

Dreamer said now, ‘What a night we had. What an extraordinary thing you have found, under the sea, Arga. More than earth and bones – you have found the story of your people. A story of times long gone, when huge boats must have sailed through those great ditches, and must have – must have – sailed across the western ocean to bring your mark to my far country. A story lost for generations, and now found again.’

‘Yes,’ Ana said. ‘And it’s all thanks to you, Arga.’

Arga submitted to a hug, but she seemed to have had enough praise, and soon wriggled free. ‘The question is, what do we do now?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Mothers’ Door is our treasure. So we can’t leave here. Can we? We can never leave this place-’

Ana said slowly, ‘You’re right. We would forget. Living somewhere in the south or in Pretani, mixed up with the snailheads and all the others, we would forget the Door – forget who we are.’

Novu said gently, ‘But when the ocean rises, if another Great Sea comes-’

‘We will build more mounds,’ Ana said. ‘As we have since the night of the storm when Zesi returned. So high the sea can never cover them and drive us away.’ Maybe this was why the little mothers had given her the determination to stay and dig that night. Maybe it had been the seed of something much greater in the future.

‘Yes,’ said Dreamer reasonably, ‘mounds will save you from an occasional flood. But what if the sea doesn’t retreat again?’ She waved a hand at the bay to the north. ‘How long could you survive, on the highest mound, sticking out of the ocean?’

‘We’d swim a lot,’ Arga said seriously, and she looked hurt when they laughed.

‘Perhaps there is more we could do,’ Novu said thoughtfully. ‘My people once built a wall around Jericho, to keep out floods from the hills. Even here we built the causeway to the island after the Great Sea destroyed it. Perhaps there is more we could build.’

‘Like what?’ Ana asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’ He got to his feet and surveyed the coast. ‘Shall we walk around the bay? The tide is low and the causeway should be passable. We might get some ideas.’

Ana and Arga stood up, eager.

Dreamer said, ‘Before you go, don’t forget about Zesi. She spoke to the priest earlier. She said she would call her meeting about now. About who should lead, and what we should do.’

Somehow Ana had forgotten all about her sister. ‘Oh, I haven’t got time for that. Come on, Novu, Arga.’

So they set off, the three of them, talking and laughing in the sunshine. They walked all the way out to Flint Island, around its eastern promontory to the south shore, then back to the causeway. They talked and planned and dreamed all the way around.

By the time they got back to the house the sun was dipping to the western horizon, and the day’s brief warmth had long bled from the air. They were all hungry.

But Zesi, rubbing goose fat into her boots in a corner of the house, looked furious.

They found that Zesi had held her meeting – so Ana heard from Ice Dreamer, who had got the story from the priest. Even Jurgi had been there reluctantly. Only a few people had bothered to turn up, and fewer yet had stayed as Zesi started talking about Ana’s flaws, and the mistakes she had been making.

The last to stay had been Lightning the dog, who only wanted Zesi to throw a stick for him. Everybody laughed at this. Zesi stalked away, seething.

But, Ana reminded herself, a few people had come to listen to what Zesi had to say. Ana could never take for granted the goodwill of the people.

And Zesi’s challenge had lodged a seed of doubt in her own mind. What if Zesi was right? What if she had been driven mad by the horrors of the Great Sea? She was still only fifteen years old, after all. Sometimes she still had nightmares of the man with no face, her father’s corpse washed up by the sea. Who was she to shape the future? What if this nascent scheme to save Etxelur from the sea was just a fever dream?

If she was mad, how could she ever know?