Stone spring

60

They approached the mouth of the bay. He could see the wall between island and mainland clearly now, a white, smooth-surfaced barrier against which the waves lapped.

‘Come,’ Arga said, ‘I’ll show you where we live.’

She led him up a sandy slope and behind a row of dunes. The dunes had evidently been battered by the Gods’ Shout; they were misshapen and the marram grass was not yet fully regrown. He had seen such sights all the way along the Northland coast. Behind the dunes, visible beyond low hills, was a grassy plain that extended off to the south.

And, tucked in just behind the dunes, a row of low hillocks stood, round and neat, perhaps twice as tall as he was, their slopes covered with grass. They were not natural, he saw immediately, with a jolt of shock, they were too regular for that. Houses stood on top of these mounds, heaps of kelp thatch over frameworks of stout logs. A low wall stood around each house, gleaming white.

Arga saw him staring, and smiled. ‘Everybody reacts the same, the first time. Come and see.’

Steps had been cut into the side of the nearest mound. Arga climbed these effortlessly. Qili followed, the grass cool under his bare feet. In turn Dolphin Gift followed him, still carrying his pack.

‘This is where you live,’ Qili said to Arga.

She nodded. ‘The house I share with Ana herself.’ The door flap was a leather sheet with the characteristic symbol of Etxelur etched into it, the three rings and the radial tongue. ‘We started building these mounds right after the Great Sea. Even before the dykes. It was Ana’s own idea. Up here, the worst floods can’t get us – even if the dykes were to fail, which they won’t.’

He bent to inspect the wall. It ran right around the house, sealing it in, yet it was low enough for him simply to step over. ‘Does this keep out the water too?’

‘No. It’s just for show.’ She showed him what the wall was made of – square-edged blocks, stuck together somehow and coloured white – and he learned words that were new to him, and new to Etxelur too, he found, brought here by a man from far away: brick, mortar, plaster. ‘To make the bricks we haul clay from the valley floor on wooden sleds. It is mixed with straw and cut into blocks and left to dry in the sun. To make the plaster we burn limestone in hot pits until it disintegrates into powder. This we mix with water and pour it over the walls, shaping it with our hands. It dries to give this smooth white cover. Well. I think Ana is at the flint lode in the Bay Land this afternoon. Would you like to rest now?’

He shook his head. ‘I’d be better to wash off the travel dirt with a swim, but that can wait. I’m keen to see Ana – and the rest of Etxelur.’

‘Good. Come on. Leave your pack.’ Arga began to make her way down the mound’s slope.

‘And you can leave me behind too,’ Dolphin said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

‘You’ll stay with me,’ Arga said with a mild authority, ‘until we’ve found your mother.’

With a snarl of disgust, Dolphin followed Arga and Qili back down the path.

Arga led Qili through the collection of mounds, each topped by houses and scraps of wall, and rows of sun-drying bricks on the ground. The people they met, pursuing their daily lives, seemed friendly enough to Qili, and when they learned he was a grandson of Heni they made him welcome. The children ran everywhere – there were always children, wherever you went – and they smiled or pulled faces at the newcomer. Everyone seemed fluent in the traders’ tongue, even the children, but their language was sprinkled with many unfamiliar words.

They climbed the dunes and paused at the summit. From here, looking north, Qili could see a strip of beach, beyond which lay a grassy plain studded with sparse trees – a gentle bowl shape, rising towards the sides, and its floor rippled with low hills, like dunes. This bowl of grass and trees and ditches was sheltered by the hills to the south, the bulk of Flint Island to the north – and to the east and to the north-west by two walls, both shining with plaster, that stood proud above the land.

‘The dykes of Etxelur,’ he said. They looked much more impressive than when he had seen the dyke from the ocean side, covered up by the sea.

‘Exactly,’ Arga said. ‘And if you listen closely you’ll hear the sea breaking against their outer walls. Walk with me.’

They walked down the dune, crossed a strip of sandy beach to mud flats, and then they came to the plain. The ground was soft, the soil rich, and criss-crossed by narrow channels.

‘This is Etxelur Bay,’ Arga said. ‘Or it was. Now we call it the Bay Land. When I was born this place was at the bottom of the sea.’

This had been described to him by Matu son of Matu. Seeing it was quite different. He gaped, unable to believe.

‘When the ground was first exposed it was muddy, salty. Well, you’d expect that. Once we cleared away the seaweed, the first things to grow were plants from the salt marshes. But in time the rain cleared the salt away, and we helped it by breaking up the soil, and the grass started to take. Then the trees, willow and alder at first – well, you can see that. I suppose they are better able to stand whatever salt is left in the soil than others. One day there will be birch and oaks here, growing where we stand.’

Qili found it hard to understand what he was seeing. ‘Grass and flowers and trees,’ he said. He looked down, peering through the long, sparse grass. ‘Soil. But under it, in the earth-’

Arga knelt down, pulled aside the grass and dug her hand into the ground. She pulled up rich black crumbling earth, but when she broke it up in her fingers Qili saw it contained fragments of sea shells. She grinned at his wonder. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to meet Ana. Wait until you see the flint lode.’

They walked forward, past willow trees and over gentle dune-like slopes.

‘Don’t mind her,’ Dolphin murmured to Qili. ‘She’s like this with every visitor we get. She has to show off. Maybe it’s because she was there when it was first getting built.’ She yawned elaborately. ‘Believe me, if you grew up with it, it doesn’t seem so special. You get used to it.’

But as they neared the northern dyke’s land side the wall loomed high over Qili’s head, perhaps three times his height, smooth and strong, excluding the sea itself. Qili, cowering in its shadow, wondered how anybody could possibly get used to living in a place like this.