Stone spring

7

The Year of the Great Sea: Spring Equinox. A few days before the Spring Walk, Jurgi the priest decreed that Mama Sunta’s time of laying-out was done. He came to speak to the sisters in their house, the house that had been Sunta’s, and now belonged to Zesi, as the oldest surviving woman of the family.

Zesi’s house it might be – but the house was full of the Pretani boys, their sprawling beds of bracken and moss and skins, their spears and nets. The Pretani evidently liked it here at Etxelur. They’d stayed as winter turned to spring, and now they were even talking of staying all the way to the summer solstice and the Giving. So, after months and months, they were still here. To Ana’s nostrils the house stank of their filthy deerskin tunics and their meat-laden farts, and the acrid smells of their maleness.

Then there were the fights. Once Gall had tried to bring a woman to his bed: Pina, a young widow known to be generous with her body. Zesi had flown into a rage, and had hurled Gall’s bedding out of the house: ‘Get that slack-uddered cow out of my home!’ For days afterwards Gall had pulled down his lower eyelids every time Zesi passed, evidently a Pretani sign for jealousy.

And rare was the morning when he wouldn’t clamber out of bed naked, stretching, displaying an erection like a stabbing spear.

Sometimes Ana dreamed of burning it all down – or, better yet, she imagined the house being smashed by some great storm, or a tide from the sea. She feared that this was the voice of her Other, the owl, the death bird; she feared this was the darkness that had been discovered inside her the night Sunta died.

Certainly this polluted house wasn’t a place where she wanted to discuss the details of her grandmother’s burial.

But the priest, composed as ever, picked his way through the Pretani debris without a murmur or a glance, and sat with the women by the warmth of the night fire. He began, ‘I know it seems a long time since Sunta’s death, at the solstice full moon-’

‘We remember when it was,’ Zesi snapped.

‘My point is, the wait has been long. The months after the solstice are the coldest of all, when even the processes of a sky burial run slow. Some say even this is a blessing of the little mothers, for it gives time for the children of winter to be given up to the sky.’ Every winter took its cull of children; the ceremony of interring their little bones was a sad mark of each spring. ‘But Sunta is now ready for you to collect her. You understand this is a man’s role – if your father were here-’

‘But he isn’t.’ Zesi folded her arms. Her face was set, her eyes clear, her red hair scraped back from her head in a practical knot. ‘Well, I’ll do it. Although the mothers know I’ve enough to do already, with the Spring Walk only days away. The low tide isn’t going to wait until we’re ready, is it?’

This was how Zesi had been since Sunta’s death. With her father’s continuing absence Zesi had taken on the roles of both the family’s senior woman and senior man. For all her complaints about it, Zesi seemed filled with energy by the burden of her dual role.

But Ana became aware that the priest hadn’t replied.

‘I did wonder,’ Jurgi said slowly, ‘if Ana might be the one to bear Mama Sunta’s bones to the midden.’

‘I’m capable of doing it,’ Zesi said. ‘And I’m older.’

‘Of course you are capable. But custom doesn’t dictate that the oldest should do this.’

Zesi sounded sceptical. ‘Then what does custom dictate?’

‘That whoever was the last companion of the dead should be chosen. Ana, Sunta was with you on the night of your blood tide. You should be with her now.’

Ana knew that Zesi didn’t like to be away from the centre of things. But after a long pause Zesi said, ‘Fine. That’s fitting. I’ve got plenty to do anyhow.’ She stood, unwinding her long legs, and grudgingly kissed the top of Ana’s head. ‘Say goodnight to Mama Sunta for me.’

So it was decided. The next morning, just before dawn, the priest called again at the Seven Houses. Glimpsed through the flap of Ana’s house, he was a silent, spectral figure, with his deer-skull mask hanging eerily at his neck and his charm bag slung at his waist, a fold of ancient seal hide.

Ana had barely slept. The thought of what she must do today filled her with dread. Perhaps that was the owl within her, battling with her spirit. But she slid off her pallet, pulled on her skin boots, and wrapped her winter sealskin cloak over her shoulders.

She glanced around the dark house. Gall was asleep, flat out on his pallet, face down, mouth open, nose squashed out of shape, snoring. The hair sprouted thickly on his bare back, and in the dim light of the fire Ana saw an infestation of bugs stirring through that greasy forest.

Zesi was awake, however; Ana saw her eyes bright in the firelight.

And Shade rolled out of bed. She saw that he had his boots and cloak ready by the side of his pallet.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Coming with you,’ he whispered back. ‘To the midden.’

‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ She glared at the priest, beyond the door flap. ‘Is this your doing, Jurgi?’

The priest spread his hands. ‘We need somebody to dig. Shade said he’d do it. Would you rather do it yourself?’

‘Please,’ Shade said. ‘I knew Sunta too.’

Jurgi beckoned. ‘We’ll discuss this outside. Don’t wake the others.’

But of course, once they got outside, all three bundled up in their winter cloaks, and Jurgi had handed Shade his shovel made of a deer’s shoulder bone, there was no point debating it any more. Ana stomped away, with bad grace.

The laying-out platform was set up on a dune matted with marram grass. It was a frame of precious driftwood, taller than a person, long enough for three adults to be laid end to end – or several infants.

The priest and Shade stood by while Ana climbed a step up to the platform. Here was Mama Sunta, a bundle of ragged deerskin and bones and bits of flesh. At least there was no sign of the growth that had eaten her from within. The bones were cold and shone with dew.

From this slight elevation, Ana looked around. It was still not yet dawn; the sky was a high grey-blue, scattered with cloud. The air was very cold, and the dew was heavy. Mama Sunta had lived out her whole long life in this place, and Ana saw traces of Sunta’s long life and her work wherever she looked. From here the Seven Houses were all visible, and Sunta’s own home was a mound of kelp thatch the deep green of the sea. The ground between the houses was thoroughly trampled. On the landward side, downwind from the prevailing breezes, was a waste pit and racks where early-season fish were drying. Sunta had always been the best cook. A rubbish tip was full of broken tools and bits of old bone and stone, hide and cloth. Sunta had always emphasised to the children that nothing was ever discarded here, just put aside until it came in handy. A space trampled flat and stained with old blood was used for butchery, and in a smaller area nearby stone was worked. Both places had been barred to the children by Sunta, for fear of their bare feet tearing on flint shards or bone scraps.

A dormouse scuttled past Ana’s feet, fresh out of its hibernation, busy already, early in the year, early in the day. In a world without Sunta.

The priest was watching her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘You know, I often come out like this. Before the dawn. Just to walk around by myself.’

‘I know you do. You probably shouldn’t be alone.’

‘But people…’ People shunned her, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. ‘People can see the owl in me. I’m bad luck.’

‘I don’t think you’re bad luck. That midwinter day was Sunta’s time to die, as it was your time for the blood tide. I know it’s affected you. But just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean they’re linked.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s a funny thing to say. I don’t remember the old priest talking like that.’

‘Well, I’m a funny sort of priest. You must give people time, Ana. A chance to know you, now you’re a woman. And you need to give yourself a chance to get over this – to get past your grandmother’s death. Why do you think I insisted it must be you who buries her today?’

‘For Sunta’s sake.’

‘No. For you.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come now, we should get to the midden before the sun is too high.’

So Ana lifted Mama Sunta. Most of the joints had lost their ligaments, and as she lifted the skeleton it broke up, and Sunta’s skull rolled backwards, revealing empty sockets where worms moved sluggishly in a kind of black muck.

Shade, watching her, said, ‘In Albia we hang our dead in the branches of a tree, an oak if we can find one. And when the birds and the worms have done their work we plant the man in the ground, and put an acorn on top of him, so a tree will grow and hold his spirit.’

Ana understood by now that Shade’s language had no word for ‘woman’, no distinction between ‘his’ and ‘hers’, as if women were an inferior sort of men.

‘But our great men, like our father when he dies, we will plant a whole tree on top of him. I mean, we dig it up roots and all, and make a hole in the ground, and put the living tree over him…’

Ana ignored him as she worked. Gently but reverently she wrapped the bones in a parcel made of the remains of Sunta’s clothing.

Carrying the body – it was shockingly light – she stepped down from the burial platform. With the priest and the Pretani boy to either side of her, she began the long walk around the bay. In the uncertain light it was sometimes difficult to see the track. But she glimpsed frogspawn massing in the dense water, and crocuses thrusting green shoots out of the dead brown earth. She could feel the change in the world, feel the spring coming, like the moment of the turning of a great tide. And yet her grandmother, in her arms, was dead.

They walked silently. Jurgi, beside her, was an extraordinarily calming man, Ana thought, with his open, beardless face, his blue-dyed hair tied back in a tail, and those sharp brown eyes that seemed to see right into her spirit. He was one of the few who had never recoiled from Ana because of her dread Other.

None in Etxelur was more important than the priest, who was the people’s bridge between the world of the senses and the world of the gods. But Jurgi was quite unlike the last priest, Petru, a capering fool with wild hair who always hid his face behind his deer-skull mask. Finally he had danced himself to a frenzied death at a midsummer Giving. Jurgi was already twenty-five, she realised. Few people lived much beyond thirty; Sunta had been unusual in living to see her granddaughters grow up. Jurgi might not have many more years. Ana would miss him when he was gone.

They trudged over the causeway to Flint Island, the going still soggy from the last tide, and walked on, passing around the island’s north coast, until the great middens stood before them. The edge of the sun had already lifted over the sea’s eastern horizon, which was clear of cloud.

The boy grinned, strong and confident, and hoisted his scapula shovel. ‘Where shall I dig?’

The priest clambered up the innermost midden, and paced its length. ‘Here.’ He pointed to a spot on the midden perhaps a third of its length along. ‘This feels right.’

The boy climbed up the midden slope, the shells crunching under his heels. ‘And if I disturb old bones-’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just be respectful.’

Shade knelt and began to dig his blade into the midden surface, crunch, scoop, crunch. He was soon done, and stood back.

The priest looked down at Ana. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Let’s get it done.’ She clutched Mama Sunta closer to her chest, and climbed the midden slope, stepping cautiously on the uncertain surface, determined not to stumble.

She stood awkwardly on the lip of the pit the Pretani had dug. The hole was neat and round. Glancing into it she saw a gleam of white, perhaps an exposed bone, picked clean by whatever creatures lived here, feasting on the dead. There was a smell of fresh, salty rot. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Just place her in the pit.’

She leaned down, and placed Mama Sunta on the rough floor.

Jurgi nodded. ‘Good. Now we wait. We will seal the pit as soon as the sun clears the horizon. But first I will speak to Sunta.’ He shifted his deer mask from where it hung on his chest and fixed it over his face. It was just a skull with antlers still fixed, and holes crudely cut to allow his human eyes to see.

But when he shifted his posture, and wrapped his deerskin cloak tighter around him, it was as if his Other, the deer, had taken his place.

‘In the beginning was the gap,’ he said. ‘The awful interval between being and not being. The gap stretched, and created an egg, out of nothing. Its shell was ice and its yolk was slush and mud and rock. For an unmeasured time the egg was alone, silent. Then the egg shattered. The fragments of its shell became ice giants, who swarmed and fought and devoured each other as they grew.

‘From the slush and mud of the yolk grew the first mother. She gave birth to the three little mothers, and the sun and the earth serpent and the sky bird of thunder.

‘But still the giants fought, until they fell on the first mother. Her own body, torn apart by the giants, became the substance of the earth, and of animals, and of people. The world became rich.

‘But when the land became too full of mouths, the little mothers and the sun came to a concord with the moon, a terrible pact, and death was given to the world.

‘Now, Sunta, by lying in these broken shells, you are returned to the egg from which all creation emerged…’ He shook his head, as if dizzy. He began to speak other words, words so old nobody but the priests understood them any more.

Somewhere a sea bird called, welcoming the day. Ana saw how the low, pinkish sunlight glinted from the shells of the midden, tens of tens of tens of them, the labour of generations. It was unexpectedly beautiful, the sparkling shells, the sweeping curve of the middens. She would not cry, she told herself. Not today.

Shade the Pretani touched her shoulder. ‘I am your friend, Ana. I think we are alike, you and I. If you would like to talk of your grandmother, or your mother or father-’

She could smell his sweat. She turned away. She didn’t even look at him again, as the priest completed the ceremony, and the sun, mistily visible, at last hauled its bulk clear of the sea.