Stone spring

71

Ana’s was a big house, set on top of one of the biggest mounds in Etxelur, big enough for a dozen people. This evening, when Dolphin and Kirike arrived, four people sat around the hearth. Ana herself sat on her own bed, which was piled up with skins so she looked down on the rest. She had oil lamps burning at her feet. She was thin, swathed in a cloak, and sat very still; ageless, she looked barely human, a thing made of stone.

To Ana’s left Jurgi and Novu sat together, close enough for their shoulders to touch.

Ice Dreamer sat to Ana’s right. When Dolphin and Kirike walked in through the door flap, defiantly hand in hand, Dreamer watched, hard and suspicious. With her proud nose and streaks of grey hair, Dolphin sometimes thought her mother was coming to look like a great and beautiful bird of prey.

Dolphin and Kirike sat together, beside Dreamer.

At last Arga pushed her way in. She looked faintly anxious, as she often did; Dolphin knew she was never truly happy away from her children. She smiled at Ana, and sat down in the gap between Dreamer and Novu. ‘Sorry I’m late-’

A bundle of hair and big paws came pushing through the door flap after her. It was Thunder. The dog was excited to find all these people here, as if they had gathered especially for him. He ran around the group, wagging his tail and submitting to pats and strokes. Finally he jumped up at Ana, resting his paws on her chest. She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re wet, dog! Look at the marks you’re making on my cloak. Oh, get away with you.’ Gently, Ana pushed the dog aside. He circled, found a comfortable patch close to the hearth, and slumped down, head on his front paws.

Arga said, ‘I’ll take him out if you like.’

‘Oh, leave him,’ Jurgi said. He looked up at Ana. ‘At least he’s broken the silence. Shall we get on with it, whatever it is you have to say?’

Ana looked back at him, stern. ‘Yes. Let’s get on.’ She turned to Dolphin. ‘You were out on the dykes today. The work isn’t going well, is it? Slower than it should. Anybody can see that.’

‘The quality of the work is poor too,’ Novu broke in before Dolphin could reply. ‘The way the stone is being cut, the fitting. I’ve said how we do it in Jericho, over and over-’

‘All right, Novu, we hear you.’ Ana turned to Dolphin. ‘Well?’

Dolphin shrugged. ‘There are too few of us and too much to do. Even with the snailheads and the folk from the World River and the rest. What with all the other work we have to do just to keep alive,’ she said heavily.

Ana said, ‘We always need more people. But that isn’t really the problem, is it?’

‘It isn’t?’

‘If people want to work at something it gets done. That’s one thing I’ve learned in life. It’s clear that people just don’t like working the stone. Why not?’

Dolphin shrugged. ‘You know why.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘Because they fear it, I think. Or they dread it. Stone is dead. It doesn’t grow like wood or reed. Flint is one thing, we have always worked flint. This Albia sandstone is the dead bones of the world. It isn’t right to use it as we do.’

Arga said cautiously, ‘There’s been muttering…’

‘What? Speak up, cousin.’

‘Some say we are defying the little mothers.’ She glanced at the priest. ‘Maybe the mothers want the sea to cover over Etxelur, for all we know.’

Ana asked, ‘And have they approached you about this, Jurgi?’

The priest nodded. ‘At times. I try to reassure them-’

‘This is one thing I want to address today. We’ve discussed this before. No matter how closely we work together, Jurgi and I, no matter what we say, the people always know that if they have doubts about me they can go to you. Maybe they think they can come between us, the way children can set one parent against another.’

Arga said, ‘But that’s the way of things. You’ve always had the priest on the one hand, the Giver on the other. It’s just the way things are.’

Ana didn’t reply.

Jurgi, watching her, said, ‘I think she has a plan. Some solution to this problem she sees. And I have a feeling I’m not going to like it.’

‘There’s another issue too.’ Ana raised her hand, and studied her own thirty-year-old flesh. ‘I don’t feel old. Yet I am old. There are only a handful of people on Etxelur older than me and still breathing – and several of them are in this house.’ She glanced at Kirike and Dolphin. ‘Our lives are so short. Even now there are people alive, adults having babies of their own, who don’t remember the Great Sea. How soon before it is forgotten completely, washed away by time as the sea-bottom mud was washed away by the rain? What will happen when I am gone? Will the people give up, will the dykes be left to crumble, until another storm comes to smash it all to rubble and drown Etxelur for good?’

Ice Dreamer said gently, ‘You’ll have to let go at some point. There’s a limit to how any mortal can shape the world.’

‘But I have to try,’ Ana said sternly, ‘or it’s all gone to waste. And that’s where you come in again, priest.’

Jurgi’s face was growing steadily more clouded, and he looked across at a confused Novu.

‘I never had a child,’ Ana said. ‘Not until now.’

That shocked them all to silence – all save Dolphin, who to her own horror found herself bursting out laughing.

Ana turned on her. ‘You think I am too old? This is another consequence of the Great Sea. It took away so many old people that kids like Dolphin here grew up not knowing about them. My own mother conceived a child when she was older than me.’

Jurgi said, ‘Do I have to remind you about the tragedy that followed? She died, and so did the baby.’

‘But it need not have been so. You know that, priest, as well as I do.’

Ice Dreamer studied her, fascinated. ‘You are always a swirl of schemes and ambitions. What do you intend to do, Ana?’

She laid her hand on the priest’s shoulder. Jurgi flinched back, as if her touch burned like a hot ember. ‘To take a husband. You, Jurgi. And we will have a child – at least one. There. That’s my plan.’

Arga, like the rest, looked astounded. ‘But no priest ever married before.’

Ana shrugged. ‘Nobody built a wall to keep out the sea before. But we did it anyway. I’m sure there are precedents in custom, if the priest thinks hard enough about it.’

For a heartbeat the priest seemed to consider the question as he would any other of its kind. ‘Yes… It’s happened before, so it’s said…’ He looked at Novu, who was stricken. ‘This isn’t about custom, Ana. You can do whatever you want – you know that. But why would you want to do this?’

‘Because it solves so many problems. If we are a couple, there can be no question of a division between us. If I could become the priest myself,’ she said harshly, ‘I’d probably do it. But I don’t think custom would bend that far, would it? Still, this is a decent second choice. And the problem disappears for ever when we have our child.’

‘It disappears? How?’

‘The child will be raised as the next priest. You’ll see to it from birth. And meanwhile I will teach her all I know of this place and how to run it. When she grows she will combine the two of us into one, your priestly authority reinforced by my blood, and she will carry on the work into the future. Then nothing will stand in the way of the vision being fulfilled, the walls being built, the bottom lands drained. Etxelur secured against the sea for ever.’ She smiled. ‘Two problems solved in one. Neat, isn’t it?’

‘You’re mad,’ Arga breathed.

‘Or a genius,’ Ice Dreamer said.

Novu wailed, ‘But what about me? What about us? Jurgi and I-’

Ana said coldly, ‘Well, that’s another problem solved, isn’t it?’

Jurgi sat still, his face expressionless. ‘And do I get a say in whether I abandon Novu, the consolation of my life – if I give you my own child to raise as your creature, driven by your dreams?’

‘Ask the little mothers for guidance,’ Ana said with a sneer. She stretched suddenly, her most vigorous movement since they had gathered here. ‘How late is it? I’m sleepy. And I need a piss.’ She got up and moved towards the door.

Suddenly Novu tumbled forward onto his knees, and plucked her cloak as she passed. ‘Don’t do this. I’ve given you everything – don’t take him away from me.’

She ignored him and made for the door flap. The dog woke and padded after her, hoping she would play.