Stone spring

74

The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice. ‘I’m pregnant,’ Ana said.

Her voice was so soft that Arga wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She leaned forward.

They were sitting in a circle around the hearth in Ana’s house, their faces lit by the fire’s dull glow, Jurgi, Novu, Arga, Ice Dreamer, and two outsiders, Knuckle of the snailheads and Qili of the World River people. As was her wont, Ana sat above the rest on a heap of skins. Beside the fire, a treat for the visitors, shellfish had been set out on the ground, covered by a kindling of sticks and dry marram grass. The kindling was burning and the shellfish were cooking; as the shells opened, spilling their juices, there were crackling sounds and delicious scents.

Ana smiled when she saw Arga’s expression. ‘You heard right. I’m pregnant.’ She reached out and touched the hand of the priest who sat beside her. Jurgi looked faintly embarrassed. ‘I’m going to announce it to everyone at the Giving in a few days’ time. But you are as close to me as anybody, and I wanted you to know first.’

The Giver had never looked more human, Arga thought. Her hair was as severely cropped as ever, and she wore her tunic tight around her body and pinned at the neck. Ana would always be a serious, closed-in woman, like a house with its door flap sewn shut. But tonight she looked slightly flushed, and she smiled, her lips parted. The priest, too, though he was as grave as ever, cradled her hand as if it was as fragile as a fledgling bird.

A baby was still a baby no matter what you intended to do with it, a lover still a lover no matter for what reasons you took him into your arms. Just as a little girl who was a slave was still a little girl. Life had a funny way of breaking through, just like the weeds and wild flowers that bravely grew in cracks in Etxelur’s dykes and reservoirs, and had to be cleared out every summer by the small hands of the children.

Now Qili spoke. ‘This is good news. There’s nothing more precious than a new life – and nothing more fragile. All our friends at the estuary will wish you well.’ His Etxelur language was now fluent, but heavily accented – and his tone was oddly wistful.

Arga turned to look at him, surprised. He looked as if he’d aged; his skin was faded, and there were bags of shadowed flesh under his eyes. She’d never paid him much attention, yet she could see that something was wrong. ‘Are you all right? You sound sad.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said firmly. ‘This is your evening, Ana, not mine.’

‘Tell us,’ Arga said.

He shrugged, looking away from their gazes. ‘It’s nothing. Or rather, it’s commonplace. We lost our new baby, my wife and I. She was half a year old. She just sickened and died. There was nothing our priest could do; if she was sick, she had something he didn’t recognise.’

Arga nodded. ‘Sometimes the moon just takes them back.’

Ana said, ‘This little girl had Heni’s blood in her. All of Etxelur will grieve with you.’

‘It’s commonplace,’ Qili said again, as if convincing himself. ‘Babies die all the time. We have other children.’

‘It might be commonplace,’ said Jurgi. ‘More than half of us die before we leave childhood. Did you know that? But it is not commonplace when it happens to you.’

Knuckle grunted. ‘I too have lost children, my friend.’ His harsh snailhead accent was a contrast to Qili’s more fluent tones. ‘I won’t say it gets easier. It doesn’t. But, with time, you remember the joy of the life, rather than the pain of the death. And at least you will have the comfort of knowing she can never grow up to become a slave of the Pretani.’

Everybody stiffened. Arga saw Ana draw her hands back from the priest. If she had looked briefly like a human being, now she looked like Ana again, leader of Etxelur and builder of dykes. ‘No folk of the World River will ever be slaves here. And nor will snailheads, Knuckle. You know that.’

‘Do I?’

‘The Pretani are our allies. We have agreements-’

‘Allies?’ Knuckle turned his head, elaborately looking around. ‘If the Pretani are your friends, why do you not invite them into your house?’ Evidently he was saying what he had come here to say. ‘And if they did turn on us, would you stop them, Ana? Or would you rub your hands at the idea of getting your stone walls built even quicker?’

Novu stirred. Arga thought it was typical of him to wake up when his precious building works were mentioned. ‘You mustn’t bring the walls into this.’

Knuckle was incredulous. ‘Why not? Without the walls, no stone and slaves. And no Pretani hanging around.’

Novu closed his eyes. ‘Because whatever it takes to get the walls built is justified. Because when we are dead and gone, nobody will ever know how the walls were built or who by, slave or free. Any more than we know the names of the ice giants who built the hills and carved the bays. And that is the way it should be.’ He stood. ‘Whenever we talk, it is always this way. Chatter about nothing – never about the work. You may talk all you like; I’ve had enough.’

Jurgi said plaintively, ‘Oh, Novu, wait-’

‘Goodnight, Ana, the rest of you.’ And he swept out through the door flap.

Jurgi grinned tiredly. ‘I was only trying to tell him the shellfish smells cooked.’

Dreamer cleared away the burned-off sticks and grass, and set the wide-open shells on wooden plates, with heaps of salt and crushed herbs.

Arga said, ‘Do you think we should call Novu back?’

‘No. Let him dream of his walls. More for us,’ Knuckle said. He grinned as he took his plate and slurped down his first oyster.