Stone spring

81

The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Autumn Equinox. On the morning of the attack on Etxelur, the Leafies were kicked awake, as usual.

Me hunched over, protecting his face, his groin, the thick net heavy on his back. He had slept little. The strangeness of the place they had been brought to – the crisp, empty saltiness of the air, the sandy soil they had to lie on – had disturbed all the Leafy Boys profoundly.

When he opened his eyes he saw the stripe of the net, the huge shapes of the grounders standing over the Leafies. All this picked out in blue-black light. It was still dark, still long before the dawn – earlier than they normally woke. Me had learned to dread change. Change meant danger, and that somebody was going to die.

With a skill born of practice the men made a ring around the Leafies, and worked together to lift the net off. A little one got caught in the tangle, but with a couple of brisk shakes he fell down like an overripe fruit.

The Leafies moved stiffly, pissing, licking leaves on the ground for their dew. Then the men moved in on the Leafies with their knives, knotted rope and clubs, and tested the tethers attached to the loops at their necks, getting ready to move them.

Soon the men started calling to each other, big gruff bellows like bull aurochs, and they formed up into their groups.

And then they started to run, heavy in their huge leather cloaks, their faces dark with blue and black paint, the scars over their brows vivid. The Leafies had to move too, only heartbeats after they had woken, driven ahead of their handlers on their leashes.

Me could barely see what he was running into. The light, such as it was, came from the dawn sky to his right, slightly paler than the rest. It felt like a nightmare, as if he had not yet fully woken up. But as he ran his muscles warmed up, and his nighttime aches started to fade, as they always did.

They came to a line of hills, low, grassy, sandy. Here the Leafy group was split in two. Some were kept back at the foot of the hills, and were taken off to the east. But Me and others were driven forward, to scramble over the soft dunes. He had no time to think about that – scarcely time to wonder if he would ever see the Leafies in that other party again.

When they got to the crest of the hills, though the light was still uncertain, Me could see the ground fall away to a shallow beach, littered with rock and mounds of some dark weed – and beyond that there was water, nothing but water, a great lapping lake of it that stretched off as far as he could see. Me froze in shock. This endless blank flatness could not have been a greater contrast to the enclosing green of the forest canopy where he had spent almost all of his conscious life. It was as if the world had been stripped away.

The advance broke up into chaos. All around him Leafies were crying, or standing, shocked. But the men were soon on them with their fists and spears and boots and snarls, and yanking their tethers. Me was driven on at a stumbling run.

The Leafies were sent down to the beach, and then turned to the right, towards the light of the gathering dawn. They ran and ran.

And, somewhere in the blocky dunes at the head of the beach, a point of fire flared brightly.