Novu felt resentful at being probed like this. ‘Look – you’re going to sell me. You take the very food out of my mouth. Have you got to poke at my spirit as well?’
Chona laughed. ‘You’re developing a bit of fire in the belly, aren’t you? That might help when I sell you on. Tell me why your father hated you that much. I mean, the thing about the thieving was just the final excuse, wasn’t it?’
‘We never got on,’ Novu said. ‘I wasn’t like him. Vain and greedy. And on the other hand I wasn’t a tough hunter type, like some of my cousins. I played alone a lot-’
‘Making bricks.’
‘As I got older we started having fights. I’d challenge my father in front of my mother, his brothers. Once he took me to a meeting of his friends. Maybe you know some of them. I think, looking back, he was trying to help me. If I could get to know these people, maybe I could be accepted by them. Be like them some day.’
‘Be like him.’
‘Yes. But they were just a bunch of stupid fat old men to me, with their sea shells and bits of jade and obsidian and gold dangling from their necks and ears. Well, I made a fool of my father. I made them laugh at him.’
Chona grunted. ‘He won’t have enjoyed that.’
‘That was over a year ago. Since then he’s been harder on me. You saw it. In turn I played up more. It just got worse and worse. I was stupid to steal from him. Now I can see that he was making plans to get rid of me. Just waiting for the chance.’
‘And waiting for the right bit of obsidian to exchange you for.’ Chona belched, and lay back on a skin. ‘I can see how it went. He feared that you’d become a rival. Position is everything to your father, position among all those other jostling idiots in Jericho. Like goats in a herd, but not as intelligent. That’s what I use to sell him stuff, you know. Impress your friends! He feared you were going to undermine all that.’
‘I probably would have,’ Novu admitted. ‘I’d have enjoyed doing it.’
‘Well, there you are. So he got rid of you. Brutal, but effective. Bad luck for you.’ He settled his head on his arm. ‘I’ve eaten too much. Well, we don’t have to walk for a couple of days.’ And with that he rolled on his side, loosed a fart that filled the cave with the essence of fish, pulled another skin over his body, and wriggled to make himself comfortable.
Novu leaned back against his wall once more. He tried to ignore the uneven, unsleeping breath of the trader, and listened again to the crackle of his fire, the rush of the river.
The last daylight was all but gone, and as his eyes opened to the dark, he saw more detail in the roof carvings. There were oval shapes, like eggs, chipped into the rock, each about the size of his own head. He thought he saw what looked like a face carved into each egg, circles for eyes, a crescent for a downturned mouth. But surrounding the face and running down the body were overlapping circles and plates that looked like scales. Half-human, half-fish. Maybe that was how the people of the Narrow saw themselves, their very spirits mingled with the fish that gave them life.
Chona coughed and stirred. He squirmed, his back to Novu, and pushed one hand inside his skin leggings. Novu saw his upper arm working. Novu had seen this before. The trader was a man who, so contained and controlled, hid a powerful lust. He had probably been dreaming of this niece of a niece of Cardum’s for days, and was now denied her.
It wasn’t long before the trader’s body shuddered, and relaxed. Then, at last, Novu was left alone, with the river, and the fish-people of the cave.
17
More than a month after the Spring Walk, Ana had the idea that they should take a party up the valley of the Little Mother’s Milk to the old summer camp.
It was a suggestion born out of desperation, after another night of arguments in the house, another night of four-way stresses between herself and her sister and the Pretani brothers, in a house that, despite being the largest in Etxelur, seemed much too small. Ana didn’t even understand what was happening any more. Did Gall still want Zesi, or not? And what about his brother? Zesi and Shade barely spoke to each other in the house, but Ana saw the looks that passed between them – looks of guilt and lust, or so she read them. Would Gall stand by and let his little brother have Zesi? It seemed unlikely. And where did Ana herself fit in? She had thought Shade was attracted to her, not Zesi. Did Shade still feel anything for her – if he ever had? Did she care if he did or not? Ana could hardly bear the baffling tension.
What made it worse was that it was still more than a month and a half to the summer solstice, and the Giving celebration. That seemed to be emerging as a major landmark in everybody’s mind. It was always the summit of the year anyhow, the longest day, after which the slow run-down to another winter began. And at the Giving the question of her father would come to a head. Although the solstice would be less than a year since Kirike’s disappearance, everybody seemed to feel that if he wasn’t back by the time of the feast, and Zesi, defying custom, took over his role as the Giver, it would be a kind of closing of Kirike’s story.
Ana didn’t want to face that. But another part of her longed for the day to come, for the Pretani were going home after the Giving.
A month and a half was too long to wait. And so she suggested a trip up-river as a way to use up some energy. The idea was greeted with a snarl from Zesi, but a day later, after a quiet word from the priest, her sister grudgingly accepted that it was a good idea after all, and the word was passed around. Not long after dawn, the people gathered around Zesi’s house, a few adults and many children, and with soft murmurs and laughter they set off.
It was a short hike from the Seven Houses to the estuary of the Milk, across scrubby grassland carpeted with buttercups. Ana walked with Arga and Lightning, neither of whom seemed troubled by the atmosphere among the adults. The sun rose, the mist burned off with the last of the dew, the birdsong was loud, and Ana was soon warm through. Given all her problems, she felt unreasonably happy.
But it didn’t help that both the Pretani boys had decided to come along.
Zesi seemed in a foul mood from the beginning. Burdened with a heavy pack, she set a tough pace, as if the walk was something to be got over with, not to be enjoyed. Some weren’t capable of keeping up the pace: the kids, and a young flint knapper called Josu, cousin of a cousin of Ana’s, who had been born with a withered leg. Soon the group was strung out, and a couple of the older men quietly moved to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the stragglers.
They reached the river, and by the early afternoon they were following a narrow valley that cut through sandstone bluffs, heading roughly west. Zesi led the tramp upstream, following a well-worn path by the bank of the river.
In places the forest, birch and hazel scrub, came pushing close to the water’s edge. The bank itself was crowded with willows, which could grow as much as a hand’s length in a month at this time of year, and old alders, trees that liked the damp. The alders’ branches were heavy with catkins, some of them as long as Ana’s hand. She could see the scars left where wood had been harvested in previous years; the cut trees were recovering, new growths pushing out of their root systems. Alder was useful for the frames of houses, for it stayed supple even after being dried out.
And in the shade of the very oldest trees white windflowers clumped, bluebell carpets shone, and elusive pied flycatchers flitted, spectacular splashes of black and white. People took the chance to gather birds’ eggs. It was a rich, charming place.
But Etxelur folk, used to the coast’s open spaces, weren’t comfortable in the confines of the narrow valley, and Ana thought it was a great relief to everybody when they reached the site of the summer camp.
Here the valley opened out to a wide plain, bounded on either side by low, rounded hills cloaked with grass and forest. The river itself spread out, as if it too was glad to be free of its confinement. The main channel here was shallow and winding, cutting through a floor of turf, heather and scrub, but in places the flow split into two, three or four braids that combined and recombined, and wide marshy areas glimmered in the low sun. All along the valley the green skin of the floor had been eroded back by the changes in the river’s course, to reveal bone-white gravel spits.