Exchanging glances, the others sat more slowly, facing him.
‘All right. Yes. I took the stuff. Even though I know what you’ve all done for me.’ He lifted his head. ‘You, Ice Dreamer. You spoke to me when I first showed up here.’
Arga put in, ‘And I showed you how to set hare traps.’
‘You did,’ he replied solemnly. He turned to Ana. ‘And you, Ana…’
Ana couldn’t face him. She burned with a kind of embarrassment. How could she have been so stupid as to waste her time on this man?
‘Please, Ana. Look at me.’
‘I owe you nothing.’
‘No.’ Beaten, he dropped his head again. ‘All right. Let me just tell you why I did this. I didn’t do it to hurt you, any of you. I did it because I had to. This is what we do, in Jericho! We have stuff. We collect it and keep it, we buy it and sell it. And if you don’t have stuff you have no power, you have nothing, you are nothing. Oh, by the blood of the bull gods, I have turned into my father! I despised him for this…’ He looked at Ana and spoke with a blunter edge to his voice. ‘Look, you have been kind to me. But I think you adopted me – like raising a lost puppy. That was what you needed. But I’m more than that. I’m a man of Jericho.’
‘You could have told me how you felt,’ Ana said.
‘Would you have listened? Could you have understood? Well, maybe you could. You’re better than me; that’s obvious.’ He straightened up. ‘So what now? Shall we go back? Maybe we should wait for your father to get back from his fishing… I’ll leave tonight. I’ll find somewhere. I learned how to live away from people, when I was walking with the traders.’
Dreamer glanced at Ana. Arga looked hugely distressed.
Neither wanted Novu to go, Ana saw. And she realised that if she fixed this mess, here and now, she could persuade her father to accept her solution later. ‘Take the stones back,’ she said impulsively.
‘What?’
‘Give them back to whoever you stole them from. And don’t sneak around doing it when they’re out. Do it to their faces. Apologise.’
He rubbed his chin doubtfully. ‘One or two will kick my arse. Your uncle Jaku for instance.’
‘You’ll deserve it. And when Jurgi gets home, tell him what you did. He’ll probably kick your arse too. And never do this again.’
‘I swear I won’t.’ He looked at her uncertainly. ‘It might not be enough. They might throw me out anyway.’
‘I’ll have to speak to my father. I can tell him I’ll watch you until you’ve got through this madness, and you can be trusted.’
He regarded her. ‘You’re so angry. Why are you helping me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said hotly. ‘Maybe it’s because I’ll look less stupid this way.’
He laughed. ‘Well, that’s a good enough reason. I’ll owe you everything, Ana. My whole life, maybe.’
Dreamer said sternly, ‘Just remember that.’
Ana glanced at her cousin. ‘Arga? Do you want to say anything?’
But Arga was frowning. ‘Can you hear that?’
‘What?’
The girl stood up, looking around at the open ground. ‘Rumbling. Like aurochs running. Or thunder.’
Dreamer said, ‘I hear it. Coming from the sea, I think.’
Gulls flew overhead, a sudden low flurry of them erupting from behind the dunes, cawing loudly, heading inland.
Dreamer murmured, ‘Unusual weather makes me nervous. We say it is the anger of the gods.’
Ana said, ‘If we climb these dunes we can see. Come on, Arga.’
Young and fit, Arga led the way, scurrying up the dune slope. Ana followed. Novu hastily packed away his stones, and Dreamer picked up her baby.
39
Lightning the dog spotted the wave before Josu did. But then, Josu was always engrossed in his work.
On sunny, windless days when the tide was low, like today, Josu liked to work on the beach. And so he had come down from his house before noon, with his work pack and blanket and a water pouch and a bit of dried meat. It was difficult for him to walk on the soft sand, but he had worked out ways to get everything carried safely to where he needed it.
He had found a patch of clean sand and spread out his hide blanket. He settled down with his boots off, with his good leg folded and his bad leg out straight. He smoothed his thick cowhide apron over his legs, to avoid cuts from flying shards of stone.
Then he had unwrapped his pack and set his tools out to one side, mostly of reindeer bone, good and hard, tools some of which he’d owned since he was a boy learning the skill, and his raw materials to the other side, his cores and fresh nodules, and broken tools that people had passed to him. Flint was valuable stuff, and you could almost always reuse even the most damaged tool, maybe turning it into smaller blades for fitting into a bone handle.
Then he had got down to work. He always liked to start on something big, to get his fingers working and his eye in. Today he picked a new nodule, knocked off some bits of chalk with an old hammer, and then turned it over in his hands, studying its strengths and its flaws. Soon he’d spotted a likely point for a striking platform. He chipped this carefully with a reindeer-bone chisel. Then he set the core between his legs, steadied it with his left hand, and struck it carefully with his right. The first blow wasn’t quite right, and he produced only a shard of flint. But the second and the third were better, each blow releasing a flint flake like a roughed-out blade, and each time leaving a new section of striking platform for him to aim at.
He always aimed his blows down and away from his face, to avoid the danger of flint shards flying into his eyes, for he had seen the damage that could do; his hands bore the scars of tiny stabbings and scrapes, but he could live with that.
Gradually the flint nodule was whittled down to a core, the pile of roughs beside him grew, and the golden sand before his legs was covered with flint shards. He knew that when he stood up he would leave the pattern of his legs on the sand, outlined by the bits of flint. He always took care to sweep sand over such mess, to avoid the children cutting their feet on it.
While he was working, others had drifted down to the beach. Fisherfolk laid out nets to dry, or pushed out boats to follow Kirike and Heni. Rute and Jaku came down to set up drying racks for Kirike’s anticipated catch. They nodded cheerfully to Josu. Their daughter Arga wasn’t with them today. But they had Kirike’s dog, Lightning. He was a yappy thing who came straight over to Josu, tail wagging vigorously, and he grabbed a corner of Josu’s apron and began tugging it. He’d have had the whole lot in the sand if Josu hadn’t held on. ‘Get away, you daft dog! You always do this. Get away with you!’
Jaku whistled, and threw a brown tube of seaweed into the sea. Lightning immediately let go of the apron and bounded off after the weed, barking shrilly, splashing into the water.
Josu was left in peace; he resumed his work with relief.
Despite such disturbances he felt content with his life, especially on such a day as this. He’d lived out his whole life in Etxelur, had rarely travelled much more than a day’s walk from this very spot, and he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Oh, he was aware that some of his stock had gone missing recently – some of the better flint cores too, fresh from the lode on Flint Island. He wasn’t bothered. People had always played tricks on him, especially children. They mocked the way he walked. They’d pinch his tools, or call him names, or push him and run away faster than he could catch them. But children usually grew out of it. And if it got too bad, he could always turn to Kirike or Heni or Rute who would soon get to the bottom of it, and all would be right again, until the next time.
He’d been lucky to be born here. There were people like the Pretani who would have drowned a crippled little boy at birth. He was thirty years old now, there were few older than him in all Etxelur, his work was treasured, and he had no complaints. Nothing troubled him. Not even the fact that he’d never found a wife, had no children…
There was a deep roaring sound, a rumble.