Knuckle’s eyes widened. ‘We will help you. Tell us what you need, what to do.’
And Matu turned to her again, expectantly, clutching his water bag.
Ana shrank in on herself. ‘You’re asking me? I don’t know. If my father was here, or my sister-’
‘But they’re not,’ Dreamer murmured. ‘You are the Giver’s daughter. Who else are these people to look to? Yesterday you saved my baby’s life, you made a decision, at what might yet be a terrible cost. And earlier, it seems so long ago now, you made the decision to spare Novu for his theft, you showed wisdom. You can do this, Ana.’
Still Ana shrank back until she felt she could shrink no further, unable to feel, able only to react. The woman broken on the tree. Arga’s cry, when Ana let go of her hand. Her father, lost again. They were all looking at her, Matu exhausted and desperate, the snailheads.
‘The basics, then,’ she said slowly, in the traders’ tongue so all could understand. ‘Water first. Without that the living will die. Knuckle, leave the food here. Send half of your men back with the boat, to where the water is fresh. Have them bring as much as they can. They can carry it in the boat. The rest of them – Matu, go to your family first, and then lead Knuckle and the rest. Find the living. Everybody who has been spared, bring them here. Knuckle, we need shelter for the coming nights. Anything will do. Use the ruins of these houses to make lean-tos.’
Knuckle and Matu nodded.
Novu asked, ‘And us?’
‘And we three will consider the dead. Everybody knows the dead and the living cannot mix. That way lies disease. Our way is to lay out the bodies on the platforms and let the birds and the worms clean them, then we put the bones in the middens. We have many more bodies than the platforms could have held, even if they were not wrecked by the sea. For now we will place the bodies on the ruins of the middens, with the bones of our ancestors. When the birds and worms are done, we will build the middens over them. And Etxelur will continue.’
Matu said, ‘Oh, it will continue all right. Thank you, Ana. I’ll take this water to my family.’ He hurried off, and Knuckle followed. Some of the snailhead men emptied out the boat, and set off back inland.
Dreamer patted her shoulder. ‘Well done,’ she whispered. She tucked the stabbing spear inside the straps of the sling that held her baby. ‘Let’s start.’ The tide was coming in by the time they had made the crossing back to Flint Island and reached its north shore. More debris was washing up, Ana saw, more tree branches and roots and lumps of sod, and darker, unmoving shapes on the sand.
She climbed up onto the broken-open midden. She glanced around at the ancestors’ bones, exposed and scattered by a wave which had shown as little compassion for the dead as for the living.
She heard shouts from the beach. Novu was jumping in his excitement and pointing out to sea. Close by, Lightning was exploring another limp body.
It was a boat, Ana saw, still far out, being paddled by two figures too remote to make out. That could be her father – but his hadn’t been the only boat out yesterday.
She slid down the midden’s broken flank, and hurried down the beach. She refused to get excited, not until the boat had made it to shore.
And, closer by, she saw what Lightning was so interested in. It was a human body, washed up from the sea, limp and unrecognisable. The dog barked in his excitement, wagging his tail.
The boat landed. Novu helped one of its occupants pull it up the beach. The other occupant, smaller, slim, jumped out and came running towards her, hobbling on a damaged leg.
And as Ana neared that broken body she saw the red, tightly curled hair, the strong arms splayed in death, and she knew who this must be. She felt as if she died too in that moment, her human part withering away, leaving only a hard black core.
She was barely aware of it when Arga, stinking of salt, her skin burned by the sun, hurled herself into her arms. ‘It’s all right,’ Arga said, burying her face in Ana’s chest. ‘You had to save the baby… It’s all right…’ Heni stood grimly behind her.
Lightning was whining, licking the dead man’s salt-crusted face, trying to make his master wake up, as he always had before.
THREE
47
The third and greatest wave was the last.
The waters had scoured west across the coastal plains of northern Albia, and to the east across Gaira, flooding wetland and ancient forests. The coast of Northland was actually the last to be washed over by the tremendous ripple. It pushed its way into the river estuaries and swept over the lowlands, probing for a way across the rich plains to the valley of the snailheads to the south, thus forcing a passage that would cut Northland in two, and unite northern and southern oceans. That triumph was denied it.
Exposing a landscape that was devastated but intact, the water retreated.
For now.
48
The Year of the Great Sea: Autumn Equinox. It was a huge relief to Zesi when she and the priest at last emerged from the forest cover.
It was around noon. She and Jurgi faced an open landscape of low hills studded with stands of trees, through which snaked the shining trail of a wide, sluggish river – a river that would head northward, just as they would, until it and they reached the sea. The sky was a deep, clear blue, cleansed by recent rains, and fat white clouds drifted. An autumn sky, she thought.
And as they walked into the sunlight Jurgi turned around, raised a grimy face to the sun, and, walking backwards, began to sing a song in praise of the little mother of the sky.
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ Zesi grumbled.
‘And you’re a misery.’ A cloud of midges hummed around his head; distracted, he swatted at them. ‘What a relief it is to break out of that awful dense clinging forest with those mad Pretani. Like being in a great green belly.’ He breathed in deep and spread his arms, and for a moment she feared he was going to sing again. ‘The sky and the sea – the greatest gifts of the first mother. Just to stand here – you can feel your mind expanding, filling the world.’
She grumbled, ‘When I look at that sky all I see is a threat of rain. When I look at the land I see the distance we still have to travel before we get home. And when we get home I will see only the work that has to be done before the winter comes, all the things that my father won’t have got around to sorting out yet.’
‘You are a leader,’ he said. ‘And that’s a good thing. We need leaders. Nothing would get done otherwise. But leaders need calm too. You can share some of your energy with me. And I will share my calm with you.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said, noncommittal. There was a bite in the wind from the north, a breeze that sent ripples scudding across the long grass. ‘Look how low the sun is, even though it’s noon. The year is late. It took us much longer to work our way back out of the forest than it took to go the other way.’
‘Are you surprised? Those trails they follow are narrower than a stoat’s back passage. Shade and his boys probably hoped we would never make it out at all.’
‘I told you, if I never hear that name again, I’ll be happy.’
Jurgi grunted. ‘And now that he’s buried his father and brother, dead at his own hands, Shade probably feels the same way about you. Anyway, come on.’ He turned around and strode off north, his pack on his back. ‘We’ll eat up a bit more distance before we have to make camp for the night.’
She followed his lead, hitching her own pack on her back, settling her stabbing spear in the straps, and marching on.
The priest seemed to have thrived on the adventure. He had become stronger, healthier in every way since joining her on this summer jaunt. She had to admit he had been a good companion during this long summer of walking.
But what had she taken away from her journey? Her understanding of the world had expanded hugely. She now knew the country of the Pretani; she no longer thought of the Pretani as mere savages but had glimpsed their culture, their background. Maybe you had to leave home to learn about the world – even to learn about home itself.