‘And you’ve dragged me all the way to see this vain joke of yours because-’
‘Because we want your backing,’ the priest said simply. ‘You know, Zesi, you fight for the respect you feel is your due. But you don’t need to try so hard. You are respected. You are your father’s daughter; you are a strong woman in your own right. People listen to what you say – and it’s entirely negative about the dyke.
‘I know it’s a difficult year. It will be a long time before we have anything but difficult years. But we have to find a balance between the needs of the present and this plan for the future. For if we don’t do this, sooner or later we will have to abandon this place, our ancestors’ land, and become rootless, like the snailheads. We are a great people. Remember that, Zesi. We once built the Mothers’ Door! And we forgot about it, nearly. We need to be a people who can do something more than just survive-’
‘What we need is less talk from you,’ Zesi said bluntly. ‘If you thought you would sway me with this nonsense, this walk into the sea, you haven’t. I’m going to keep on arguing against you until this foolish distraction is abandoned, and we get back to what’s important in life. I’m going back.’ She held out a hand. ‘Arga. You come too. Enough of this.’
But Arga was staring south across the bay. She pointed. ‘Look!’
Ana turned. There on the water, coming around the point of the bay, was a small fleet of boats. Even from here she could see that the people paddling them were snailheads. And behind them came what looked like a raft, wide, thick, huge. It was logs, a mass of them, strapped together and floating on the water.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Dreamer said.
‘I do,’ Ana said, warm deep inside. ‘It’s taken a while for Knuckle to come through. But here are the snailheads, coming to help us.’
One of the snailheads was standing on his boat, waving and shouting.
Novu waved back. ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying, if that’s you, Knuckle. But I love you, even if you are an ugly lophead!’ He grabbed Ana. ‘You see what this means? With lumber, with more muscles, we’ll get this first barrier finished in a heartbeat. And then-’
Ana had to laugh. ‘Yes, Novu? And then? What dreams are you cooking up now?’
‘Not dreams,’ Zesi hissed. ‘More madness.’
She was seething, Ana saw. But while Zesi might be able to talk around some of the Etxelur folk, she had no hold over Knuckle, who hated her so much he would never listen to her.
Novu said, ‘Come on, let’s help those snailheads get all that lovely wood ashore.’ He ran back along the dyke to the beach, shouting instructions out to sea.
56
The First Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice. Jurgi the priest, in his Giving finery of poppy crown on his head and new flint axe at his neck, waited for the snailhead party on the southern bank of the outflow of the Little Mother’s Milk. He had brought food for the visitors, dried fish and hazelnuts, and sacks of drinks.
Kara, wife of Matu, had come with him to set up this small feast. Kara had laced her hair with flowers. She was still thin from the winter’s deprivations, as they all were, but she looked welcoming and beautiful.
And here came Knuckle, leading a party of a dozen snailheads down the valley of the Milk, with Eyelid, wife of his dead brother, at his side. They strode easily, smiling in the midsummer sunshine. The country was generous at this time of year, and they hadn’t needed to carry much – bundles of spare clothes, a few tools, skins for overnight shelters. Eyelid’s daughter Cheek was running around, weaving complicated patterns of her own around the adults’ steady plod. She grew more active and confident every time Jurgi saw her.
Jurgi saw how easily Knuckle and Eyelid walked together, their arms brushing. The company of others was a subtle and consoling gift of the little mothers.
As they approached, the snailheads broke from their walk to fall on the refreshments Jurgi had brought. The children soon found the honeycombs.
Jurgi, smiling, came up to Knuckle with a skin sack. ‘Blackcurrant juice,’ he said in the traders’ tongue. ‘I remember how much you like it.’
‘Good man.’ He took the sack, removed the wooden stopper from the sewn neck, and poured the thick liquid into his throat. ‘Honour to have the priest of Etxelur come to meet us.’
‘The honour is mine. It’s been a hard year – hard for everybody in Northland. But without you we would be much worse off.’
Knuckle nodded, his great misshapen head gleaming with beads of sweat, and he looked down at the children gorging on the chunks of honeycomb. ‘In the end we knew you were right – and Ana, your young goddess. If you had been forced from the coast, it would have been our turn next. Time to take a stand.’ ‘Exactly. Look, your people are welcome to go on around the shore to the Giving feast. The stand has been set up by the middens as usual.’ He glanced up at the sun. ‘I think the games will have started by now. But come with me along the river valley, Knuckle. I want you to see what’s become of your gift of logs and labour. I think you’ll be impressed – and surprised.’
His chin smeared with fruit juice, Knuckle grinned, showing his studded tongue. He turned to Eyelid and his people, and they had a short, jabbered conversation in their own guttural language. The children were keen to get to the beaches, for swimming in the sea was a treat for these inlanders. The younger men and women wanted to take their chances in the contests, the running and throwing, and to see how the crop of Etxelur youngsters – those who had survived the Great Sea – had blossomed in the last year. But Eyelid decided she and Cheek would walk with the men.
So, led by Jurgi, the four of them set off up the valley of the Little Mothers’ Milk, heading roughly west.
Away from the estuary the valley soon narrowed, the languid water passing between walls of sandstone. The trail they followed was sometimes hard to make out, so high was the bracken around them. The flowers’ colours were bright in the midsummer light, and fat bees hummed in clouds of pollen.
‘World full of life,’ Knuckle said. ‘Less than a year since whole place smashed by the Great Sea.’
‘But some have not returned. Otters, for instance.’ On impulse the priest bent down, rooted at the base of the bracken, and came up with a handful of soil. It was speckled with white. ‘And the sea-bottom mud is still here as a reminder. In time it will be hidden, but it will always be visible to anybody who cares to dig down into the ground. Like the extra thickness of a healed bone.’
Knuckle grunted. ‘You are thoughtful. Glad I’m not a priest, having to think. Happy to live in the now.’ The path dipped closer to the water, where the air was thick and hot. ‘How far is this mystery of yours?’
The priest grinned. ‘Just a little further…’
The valley opened out here and the river broadened, becoming shallower as it ran over its bed of gravel and mud. On the south bank, where they walked, a broad grassy plain stretched away, studded with tall bright thistles and churned up by the hooves of the cattle that came here to drink. To the north the land rose up into the low hills that divided this valley from the bay.
The priest pointed to the north bank, where a rivulet descended between two green hummocks towards the river. ‘See that?’
‘A stream. So what?’
‘It wasn’t there this time last year. We need to cross the river. There’s a ford just further down.’
They walked on to a place where the river was wide and very shallow. Following the priest’s lead, the snailhead slipped off his boots and walked out across the river’s gravelly bed. Knuckle enjoyed the walk in the water, childlike, as he hopped from one stone to the next. He slipped once, and laughed as he recovered, splashing water over the priest.
Cheek was delighted by the water, and gurgled as she splashed with her mother.
Soon they were all on the north bank. The rivulet, descending from the slope, emptied into an area of marshy land.