He snorted, and spat a gob of phlegm into the sand. ‘These old folk, with their ancient fights and their Great Sea. Don’t you get sick of hearing about it?’
‘If she goes,’ Dolphin said simply, ‘she wants me to go with her.’
‘Oh.’ He dug his fingers into the sand. ‘What about us?’
‘My mother doesn’t want us to be together anyhow. You know that.’
‘What about you? What do you want?’
His Pretani-dark eyes were on her, and she saw how important this question was to him. She didn’t want to answer, she wanted their relationship to continue to be the wonderful game it had been so far. But she knew that what she told him now would shape them for ever. It must be the deepest truth.
She set her hand on his. ‘How could I leave you? Our babies will be beautiful.’
He grabbed her to him. ‘Beautiful, yes. Hairy, but beautiful.’
That made her laugh.
He whispered in her ear, his breath hot, ‘It doesn’t matter where we came from, or our parents. All that matters is who we are, and where we are. What we feel, here and now…’ She felt his hand move down her back, strong and confident. She thrilled as he explored the cleft of her buttocks.
But she pushed him away. ‘No. You were right. Too windy and cold here. And besides, Ana will be waiting.’
He pulled back, reluctant. ‘All right. What shall we say to your mother?’
‘Nothing.’ She stood, brushing away sand from her tunic. ‘We know what we’re going to do. But it’s none of her business – not until she asks, or we choose to tell her. Come on. You can carry my boots, as you’re so keen on them.’
They walked away down the dunes and along the beach, heading for the abutment of the dyke and the way back to Ana’s house.
71
Ana’s was a big house, set on top of one of the biggest mounds in Etxelur, big enough for a dozen people. This evening, when Dolphin and Kirike arrived, four people sat around the hearth. Ana herself sat on her own bed, which was piled up with skins so she looked down on the rest. She had oil lamps burning at her feet. She was thin, swathed in a cloak, and sat very still; ageless, she looked barely human, a thing made of stone.
To Ana’s left Jurgi and Novu sat together, close enough for their shoulders to touch.
Ice Dreamer sat to Ana’s right. When Dolphin and Kirike walked in through the door flap, defiantly hand in hand, Dreamer watched, hard and suspicious. With her proud nose and streaks of grey hair, Dolphin sometimes thought her mother was coming to look like a great and beautiful bird of prey.
Dolphin and Kirike sat together, beside Dreamer.
At last Arga pushed her way in. She looked faintly anxious, as she often did; Dolphin knew she was never truly happy away from her children. She smiled at Ana, and sat down in the gap between Dreamer and Novu. ‘Sorry I’m late-’
A bundle of hair and big paws came pushing through the door flap after her. It was Thunder. The dog was excited to find all these people here, as if they had gathered especially for him. He ran around the group, wagging his tail and submitting to pats and strokes. Finally he jumped up at Ana, resting his paws on her chest. She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re wet, dog! Look at the marks you’re making on my cloak. Oh, get away with you.’ Gently, Ana pushed the dog aside. He circled, found a comfortable patch close to the hearth, and slumped down, head on his front paws.
Arga said, ‘I’ll take him out if you like.’
‘Oh, leave him,’ Jurgi said. He looked up at Ana. ‘At least he’s broken the silence. Shall we get on with it, whatever it is you have to say?’
Ana looked back at him, stern. ‘Yes. Let’s get on.’ She turned to Dolphin. ‘You were out on the dykes today. The work isn’t going well, is it? Slower than it should. Anybody can see that.’
‘The quality of the work is poor too,’ Novu broke in before Dolphin could reply. ‘The way the stone is being cut, the fitting. I’ve said how we do it in Jericho, over and over-’
‘All right, Novu, we hear you.’ Ana turned to Dolphin. ‘Well?’
Dolphin shrugged. ‘There are too few of us and too much to do. Even with the snailheads and the folk from the World River and the rest. What with all the other work we have to do just to keep alive,’ she said heavily.
Ana said, ‘We always need more people. But that isn’t really the problem, is it?’
‘It isn’t?’
‘If people want to work at something it gets done. That’s one thing I’ve learned in life. It’s clear that people just don’t like working the stone. Why not?’
Dolphin shrugged. ‘You know why.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Because they fear it, I think. Or they dread it. Stone is dead. It doesn’t grow like wood or reed. Flint is one thing, we have always worked flint. This Albia sandstone is the dead bones of the world. It isn’t right to use it as we do.’
Arga said cautiously, ‘There’s been muttering…’
‘What? Speak up, cousin.’
‘Some say we are defying the little mothers.’ She glanced at the priest. ‘Maybe the mothers want the sea to cover over Etxelur, for all we know.’
Ana asked, ‘And have they approached you about this, Jurgi?’
The priest nodded. ‘At times. I try to reassure them-’
‘This is one thing I want to address today. We’ve discussed this before. No matter how closely we work together, Jurgi and I, no matter what we say, the people always know that if they have doubts about me they can go to you. Maybe they think they can come between us, the way children can set one parent against another.’
Arga said, ‘But that’s the way of things. You’ve always had the priest on the one hand, the Giver on the other. It’s just the way things are.’
Ana didn’t reply.
Jurgi, watching her, said, ‘I think she has a plan. Some solution to this problem she sees. And I have a feeling I’m not going to like it.’
‘There’s another issue too.’ Ana raised her hand, and studied her own thirty-year-old flesh. ‘I don’t feel old. Yet I am old. There are only a handful of people on Etxelur older than me and still breathing – and several of them are in this house.’ She glanced at Kirike and Dolphin. ‘Our lives are so short. Even now there are people alive, adults having babies of their own, who don’t remember the Great Sea. How soon before it is forgotten completely, washed away by time as the sea-bottom mud was washed away by the rain? What will happen when I am gone? Will the people give up, will the dykes be left to crumble, until another storm comes to smash it all to rubble and drown Etxelur for good?’
Ice Dreamer said gently, ‘You’ll have to let go at some point. There’s a limit to how any mortal can shape the world.’
‘But I have to try,’ Ana said sternly, ‘or it’s all gone to waste. And that’s where you come in again, priest.’
Jurgi’s face was growing steadily more clouded, and he looked across at a confused Novu.
‘I never had a child,’ Ana said. ‘Not until now.’
That shocked them all to silence – all save Dolphin, who to her own horror found herself bursting out laughing.
Ana turned on her. ‘You think I am too old? This is another consequence of the Great Sea. It took away so many old people that kids like Dolphin here grew up not knowing about them. My own mother conceived a child when she was older than me.’
Jurgi said, ‘Do I have to remind you about the tragedy that followed? She died, and so did the baby.’
‘But it need not have been so. You know that, priest, as well as I do.’
Ice Dreamer studied her, fascinated. ‘You are always a swirl of schemes and ambitions. What do you intend to do, Ana?’
She laid her hand on the priest’s shoulder. Jurgi flinched back, as if her touch burned like a hot ember. ‘To take a husband. You, Jurgi. And we will have a child – at least one. There. That’s my plan.’
Arga, like the rest, looked astounded. ‘But no priest ever married before.’
Ana shrugged. ‘Nobody built a wall to keep out the sea before. But we did it anyway. I’m sure there are precedents in custom, if the priest thinks hard enough about it.’