Stone Spring Part 32

The priest grinned. 'A good practical question. I'll show you.' He led the way down the hill a little way, until he came to a length of rope to which a kind of sled had been fixed. The sled, made of sewn, caulked skin sitting on wooden runners, was big, several paces long. The rope was fixed to one end of the sled, and trailed on down the hill from the other end, to the next sled. 'We had our boat-builders' help; they made the sleds the same way they make their craft, from wooden frames over which skin is stretched and then caulked . . .' He lifted up the sled; large as it was, it was light when empty. 'See these rails? Just like a sled you drag over the snow. It glides easily over the ground, even when full.'

'Full of what? Water?'

'That's the idea.'

'I feel dull-witted,' said the snailhead. 'Following your path one step at a time. You fill this sled with sea water. And you drag it with this rope, all the way up the hill from the bay-'

'No. Only from the next reservoir down. And there's more than one sled. See, there is a whole set of them, connected in a loop by the rope.'

The snailhead squinted to see. 'Like a necklace. A necklace of sleds.'

'That's it, exactly. There is a necklace between each pair of the ponds, the first to the second, the second to the third, all the way up from the bay. Come on, I'll show you.'

Climbing down the hillside towards the bay, shallow on this side, was a lot easier than climbing up the other.

They came to where the people were working, between the second and third ponds. Most of them stood in a line, facing downhill, hauling on a rope. As they pulled, they dragged laden sleds up from the lower pond towards the higher. Others worked at the ponds, dunking each sled to fill it at the lower pond, or tipping it out into the upper pond. A few people guided the return of the empty sleds from upper to lower, making sure the descending line didn't snag the ascending. Arga was busy with this today; when she saw the priest she waved.

The dragging was heavy work, and the people who hauled, men and women side by side, sang an antique song about the moon's treachery - gloomy but rhythmic, a steady beat that helped them work together. Some of them were snailheads, the priest noted, and that was lucky; he hadn't thought to make sure Knuckle's countrymen were here today to impress him, but the mothers in their beneficent midsummer mood had smiled on him anyhow.

'You see the idea,' the priest said to Knuckle. 'It's a lot easier to raise the water in stages than all at once. We have teams; we take turns. Ana works out who should work when. We all pitch in, all of us who are able.'

'Do you? It seems a dismal labour. People always want to make sure their families don't go hungry first. How do you get people to work if they don't want to?'

'Ana has her ways,' the priest said. Which was true.

The way they had to work on these big projects was new to the people of Etxelur. In the old days, if you wanted to build a house, you would have just done it yourself, with the help of your sisters and brothers and their spouses and children and your friends. If you wanted to fish, you just built a boat and went fis.h.i.+ng. And so on. None of it needed much coordination, or permission, or compulsion - unlike these complicated new tasks. Ana had had to develop a harder side, using her own strange authority to face down grown men and women, to shame them to do their share. And when that didn't work she had developed a new system of what she called gatherings, bringing everybody in Etxelur together to confront the unwilling one. Most people would rather just put in the work than face that. But Knuckle was right to guess that not everybody was happy.

One way or the other, however, the work was getting done.

'We've been working on this since the spring,' Jurgi said. 'We started filling up the lower ponds even before we'd dug out the upper.'

The snailhead sat on the gra.s.s. 'Just watching them work makes me feel tired. All right. Ponds, sleds - all very clever. Now the real question. Why? Why haul water all the way up a hill, only to let it run away again?'

The priest sat beside him. From here the expanse of the bay was opened up, with the bulk of Flint Island beyond. 'Look at the bay. Look at the sh.o.r.e. Remember how it was last time you saw it.'

All around the sh.o.r.e the waterline was lower than it had been, exposing swathes of mud and sand, littered with drying weed, laced by human footprints and worked by wading birds. Children were playing on mud flats all the way to the water's edge, picking sh.e.l.ls and mussels from the sand. Their voices rose up to the watching men like the cries of distant gulls.

With their steady labour, the people had already removed a significant fraction of the water in the bay.

'You see? With the d.y.k.e and the built-up causeway we turned the bay from an open stretch of the sea into a sealed bowl. And we've been emptying that bowl, one sled after another. Now those children are playing in mud that just months ago was at the bottom of the sea.'

The snailhead frowned. 'It is hard to believe.'

'And look in the centre of the bay,' the priest said, pointing. 'Can you see - it's just breaking the water-'

'Like an island.'

'Yes. That is Etxelur's flint lode. Once the finest flint anybody knew about, finer even than what we mine from the island. Lost to the rising sea for generations.'

'But no more.'

'But no more. Soon we will be able to walk out from the sh.o.r.e, all the way out, and mine it as our ancestors did.'

'You are not just keeping the sea out. You are taking your land back.'

'Yes.'

'It is mad.'

'Probably.'

'It is magnificent.'

'Certainly. And it's all because of you snailheads, and your logs, and the work you contributed-'

There was a scream, from the other side of the hill, behind them.

Knuckle turned immediately. 'Cheek?' He ran back up the gra.s.sy slope.

The priest scrambled to his feet, and laboured to follow through the long gra.s.s. As he reached the summit, he stared in disbelief.

Zesi stood over the highest reservoir. She had an axe in her hand. She was breathing hard, and, turned away, was looking down the southern hillside.

The reservoir, which had been br.i.m.m.i.n.g, was drained.

Knuckle ran forward, past her, and on down the hill. 'Eyelid! Cheek!'

Jurgi climbed the last few paces to stand beside Zesi, and he began to understand. She had taken her axe, a heavy thing with a flint blade, to the lip of the reservoir, where it drained into the rivulet. And when she had breached the reservoir all its water was released at once. A ma.s.s of water had surged down the rivulet and pooled at the hill's base. He could see how the force of the water had displaced the rocks of the river bed.

And blood was splashed over those rocks.

'I did it because of Ana,' Zesi said, breathless, looking shocked at her own handiwork. 'Because n.o.body would listen. I did it for everybody in Etxelur-'

Eyelid was in the river, soaked with water and blood, pulling at the rocks, calling Cheek's name over and over. Knuckle ran on down the hillside to her.

The priest was appalled. 'By the mothers' tears, Zesi, what have you done?'

57.

The next morning Ana sent word that she was calling a gathering.

By noon, all of Etxelur had come together on the beach before the Giving platform. The snailheads were here too.

Jurgi, slipping through the silent crowd, made sure he stood close to Knuckle. The snailhead was white with anger and hatred - just as he had been almost exactly a year ago, when he had lost his brother.

On the stage itself stood Ana and Zesi. Ana had her arms folded. Zesi, standing alone, wore the same skin tunic she had yesterday; she looked as if she hadn't washed, hadn't eaten, hadn't slept.

Everybody was utterly silent. In the background was a wash of noise, from the lapping sea, the gulls crying.

When Ana decided everybody was a.s.sembled she began. 'We are here because of what my sister has done-'

'I did it for you,' Zesi blurted. She turned to the people. 'For all of you. I wanted to show you how fragile this thing you're building is. How much danger you're putting yourselves in. How much effort you are wasting-'

'Shut up,' Ana said softly.

Zesi immediately complied, trembling. Jurgi felt a twinge of fear at Ana's power, her authority even over her rivalry-ridden older sister.

Ana said, 'Today we consider what was done. Not why. The why doesn't matter. Let Knuckle and Eyelid come forward.'

But Eyelid, weeping, stayed with her family.

Knuckle strode forward. He spoke to Ana, his Etxelur language crude and thickly accented. 'Last year, brother died, because of this woman. This year, niece dies. Because of this woman.' Muscles bunched in his neck, and his hands were clenched into fists so tight that blood trickled from palms pierced by his fingernails. 'Punish her your way, but punish her so she never forgets what she did. Never forget my niece.'

Ana walked up to Zesi.

Zesi cowered. 'I didn't mean it! Can't you see? I meant to protect you. I never meant to harm anybody! Do you think I intended for this to happen? Oh, you fools, listen to me . . .'

But she fell silent before Ana's cold gaze.

When Ana spoke it was softly, yet the priest was sure everybody present could hear. 'Zesi, my sister, you are dead to us. Dead as the child whose life you took. Dead to those of Etxelur. Dead to all our allies. Dead to the snailheads.' There was a growl of agreement from Knuckle's people. 'We will not feed you, we will not look at you, we will not speak to you, for you are one with the dead. Go from this place; you do not exist here.'

As she uttered these words the priest watched Ana's face. It was hard and cold as stone, ancient and implacable. It was the owl's unblinking stare, the priest thought suddenly, the stare of her deathly Other. Ana was barely sixteen years old.

Zesi looked shocked. But then a spark of her old defiance returned. 'Fine. I'll go. I'll go back to Albia. I'll take my son. Kirike is the son of the Root. He has a place there, and will win one for me. The moon take you to its ice heart, Ana . . .' But Ana did not react, and a new horror broke over Zesi's face. 'My son. Where is Kirike?'

'He is of Etxelur,' Ana said. 'You are as dead to him as to me. Don't try to find him. Go. I can no longer see you.' She turned away.

As one, the crowd before the platform broke up and moved away, murmuring quietly. Knuckle had his arm around Eyelid, who was weeping steadily.

n.o.body was looking at Zesi, as if the curse Ana had laid on her had made her truly invisible. She pursued Ana as she walked off the stage. 'Ana! You can't do this! My baby - give me back my baby!'

Her agonised pleas filled the priest with darkness and dread, and he wondered what consequences would flow from this moment.

58.

The years pa.s.sed, and the world followed its ancient cycles, seasons succeeding each other like intakes of breath.

For Northland, there was no repeat of the calamity of the Great Sea - not yet anyhow. But the ocean rose steadily, fuelled by melting ice and the very expansion of its own water ma.s.s in a warming clime. It bit away relentlessly at the surviving land and there were surges when it was a.s.sisted by storms or landslips. Before the sea's advance anything living on the land had to retreat, if it could, or die. Humans too, their lives brief compared to the sea's long contemplations, had to make way for the water.

That, at least, was how it used to be. Now the northern coast of Northland was acquiring a kind of crust, of works that defied the sea's advances.

And the humans who lived there, though as always they grew and aged and died to be replaced by new generations, weren't going anywhere.

59.

The Fifteenth Year After the Great Sea: Late Spring.

Qili, following the northern sh.o.r.e of Northland, walked steadily west, as he had done for many days.

The sea was a blue-grey expanse to his right, stretching to the northern horizon, and he saw fis.h.i.+ng boats working far out, grey outlines against the sky. On the wrack-strewn beach gulls and wading birds worked, squabbling noisily. The day was warm, less than two months short of midsummer, one of the hottest days of the year so far, and the sun was high in a clear sky. Qili had his boots on a bit of rope slung around his neck, and he walked in the damp sand that bordered the sea. The cool wavelets that broke over his feet eased the ache of callused soles, but did nothing to relieve the weight of the pack on his back, grubby and stained after his long walk from home at the mouth of the World River, far to the east.

He rounded a headland of gravel that spilled from the feet of eroding dunes, and the view to the west opened up. And he saw Etxelur, birthplace of his grandfather Heni, for the first time in his life.

It was just as his father's visitor from Etxelur had described. There was Flint Island lying just offsh.o.r.e, and there the bay cupped by the island's bulk and the gentle hills of the mainland. With land and sea mixed together, an estuary-dweller like Qili could see at a glance how desirable it was as a place to live.

But there, cutting across the sea, stretched between island and mainland, was a line, dead straight and bone white. It was clearly unnatural, sharp and straight in a world of curves and randomness.

All along the Northland coastline he had glimpsed similar works, walls to keep the water out, channels to let it run away, many of the works fresh cut from the earth. Everywhere people were working the land to keep it from the clutches of the sea. A part of him quailed at the thought of this reshaping of the world. Yet, standing here before the great d.y.k.e, he felt a spark of wonder. He was seventeen years old.

A pair of birds flew over his head, casting sweeping shadows. Their outspread wings had a clear white stripe along their brown surfaces, and behind sharp bills they had bright red necks; their call was a low-pitched 'whee-t'. He watched, entranced.

'Phalaropes. We call them phalaropes.' The words were in the traders' tongue.

Two women were approaching him, coming from the west. They were bare-footed, dressed in simple dyed-cloth tunics that left their arms and legs bare. The older woman, perhaps in her early twenties, had a serious face and blonde hair tied back behind her head. The younger, perhaps younger than Qili, was more exotic, her hair thick and jet-black, her features strong, her skin a rich brown. Her tunic was open at the waist, and he saw a marking on her belly: three concentric circles and a single radial stab, disappearing into the wrap around her loins. She was taller than he was. He'd never seen anyone quite like her. She was undoubtedly beautiful, but intimidating.

As they reached him they stood apart, and he saw that both had bone-handled stone blades hanging on loops from their leather belts. If he had been meaning to attack them, he could not have reached both with a single movement. That was a reasonable precaution, strangers were often unfriendly, but he had no such intention. And he couldn't take his eyes off the weapons' blades, shaped from a rich, creamy, pale brown flint. Back home only the big men and the priests would wear such things. Was Etxelur really as rich as they said?

The women were watching him, waiting to see what he would do. He smiled and spread his hands, showing they were empty.

The older woman asked, 'You speak the traders' tongue?'

'Not well.' He glanced up. 'Phalaropes. We call them red-cheeks. They are early this year. Often not seen before . . .' He stumbled on the word.

'Midsummer? No. My name is Arga. This is Dolphin Gift.'

'I am Qili. I come from a land east of here, at the mouth of the World River. You are from Etxelur.'