And they headed west, not east.
‘The current ran that way.’
‘Some of the time.’
‘We might have found land. People to trade with.’
‘We found ice! We slept on floating ice, and fished through holes in the ice. My piss turned to ice.’
‘Nobody ever went so far west before! We were strong, we were healthy. Who could have known what we’d find?’
‘All we found was ice…’
Over weeks of westward sailing, they had hopped from ice floe to ice floe across the roof of the world. Then the land curved south, and they had passed the mouth of a wide and deep river estuary, ice-bound in the winter. At last they had settled on this shore with the big clams.
Kirike said, ‘Maybe this is Albia, but if it is it’s like no bit of Albia I ever heard of, even from the traders. If they had clams like these we’d have known about it.’
‘We’re nowhere,’ Heni said. ‘A land with no name on the arse of the world. Where the funny-looking people don’t speak a shred even of the traders’ tongue. Well, we have to go home some time. If we can make it back. And what about Zesi? What about Ana? Your daughters don’t know if you’re dead or alive – or me, come to that.’
Kirike blurted, ‘Every time I see them I will think of Sabet.’
Heni nodded gravely. ‘Yes. That is true. But do you think your daughters won’t be missing their mother too?’
‘Sun and moon, it’s like talking to a priest.’
‘So are we going home?’
‘All right! Tonight we’ll turn the boat over. In the morning, as soon as it’s stocked, if it’s not actually storming-’
‘Well, about time.’
‘So what did you get from the Hairy Folk? Apart from a tit-grab from your bearded lover.’
Heni opened up his pack, to reveal bone and polished stone. ‘I traded our last bits of obsidian for this stuff.’ He pulled out a fine slate knife. ‘Look at the edge on that.’
Kirike picked up an awl made from what felt like a tooth. ‘I wonder what animal this came from.’
‘They told me. We don’t have a name for it. Like a big fat seal, with long teeth that stick down.’ He mimed with two pointing fingers. ‘And look at this harpoon. See the toggle? Look, you pass a rope through here, it runs out when you throw the spear, and then you can just pull the weapon back.’
Kirike rummaged through the gifts. ‘But no food. No dried meat, none of those acorn biscuits they make-’
‘Who needs food? Kirike, it’s spring, we’ll be sitting on an ocean full of fish.’ The tooth harpoon was on a loop of cord; he slipped it around his neck. ‘Imagine the show we’ll make when we paddle into Etxelur with this lot!’
But Kirike, looking over Heni’s shoulder, was distracted. To the north, beyond the sandstone bluff that stuck out to sea at the end of this bay, a thread of smoke rose. He stood up. ‘Fire.’
‘What?’ Heni turned to see. ‘That’s not the Hairy Folk. They’re down south, the band we’ve been trading with anyhow. ’
‘Then who?’
‘I don’t know. Makes no difference. Not if we’re leaving tomorrow, or the day after.’
‘Unless they jump us in the night, burn the boat and steal our stuff.’
Heni frowned. ‘Another distraction, Kirike?’
Kirike grinned. ‘Call it a precaution. Let’s go see.’
Heni grumbled, but he had to give in. They packed Heni’s booty and their other gear under the boat, and they each slid a knife of good Etxelur flint into their tunics.
Then Heni pulled on his boots, and they walked north along the beach towards the bluff.
14
‘In the beginning the father spirit gave birth to mother earth and father sky. A mud diver made the world from the body of the mother, and set it on the back of a turtle. But another diver dug the anti-world, a wolf thing, out of the body of the father. The father, disgusted, flung the wolf thing away into the sky…’
Dreamer lay back against the strange rock panel she had found at the head of the beach, with loops and lines carved into it, an oddly comforting design, brisk and complete. She had banked up the fire early today. Moon Reacher was very cold, and she hadn’t stirred, even when Ice Dreamer had poured fresh water from the spring into her mouth, and doused her wound with salt water from the great eastern lake of brine, trying to drown the squirming maggots. Reacher had been just the same yesterday, the face like snow, the purple, bruised lips, the cold limbs. Walking had been impossible for days.
Dreamer cradled Reacher in her arms over her own swollen belly, the two of them, the last of the True People, on the beach before this strange poisonous lake, and she told Reacher the story of the world.
‘In those days the world was rich and teemed with game. People crawled out of the sea to populate the land. The People hunted and grew wise and lived long. Even when they died they were born again into this world, for this was the most perfect world there could be. Their most powerful totems were the mammoth, which was like a hairy boulder walking the earth, and the horse, which was a swift runner.
‘But then the Sky Wolf, jealous of his banishment from the earth, decided to smash the world.
‘When the clouds and frost and the ash had cleared, the great animals had gone, and nothing stirred but stunted creatures barely worthy of the hunt. There was only a handful of True People left, but the earth swarmed with a new race of sub-men who evolved from the cowardly things that burrowed in the ground.
‘Now the True People still make their fluted blades, but there is nothing left to hunt. Even when we die we can’t return to the hunting ground of the past. The world is dead and we are already dead; this is the afterlife, the anti- world. Even our totems are dead…’
She thought she heard Reacher murmur. She held her closer, looking into her hooded eyes. ‘You must listen,’ she said. ‘Listen to the story. For you, Reacher, must tell it to me when I am in labour, and you, child in my womb, must speak it over my bed as I lie dying, for there is nobody else…’
Two men were watching her. The woman sat by a poor, shoddy fire under a shelter made of a heap of driftwood. She was dressed in tattered skins. Her dark hair was a mat of filth and grease, her face streaked with old blood. Bits of kit lay on the ground around her, amid folds of dirty leather. Her belly was swollen, though she was terribly thin; her wrist looked so fine Kirike thought he could have closed his thumb and forefinger around it. She held a child in her arms, a girl, perhaps eight or ten – nothing but skin and bones, and not moving.
The woman had been speaking, murmuring nonsense in an unknown tongue. Now she looked at Kirike with pale, blank eyes, and he suppressed a shudder.
Heni hissed, ‘Can you smell that rot? Like spoiled meat.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think she’s mad?’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Kirike said. ‘Or was. And she’s pregnant.’
‘Yes. Far gone with it. And look at the kid she’s holding. How stiff she is…’
Kirike stepped forward cautiously. The woman, watching, didn’t move. He crouched and touched the dangling arm of the girl, the wrist. The skin was cold as stone, and he could find no pulse. He moved closer, deliberately smiling at the woman. There was an overpowering stink of filth, of shit and piss and sweat, of stale fish grease – and that dread rot stench. He worked his fingers under the matted hair at the girl’s neck, and felt the cold flesh.
He drew back. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Dead for days, I’d say.’ Heni leaned forward and cautiously unwrapped the skin around the girl’s leg. The limb was swollen to the size of a log, and an open wound swarmed with maggots. He fell back, his hand over his mouth. ‘Well, we know how she died.’
‘Try not to frighten the live one.’ Still smiling, Kirike tried to slide his arms under the girl’s stiff body, to take her from the woman. But the woman grabbed the girl back. ‘I bet she won’t speak a word of any tongue we know.
