and an armful of dead branches. At the back of the cave he gathered stones to make a hearth, and dug the ember from last night’s fire out of his pack.
As he was nursing his fire, two children peered under the overhang. Both boys, maybe eight years old, they looked oddly like Cardum, both round and jowly with thick black hair. They threw in a parcel of some kind, shouted what was evidently an insult, and ran off, giggling.
‘And you’re the same!’ Novu yelled back.
The parcel turned out to be a couple of plump fish, fresh from the river, wrapped in thick broad-lobed leaves. He had no name for their kind, but he had learned how to prepare fish. He briskly skinned and gutted the fish. He buried the waste, not wanting to offend anybody by throwing it out or to attract rats by leaving it lying around. He dropped handfuls of dirt into his bowl of water, making clay, and plastered it over the fish, moulding a compact lump that he dropped on the fire.
After he’d fetched in more water he sat back, leaning against the wall, waiting for the fish to cook.
His cave looked north, and as the sun set the daylight sank down to a bare grey-blue. His eyes adapted to the dark, and he saw how the glow of the subdued fire was picking out the carvings on the roof of his shelter. He felt oddly content. Food, warmth, peace. It was a relief, for once, to be alone. The rush of the river filled his head, like the sound of his own blood flowing.
But it didn’t last long. Chona came crawling in. He sniffed loudly, making himself cough. ‘That smells good. Enough for two?’
‘Maybe. And if not, I suppose I’ll go hungry again, will I?’
Chona just laughed. He settled against the cave wall, shucked off his boots and pulled a skin over his legs. ‘Getting colder.’
‘So why didn’t you stay in the house of, umm-’
‘Cardum? Too crowded. Crawling with kids and farting men and complaining women. Ate my fill of his fish, though.’
Novu wondered how much of that was true. That coughing might have something to do with it. Nobody wanted a sick man around their kids.
‘Their women aren’t bad, if you can stand the smell. I’ll swear they sweat fish oil. There’s one in there I had my eye on last time, a niece of a niece of Cardum’s, I think, plump little thing-’
‘Just how you like them,’ Novu said dryly.
‘Got the impression she was willing to trade a little comfort for a jade bead or a pretty shell… Well. She’ll be ripe for a couple more summers. How’s that fish doing?’ Without waiting for a reply he lifted the fish off the fire and cracked open the baked-hard clay. The flesh, tender and steaming, fell apart in the clay fragments, and Chona took healthy handfuls.
Even when he had done there was plenty for Novu, and he ate, ravenous as he always was after a day of travelling.
‘So,’ Chona said around mouthfuls of food. ‘Think you’ll sleep well tonight?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You’ve been dreaming, the last couple of nights on the road. You came near to a punch in the head a few times.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You were worse when we left Jericho, you know. Have to be deaf not to hear you. Thrashing and muttering. All that anger at your father.’
Novu felt resentful at being probed like this. ‘Look – you’re going to sell me. You take the very food out of my mouth. Have you got to poke at my spirit as well?’
Chona laughed. ‘You’re developing a bit of fire in the belly, aren’t you? That might help when I sell you on. Tell me why your father hated you that much. I mean, the thing about the thieving was just the final excuse, wasn’t it?’
‘We never got on,’ Novu said. ‘I wasn’t like him. Vain and greedy. And on the other hand I wasn’t a tough hunter type, like some of my cousins. I played alone a lot-’
‘Making bricks.’
‘As I got older we started having fights. I’d challenge my father in front of my mother, his brothers. Once he took me to a meeting of his friends. Maybe you know some of them. I think, looking back, he was trying to help me. If I could get to know these people, maybe I could be accepted by them. Be like them some day.’
‘Be like him.’
‘Yes. But they were just a bunch of stupid fat old men to me, with their sea shells and bits of jade and obsidian and gold dangling from their necks and ears. Well, I made a fool of my father. I made them laugh at him.’
Chona grunted. ‘He won’t have enjoyed that.’
‘That was over a year ago. Since then he’s been harder on me. You saw it. In turn I played up more. It just got worse and worse. I was stupid to steal from him. Now I can see that he was making plans to get rid of me. Just waiting for the chance.’
‘And waiting for the right bit of obsidian to exchange you for.’ Chona belched, and lay back on a skin. ‘I can see how it went. He feared that you’d become a rival. Position is everything to your father, position among all those other jostling idiots in Jericho. Like goats in a herd, but not as intelligent. That’s what I use to sell him stuff, you know. Impress your friends! He feared you were going to undermine all that.’
‘I probably would have,’ Novu admitted. ‘I’d have enjoyed doing it.’
‘Well, there you are. So he got rid of you. Brutal, but effective. Bad luck for you.’ He settled his head on his arm. ‘I’ve eaten too much. Well, we don’t have to walk for a couple of days.’ And with that he rolled on his side, loosed a fart that filled the cave with the essence of fish, pulled another skin over his body, and wriggled to make himself comfortable.
Novu leaned back against his wall once more. He tried to ignore the uneven, unsleeping breath of the trader, and listened again to the crackle of his fire, the rush of the river.
The last daylight was all but gone, and as his eyes opened to the dark, he saw more detail in the roof carvings. There were oval shapes, like eggs, chipped into the rock, each about the size of his own head. He thought he saw what looked like a face carved into each egg, circles for eyes, a crescent for a downturned mouth. But surrounding the face and running down the body were overlapping circles and plates that looked like scales. Half-human, half- fish. Maybe that was how the people of the Narrow saw themselves, their very spirits mingled with the fish that gave them life.
Chona coughed and stirred. He squirmed, his back to Novu, and pushed one hand inside his skin leggings. Novu saw his upper arm working. Novu had seen this before. The trader was a man who, so contained and controlled, hid a powerful lust. He had probably been dreaming of this niece of a niece of Cardum’s for days, and was now denied her.
It wasn’t long before the trader’s body shuddered, and relaxed. Then, at last, Novu was left alone, with the river, and the fish-people of the cave.
17
More than a month after the Spring Walk, Ana had the idea that they should take a party up the valley of the Little Mother’s Milk to the old summer camp.
It was a suggestion born out of desperation, after another night of arguments in the house, another night of four-way stresses between herself and her sister and the Pretani brothers, in a house that, despite being the largest in Etxelur, seemed much too small. Ana didn’t even understand what was happening any more. Did Gall still want Zesi, or not? And what about his brother? Zesi and Shade barely spoke to each other in the house, but Ana saw the looks that passed between them – looks of guilt and lust, or so she read them. Would Gall stand by and let his little brother have Zesi? It seemed unlikely. And where did Ana herself fit in? She had thought Shade was attracted to her, not Zesi. Did Shade still feel anything for her – if he ever had? Did she care if he did or not? Ana could hardly bear the baffling tension.
What made it worse was that it was still more than a month and a half to the summer solstice, and the Giving
