And then there were the even stranger fish-animals the men hunted, whenever they spotted one. She had never seen their like before. These creatures that could be bigger than a man had bodies like a fish’s but faces like a dog’s, and they seemed to spend as long sitting out on the ice or rocks as they did in the water. Kirike and Heni hunted them enthusiastically, but with respect, and their butchery was quick and efficient.
Dreamer soon learned that the broth that had kept her alive during her illness was made from boiled meat from the fish-animal. In the process she learned her first word of Kirike’s language, through his pointing. ‘Seal.’
‘Seal.’
More pointing. ‘Dolphin. Fish. Spear. Net. Harpoon…’ The journey went on and on, until she had long lost track of the days.
Sometimes the weather would close in, and they would be stuck in their tiny shelter for days, and their mood inevitably turned inwards, souring. There was always a tension between the men, she realised, as she learned to read their moods. Kirike was more welcoming; maybe it was Kirike who had wanted to save her in the first place. Heni was much more grudging. She saw something in Kirike’s eyes. He was injured within. Somehow helping her helped him. She fretted that it was a pretty tenuous reason to be kept alive. Dreamer always tried to stay out of the way of any arguments.
As the days passed, it was the sheer endlessness of the journey that wore her down. How large could this briny lake be? Maybe, she thought, brooding, the lake was not of this world at all. She feared she was the last of the True People. If everybody else was dead, maybe she was dead too. What if these strange men weren’t human, but were agents of the Sky Wolf whose rage had destroyed the world?
One day, as the men paddled, with the setting sun bright and pointlessly beautiful in her eyes, she folded her hands on her swollen belly and repeated the ancient priest’s words to her child. ‘ “The world is dead. We are dead, already dead; this is the afterlife, of which even the priests know nothing. Even our totems are dead…” ’ She folded over and began to weep, deep heaving sobs, though her tears would not flow.
Kirike stopped paddling. He worked his way down the boat to her, and folded her in his arms. But his thick furs were frost-coated and there was no hint of warmth from him, as if he was dead too, the dead embracing the dead.
Heni snorted his contempt. He stayed where he was, paddling gently.
Thus the days and nights wore away. Until the night she woke up screaming in agony.
22
‘You’re mad,’ Heni insisted. ‘You can’t cut the baby out. Even the priests hesitate to do that. And we’re not priests. We’re just two idiots in a boat who can’t even find their way home.’
‘There’s no choice. Her waters broke. The baby’s coming.’ Kirike, more desperate than he wanted to admit, looked down at Dreamer, where they had laid her down in the shelter of the boat tent. Mercifully the sea was calm. It was the first time in many days the two of them had had to handle the woman like this, but after the contractions had started she had soon lost consciousness. He put his hands under her tunic, over the top of her swollen belly. ‘But the contractions have stopped. Or they’re so weak I can’t feel them. And even if she woke up to push…’ He glanced down at the marks of an obvious and brutal rape. ‘She’d be torn apart.’
Heni put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Look – you’ve done wonders. She was nearly as dead as that kid when we found her. You brought her back to life. You gave her these days on the boat. She’s even laughed, at times. You gave her that. You can’t do any more for her.’
‘I’ve seen this done twice,’ Kirike insisted. ‘The cutting-out. The first time I helped the priest.’
‘How long ago was that? You were a boy! Watching a priest do it isn’t the same as doing it yourself, believe me. And the second time-’
‘It was Sabet. And, yes, it failed, we lost mother and baby. But don’t you think I paid close attention? Anyhow what do you suggest we do? Tip her over the side?’
‘Yes. Let the little mother of the sea embrace her, and her baby. It’s out of your hands now.’
‘Not yet.’ He felt his heart hammer. He stripped off his tunic so he was bare from the waist up. ‘Give me my best blade, Heni. The big one of the old Etxelur flint. Get an ember from the fire. And the sleeping moss.’
Heni hesitated for a long moment. Then he began to unpack the fold with their few remaining medicines, put together for them by Jurgi the priest before they left Etxelur, for what should have been a few days’ fishing and had become a journey of months.
The sleeping moss had been soaked in sap taken from a poppy’s seed pod. Kirike lifted Dreamer’s chin to tip her head back.
‘Just a drip in each nostril,’ Heni said. ‘Too little, it won’t take the pain away. Too much and it will poison her-’
‘I know! Shut up, man.’ Carefully Kirike squeezed the moss over her nose, delivering the droplets. Then he held his hand over her mouth, forcing her to breathe through her nose. She shifted, stirred, moaned.
He leaned over, pushed his arms out through the tent’s flap and dunked his hands in cold sea water. This part he was sure of; the priests at home always used salt water to clean their hands.
He came back into the tent. He lifted Dreamer’s tunic up over her breasts, and shifted around until he was kneeling on the woman’s shoulders, pinning her. ‘You hold her ankles.’
‘We need more people. You always have a whole pack of helpers.’
‘We’ll have to make do.’ Sweat was running into his eyes. He took his big, familiar blade in his right hand.
‘This is about Sabet,’ Heni said abruptly.
Kirike halted, his knife poised. ‘What about Sabet?’
‘You couldn’t save her. The priest couldn’t; nobody could. We’re here on the wrong side of the ocean because of Sabet. Now you do this because of Sabet. Even if you save this woman it won’t help Sabet, or your baby. And if you kill her-’
‘Shut up!’ He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Just hold her.’
Heni grunted, but held the woman’s ankles.
Kirike muttered a prayer to his Other, the clever pine marten. He hefted his blade again, and, trying to be as sure and confident as if he were butchering a seal, he pushed his blade into her flesh, just above the pubic hair, and rapidly made a slit up to her navel. He knew it had to be deep enough to sever the skin, muscle and womb wall, yet he must not harm the baby.
Amniotic fluid spilled, its stink strong, and Dreamer stirred in her drugged sleep. Where the bleeding was heaviest Heni touched the spot with a glowing ember, held between two splinters of seal bone.
‘Now the baby,’ Kirike said. ‘Let’s be quick.’
Heni put down the ember, hooked his fingers into the wound, and pulled the stomach walls apart. Kirike quickly widened the cut in the womb and dug out the child. He cupped it in his hand, a greasy creature with shut, swollen eyes that seemed barely human. With a swipe of Etxelur flint he cut the cord and, keeping one hand inside the abdominal wall so it wouldn’t spring back, handed the baby to Heni.
Heni cradled the child, tied off its cord with a bit of twine, and wrapped it in skin cleansed in sea water. Now they were in the midst of the operation they worked together quickly and well, as Kirike had known they would.
But Kirike’s job was not over; even if the baby survived the mother was yet to be saved. In his mind’s eye he imagined what the priests had done, how they had worked to save Sabet. He had to fix the womb. Reaching in he scooped out clots, and felt for the placenta. It was extraordinary to look down and see his own bloody hand thrust into the belly of this woman, who he had never met a month ago, whose very language he couldn’t speak.
He removed the placenta and dumped it in a bowl, but a loop of intestine escaped through the wound. ‘Help me…’ Heni, holding the child, reached over with one hand and pushed the pink-grey worm back into the hole. Kirike kept pressing the womb, which he knew had to be held firmly as it contracted. Had he compressed it enough? He had no idea.
Dreamer stirred again.
‘We have to turn her over to drain her. Hold the wound…’
Heni put the baby down and grabbed hold of Dreamer’s flesh at either end of the wound, by her navel and her
