from across Albia and Gaira as well as all Northland. A thread of tradition that’s fraying and close to breaking altogether, if you ask me. But this year, after I sent my sons into your country, I find one boy has gone rogue, and the other addled. All because of trouble with women, I hear – if you can call these scrawny bitches women at all.’
Ana grabbed Zesi’s arm; she felt her sister’s muscles bunch.
Jurgi spoke quickly. ‘Whatever the reason, we’re honoured you’re here. Please.’ He gestured at the Seven Houses. ‘If you would like to rest, to eat or drink-’
‘If I need a shit I won’t be asking your permission, priest.’
Jurgi said smoothly, ‘Then come see what we’re working on.’ He led them away from the houses. ‘You understand the Giving will be held on Flint Island as usual, on the north shore, facing the sea. But we’re busy preparing all over Etxelur. Josu, show us what you’re doing.’
The stoneworker, squatting over his hearth in the lee of the dunes, had been concentrating on preparing his flints. Now, startled as the Pretani approached, he tried to get up, and he almost fell over, betrayed by his damaged leg. ‘Sun and moon-’
‘It’s all right,’ the priest said. ‘Your flints. Can you tell us what you’re doing? Use the heroes’ tongue.’
Josu stumbled over his words. He showed the Pretani how he worked. In the centre of the hearth, with charcoal burning sullenly, he had dug out a sand bath. Here he placed lumps of flint, the high-quality stuff mined from Flint Island. Heat, if applied correctly, could change the quality of the stone and make it easier to shape. But you had to keep the heating slow and gradual, and at a temperature that Josu continually checked by sprinkling water on his sand baths. Too rapid a heat shock, for instance if you just threw a lump of flint onto a fire, and it would shatter uselessly…
The Root glared at Josu without speaking, and moved on. Further along a group of women had gathered the bones of a mature male deer, a big animal, specially hunted for the purpose. The skeleton had been roughly reassembled on the sandy ground, and the women were carefully working the bones. Jurgi, smiling at the women, picked up a flute made of a shin bone, a rattle made of a hip socket containing beach pebbles, a bull roarer carved from a bit of scapula, a rasper from a chipped rib. ‘You see, we like to turn the whole animal into music, even little drums and rattles for the children. Then at the solstice when we march to the Giving place we bring the spirit of the animal with us, and-’
The Root spat. ‘Cripples with lumps of flint. Whistles for children. Is this how the men of Etxelur spend their time, priest? No wonder you let your women chop your balls off.’
The priest tried to intervene again, but Zesi wouldn’t stay silent this time. ‘We live differently to you, Root,’ she said in passable Pretani – a skill she had probably picked up, Ana thought with an inward twist of pain, during the spring days she had spent, secretly, with Shade.
The Root said, with a kind of dangerous calm, ‘In Albia, no woman would dare speak to me at all – let alone this way.’
‘None but my mother,’ Shade said dryly.
‘Silence, boy.’ The Root leered at Zesi. ‘What else can you do with your tongue, little girl? Maybe that’s what drove my boys wild.’
Zesi’s face twisted into a snarl.
This time it was the priest who pulled her back. ‘You are our guests. We have food, drink – the fruits of the sea, which-’
‘Fish, you mean. You all stink of fish.’ Root put his hands on his hips and glared around. ‘What a pitiful display this is. Etxelur is dead, or all but. Twitching like a calf after its brains have been stove in. What kind of Giving will this be anyhow?’ He glared at Zesi again. ‘I heard your father is dead.’
‘Not dead. Missing.’
‘Since the autumn equinox – that’s what I heard. Dead – that’s what you call a man missing so long. But he was the Giver. Who will Give this year? His eldest son – that’s the custom, isn’t it, priest? Oh, but wait. He had no sons! How typical of a ball-less Etxelur hunter of little fish that he couldn’t even father a son.’
Jurgi said, ‘Zesi will Give, as the senior woman of Kirike’s house. It’s unusual but not without precedent-’
‘A woman, Giving!’ The Root bellowed laughter, and his men dutifully joined in, though Shade looked away. ‘That I’ve got to see. And what of the wildwood hunt? It’s the Giver, or his son, who stands for Etxelur on that too. Who will lead this year?’ He reached out to chuck Zesi under the chin. ‘You, tongue girl?’
She flinched, but snapped back, ‘Yes.’
The priest murmured, ‘Zesi, think about this-’
‘Yes, I will go on the wildwood hunt. And when I bring down a bull with bigger balls than yours, Root, you will apologise for your insults.’
The Root laughed again. ‘Then bring on the autumn! That I have to see.’ He turned to his men.
In her own tongue Ana murmured, ‘Zesi, oh Zesi – what have you done?’
‘I can hunt as well as any man,’ Zesi shot back.
‘That’s true,’ the priest said. ‘But it’s not the hunting that’s the danger. It’s the Pretani…’
‘I will fulfil my promise.’
‘Whale!’
24
The cry had come from a boy standing on the crest of the dunes that stood over the Seven Houses. He waved and pointed east, towards the mouth of the bay.
The Etxelur folk forgot about their visitors and ran that way, scrambling over the dunes.
The Root glanced at Shade and his hunters, and began to stride that way too. The priest walked with them, at times half-trotting to keep up with their long paces, and Zesi and Ana followed.
They soon crossed the dunes and clambered down to the beach, and walked towards the mouth of the bay, opposite Flint Island. The Pretani looked extraordinary as they marched along the strand, Ana thought, their hoof- like feet kicking up brown-yellow sand that clung to their furs and their bare, sweating legs. They were out of place, like aurochs driven along a beach.
And at the neck of the bay she saw the whale, huge and glistening, stranded on the stretch of tidal marsh land opposite the island. It must have lost its way in the open ocean and swum into the bay – or it might have been driven that way by Etxelur fisherfolk.
The whale still lived; its big tail fluke quivered, and its skin glistened wet. But its life was effectively over. Its own weight would crush it, if it wasn’t finished off by spears and knives.
The people ran towards it, shouting their pleasure and excitement. Etxelur folk went whaling, but it was a dangerous venture to chase down such huge, powerful animals in skin boats with bone harpoons. To have such a beast delivered to their own shore without risking any lives was a gift of the little mother of the sea. Soon the process of turning the whale into a mountain of meat, oil, and bones would begin.
But even before she got there Ana heard shouting voices, and saw raised fists and shaken spears.
‘Snailheads,’ Zesi murmured. ‘That’s all we need.’
A group of the strangers were confronting the gathering Etxelur folk. The snailheads, here for the Giving, were led by Knuckle, the man Ana had met at the summer camp, who faced Jaku, uncle of Ana and Zesi. These two were screaming in each other’s faces. Etxelur folk and snailheads, gathered round, were joining in, backing their champions and yelling insults. All this was played out beneath the huge, sad eye of the dying whale.
The priest tried to get between the arguing men. ‘What’s this about?’
The snailhead, Knuckle, roared in his broken traders’ tongue, ‘Our find! Ours! Our fish!’
Jaku laughed. ‘It’s a whale, you fool. A whale, not a fish. Don’t you have whales where you come from? Maybe you don’t. Why don’t you snailheads just go home?’
The Root boomed laughter. ‘Like day-old calves butting heads.’
Knuckle stared at him, and switched to the traders’ tongue. ‘Pretani?’ And he saw Shade behind his father. ‘You.’ He marched towards Shade. The man’s extraordinary elongated skull, painted today with green spirals, had veins that throbbed at each temple. ‘You! Brother of the man who killed my brother. I told you at the camp – stay
