treatment.’
‘Thank you.’
When Alder went off for the tea, Zesi held Jurgi’s hand. ‘I didn’t know he knew medicine,’ she said. ‘That Pretani.’
Jurgi grunted. ‘Nor did I. But I knew a man like the Root wouldn’t travel far without a medicine man. I- Ow!’
‘Don’t move, you idiot.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Shade said that falling branch would have crushed my skull if you hadn’t shoved me aside.’
Lying back, he squinted up at the trees, the canopy darkening as the light faded. ‘I’ll tell you the oddest thing. I thought I saw something move up there, above you. Climbing in the trees. A big animal… It pushed the branch and made it fall. I think. It might have been shadows. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘You saved my life.’
‘Then I’m doing what your father asked me to do, for both of you.’
She stared at him, puzzling out his meaning. ‘ “Both of you…” ’ Her hand flew to her belly.
He tried to smile. ‘You didn’t know, did you? Or maybe you did, deep down.’
She didn’t want to follow him down this path. ‘There’s nothing to know.’
‘Of course there is. The women knew, back in Etxelur. Ana suspected, I think. Even Arga. And Ice Dreamer, who’s just had a baby of her own. Think about it. When was your last bleeding?’
‘I was never regular. I never count the days-’
‘Think about your sickness in the mornings! How many of the Pretani’s wretched trees have you marked with your vomit? You just didn’t want to know, because it gets in the way of your goals.’
‘Shut up,’ she snarled. And then she squeezed the hand of the man who’d probably saved her life, and, it seemed, her baby’s. ‘Sorry. You’re right. You know me too well. But – my father let me come on the wildwood challenge, even knowing I was pregnant?’
‘Could he have stopped you?’
She touched her stomach again, through the layers of deerskin. ‘It is Shade’s, you know. It can only be his.’
The priest said softly, ‘You don’t have to tell him. We can complete the challenge and get out of here, get back to Etxelur, before the baby shows. And…’
‘What?’
‘I have treatments. If you want to lose the baby – it is best when it is small. It is not pleasant, but not painful. We could say you are ill, infectious. Go into the forest for a day-’
‘No. Not yet.’ She glanced over at Shade, who was talking quietly to his father. ‘I need time to think this through.’
The priest lay back, his eyes closing. She could see purple gathering around the wound on his forehead, an almighty bruise coming.
The Pretani medicine man came across with a bowl of nettle tea. He glanced down at Jurgi, closed the priest’s mouth with one finger under the jaw, and walked away. Zesi grabbed the bowl herself and sipped the tea, relishing the way its heat stung her tongue.
31
A month after his midsummer arrival at Etxelur, Novu was building his home.
It was far from complete, but, only a short walk from the Seven Houses, already it was like nothing else in Etxelur. Within a boundary stone wall, two low boxy houses stood so close together they touched. Their walls were a weave of sapling wood plastered with mud, and their roofs were planks set horizontally and heaped with rough thatch. The ground around the entrance was trampled, and little grew here save for a cluster of tree mallows, their pink flowers a bright contrast to the paleness of the bare sandy soil.
Ana sat on the ground near the low, dark doorway, waiting for Novu to emerge. It was like the mouth of some ground-dwelling animal’s burrow. She could hear him moving around inside.
Somewhere a curlew called. It was a bright summer morning, the sky a washed-out pale blue that spoke of the intense heat that was to come later in the day. She wasn’t sure why she was here. Something about this stranger from the east fascinated her.
At last Novu came crawling out of the hole in the house wall. He was naked save for a scrap of cloth around his loins, his skin greasy, his hair tied back, and he smelled of oily smoke from his lamps. He carried a bowl full of his night soil. As he got to his feet, he seemed embarrassed to see Ana sitting there. ‘What do you want? I mean – sorry. Good morning. Let me get rid of this.’ He walked up and over a low dune’s shallow slope, and dumped the waste on the far side.
‘You’re a late riser.’
He grinned as he walked back. ‘Or you’re an early one. Have you been sitting there long? I don’t get much light in there.’
‘That’s obvious. It’s so weird that you bury yourself in the dark.’
‘But it reminds me of home.’ He lifted his head to the sun, closing his eyes, and sniffed the salty air. ‘Although I do admit it’s nice to smell something other than myself.’ His words were heavily accented, but his language was mostly Etxelur now, mixed with the word-rich jabber of the traders’ tongue.
He was good-looking, she thought, in his own dark way, strong-featured with the nostrils of that big shapely nose flaring as he drank in the air. When he had arrived here, after months of walking with the traders who had owned him as a slave, he had been scrawny, underfed, his muscles small and hard, like walnuts. Now he was filling out, and his bare skin had tanned a rich brown in the summer sun. But he would always be small compared to Etxelur men. Small in height, more lightly muscled, prone to flab, and with those oddly worn teeth.
He was watching her calmly. ‘See something you like?’
Embarrassed, she looked away. ‘No.’
‘So what are you doing here? You are a curious one, aren’t you?’
‘I suppose. I never met anybody like you before.’
‘I should think not. I came a very long way. You want to come in and take a look around?’
That was why she was here, but she looked into the dark hole dubiously.
‘Come on. You’ll have to crawl, mind, the door’s a bit low…’ He got down on his hands and knees and wriggled inside, disappearing like a huge bank vole vanishing into its hole.
She got to her knees and followed him. She could feel her back scraping the door frame.
Inside, she found herself in a space high enough for her to sit up but not to stand. Stone lamps filled with what smelled like whale oil burned smokily. The floor was flat, much of it paved with slabs of sandstone from the beach that must have been hard work to haul in here. A hearth was set in the centre of the floor, a circle of heavy stones, but there was no sign of fire.
The walls were flat and smooth; she could see the marks of his hands where he’d pressed and stroked the damp mud before it dried. Alcoves had been dug into the walls, and were heaped with objects. A second door had been cut into the wall, leading to an even darker space.
Novu was sitting on a pallet set against one wall. ‘Take your time. Let your eyes open to the dark. See what I’ve done.’ He pointed up. ‘I’m cutting a chimney. See the hole in the roof? When I break through I’ll clog it with thatch to keep the rain out. It’s been so warm I haven’t needed the fire yet.’ He wrapped his arms around his bare torso. ‘I know your winter is going to be colder than I’m used to. But I’ll be warm enough in here, with the fire.’
‘Where does that door go?’
‘The other room. There will be more rooms eventually.’
Rooms. A Jericho word that didn’t have a precise match in Etxelur. Here, houses weren’t divided up into rooms. ‘Is this how people live in Jericho?’
‘Not quite. I’ve seen places like it. This is the best I can do for now, until I start making bricks. When I make bricks I will build a better house. I will build many houses, all made of bricks, all jammed together.’ He grinned. ‘I
