mounds she had ordered to be built, rising up from the plain. For now they were just heaps of earth, but they would show their worth when the next flood came.
The more she walked, the more the world seemed to open up around her, the stillness of the sky and the land, the calmness of the sea. She concentrated on the soft crunch of the frosty grass and sand under her feet, and the different texture of the light at night, the moon shadows that made dips and gullies seem deeper, the lack of colour that changed her sense of distance. It was as if she was walking in a different world altogether, a world separated from the clutter of the day.
Something rustled in a patch of long grass.
She stood still. She made out a round, pale body, long ears, a single black eye looking warily at her. It was a snow hare, already in its winter coat. She felt unreasonably glad to see it, for the Great Sea had left the land depopulated of its animals, even its birds – even the owl, her own Other, whose hooting calls were rarely heard this winter. But the hare was a great survivor.
After an instant of sublime shared stillness, something startled the animal. It bounded away in a spray of loose sand and frost. She glimpsed it once more, zigzagging across a meadow, compact and strangely graceful.
‘I’m glad it didn’t find my trap.’ The soft whisper came from Matu, bundled up in thick furs; he clambered awkwardly up the dune face. ‘Wouldn’t have enjoyed killing a snow hare.’
Ana was disappointed that she was no longer alone, but she smiled. ‘You’re out late.’
‘Just checking the catch. Anyway it’s not that late. Fishers know how to track the passage of the night by the stars.’ He looked around the sky and pointed. ‘See the Bear?’ This was a distinctive pattern of seven stars that resembled a bear in a crouch. ‘When his body is pointing that way, the night is still young, and morning’s far away. That’s how it is tonight. Of course tomorrow night the positions will be a little different, and the night after that, different again. We experienced fisherfolk know the sky’s secrets.’ He smiled, gently mocking himself, for she knew that, like her, he had never been out fishing before the Great Sea forced him to.
She said, ‘Ice Dreamer comes from a land far from here. But her people, too, call those stars the Bear.’
‘Do they?’
‘So she says. Perhaps it really is a bear, thrown against the stars in some long-gone age.’
He squinted up at the stars. ‘It doesn’t really look much like a bear, does it? You could think it looks like something else, a dog or a deer, and call it that. Perhaps our people and Ice Dreamer’s knew each other before. Maybe we were once the same people, who have separated, carrying the same stories over the world.’
‘And maybe everybody talks too much about stupid things that don’t matter.’ This was Zesi’s harsh voice. She came walking along the dune ridge, following her sister’s footsteps.
Ana’s heart sank. So much for her quiet walk in the night. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you. I said we needed to talk. Besides, Arga woke and asked for you. Poor little kid depends on us now, you know.’
‘I know.’ Ana refused to be made to feel guilty. ‘She knows I never go far-’
‘No. You stand around out here and talk, talk, talk…’ Zesi was wearing only a tunic, not even a coat, so her belly showed, prominent. The hairs on her bare arms were stiff with the cold. ‘What are you talking about now – star patterns? People who wandered around in the deep past?’
Ana said, ‘Ice Dreamer’s legends are all of a different kind of past, where-’
Zesi put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t – care – what that woman says. I’ve had enough of her. And Novu, that other stranger you spend all your time with. What a waste of time it all is! Stars and legends! Mounds of earth! Bones under the sea! The people should be fishing. Hunting. Gathering the last acorns and hazelnuts – oh, I’ve heard enough. Tonight has driven me to a decision. This is what I want to tell you. In the morning I will speak to the priest, and some of the others, and talk about what we must do to get through the winter – and who must lead.’
‘You’re going to challenge me?’ Ana, astonished, laughed.
Matu was not a man who grew angry. But now he faced Zesi and said sternly, ‘In those first days after the Great Sea, when those who survived envied the dead, Ana made us want to live, by not giving in, by keeping going. Perhaps others could have taken that first step. Her father if he had lived. Perhaps you, if you had been here, Zesi. But it was Ana. We remember that. And you should show her respect.’
Zesi snorted, the breath streaming from her nostrils. ‘Respect? For her? Don’t make me laugh.’ And she turned on her heel and walked away, along the ridge of the dune.
Ana sighed. ‘Come on, Matu. Let’s get back in the warm.’
53
The next day dawned clear and frosty, and at noon there was just a hint of warmth in the sunlight.
‘A promise of the spring to come,’ Ice Dreamer said. ‘Or a memory of the summer past.’ She sat on a bundle of furs heaped up on the dunes over Ana’s house, lifting her face to the light.
From here Ana, sitting with her, could see much of the bay, and the grey outline of Flint Island. Dreamer’s baby sat up on her lap, gurgling and smiling. They gathered around Dreamer, Ana and Arga and Novu, sitting on the ground in the brief warmth of the sun. They worked as they talked; they had a heap of hazelnuts to shell.
Dreamer’s face was strongly shadowed by the sun, and age showed in the lines around her eyes and mouth, and in the grey streaks in her tied-back hair. Yet she was still beautiful, Ana thought, strong and beautiful. No wonder her father hadn’t been able to abandon this woman when he found her on that distant shore. Kirike’s and Dreamer’s was one story among many cut short by the Great Sea.
Dreamer said now, ‘What a night we had. What an extraordinary thing you have found, under the sea, Arga. More than earth and bones – you have found the story of your people. A story of times long gone, when huge boats must have sailed through those great ditches, and must have – must have – sailed across the western ocean to bring your mark to my far country. A story lost for generations, and now found again.’
‘Yes,’ Ana said. ‘And it’s all thanks to you, Arga.’
Arga submitted to a hug, but she seemed to have had enough praise, and soon wriggled free. ‘The question is, what do we do now?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Mothers’ Door is our treasure. So we can’t leave here. Can we? We can never leave this place-’
Ana said slowly, ‘You’re right. We would forget. Living somewhere in the south or in Pretani, mixed up with the snailheads and all the others, we would forget the Door – forget who we are.’
Novu said gently, ‘But when the ocean rises, if another Great Sea comes-’
‘We will build more mounds,’ Ana said. ‘As we have since the night of the storm when Zesi returned. So high the sea can never cover them and drive us away.’ Maybe this was why the little mothers had given her the determination to stay and dig that night. Maybe it had been the seed of something much greater in the future.
‘Yes,’ said Dreamer reasonably, ‘mounds will save you from an occasional flood. But what if the sea doesn’t retreat again?’ She waved a hand at the bay to the north. ‘How long could you survive, on the highest mound, sticking out of the ocean?’
‘We’d swim a lot,’ Arga said seriously, and she looked hurt when they laughed.
‘Perhaps there is more we could do,’ Novu said thoughtfully. ‘My people once built a wall around Jericho, to keep out floods from the hills. Even here we built the causeway to the island after the Great Sea destroyed it. Perhaps there is more we could build.’
‘Like what?’ Ana asked.
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’ He got to his feet and surveyed the coast. ‘Shall we walk around the bay? The tide is low and the causeway should be passable. We might get some ideas.’
Ana and Arga stood up, eager.
Dreamer said, ‘Before you go, don’t forget about Zesi. She spoke to the priest earlier. She said she would call her meeting about now. About who should lead, and what we should do.’
Somehow Ana had forgotten all about her sister. ‘Oh, I haven’t got time for that. Come on, Novu, Arga.’
So they set off, the three of them, talking and laughing in the sunshine. They walked all the way out to Flint Island, around its eastern promontory to the south shore, then back to the causeway. They talked and planned and
