dreamed all the way around.
By the time they got back to the house the sun was dipping to the western horizon, and the day’s brief warmth had long bled from the air. They were all hungry.
But Zesi, rubbing goose fat into her boots in a corner of the house, looked furious.
They found that Zesi had held her meeting – so Ana heard from Ice Dreamer, who had got the story from the priest. Even Jurgi had been there reluctantly. Only a few people had bothered to turn up, and fewer yet had stayed as Zesi started talking about Ana’s flaws, and the mistakes she had been making.
The last to stay had been Lightning the dog, who only wanted Zesi to throw a stick for him. Everybody laughed at this. Zesi stalked away, seething.
But, Ana reminded herself, a few people had come to listen to what Zesi had to say. Ana could never take for granted the goodwill of the people.
And Zesi’s challenge had lodged a seed of doubt in her own mind. What if Zesi was right? What if she had been driven mad by the horrors of the Great Sea? She was still only fifteen years old, after all. Sometimes she still had nightmares of the man with no face, her father’s corpse washed up by the sea. Who was she to shape the future? What if this nascent scheme to save Etxelur from the sea was just a fever dream?
If she was mad, how could she ever know?
54
The First Year After the Great Sea: Late Winter. Cheek, the snailhead toddler, ran ahead of Ana’s group along the new causeway. Her mother Eyelid, walking behind Knuckle, watched Cheek cautiously, but didn’t try to stop her. Lightning ran after the child, wagging his tail and barking.
The causeway, rebuilt, cut across the ocean to Flint Island, a smooth arc. The way was solid underfoot on an upper surface of wood, logs pressed into mud. Gentle waves lapped to either side. To the left lay the open sea, and to the right the bay, where a couple of boats worked this morning searching for eels. And on the bay’s southern shore Ana could see new houses sitting on their flood-defying mounds of dark earth. Half a year after the Great Sea, Etxelur was recovering.
It was a bright winter day, not yet a month after the midwinter solstice, and the weather was benign, the wind low, the sea calm, and the ocean water reflected a diffuse, cloudy sky: a world grey above, grey below, and bitterly cold, yet full of light. Ana offered up silent thanks to the little mothers for the weather, as she walked between the priest and Knuckle, with Novu stepping quietly behind them with the rest of the snailheads. Maybe the mildness of the day would soothe the snailheads’ mood – and make them more amenable to giving Ana what she wanted of them today.
Little Cheek was a bundle of furs, with hide bandages wrapped around her growing snailhead skull. But she was wide-eyed, fascinated by the water that lapped so close to her feet. Knuckle watched her indulgently. Eyelid was the wife of Knuckle’s dead brother Gut; Cheek was his niece. Knuckle had grown closer to Eyelid, since Ana had rejected his tentative advances. Ana was glad for them.
Not that she knew them all that well; they were still very odd by Etxelur’s standards. Walking now with Eyelid, she tried to think of something to say to her. But with the snailheads, as with the Pretani, the men decided everything of significance, while the women did the work – or anyhow that was how it seemed to Ana. Eyelid wouldn’t even speak to the Etxelur folk save through Knuckle.
‘Cheek can’t remember the ocean,’ Knuckle said now. ‘She was last here at midsummer. Long ago for a three- year-old.’
‘For all of us,’ said the priest. ‘Because of the Great Sea the world has changed since those days. But I don’t suppose the little girl will remember that either.’
‘No,’ said the snailhead grimly, ‘and she’s lucky for that.’
Ana nodded. ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been possible to walk this way just a few months ago. It’s taken a lot of hard work to restore the causeway.’
Jurgi glanced at her with approval; she was learning subtlety, and was steering the conversation the way she wanted it to go. It had even been her idea to bring the snailheads out to the causeway, the nearest they had to a demonstration of the dream they wanted the snailheads to share.
Knuckle said now, testing his tread on the logs under his feet, ‘Better than I remember. I never trusted that muddy track.’
Novu stepped forward and said, ‘The old causeway was a gift of the gods. What we did this time was to start again from the beginning. Of course the natural track was the starting point. We pushed rocks and gravel and brush into the mud. And then we laid logs over the top, pressing them down. Now the causeway’s stronger than before and higher. And it’s sturdier. You can feel that. It’s already withstood a couple of winter storms. I don’t know if it could survive another Great Sea.’ He glanced out at the placid ocean. ‘I’d like to find out.’
‘Don’t challenge the gods,’ the priest murmured, ‘lest they take you up on it.’
Knuckle asked Ana, ‘So how is your sister? Produced her Pretani pup yet?’
‘No. Well, not the last time I saw her.’ Which was another gift from the gods, as far as Ana was concerned. Zesi, fuming, frustrated, continued to oppose all Ana’s projects, and ranted at anybody who came within earshot about how their father wouldn’t have run things this way. She would have been particularly difficult this morning, for she had been central to the mess that had led to the death of Gut, Knuckle’s brother, at the hands of Gall the Pretani. But her long pregnancy was keeping her out of the way, and Ana was grateful to be able to get some work done.
They reached the island, and walked around its northern shore towards the holy middens, now half-rebuilt themselves. Cheek ran ahead along the sand, kicking at washed-up seaweed, and the dog ran after her.
Suddenly Ana saw oystercatchers, a pair of them flying low along the coast. They were big birds, black and white with distinctive orange beaks and a plaintive, repetitive cry. They were probably both males, this early in the year, preparing for their flight up the river valleys where they would stake out territory on a shingle bar, to build their ground nests. She felt her spirit expand, as if thawing out, at this latest sign of the turn of the season.
Knuckle watched the birds fly, his great head gleaming in the sun’s watery light. ‘We were coastal folk, like you, down in the south, before the sea drove us away. We live in the forest now. But the forest has its charms, even in the winter. You can see the squirrels run in the bare trees, and the nests of the rooks.’
The priest nodded. ‘It is said a rook always comes back to her old nest.’
Knuckle grunted. ‘Just as you have come back to yours – even though the ocean told you it didn’t want you any more.’
Ana said, ‘This is our home. Our ancestors’ bones are piled deep in the middens.’
The snailhead raised a shaved eyebrow. ‘That’s your choice. So why have you asked us here? I think you want something,’ he said bluntly.
‘I suppose that must be obvious,’ said the priest. ‘But you’re right. We have something to show you. Come. Just a little further.’
They walked away from the beach and cut south across the island, picking their way along a trail that led through sea-battered dunes, and then around the island’s central hillock.
They soon broke through to Flint Island’s south coast, where they had a clear view of the promontory just on the other side of the bay. On the narrow beach here logs had been heaped up, stripped of their bark. A couple of men were working on them, using heavy flint axes to sharpen one end of each log.
While child and dog ran off to play with another mound of seaweed, the adults shared skins of water, carried by the priest.
Knuckle looked around, sniffing the cold air. ‘Never came here.’
‘There’s no reason why you should,’ Novu said, stepping forward. ‘Yet it’s an important place.’ He waved a hand. ‘You can see we’re at the mouth of the bay. The narrowest point, where Flint Island comes closest to the mainland. When the tide rises the water rushes through here to fill up the bay. When the tide goes out the current is just as strong the other way. The kids like to swim here.’
‘Never much liked swimming myself. So what are those lads doing hacking away at logs?’
Novu took a deep breath, and Ana remembered how hesitant he had been when he had first described his
