grand scheme to her and the priest and Dreamer, in the confines of her house. It was all founded on Ana’s determination, but it was Novu’s vision, and now he had to describe it all over again.
‘We want to build a dyke across the bay. Just here, between this headland and that promontory, across the bay’s neck at its narrowest.’
Knuckle frowned. Ana wondered if he was familiar with Novu’s Jericho word ‘dyke’. ‘What? Another causeway?’
‘No. Well, you could walk across it, it will be wide enough, but it’s not just a causeway. It will be a kind of wall. Look around. Once this bay was dry land – that’s what the Etxelur folk say. Their grandparents mined flint here. But then it became marshy, and then salty, and the grass and the trees died, and the houses had to be moved up to the beach. Now it often floods high beyond the beach, even at a normal high tide. And if you get an exceptional tide or a storm-’
‘The sea has taken the land back. Just as in the south, our home under the cliffs of white rock. That’s what the sea does.’
‘Yes. But that’s what we want to fight against. We’ll build a dyke, right across the bay. It will rise up high above the water – above the high tide level. So then, you see, the ocean won’t be able to break into the bay again. The bay itself will be like a lagoon, isolated from the sea.’
‘No more flooding,’ Knuckle said.
‘No more flooding.’
‘If you can build this dyke.’ Knuckle stepped forward and peered at the sea, where it ran between headland and promontory. ‘How? You built the causeway where the old one ran. There is no causeway here.’
‘No. In fact the seabed is deeper here, because it’s been scoured by the tides. That’s why we need the logs, these sharpened stakes. You see, we’ll drive them into the sea-bottom mud, in parallel rows-’
‘You built dykes like this before?’
‘No,’ Novu said defiantly. He’d faced this question before. ‘But my people have. I’ve seen it done.’
‘Hmm. Seen a bird fly. Doesn’t mean I can do it myself. Doesn’t mean I should try.’ He turned to Jurgi. ‘You will defy your gods?’
The priest said, ‘We fight the ocean, but not our gods. When the great cold retreated, our ancestors walked into this land behind the little mothers. While the mothers built the hills and river valleys and beaches, the people named each living and non-living thing, and gave each a story. We made the land hand in hand with the gods. There’s no reason the gods will be unhappy if we build it again.’
Knuckle eyed him. ‘You’re a clever man, priest. I think you have a way of saying what needs to be said. And when will you start to build your wall?’
Novu gestured at the men sharpening the logs. ‘You can see the work’s already started. But the spring equinox will be the key time. The days of the low tide. That is when the seabed will be easiest to reach.’ He walked to the sea’s edge and sketched great arcs with his hands. ‘We plan to work out from either side of the bay, and meet in the middle.’
Knuckle turned and looked around at them, Ana and Novu and the priest, and the two men desultorily hacking at the logs. Ana imagined what he saw: scrawny people in their ragged clothes, stick-thin already and with the hungriest part of the winter still to come, and yet here they were talking of expelling the sea itself. Knuckle said gently, ‘Ana, Jurgi, you have done well to survive. But this wall across the sea is a dream. Look at you. You don’t have the strength… Oh.’
Ana smiled.
‘This is why you asked me to come here. You want us to help build the dyke?’
‘There are more of you than us now. I don’t know if we can do it alone. We’ll try. But with your help-’
‘We’re half-starved ourselves.’ He glanced at Cheek, who was tugging on a piece of seaweed with the dog. ‘I see a busy year, full of the work of staying alive. That will be hard enough.’
‘I know what I’m asking.’
‘Do you?’ His face grew harder. ‘You Etxelur folk look down on us, for we are newcomers to your land. Why should we come here now, risk our own chances of life, just to help you?’
Jurgi said, ‘But it isn’t just about us. Think. The sea is rising. We know that. Our grandmothers were driven back from the floor of this bay, just as you had to retreat north when the sea lapped higher against your white cliffs. We could give up. We could simply walk away from here, and go south – but you’re already there. And as the sea rises more and more, as we head further south and others come pouring north-’ ‘All right!’ Knuckle snapped.
Ana nodded. ‘So will you help us?’
He looked around, at the channel into the bay. ‘I don’t know. Not for me to say, not alone. The elders will talk about it. That’s all I can do.’
Novu said urgently, ‘But you must make them see-’
Ana touched his arm, hushing him. She said to Knuckle gravely, ‘Thank you. We can’t ask any more of you. Look, you’re our guests here. Let us feed you. If you’ll come to our house-’
Knuckle glanced up at the sun. ‘Yes. We need to eat. Which is the quickest way back? Eyelid, Cheek – this way!’ And he marched off across the beach.
55
The First Year After the Great Sea: Spring Equinox. Ana led her sister up the rough trail to the top of Flint Island’s solitary hill.
It was a bright day, and though the breeze that blew off the sea had a bite in it, the sun was strong, for perhaps the first time this year, Ana thought, after what had seemed a long, cold winter – hot enough to make Ana sweat under the pack of water skins she carried on her back. Zesi was additionally laden with her new baby, just a couple of months old, a little boy she’d defiantly called Kirike, who she carried in a sling. Zesi kept up a tough pace, and if she felt any weakness from a winter of hunger and the aftermath of a long and difficult labour she seemed determined to show no sign of it. But Ana saw how pale she was, how hard she was breathing.
It struck Ana that Zesi didn’t speak to her baby once during the climb – whereas Ice Dreamer talked to Dolphin Gift all the time, and she was already responding with gurgles and smiles.
Responding to the warmth, chaffinches were working the exposed ground, a gang of a dozen of them busily and expertly poking in the grass, their round pink bellies bright in the low sunlight. Mixed in with them were bramblings, so like the chaffinches save for the white flashes of their bellies, visible as they ducked and bobbed. The sisters startled the little birds, and they fluttered into the air, spiralling in pairs to the safety of the trees’ lower branches.
They passed the flint lode, a dent in the hillside, but nobody was working today. A pool of stagnant rainwater lay in the bottom of the working, where Ana saw bright beads of frogspawn, each with its telltale black dot, another promise of new life.
Then they reached the shallow summit of the hill, a place of sparse grass and rocky hollows where more rainwater pools glimmered. Here sat a tremendous stone that the people called the First Mother’s Knuckle Bone, for they imagined it had been spat out by an ice giant when he consumed her huge body.
Zesi paused by Knuckle, the sleeping baby lifted by each heavy breath. ‘So? Here we are. What do you want?’
Ana slipped off her pack and dug out a couple of water skins; she threw one to her sister, who caught it one- handed. ‘Zesi, I need to talk to you about the dyke. Novu, the priest, the others are waiting to see you later. But I wanted us to speak first.’
‘So why come up here? Why not speak in the house?’
Ana stepped to the edge of the summit, looking south. They stood over the mouth of the bay. Its enclosed expanse swept off to their right, while to the left was the open sea where the people’s boats were scattered. Everywhere the sun reflected from the water. Ana pointed down at the mouth of the bay. ‘There. That is what I brought you up here to see…’
The tide was rising, and you could see the water rushing to fill up the bay, small waves breaking against the rocks of the promontory on the far side. And you could also see two fine lines curving out from the land, one from
