hold over Knuckle, who hated her so much he would never listen to her.
Novu said, ‘Come on, let’s help those snailheads get all that lovely wood ashore.’ He ran back along the dyke to the beach, shouting instructions out to sea.
56
The First Year After the Great Sea: Summer Solstice. Jurgi the priest, in his Giving finery of poppy crown on his head and new flint axe at his neck, waited for the snailhead party on the southern bank of the outflow of the Little Mother’s Milk. He had brought food for the visitors, dried fish and hazelnuts, and sacks of drinks.
Kara, wife of Matu, had come with him to set up this small feast. Kara had laced her hair with flowers. She was still thin from the winter’s deprivations, as they all were, but she looked welcoming and beautiful.
And here came Knuckle, leading a party of a dozen snailheads down the valley of the Milk, with Eyelid, wife of his dead brother, at his side. They strode easily, smiling in the midsummer sunshine. The country was generous at this time of year, and they hadn’t needed to carry much – bundles of spare clothes, a few tools, skins for overnight shelters. Eyelid’s daughter Cheek was running around, weaving complicated patterns of her own around the adults’ steady plod. She grew more active and confident every time Jurgi saw her.
Jurgi saw how easily Knuckle and Eyelid walked together, their arms brushing. The company of others was a subtle and consoling gift of the little mothers.
As they approached, the snailheads broke from their walk to fall on the refreshments Jurgi had brought. The children soon found the honeycombs.
Jurgi, smiling, came up to Knuckle with a skin sack. ‘Blackcurrant juice,’ he said in the traders’ tongue. ‘I remember how much you like it.’
‘Good man.’ He took the sack, removed the wooden stopper from the sewn neck, and poured the thick liquid into his throat. ‘Honour to have the priest of Etxelur come to meet us.’
‘The honour is mine. It’s been a hard year – hard for everybody in Northland. But without you we would be much worse off.’
Knuckle nodded, his great misshapen head gleaming with beads of sweat, and he looked down at the children gorging on the chunks of honeycomb. ‘In the end we knew you were right – and Ana, your young goddess. If you had been forced from the coast, it would have been our turn next. Time to take a stand.’ ‘Exactly. Look, your people are welcome to go on around the shore to the Giving feast. The stand has been set up by the middens as usual.’ He glanced up at the sun. ‘I think the games will have started by now. But come with me along the river valley, Knuckle. I want you to see what’s become of your gift of logs and labour. I think you’ll be impressed – and surprised.’
His chin smeared with fruit juice, Knuckle grinned, showing his studded tongue. He turned to Eyelid and his people, and they had a short, jabbered conversation in their own guttural language. The children were keen to get to the beaches, for swimming in the sea was a treat for these inlanders. The younger men and women wanted to take their chances in the contests, the running and throwing, and to see how the crop of Etxelur youngsters – those who had survived the Great Sea – had blossomed in the last year. But Eyelid decided she and Cheek would walk with the men.
So, led by Jurgi, the four of them set off up the valley of the Little Mothers’ Milk, heading roughly west.
Away from the estuary the valley soon narrowed, the languid water passing between walls of sandstone. The trail they followed was sometimes hard to make out, so high was the bracken around them. The flowers’ colours were bright in the midsummer light, and fat bees hummed in clouds of pollen.
‘World full of life,’ Knuckle said. ‘Less than a year since whole place smashed by the Great Sea.’
‘But some have not returned. Otters, for instance.’ On impulse the priest bent down, rooted at the base of the bracken, and came up with a handful of soil. It was speckled with white. ‘And the sea-bottom mud is still here as a reminder. In time it will be hidden, but it will always be visible to anybody who cares to dig down into the ground. Like the extra thickness of a healed bone.’
Knuckle grunted. ‘You are thoughtful. Glad I’m not a priest, having to think. Happy to live in the now.’ The path dipped closer to the water, where the air was thick and hot. ‘How far is this mystery of yours?’
The priest grinned. ‘Just a little further…’
The valley opened out here and the river broadened, becoming shallower as it ran over its bed of gravel and mud. On the south bank, where they walked, a broad grassy plain stretched away, studded with tall bright thistles and churned up by the hooves of the cattle that came here to drink. To the north the land rose up into the low hills that divided this valley from the bay.
The priest pointed to the north bank, where a rivulet descended between two green hummocks towards the river. ‘See that?’
‘A stream. So what?’
‘It wasn’t there this time last year. We need to cross the river. There’s a ford just further down.’
They walked on to a place where the river was wide and very shallow. Following the priest’s lead, the snailhead slipped off his boots and walked out across the river’s gravelly bed. Knuckle enjoyed the walk in the water, childlike, as he hopped from one stone to the next. He slipped once, and laughed as he recovered, splashing water over the priest.
Cheek was delighted by the water, and gurgled as she splashed with her mother.
Soon they were all on the north bank. The rivulet, descending from the slope, emptied into an area of marshy land.
The snailhead spread his hands. ‘We came all this way to see this?’
‘Taste it.’
Knuckle grunted. ‘Thirsty anyhow.’ He took a healthy scoop of water in his cupped hand, tipped it into his mouth, and immediately spat it out. He looked at the priest, astonished. ‘Salt!’ The snailhead looked up at the innocent hillside. ‘Salt, like the sea!’
‘Salt. But it wasn’t this way before. Come on. You might want to put your boots back on. We have to climb.’
Cheek and Eyelid decided not to follow. They stayed playing in the stream, while Knuckle climbed after the priest.
They followed the rivulet’s little valley, cut into natural folds in the landscape, up the side of the hill. It wasn’t steep, but the priest had to take big strides over the long grass. He walked close to the rivulet, and he could smell the salt of its water, growing stronger as they climbed further.
They were both breathing hard by the time they had reached the summit of the hillock. From here, looking north over the shoulders of rounded hills, they could see the complicated geography of Etxelur, the bay, Flint Island, and the sea beyond. A soft breeze blew from the sea.
‘Nice view,’ Knuckle said, panting.
‘Yes. But I brought you here to see this.’ Jurgi pointed at a pond that nestled on the hillock’s broad summit.
You could immediately see that the reservoir was artificial. Reservoir: another of Novu’s words from Jericho that had become part of the Etxelur tongue. Several paces across, it had been a natural feature, a pond gathered in a dip, but it had been deepened and made neatly circular, and lined with stones and clay and mud to make it waterproof. In a confident flourish two rings of earth had been dug up around its perimeter to make a crude approximation of the three-ring symbol of Etxelur.
And the reservoir was brimming with water – even though, as the priest indicated to the snailhead, water flowed out of the pond through a breach in the wall to feed the rivulet.
Knuckle tasted the pond water. ‘More salt,’ he said without surprise.
‘It mixes with the natural runoff. I can’t imagine it will do much harm to the wildlife of the Milk, its flow is so tiny compared to the river’s grander flow. And ultimately, of course, it will be washed all the way to the estuary and out to sea.’
‘Fine. But how does salt water get up here in the first place?’
‘Come and see.’
