was, their slopes covered with grass. They were not natural, he saw immediately, with a jolt of shock, they were too regular for that. Houses stood on top of these mounds, heaps of kelp thatch over frameworks of stout logs. A low wall stood around each house, gleaming white.
Arga saw him staring, and smiled. ‘Everybody reacts the same, the first time. Come and see.’
Steps had been cut into the side of the nearest mound. Arga climbed these effortlessly. Qili followed, the grass cool under his bare feet. In turn Dolphin Gift followed him, still carrying his pack.
‘This is where you live,’ Qili said to Arga.
She nodded. ‘The house I share with Ana herself.’ The door flap was a leather sheet with the characteristic symbol of Etxelur etched into it, the three rings and the radial tongue. ‘We started building these mounds right after the Great Sea. Even before the dykes. It was Ana’s own idea. Up here, the worst floods can’t get us – even if the dykes were to fail, which they won’t.’
He bent to inspect the wall. It ran right around the house, sealing it in, yet it was low enough for him simply to step over. ‘Does this keep out the water too?’
‘No. It’s just for show.’ She showed him what the wall was made of – square-edged blocks, stuck together somehow and coloured white – and he learned words that were new to him, and new to Etxelur too, he found, brought here by a man from far away: brick, mortar, plaster. ‘To make the bricks we haul clay from the valley floor on wooden sleds. It is mixed with straw and cut into blocks and left to dry in the sun. To make the plaster we burn limestone in hot pits until it disintegrates into powder. This we mix with water and pour it over the walls, shaping it with our hands. It dries to give this smooth white cover. Well. I think Ana is at the flint lode in the Bay Land this afternoon. Would you like to rest now?’
He shook his head. ‘I’d be better to wash off the travel dirt with a swim, but that can wait. I’m keen to see Ana – and the rest of Etxelur.’
‘Good. Come on. Leave your pack.’ Arga began to make her way down the mound’s slope.
‘And you can leave me behind too,’ Dolphin said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
‘You’ll stay with me,’ Arga said with a mild authority, ‘until we’ve found your mother.’
With a snarl of disgust, Dolphin followed Arga and Qili back down the path.
Arga led Qili through the collection of mounds, each topped by houses and scraps of wall, and rows of sun- drying bricks on the ground. The people they met, pursuing their daily lives, seemed friendly enough to Qili, and when they learned he was a grandson of Heni they made him welcome. The children ran everywhere – there were always children, wherever you went – and they smiled or pulled faces at the newcomer. Everyone seemed fluent in the traders’ tongue, even the children, but their language was sprinkled with many unfamiliar words.
They climbed the dunes and paused at the summit. From here, looking north, Qili could see a strip of beach, beyond which lay a grassy plain studded with sparse trees – a gentle bowl shape, rising towards the sides, and its floor rippled with low hills, like dunes. This bowl of grass and trees and ditches was sheltered by the hills to the south, the bulk of Flint Island to the north – and to the east and to the north-west by two walls, both shining with plaster, that stood proud above the land.
‘The dykes of Etxelur,’ he said. They looked much more impressive than when he had seen the dyke from the ocean side, covered up by the sea.
‘Exactly,’ Arga said. ‘And if you listen closely you’ll hear the sea breaking against their outer walls. Walk with me.’
They walked down the dune, crossed a strip of sandy beach to mud flats, and then they came to the plain. The ground was soft, the soil rich, and criss-crossed by narrow channels.
‘This is Etxelur Bay,’ Arga said. ‘Or it was. Now we call it the Bay Land. When I was born this place was at the bottom of the sea.’
This had been described to him by Matu son of Matu. Seeing it was quite different. He gaped, unable to believe.
‘When the ground was first exposed it was muddy, salty. Well, you’d expect that. Once we cleared away the seaweed, the first things to grow were plants from the salt marshes. But in time the rain cleared the salt away, and we helped it by breaking up the soil, and the grass started to take. Then the trees, willow and alder at first – well, you can see that. I suppose they are better able to stand whatever salt is left in the soil than others. One day there will be birch and oaks here, growing where we stand.’
Qili found it hard to understand what he was seeing. ‘Grass and flowers and trees,’ he said. He looked down, peering through the long, sparse grass. ‘Soil. But under it, in the earth-’
Arga knelt down, pulled aside the grass and dug her hand into the ground. She pulled up rich black crumbling earth, but when she broke it up in her fingers Qili saw it contained fragments of sea shells. She grinned at his wonder. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to meet Ana. Wait until you see the flint lode.’
They walked forward, past willow trees and over gentle dune-like slopes.
‘Don’t mind her,’ Dolphin murmured to Qili. ‘She’s like this with every visitor we get. She has to show off. Maybe it’s because she was there when it was first getting built.’ She yawned elaborately. ‘Believe me, if you grew up with it, it doesn’t seem so special. You get used to it.’
But as they neared the northern dyke’s land side the wall loomed high over Qili’s head, perhaps three times his height, smooth and strong, excluding the sea itself. Qili, cowering in its shadow, wondered how anybody could possibly get used to living in a place like this.
61
When Qili emerged from Arga’s house the next day, the weather was if anything even brighter, even more cheerful. He heard a melodic, bubbling cry, and looked up to see a pair of curlews flapping overhead in their usual leisurely way, with their pale bellies and distinctive curved beaks, perhaps on their way to the marshy ground to the west.
Too beautiful a day for a funeral, he thought. But already people were emerging from the houses on the mounds and making their way towards the coast.
Arga and Dolphin Gift followed Qili out of the house. They wore simple smocks and cloaks, their hair had been plaited into tight coils, and their cheeks were marked with the ubiquitous rings-and-slash symbol, painted on with a mixture of ochre and goose fat. The house belonged to Ana, he had come to understand, as the senior woman in her family. But last night Arga and Dolphin had stayed with Qili, and Arga’s children had stayed with a friend to make room for him. Meanwhile Ana, and Dolphin’s mother, Ice Dreamer, had visited Etxelur’s priest to discuss the ceremony for Heni.
They walked together down the mound’s steep slope, and set off once more towards the beach. They joined a sparse crowd that converged at the abutment of the dyke that spanned the mouth of the bay, running north to Flint Island. Dolphin anxiously scanned the crowd, evidently looking for somebody.
Close to, Qili was able to see the detail of the dyke’s construction. Rows of fat wooden piles contained a core of rock and sand and mud. Further out into the water this foundation was buried under rock, with a facing of mud bricks coated with white plaster. On its dry side the dyke was a wall three times the height of a person, brilliant white, smooth-faced – but on the other side the sea lapped not far below its edge. Arcing across the bay mouth, unnatural and intimidating, the dyke oddly made Qili think of death; pale as bone, it divided the living world in two.
And he was going to have to walk across it, he realised now. The people were funnelling towards the abutment and starting to stream onto the path across the top. Children ran ahead, shouting, chased by barking dogs.
As they walked forward Arga said to Qili, ‘We always use the dyke on occasions like this, to get to the island. Saves getting your feet muddy on the Bay Land. Of course before the dyke was built you had to walk all the way around the bay…’
Qili found it hard to listen, as he followed her steady pace.
Soon he was out on the dyke itself, with a drop down to the Bay Land to his left, and the sea lapping not far below the lip of the wall to his right. It was an extraordinary experience, a little like walking a cliff edge, or as if the whole world was unbalanced and tilting over, and he had an odd fear of falling. Once a child jostled him, rushing past; Qili, stumbling, was glad of Arga’s supporting hand.
