Somebody began to jabber commands. They got her on her back and began to drag at her skins, and somebody took hold of her ankles, forcing her legs apart. She heard them calling, and more men came running to join in. She struggled and spat and bit, but the punches rained down, and she was weakening fast.
And, as if through a bloody haze, she remembered Moon Reacher. She forced her head to left, right, and there she was. A man held the girl up in the air with one big paw around her wrists, and with his other hand he was pulling away her skins like peeling a berry. Reacher’s leg was injured; blood streamed down from a wound in her thigh.
Dreamer stopped fighting. She looked around until she found the single Coward woman. As naked as the rest, and as garishly tattooed, she stood away from the men, nursing a bruised arm. ‘Please!’ Dreamer yelled until the woman looked at her, and met her eyes. ‘Please – the little girl – she is only a child – you’re a woman, help her-’
The woman could never understand her words. The language of the people and of the Cowards had nothing in common. But she shared some basic humanity. She stepped over to the man with Reacher. She slapped him until he let the girl go, and she gestured at Dreamer, on the ground. Take what you want over there. She dragged Reacher away, out of Dreamer’s sight.
The men were getting organised. One held her arms up over her head, another two, crouching, held her legs open. A younger man, not much more than a boy, ran his hands over her big belly and her milk-swollen breasts, as if fascinated. Then the men started clapping, and another approached her, a huge bull of a man with a swirling blood-red tattoo on his belly. He was already erect, she saw, his penis like a spear shaft, tattooed along its length and with what looked like a splinter of bone through the glans. He leaned over her and grinned.
She worked her aching mouth, summoning up one more mouthful, and spat blood and mucus in his face. That earned her a punch in the head, and the world fell away.
7
The Year of the Great Sea: Spring Equinox. A few days before the Spring Walk, Jurgi the priest decreed that Mama Sunta’s time of laying-out was done. He came to speak to the sisters in their house, the house that had been Sunta’s, and now belonged to Zesi, as the oldest surviving woman of the family.
Zesi’s house it might be – but the house was full of the Pretani boys, their sprawling beds of bracken and moss and skins, their spears and nets. The Pretani evidently liked it here at Etxelur. They’d stayed as winter turned to spring, and now they were even talking of staying all the way to the summer solstice and the Giving. So, after months and months, they were still here. To Ana’s nostrils the house stank of their filthy deerskin tunics and their meat-laden farts, and the acrid smells of their maleness.
Then there were the fights. Once Gall had tried to bring a woman to his bed: Pina, a young widow known to be generous with her body. Zesi had flown into a rage, and had hurled Gall’s bedding out of the house: ‘Get that slack-uddered cow out of my home!’ For days afterwards Gall had pulled down his lower eyelids every time Zesi passed, evidently a Pretani sign for jealousy.
And rare was the morning when he wouldn’t clamber out of bed naked, stretching, displaying an erection like a stabbing spear.
Sometimes Ana dreamed of burning it all down – or, better yet, she imagined the house being smashed by some great storm, or a tide from the sea. She feared that this was the voice of her Other, the owl, the death bird; she feared this was the darkness that had been discovered inside her the night Sunta died.
Certainly this polluted house wasn’t a place where she wanted to discuss the details of her grandmother’s burial.
But the priest, composed as ever, picked his way through the Pretani debris without a murmur or a glance, and sat with the women by the warmth of the night fire. He began, ‘I know it seems a long time since Sunta’s death, at the solstice full moon-’
‘We remember when it was,’ Zesi snapped.
‘My point is, the wait has been long. The months after the solstice are the coldest of all, when even the processes of a sky burial run slow. Some say even this is a blessing of the little mothers, for it gives time for the children of winter to be given up to the sky.’ Every winter took its cull of children; the ceremony of interring their little bones was a sad mark of each spring. ‘But Sunta is now ready for you to collect her. You understand this is a man’s role – if your father were here-’
‘But he isn’t.’ Zesi folded her arms. Her face was set, her eyes clear, her red hair scraped back from her head in a practical knot. ‘Well, I’ll do it. Although the mothers know I’ve enough to do already, with the Spring Walk only days away. The low tide isn’t going to wait until we’re ready, is it?’
This was how Zesi had been since Sunta’s death. With her father’s continuing absence Zesi had taken on the roles of both the family’s senior woman and senior man. For all her complaints about it, Zesi seemed filled with energy by the burden of her dual role.
But Ana became aware that the priest hadn’t replied.
‘I did wonder,’ Jurgi said slowly, ‘if Ana might be the one to bear Mama Sunta’s bones to the midden.’
‘I’m capable of doing it,’ Zesi said. ‘And I’m older.’
‘Of course you are capable. But custom doesn’t dictate that the oldest should do this.’
Zesi sounded sceptical. ‘Then what does custom dictate?’
‘That whoever was the last companion of the dead should be chosen. Ana, Sunta was with you on the night of your blood tide. You should be with her now.’
Ana knew that Zesi didn’t like to be away from the centre of things. But after a long pause Zesi said, ‘Fine. That’s fitting. I’ve got plenty to do anyhow.’ She stood, unwinding her long legs, and grudgingly kissed the top of Ana’s head. ‘Say goodnight to Mama Sunta for me.’
So it was decided. The next morning, just before dawn, the priest called again at the Seven Houses. Glimpsed through the flap of Ana’s house, he was a silent, spectral figure, with his deer-skull mask hanging eerily at his neck and his charm bag slung at his waist, a fold of ancient seal hide.
Ana had barely slept. The thought of what she must do today filled her with dread. Perhaps that was the owl within her, battling with her spirit. But she slid off her pallet, pulled on her skin boots, and wrapped her winter sealskin cloak over her shoulders.
She glanced around the dark house. Gall was asleep, flat out on his pallet, face down, mouth open, nose squashed out of shape, snoring. The hair sprouted thickly on his bare back, and in the dim light of the fire Ana saw an infestation of bugs stirring through that greasy forest.
Zesi was awake, however; Ana saw her eyes bright in the firelight.
And Shade rolled out of bed. She saw that he had his boots and cloak ready by the side of his pallet.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Coming with you,’ he whispered back. ‘To the midden.’
‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ She glared at the priest, beyond the door flap. ‘Is this your doing, Jurgi?’
The priest spread his hands. ‘We need somebody to dig. Shade said he’d do it. Would you rather do it yourself?’
‘Please,’ Shade said. ‘I knew Sunta too.’
Jurgi beckoned. ‘We’ll discuss this outside. Don’t wake the others.’
But of course, once they got outside, all three bundled up in their winter cloaks, and Jurgi had handed Shade his shovel made of a deer’s shoulder bone, there was no point debating it any more. Ana stomped away, with bad grace.
The laying-out platform was set up on a dune matted with marram grass. It was a frame of precious driftwood, taller than a person, long enough for three adults to be laid end to end – or several infants.
The priest and Shade stood by while Ana climbed a step up to the platform. Here was Mama Sunta, a bundle of ragged deerskin and bones and bits of flesh. At least there was no sign of the growth that had eaten her from within. The bones were cold and shone with dew.
From this slight elevation, Ana looked around. It was still not yet dawn; the sky was a high grey-blue, scattered with cloud. The air was very cold, and the dew was heavy. Mama Sunta had lived out her whole long life in this
