Iron Winter

Crimm saw he observed this. ‘The moon is our goddess of death. She is bright in the sky, these days and nights.’

‘Pyxeas would say, because she shines in the reflected light of the ice lying on the earth.’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Perhaps. She exults even so. Avatak, I remembered you were travelling with uncle Pyxeas, and I always hoped you would return. All the Coldlanders who were here fled years ago, before we started starving. I’m sure they’re prospering. .’

Avatak had heard nothing of his people since leaving Coldland with Pyxeas, nothing of uncle Suko and his sister Nona, and Uuna his betrothed who, he was sure, was still waiting for him. Yes, they would be prospering, even if they had had to abandon their old grounds and followed the edge of the spreading ice to the sea.

Crimm said now, ‘There is so much we can learn from you. We have done our best, to build a way of living in the unending winter — but you, you have your ancestors’ knowledge, their old wisdom.’

Avatak remembered Pyxeas predicting that it would be his wisdom, of the ice and sea, that would be in demand in the future, not the scholar’s learning. He felt embarrassed. ‘I was pretty young when Pyxeas took me away from home, and I have been travelling since. I have probably forgotten much of what I know.’

‘I think you’re too modest. Well, I hope you are. Take a look at this, for instance.’

Crimm led him to a scaffold on which hung the flensed body of a seal, dripping blood onto the frozen ground. The eyeballs drooped, ugly and exposed. The black flippers, the only bit of skin left on the body, looked oddly like gloves. At the base of the scaffold was the evidence of a previous kill, a heap of purplish guts, tangled up.

Avatak asked, ‘Where do you get the wood for the scaffold?’

‘Some driftwood, at first. A lot of it scorched from big fires burning somewhere, overseas. Not so much this year; I guess the gathering ice is seeing to that. But there’s always the Wall, like a great mine, crammed with stuff. All you have to do is haul it out. We know how to salt fish; we’ve done that for generations. What do you think of how we’ve handled the seal?’

‘You can use more of it.’ Avatak picked up a length of gut, and ran his fingers along the ropy stuff. ‘Squeeze out the blood like this, and boil it up. The liver is considered a treat, by the way, for the hunter who brings the animal in. There are ways to treat the hide so it’s easy to wear — you dry it, rub it to keep it supple. I will show you. Oh, and the eyes. .’ He plucked an eye from its nerve stalk, popped it into his mouth, and chewed hard; it burst with a crackle, and cold fluid filled his mouth. ‘Mm,’ he said around the mouthful. ‘Delicious. A treat for the kids.’

Crimm stared. ‘Ha! Well, I must try it myself. Look, Avatak — would you help with something else? We have sickness here.’

‘I saw your wife.’

‘We all suffer to some extent. But especially my wife’s little niece. Please.’

He led Avatak back up the beach to the cave, outside which Pyxeas sat, cradling an empty soup bowl, and Avatak was impressed that he had managed to finish a meal for once. Pyxeas had Muka help him up, and with the others followed Crimm into the dimly lit rear of the cave.

But Pyxeas paused by the fire where there was a heap of paper, evidently used as kindling. He ruffled through this, appalled. ‘By the mothers’ mercy — did this come from the Archive? I know this work — on the philosophy of the motion of the planets — centuries old! And it’s been used to light a fire for a bunch of-’

‘Not now, master,’ Avatak murmured firmly.

Pyxeas fell silent, visibly angry.

They walked deeper into the cave. At the back a little girl, not more than five years old, lay on a heap of skins. A woman, perhaps her mother, stood back as they approached, hope and fear obvious in her face. Avatak became aware that they were all watching him, all the Northlanders, and he felt a stab of self-doubt.

‘Just do your best,’ murmured Pyxeas, leaning on Muka.

Tentatively Avatak bent over the little girl. Listless, lethargic, she did not resist. He saw she had spots on her skin, on her face and arms and, he saw when he lifted a blanket, on her legs. She had evidently been suffering from nosebleeds, and when he gently opened her mouth he saw teeth missing from bleeding gums.

‘She’s been so down,’ said the mother. ‘So miserable for so long.’

‘Many of us have the same symptoms,’ Crimm said. ‘To one degree or another.’

‘And you know what she asks for, all the time? Cabbage! Who would have thought it? But you can’t grow cabbage in all this snow and ice.’

Pyxeas grunted. ‘I bet that’s the answer. You people seem to have plenty of fish and meat to eat, but not a scrap of green.’

Avatak felt faintly irritated, for Pyxeas was right. ‘We call it the bleeding fever. Yes, it comes about if you don’t eat all you need.’

‘I need cabbage,’ whispered the little girl, and her mother stroked her head.

Pyxeas said, ‘So what’s the answer, boy? Should we boil up some seaweed?’

‘No. Not that. We call it mattak. You can chop it into small pieces and eat it raw, or you can fry it and boil it to make it easier for the children. That will stop this sickness.’

Crimm frowned. ‘Mattak? What is that?’

‘The skin of a whale.’

There was a long silence.

Crimm said, ‘And to get hold of that. .’

‘First you have to catch a whale.’ Avatak grinned. ‘It’s not hard. I will show you.’

Crimm clapped him on the back. ‘You see? I knew you could help us! Why, with your help we’ll be able to prosper — to do more than survive — we can live in this place as long as we want-’

‘No,’ Pyxeas said. Suddenly he groaned, and leaned more heavily on Muka. Avatak rushed to his side, and helped lower him to the ground.

Crimm said, ‘No? What do you mean, Uncle?’

Pyxeas looked up. ‘Oh, you have done well — despite your barbaric consumption of books to light your fires. Yes, you are prospering. Yes, Avatak, if you can, show them how to catch whales, and all the other skills you have brought with you from the Coldland — skills you have used to keep me alive for so long.

‘But, Crimm, Muka, the rest of you — you cannot stay here. For the ice will not let you. And before you leave here you have a great assignment.’

Avatak said gently, ‘There is no scholarship here. You can see that.’

‘Yes. Yes, I see it. I was a fool to hope for more. Yet there is a duty to be fulfilled even so. Come, boy, help me back out into the light, may as well enjoy the daylight while we have it. .’

77

They sat on the growstone beach. Pyxeas was given a heap of blankets, and Avatak and Nelo sat with him, Nelo sketching intently. The folk of the little village, what was left of Etxelur, gathered around them: Crimm and his wife, the other adults, and the children who stood and openly stared at the newcomers with their exotic looks, their strange clothes. It was afternoon now, and the sun, hanging in a clear sky, cast a light of a strange quality, a rich golden yellow, on the face of the Wall behind them.

A small child, it might have been either a boy or girl in its bundle of furs, walked boldly forward, sat on Pyxeas’ lap, and started to pull at his wispy beard. It struck Avatak suddenly that there were no old people in this village — none at all, save Pyxeas.

Crimm smiled at Pyxeas. ‘That’s your great-grand-nephew. He’s called Citeg. He’s evidently a philosopher, like his uncle.’

Pyxeas, cradling the child, seemed to gather what was left of his strength. ‘Indeed. What a tableau we must make — draw us, Nelo! Draw us for history. Myself the elder, who remembers the world before the coming of the longwinter. You adults who are living through this age of transition. And now this little one on my lap, one of a new generation rising already, who knows nothing of the days before the longwinter, and who will grow up thinking all this is normal — to live on a growstone beach, to trap seals to survive. Thus we humans forget the pain of the past.