Stone Spring Part 22

They stared at each other. It had been a wave, a single huge muscle of water that had lifted them as if in the palm of a huge hand. They could see it pa.s.sing on towards the sh.o.r.e, a glistening hump.

'By the first mother's left t.i.t,' Heni said, 'I never felt anything like that in my life.'

Kirike shook his head; he felt too hot, his thinking fuzzy. Two strange things in one day. 'Do you think it had something to do with that thunder we heard?'

'Maybe.'

The wave receded. Diminished by distance it looked harmless - soon it was hard even to make out. But Kirike knew from experience that it would grow when it approached the land, the water heaping up on itself. 'That is a big wave,' he said.

'And it will break when it gets to the sh.o.r.e.'

'Yes.'

They stared at each other for a heartbeat. Then they hauled up their nets and reached for their paddles.

38.

Ana hurried back down the dune, followed by Novu.

Something spilled from Novu's pack, glinting.

'It's my fault,' Arga blurted. 'I was trying to help. I was opening the packs. Look, I opened yours, Ana! I was just trying to get to the food and the embers and stuff, and the water bags. I didn't mean anything.'

Novu, panting, his arms folded around his body, had a complex expression on his face; his eyes flickered, as if he were a trapped animal looking for escape. 'You should have asked.'

'It's just a pack.'

'It's mine.'

'I didn't know he had all that stuff in there!'

Ana frowned, baffled. 'What stuff?'

Dreamer gestured. 'Take a look.'

Ana leaned down. The crudely sewn deerskin sack was stuffed with stones: flints, mostly, but a few s.h.i.+ning gleams of obsidian, spilling out onto the sand. She tipped the sack up so the rest fell out.

Novu darted forward. 'Hey! Careful. You'll damage the pieces.'

Ana looked at him, and began to sort through the stones. Some of them were unworked lumps of flint, even complete nodules, and some finished tools. 'I wish Josu was here; he would know this stuff. But I can see this is good quality.' She picked up an axe-head, finely worked. 'And I think I recognise this. I used it once; I borrowed it to cut wood, and I remember leaving that chip in the blade . . . I think it is Jaku's.'

Arga nodded. 'Yes, that's my dad's.'

'All of this is mine,' Novu said with a touch of desperation. 'I worked for it all! You saw my house, Ana. The pieces on the shelves. This is what I do. I work for stones.'

'No one could work this hard,' Dreamer said dryly.

Ana rummaged through the rest of the pieces. It was quite a collection. There were knives and spearheads, and many intricately carved blades, no larger than a fingernail, that could be stuck in bone shafts to make sc.r.a.pers and awls. Most looked fresh to her, as if they had yet to be used.

And she found one big axe blade made of a sheet of beautiful, milky brown flint shaped to a perfect symmetry. You could barely see the marks of the hammer, so fine had the knapper's work been.

Dreamer gasped. 'That's beautiful.'

'Yes, it is. And it belongs to Jurgi. The priest. He wears it on special occasions, like weddings and the Giving. This is old, and very precious.' She looked up at Novu. 'There is nothing you could do that would make Jurgi give you this blade. Why, it's not his to give. The priests have held it for generations, pa.s.sing it from one to the next. And you took it, and hid it in your house, your pack? Why are you carrying it now? Were you afraid somebody would find it?'

Novu started pacing, muttering in his own language. When he spoke aloud he lapsed into a mix of the Etxelur language and the traders' tongue. 'It's not like that. You don't understand.'

Dreamer looked stern, but oddly weary. 'What is there to understand? You're a thief, Novu.' She used a traders'-tongue word. There was no precise matching word in Etxelur.

Ana was slowly working it out. 'You must have gone into houses when the people were out, and just taken things. Flints, tools. Whatever you liked. You even went into the priest's house, and went through his bags, the sacred, ancient stuff.'

'It was easy,' he said lightly. 'The man's gone wandering off in the forest, hasn't he? There's n.o.body in his house.'

Ana could see emotions chasing across his face. He liked to be cheeky, to be daring, elusive, unpredictable - although he had hinted that it was those qualities that had caused him to be thrown out of his home by his father in the first place. He was trying to laugh this off.

But then, before their three serious faces, something seemed to snap. He sat down suddenly, his legs folded up, his elbows on his knees, his head hanging.

Exchanging glances, the others sat more slowly, facing him.

'All right. Yes. I took the stuff. Even though I know what you've all done for me.' He lifted his head. 'You, Ice Dreamer. You spoke to me when I first showed up here.'

Arga put in, 'And I showed you how to set hare traps.'

'You did,' he replied solemnly. He turned to Ana. 'And you, Ana . . .'

Ana couldn't face him. She burned with a kind of embarra.s.sment. How could she have been so stupid as to waste her time on this man?

'Please, Ana. Look at me.'

'I owe you nothing.'

'No.' Beaten, he dropped his head again. 'All right. Let me just tell you why I did this. I didn't do it to hurt you, any of you. I did it because I had to. This is what we do, in Jericho! We have stuff. We collect it and keep it, we buy it and sell it. And if you don't have stuff you have no power, you have nothing, you are nothing. Oh, by the blood of the bull G.o.ds, I have turned into my father! I despised him for this . . .' He looked at Ana and spoke with a blunter edge to his voice. 'Look, you have been kind to me. But I think you adopted me - like raising a lost puppy. That was what you needed. But I'm more than that. I'm a man of Jericho.'

'You could have told me how you felt,' Ana said.

'Would you have listened? Could you have understood? Well, maybe you could. You're better than me; that's obvious.' He straightened up. 'So what now? Shall we go back? Maybe we should wait for your father to get back from his fis.h.i.+ng . . . I'll leave tonight. I'll find somewhere. I learned how to live away from people, when I was walking with the traders.'

Dreamer glanced at Ana. Arga looked hugely distressed.

Neither wanted Novu to go, Ana saw. And she realised that if she fixed this mess, here and now, she could persuade her father to accept her solution later. 'Take the stones back,' she said impulsively.

'What?'

'Give them back to whoever you stole them from. And don't sneak around doing it when they're out. Do it to their faces. Apologise.'

He rubbed his chin doubtfully. 'One or two will kick my a.r.s.e. Your uncle Jaku for instance.'

'You'll deserve it. And when Jurgi gets home, tell him what you did. He'll probably kick your a.r.s.e too. And never do this again.'

'I swear I won't.' He looked at her uncertainly. 'It might not be enough. They might throw me out anyway.'

'I'll have to speak to my father. I can tell him I'll watch you until you've got through this madness, and you can be trusted.'

He regarded her. 'You're so angry. Why are you helping me?'

'I don't know,' she said hotly. 'Maybe it's because I'll look less stupid this way.'

He laughed. 'Well, that's a good enough reason. I'll owe you everything, Ana. My whole life, maybe.'

Dreamer said sternly, 'Just remember that.'

Ana glanced at her cousin. 'Arga? Do you want to say anything?'

But Arga was frowning. 'Can you hear that?'

'What?'

The girl stood up, looking around at the open ground. 'Rumbling. Like aurochs running. Or thunder.'

Dreamer said, 'I hear it. Coming from the sea, I think.'

Gulls flew overhead, a sudden low flurry of them erupting from behind the dunes, cawing loudly, heading inland.

Dreamer murmured, 'Unusual weather makes me nervous. We say it is the anger of the G.o.ds.'

Ana said, 'If we climb these dunes we can see. Come on, Arga.'

Young and fit, Arga led the way, scurrying up the dune slope. Ana followed. Novu hastily packed away his stones, and Dreamer picked up her baby.

39.

Lightning the dog spotted the wave before Josu did. But then, Josu was always engrossed in his work.

On sunny, windless days when the tide was low, like today, Josu liked to work on the beach. And so he had come down from his house before noon, with his work pack and blanket and a water pouch and a bit of dried meat. It was difficult for him to walk on the soft sand, but he had worked out ways to get everything carried safely to where he needed it.

He had found a patch of clean sand and spread out his hide blanket. He settled down with his boots off, with his good leg folded and his bad leg out straight. He smoothed his thick cowhide ap.r.o.n over his legs, to avoid cuts from flying shards of stone.

Then he had unwrapped his pack and set his tools out to one side, mostly of reindeer bone, good and hard, tools some of which he'd owned since he was a boy learning the skill, and his raw materials to the other side, his cores and fresh nodules, and broken tools that people had pa.s.sed to him. Flint was valuable stuff, and you could almost always reuse even the most damaged tool, maybe turning it into smaller blades for fitting into a bone handle.

Then he had got down to work. He always liked to start on something big, to get his fingers working and his eye in. Today he picked a new nodule, knocked off some bits of chalk with an old hammer, and then turned it over in his hands, studying its strengths and its flaws. Soon he'd spotted a likely point for a striking platform. He chipped this carefully with a reindeer-bone chisel. Then he set the core between his legs, steadied it with his left hand, and struck it carefully with his right. The first blow wasn't quite right, and he produced only a shard of flint. But the second and the third were better, each blow releasing a flint flake like a roughed-out blade, and each time leaving a new section of striking platform for him to aim at.

He always aimed his blows down and away from his face, to avoid the danger of flint shards flying into his eyes, for he had seen the damage that could do; his hands bore the scars of tiny stabbings and sc.r.a.pes, but he could live with that.

Gradually the flint nodule was whittled down to a core, the pile of roughs beside him grew, and the golden sand before his legs was covered with flint shards. He knew that when he stood up he would leave the pattern of his legs on the sand, outlined by the bits of flint. He always took care to sweep sand over such mess, to avoid the children cutting their feet on it.

While he was working, others had drifted down to the beach. Fisherfolk laid out nets to dry, or pushed out boats to follow Kirike and Heni. Rute and Jaku came down to set up drying racks for Kirike's antic.i.p.ated catch. They nodded cheerfully to Josu. Their daughter Arga wasn't with them today. But they had Kirike's dog, Lightning. He was a yappy thing who came straight over to Josu, tail wagging vigorously, and he grabbed a corner of Josu's ap.r.o.n and began tugging it. He'd have had the whole lot in the sand if Josu hadn't held on. 'Get away, you daft dog! You always do this. Get away with you!'

Jaku whistled, and threw a brown tube of seaweed into the sea. Lightning immediately let go of the ap.r.o.n and bounded off after the weed, barking shrilly, splas.h.i.+ng into the water.

Josu was left in peace; he resumed his work with relief.

Despite such disturbances he felt content with his life, especially on such a day as this. He'd lived out his whole life in Etxelur, had rarely travelled much more than a day's walk from this very spot, and he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Oh, he was aware that some of his stock had gone missing recently - some of the better flint cores too, fresh from the lode on Flint Island. He wasn't bothered. People had always played tricks on him, especially children. They mocked the way he walked. They'd pinch his tools, or call him names, or push him and run away faster than he could catch them. But children usually grew out of it. And if it got too bad, he could always turn to Kirike or Heni or Rute who would soon get to the bottom of it, and all would be right again, until the next time.

He'd been lucky to be born here. There were people like the Pretani who would have drowned a crippled little boy at birth. He was thirty years old now, there were few older than him in all Etxelur, his work was treasured, and he had no complaints. Nothing troubled him. Not even the fact that he'd never found a wife, had no children . . .

There was a deep roaring sound, a rumble.

Josu looked around, confused, faintly alarmed. The sky was cloudless. Gulls cawed noisily. He looked up to see the birds flying overhead, not wheeling and squabbling as they usually did, but heading inland, fleeing the sea. And Lightning was barking shrilly, not in play. The dog, his fur glistening wet, stood on the sand looking out to sea.

A few paces away from Josu, Jaku straightened up from the fish rack he'd been tying together. 'What's wrong with that dog?'

Rute s.h.i.+elded her eyes against the sun. 'Look out there.' She pointed out to sea.

Josu looked that way. The sea looked flat, calm - just as usual, save for a single dark line drawn across it, like a charcoal scribble. A wave, steadily approaching the sh.o.r.e. It didn't seem so remarkable. Then Josu saw a figure before it, frantically swimming towards the sh.o.r.e, perhaps a child. The wave towered over the swimmer, and calmly engulfed her.

Jaku murmured, 'By the little mothers' blessing-'

It seemed unreal to Josu, a scene from a dream.

Rute pulled apart the fish rack. 'We'd best get off the beach. Lightning! Here, boy!'

'It won't come this far up,' Jaku said.

'I'm not going to wait to find out. Oh, help me with the rack, you idiot, don't just stand there. And whistle for the dog.' She glanced over at the toolmaker. 'You too, Josu. I think it would be safer.'

'Yes.' Josu looked again at the sea. The wave was growing taller yet, as if water was piling up on water, standing on its own shoulders, the faster surface layers overtaking the lower that were dragged back by contact with the land. 'I wouldn't want to lose my tools.'

But Rute was not listening. She was already moving away, picking on Jaku, calling for Lightning.

Belatedly, Josu started to move. He wrapped up his tools and his cores, and the new flakes in their separate skins. Then he bundled his packets and his water skins and his ap.r.o.n in the hide blanket. He was rus.h.i.+ng, and was making a mess of his packing.

The dog was still barking, close by. He could hear people shouting. All around him children were running, away from the sea.

And the wave climbed up the beach. It wasn't like a wave but a slab of water, as if the whole sea had risen up. He could taste the spray.

Josu stood hastily, his bare feet scattering flint shards. He didn't have his boots on, but there was no time. He began to run, holding his bundle before him. But he went down, his withered leg betraying him, and he spilled his goods over the sand. He scrambled to pick them up, his tools, the packet of cores.