which were gentler now. It was as if the tree was embracing her, holding her safe. Well, it was as far from home as she was, its very roots ripped out of the ground.
The tree was all that was real. The only sound she heard outside her own head was the soft lapping of the water against the branches and trunk. Maybe she ought to be afraid of the huge expanse of sea beyond, but she couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it.
She slept again.
The next time she woke she saw light. A pink-grey sheen was seeping into one side of the sky, reflecting from flat layers of cloud. The other way, to the west, the stars still shone, though more palely. Above her head the sky was a deep blue dome, with only the brightest stars left visible. She felt a vast reluctance to be dragged into the day, from the safety of the dreamlike night.
And she heard something, a small splashing, a creak like a branch in the wind.
She sat up, making the tree rock, and looked east. She saw a shape silhouetted against the light, cutting through the water, and for an instant she thought it was a shark. Then she made out the clean profile of a boat, and the shadow of a man, alone, working two paddles. Smooth slow ripples spread from the prow.
She waved, and tried to call. ‘Hello?’ But her throat was sore and dry, her voice no more than a whisper, dwarfed by the sea. ‘Hello! Hello! I’m here!’
45
Through the night they huddled on top of the hill, Ana, Dreamer and Novu, with Dreamer’s baby cupped between their bodies. Other refugees crowded the slopes.
In the starlit dark, Ana slept only fitfully. All night Lightning cuddled up against Ana’s back, his head tucked in against her tunic, with occasional twitches, snuffles and yipped barks as he chased pine martens in his sleep. Once the baby stirred, hungry, and mewled; Dreamer held her close and fed her, murmuring soft words in her own transoceanic language.
Ana longed to be the one cuddling in, to be sleeping between her mother and her father as she used to when she was very small. But that wasn’t going to happen, not ever again.
They began to stir not long after dawn. Oddly Ana had just fallen into her deepest slumber, and she had trouble waking up.
Novu walked away and stepped behind a rock to make water; she could hear him groan from stiffness and bruises. Dreamer sat cross-legged, rocking her baby and murmuring to her, for a brief moment lost in the bond between them, but when Ana sat up Dreamer smiled warmly at her. Ana understood. Without Ana, Dreamer’s baby might not even be alive to see this morning. But with that thought came the memory of how she had been forced to abandon Arga.
Ana moved over to a broken heap of rocks, took off her loin wrap, and squatted to piss. The hill’s small summit, the flint lode, the sandstone tufted with grass and sparse heather, looked deceptively normal. After all, even the great third wave had not climbed as high as this. All around her people were moving, children and adults waking, and picking their way down the slopes.
Lightning came sniffing at Ana’s bare rump, wagging his tail, and she pushed him back. ‘Oh, get away, you silly dog . . .’ The dog roamed around, marking stones and patches of turf with sprinkles of urine, and he licked at the light dew on the blades of grass.
‘He’s thirsty,’ Novu observed, hitching his trousers. ‘Well, so am I. There’s no spring up here, is there? We’ve no food either.’
‘We’ll find water easily enough when we climb down,’ Dreamer said.
Ana asked, ‘Is it safe to go down?’
‘The sea’s gone back,’ Novu said, pointing north. ‘It looks normal to me. Lapping away as it always has. It’s what it’s done to the land that’s going to be interesting. Are you ready? There’s no point staying here.’
‘Help me with the baby,’ Dreamer said.
With Novu’s help Dreamer fixed Dolphin in her sling on her back. Ana pulled on her boots.
Then the three of them stood together, looking at each other. Ana flexed her arms and legs, spreading her hands; she was stiff, sore, but everything worked. ‘We’re all whole, at least. No broken limbs, no cracked heads.’
Novu was bare to the waist, his tunic ripped apart. Like the others he was covered in minor cuts, and bruises that were beginning to