‘Come on,’ Novu said, clearly shaken by Ana’s flare of anger, growing uneasy. ‘We need to get back to the mainland. That’s where we’ll find food and water, and people, and we can start sorting out this mess. Do you think the tide is low enough for us to cross the causeway?’ And he led the way west along the shore.
Dreamer followed, then Ana, and then the dog, frisky, anxious, his tongue lolling from his thirst.
46
It was approaching low tide. The causeway should have been crossable, a strip of muddy ground gleaming above the surface of the sea. But the causeway too had been wrecked by the waves, erased as a child might tread over a line drawn in the sand.
So they walked further along the island’s beach until they found a boat, stranded high above the normal water line. Just stretched skin over a wooden frame, it was light enough for the three of them to carry down to the water. There were no paddles or bailing buckets.
They crossed close to the line of the causeway, where the water was shallowest, and launched the boat. They had to paddle with their hands, while water gradually seeped in through the skin seams. Lightning jumped onto Ana’s lap to escape the bilge water, whining, the fur on his legs drenched. The crossing became a grim race between their slow passage and the boat’s sinking.
Once on land they walked around the curve of Etxelur Bay, skirting the boggy tidal flats. Even here there was damage, the ancient wooden walkways broken and submerged, the dipping willow trees uprooted, and that blanket of pale mud and sand lying over everything. Ana saw no sign of the birds that normally inhabited the marshes, the buntings and lapwings and curlews. They had either fled inland or were dead. The only birds that moved here today were gulls, pecking curiously at the churned-up mud.
Suddenly Novu ran forward, clapping his hands. ‘Get away! Get away, you monsters!’ Gulls flapped into the air before him, big heavy birds, grey and white and black, squawking in protest.
Ana was startled. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘They were working on his face. His eyes.’
The corpse lay twisted, half-buried in the mud and the pale new sand. One hand stuck up in the air, fingers clenched. The mouth was open, and a bloody fluid leaked from the eye sockets. Lightning ran forward, curious, but Novu held him back by the scruff.
Ana felt Dreamer take her hand. ‘Do you know who this is?’
‘I think so,’ Ana said slowly. The face was muddy and squashed up. ‘I think this is Lene. Used to play with Arga, though she’s a few years older. A her, not a him, Novu. There are words we say for the dead. And the body - there’s no midden to place the bones.’
Dreamer murmured, ‘We’ll have time enough for that. Come, child. Let’s see all of it first.’
So Ana let herself be led on around the bay, towards the Seven Houses.
They started to see more bodies. They found more people drowned in mud, hands and questing faces thrust up into the air, adults and children blanketed by the white sea-bottom sand. Ana did not have the stomach to dig out their faces to see who they were. A child had been thrown against a rock wall, her head crushed like a hazelnut shell. A man’s face had been scraped away entirely, leaving eyes that gleamed like oysters in bloody bone.
‘People are fragile,’ Ana said.
‘All life is fragile,’ murmured Dreamer. Her baby on her back, she held Ana’s hand firmly.
They were approaching Ana’s own house now. The dog could smell home, and he bounded forward, tail wagging, barking.
Novu came to walk on Ana’s other side, offering silent support. ‘I envy the dog,’ Novu said. ‘He lives in the present.’
Ana said, ‘I don’t envy him what he’s soon to find.’
The Seven Houses had been flattened, as if kicked over and stamped down, and then covered by a dumped layer of the pale sea-bottom sand. A few broken support posts stuck out of the mud blanket, scraps of ripped seaweed thatch. The big communal open-air hearth was barely visible, a scatter of stones and scorched earth under the sand. Ana could see from the pattern of the mud flow that the water had come from the east, forcing its way from the sea up the narrow estuary of the river they called the Little Mother’s Milk.
Dreamer pointed. ‘That was your house, wasn’t it?’