to the western horizon, and the day’s brief warmth had long bled from the air. They were all hungry.
But Zesi, rubbing goose fat into her boots in a corner of the house, looked furious.
They found that Zesi had held her meeting - so Ana heard from Ice Dreamer, who had got the story from the priest. Even Jurgi had been there reluctantly. Only a few people had bothered to turn up, and fewer yet had stayed as Zesi started talking about Ana’s flaws, and the mistakes she had been making.
The last to stay had been Lightning the dog, who only wanted Zesi to throw a stick for him. Everybody laughed at this. Zesi stalked away, seething.
But, Ana reminded herself, a few people had come to listen to what Zesi had to say. Ana could never take for granted the goodwill of the people.
And Zesi’s challenge had lodged a seed of doubt in her own mind. What if Zesi was right? What if she had been driven mad by the horrors of the Great Sea? She was still only fifteen years old, after all. Sometimes she still had nightmares of the man with no face, her father’s corpse washed up by the sea. Who was she to shape the future? What if this nascent scheme to save Etxelur from the sea was just a fever dream?
If she was mad, how could she ever know?
54
The First Year After the Great Sea: Late Winter.
Cheek, the snailhead toddler, ran ahead of Ana’s group along the new causeway. Her mother Eyelid, walking behind Knuckle, watched Cheek cautiously, but didn’t try to stop her. Lightning ran after the child, wagging his tail and barking.
The causeway, rebuilt, cut across the ocean to Flint Island, a smooth arc. The way was solid underfoot on an upper surface of wood, logs pressed into mud. Gentle waves lapped to either side. To the left lay the open sea, and to the right the bay, where a couple of boats worked this morning searching for eels. And on the bay’s southern shore Ana could see new houses sitting on their flood-defying mounds of dark earth. Half a year after the Great Sea, Etxelur was recovering.
It was a bright winter day, not yet a month after the midwinter solstice, and the weather was benign, the wind low, the sea calm, and the ocean water reflected a diffuse, cloudy sky: a world grey above, grey below, and bitterly cold, yet full of light. Ana offered up silent thanks to the little mothers for the weather, as she walked between the priest and Knuckle, with Novu stepping quietly behind them with the rest of the snailheads. Maybe the mildness of the day would soothe the snailheads’ mood - and make them more amenable to giving Ana what she wanted of them today.
Little Cheek was a bundle of furs, with hide bandages wrapped around her growing snailhead skull. But she was wide-eyed, fascinated by the water that lapped so close to her feet. Knuckle watched her indulgently. Eyelid was the wife of Knuckle’s dead brother Gut; Cheek was his niece. Knuckle had grown closer to Eyelid, since Ana had rejected his tentative advances. Ana was glad for them.
Not that she knew them all that well; they were still very odd by Etxelur’s standards. Walking now with Eyelid, she tried to think of something to say to her. But with the snailheads, as with the Pretani, the men decided everything of significance, while the women did the work - or anyhow that was how it seemed to Ana. Eyelid wouldn’t even speak to the Etxelur folk save through Knuckle.
‘Cheek can’t remember the ocean,’ Knuckle said now. ‘She was last here at midsummer. Long ago for a three-year-old.’
‘For all of us,’ said the priest. ‘Because of the Great Sea the world has changed since those days. But I don’t suppose the little girl will remember that either.’
‘No,’ said the snailhead grimly, ‘and she’s lucky for that.’
Ana nodded. ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been possible to walk this way just a few months ago. It’s taken a lot of hard work to restore the causeway.’
Jurgi glanced at her with approval; she was learning subtlety, and was steering the conversation the way she wanted it to go. It had even been her idea to bring the snailheads out to the causeway, the nearest they had to a demonstration of the dream they wanted the snailheads to share.
Knuckle said now, testing his tread on the logs under his feet, ‘Better than