but it was Novu’s vision, and now he had to describe it all over again.
‘We want to build a dyke across the bay. Just here, between this headland and that promontory, across the bay’s neck at its narrowest.’
Knuckle frowned. Ana wondered if he was familiar with Novu’s Jericho word ‘dyke’. ‘What? Another causeway?’
‘No. Well, you could walk across it, it will be wide enough, but it’s not just a causeway. It will be a kind of wall. Look around. Once this bay was dry land - that’s what the Etxelur folk say. Their grandparents mined flint here. But then it became marshy, and then salty, and the grass and the trees died, and the houses had to be moved up to the beach. Now it often floods high beyond the beach, even at a normal high tide. And if you get an exceptional tide or a storm—’
‘The sea has taken the land back. Just as in the south, our home under the cliffs of white rock. That’s what the sea does.’
‘Yes. But that’s what we want to fight against. We’ll build a dyke, right across the bay. It will rise up high above the water - above the high tide level. So then, you see, the ocean won’t be able to break into the bay again. The bay itself will be like a lagoon, isolated from the sea.’
‘No more flooding,’ Knuckle said.
‘No more flooding.’
‘If you can build this dyke.’ Knuckle stepped forward and peered at the sea, where it ran between headland and promontory. ‘How? You built the causeway where the old one ran. There is no causeway here.’
‘No. In fact the seabed is deeper here, because it’s been scoured by the tides. That’s why we need the logs, these sharpened stakes. You see, we’ll drive them into the sea-bottom mud, in parallel rows—’
‘You built dykes like this before?’
‘No,’ Novu said defiantly. He’d faced this question before. ‘But my people have. I’ve seen it done.’
‘Hmm. Seen a bird fly. Doesn’t mean I can do it myself. Doesn’t mean I should try.’ He turned to Jurgi. ‘You will defy your gods?’
The priest said, ‘We fight the ocean, but not our gods. When the great cold retreated, our ancestors walked into this land behind the little mothers. While the mothers built the hills and river valleys and beaches, the people named each living and non-living thing, and gave each a story. We made the land hand in hand with the gods. There’s no reason the gods will be unhappy if we build it again.’
Knuckle eyed him. ‘You’re a clever man, priest. I think you have a way of saying what needs to be said. And when will you start to build your wall?’
Novu gestured at the men sharpening the logs. ‘You can see the work’s already started. But the spring equinox will be the key time. The days of the low tide. That is when the seabed will be easiest to reach.’ He walked to the sea’s edge and sketched great arcs with his hands. ‘We plan to work out from either side of the bay, and meet in the middle.’
Knuckle turned and looked around at them, Ana and Novu and the priest, and the two men desultorily hacking at the logs. Ana imagined what he saw: scrawny people in their ragged clothes, stick-thin already and with the hungriest part of the winter still to come, and yet here they were talking of expelling the sea itself. Knuckle said gently, ‘Ana, Jurgi, you have done well to survive. But this wall across the sea is a dream. Look at you. You don’t have the strength . . . Oh.’
Ana smiled.
‘This is why you asked me to come here. You want us to help build the dyke?’
‘There are more of you than us now. I don’t know if we can do it alone. We’ll try. But with your help—’
‘We’re half-starved ourselves.’ He glanced at Cheek, who was tugging on a piece of seaweed with the dog. ‘I see a busy year, full of the work of staying alive. That will be hard enough.’
‘I know what I’m asking.’
‘Do you?’ His face grew harder. ‘You Etxelur folk look down on us, for we are newcomers to your land. Why should we come here now, risk our own chances of life, just to help you?’
Jurgi said, ‘But it isn’t just about us. Think. The sea is rising. We know that. Our grandmothers were driven back from the floor of this bay, just as you had to