retreat north when the sea lapped higher against your white cliffs. We could give up. We could simply walk away from here, and go south - but you’re already there. And as the sea rises more and more, as we head further south and others come pouring north—’ ‘All right!’ Knuckle snapped.
Ana nodded. ‘So will you help us?’
He looked around, at the channel into the bay. ‘I don’t know. Not for me to say, not alone. The elders will talk about it. That’s all I can do.’
Novu said urgently, ‘But you must make them see—’
Ana touched his arm, hushing him. She said to Knuckle gravely, ‘Thank you. We can’t ask any more of you. Look, you’re our guests here. Let us feed you. If you’ll come to our house—’
Knuckle glanced up at the sun. ‘Yes. We need to eat. Which is the quickest way back? Eyelid, Cheek - this way!’ And he marched off across the beach.
55
The First Year After the Great Sea: Spring Equinox.
Ana led her sister up the rough trail to the top of Flint Island’s solitary hill.
It was a bright day, and though the breeze that blew off the sea had a bite in it, the sun was strong, for perhaps the first time this year, Ana thought, after what had seemed a long, cold winter - hot enough to make Ana sweat under the pack of water skins she carried on her back. Zesi was additionally laden with her new baby, just a couple of months old, a little boy she’d defiantly called Kirike, who she carried in a sling. Zesi kept up a tough pace, and if she felt any weakness from a winter of hunger and the aftermath of a long and difficult labour she seemed determined to show no sign of it. But Ana saw how pale she was, how hard she was breathing.
It struck Ana that Zesi didn’t speak to her baby once during the climb - whereas Ice Dreamer talked to Dolphin Gift all the time, and she was already responding with gurgles and smiles.
Responding to the warmth, chaffinches were working the exposed ground, a gang of a dozen of them busily and expertly poking in the grass, their round pink bellies bright in the low sunlight. Mixed in with them were bramblings, so like the chaffinches save for the white flashes of their bellies, visible as they ducked and bobbed. The sisters startled the little birds, and they fluttered into the air, spiralling in pairs to the safety of the trees’ lower branches.
They passed the flint lode, a dent in the hillside, but nobody was working today. A pool of stagnant rainwater lay in the bottom of the working, where Ana saw bright beads of frogspawn, each with its telltale black dot, another promise of new life.
Then they reached the shallow summit of the hill, a place of sparse grass and rocky hollows where more rainwater pools glimmered. Here sat a tremendous stone that the people called the First Mother’s Knuckle Bone, for they imagined it had been spat out by an ice giant when he consumed her huge body.
Zesi paused by Knuckle, the sleeping baby lifted by each heavy breath. ‘So? Here we are. What do you want?’
Ana slipped off her pack and dug out a couple of water skins; she threw one to her sister, who caught it one-handed. ‘Zesi, I need to talk to you about the dyke. Novu, the priest, the others are waiting to see you later. But I wanted us to speak first.’
‘So why come up here? Why not speak in the house?’
Ana stepped to the edge of the summit, looking south. They stood over the mouth of the bay. Its enclosed expanse swept off to their right, while to the left was the open sea where the people’s boats were scattered. Everywhere the sun reflected from the water. Ana pointed down at the mouth of the bay. ‘There. That is what I brought you up here to see . . .’
The tide was rising, and you could see the water rushing to fill up the bay, small waves breaking against the rocks of the promontory on the far side. And you could also see two fine lines curving out from the land, one from the headland on the north side, one from the promontory to the south. A gap still lay between them, in fact there was more gap than line, but the intent was clear.