dunes the fishing boats had been dragged up onto the beach, and their catch lay in glistening silver heaps on the sand. Further back the drying racks were set up. A thin, slow-moving figure must be Jurgi, the priest, apologising to the tiny spirits of the fish. On the mud flats and marshes people gathered rushes and reeds, and some of the men hunted swans with their spears and bolas. On the island she saw Pretani, bulky dark figures, hovering over a heap of mined flint. There were other strangers here, traders and folk from east and south, gathering at a time of year when, paradoxically, despite the shortness of the days, frozen lakes and snow-covered ground made for easy walking and sled-dragging.
The whole place swarmed with children. They dug in the mud and raced at the sea, daring each other as they fled the frothy waves. Dogs ran with the children, yapping their excitement at the games they played. There were always more children than adults in Etxelur, burning through lives that, for many, would be brief.
Beyond Flint Island there was only the sea, the endless sea. Its grey flatness was matched by a lid of cloud above, though the sun was visible low in the sky, a milky blur across whose face wisps of cloud raced like smoke. More snow coming, Ana thought. She looked to the north, trying to make out the stud of rock that was North Island, the holy place to which she would be taken tonight for the blood tide. But the midwinter daylight was murky, uncertain.
This place, this bay with its island of flint treasures and marshland and dune fields, was Etxelur. And this was the northernmost coast of Northland, a rich, rolling landscape that extended to the south as far as you could walk. Ana had grown up here, and she knew every scrap of it, every outcrop of jutting, layered rock, every grain of sand. She loved this rich, generous place, and its people. Despite the Pretani she couldn’t stay unhappy for long, not today. This was her day, the day of her blood tide, the first truly significant day of any woman’s life.
And as she walked down the track through the dunes towards the beach, people nodded to her, smiling as they worked. ‘The sun’s warmth stay with you on the ocean tonight, Ana!’
Little Arga, seven years old and Ana’s cousin, came running up. ‘Ana! Ana! Where have you been? I want to see your marks. Has Mama Sunta drawn them yet?’
Ana took her hand. ‘Let me get out of the wind first. Where’s Zesi?’
‘With the flint.’ Arga pointed. Flint samples, hewn from the lodes on the island, had been set out in neat rows on a platform of eroded rock above the high water mark, sorted by size, colour and type. Ana saw her sister Zesi sitting cross-legged on the sand - and, she saw with dismay, the two Pretani boys loomed over her. Evidently they were discussing the flint.
‘Let’s show Zesi your blood marks,’ Arga said. She was slim, tall for her age, with the family’s pale skin and red hair.
Ana hung back. ‘She’s busy with the Pretani. Let’s not bother her . . .’
But now the older Pretani, Gall, touched Zesi’s hair, a flame of red on this drab day. Zesi snapped at him and pulled her hair back. Gall laughed and drifted off, heading for the smoking fish, and Shade followed, looking back with vague regret.
Arga said, ‘They’re gone. Come on.’
The two girls ran hand in hand down the beach, towards the rock flat. Close to, Ana could see how artfully the flints had been arrayed, over the big triple-ring marking that had been cut into the rock flat in a time before remembering.
Zesi greeted them with a grin as they sat on the sand beside her. ‘So how’s blood tide day so far?’
‘A nightmare.’
‘Oh, everybody feels that way; it works out in the end. Let me see your circles.’
Reluctantly Ana pushed back her cloak and opened her tunic. Arga bent close to see, her small face intent.
Zesi traced the circles on her sister’s belly. ‘It’s not bad.’
‘Sunta’s very weak.’
‘She’ll finish this off for you, she won’t let you down.’
‘Unless those Pretani idiots mess everything up.’
Zesi let her hair come loose, and shook it out around her head. In the wan daylight the colour made her pale skin shine like the moon. Zesi was seventeen, three years older than Ana, and, Ana knew, she would always