She had thought Shade was attracted to her, not Zesi. Did Shade still feel anything for her - if he ever had? Did she care if he did or not? Ana could hardly bear the baffling tension.
What made it worse was that it was still more than a month and a half to the summer solstice, and the Giving celebration. That seemed to be emerging as a major landmark in everybody’s mind. It was always the summit of the year anyhow, the longest day, after which the slow run-down to another winter began. And at the Giving the question of her father would come to a head. Although the solstice would be less than a year since Kirike’s disappearance, everybody seemed to feel that if he wasn’t back by the time of the feast, and Zesi, defying custom, took over his role as the Giver, it would be a kind of closing of Kirike’s story.
Ana didn’t want to face that. But another part of her longed for the day to come, for the Pretani were going home after the Giving.
A month and a half was too long to wait. And so she suggested a trip up-river as a way to use up some energy. The idea was greeted with a snarl from Zesi, but a day later, after a quiet word from the priest, her sister grudgingly accepted that it was a good idea after all, and the word was passed around.
Not long after dawn, the people gathered around Zesi’s house, a few adults and many children, and with soft murmurs and laughter they set off.
It was a short hike from the Seven Houses to the estuary of the Milk, across scrubby grassland carpeted with buttercups. Ana walked with Arga and Lightning, neither of whom seemed troubled by the atmosphere among the adults. The sun rose, the mist burned off with the last of the dew, the birdsong was loud, and Ana was soon warm through. Given all her problems, she felt unreasonably happy.
But it didn’t help that both the Pretani boys had decided to come along.
Zesi seemed in a foul mood from the beginning. Burdened with a heavy pack, she set a tough pace, as if the walk was something to be got over with, not to be enjoyed. Some weren’t capable of keeping up the pace: the kids, and a young flint knapper called Josu, cousin of a cousin of Ana’s, who had been born with a withered leg. Soon the group was strung out, and a couple of the older men quietly moved to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the stragglers.
They reached the river, and by the early afternoon they were following a narrow valley that cut through sandstone bluffs, heading roughly west. Zesi led the tramp upstream, following a well-worn path by the bank of the river.
In places the forest, birch and hazel scrub, came pushing close to the water’s edge. The bank itself was crowded with willows, which could grow as much as a hand’s length in a month at this time of year, and old alders, trees that liked the damp. The alders’ branches were heavy with catkins, some of them as long as Ana’s hand. She could see the scars left where wood had been harvested in previous years; the cut trees were recovering, new growths pushing out of their root systems. Alder was useful for the frames of houses, for it stayed supple even after being dried out.
And in the shade of the very oldest trees white windflowers clumped, bluebell carpets shone, and elusive pied flycatchers flitted, spectacular splashes of black and white. People took the chance to gather birds’ eggs. It was a rich, charming place.
But Etxelur folk, used to the coast’s open spaces, weren’t comfortable in the confines of the narrow valley, and Ana thought it was a great relief to everybody when they reached the site of the summer camp.
Here the valley opened out to a wide plain, bounded on either side by low, rounded hills cloaked with grass and forest. The river itself spread out, as if it too was glad to be free of its confinement. The main channel here was shallow and winding, cutting through a floor of turf, heather and scrub, but in places the flow split into two, three or four braids that combined and recombined, and wide marshy areas glimmered in the low sun. All along the valley the green skin of the floor had been eroded back by