the changes in the river’s course, to reveal bone-white gravel spits.
The old camp itself, set back from the river, had been abandoned since the last visit two years ago. Only one of the houses Ana remembered still stood, a collection of poles leaning against each other with the remains of a covering of skin and thatch. In a few more years, Ana thought, even these ruins would have disappeared into the green, and you’d never know the camp was ever here. People touched the land lightly.
People dumped their packs and began the pleasant work of restoring the camp. Two men chose a site downwind of the houses and close to the forest’s edge to dig a fresh waste pit. Another man checked over an old urine pit, lined with stone. He jumped down into it and began raking out dead leaves; later he would seal it up with fat.
Further back was a stand of forest, with an open area where new young trees were sprouting. Ana remembered that this area had been cleared by fire the last time they had camped here, and she thought she saw the pale, wide-eyed face of a deer at the edge of the thicker forest. That was the point of the clearing, to encourage the growth of whippy young hazel shoots and fresh plants, and so to attract the animals.
When Gall saw the deer he immediately sprinted away, spear and club in hand. The deer vanished.
Arga grabbed Ana’s hand and Shade’s. ‘Come on! I’ll show you the river, Shade. I bet you don’t have rivers like this in Pretani.’
With grudging glances at each other, they both ran with the girl towards the river.
The sun was still high, the summer sky washed out, and the colours of the landscape, blue water and white gravel and green grass, were bright. Lightning, hot, thirsty but full of life, ran at their heels, yapping. Ahead of them a heron, invisible before it moved, took to the air and flapped away, its narrow head held high.
They came to a gravel bank, and the dog disturbed an oystercatcher from her nest amid the stones. The bird rose, red beak bright, peeping indignantly, and flapped away. The dog splashed into the river, shook himself to make a spray, and his pink tongue lapped busily at the cool, air-clear water.
Shade looked down at the ground, puzzled. ‘I know the oystercatcher’s been nesting here. I just can’t see where.’
Arga got to her hands and knees and poked at the gravel. ‘Look! Here it is.’ She held up a pale brown egg; the nest was just a collection of twigs in the gravel. ‘They’re good at hiding. I suppose you have to be if you make your nest on the ground.’ She popped the egg into her leather pouch. ‘You just take one,’ she said seriously. ‘The little mothers say you should leave the rest. Come on. I’ll show you the lagoon.’
They walked further up the valley. Here a lagoon ran beside the river, a crescent of dense, stagnant water choked with reeds and rushes, and surrounded by grass and scrub. Arga, seven years old, enjoying having somebody to show off to, told Shade about the different plants here, the watercress and water chestnut and water lily, and how you used them all. Lightning, his tail wagging ferociously, paddled across muddy ground and stuck his head down among the reeds, trying to get to the water.
Ana knelt, filled a cupped palm with water, and raised it to her face. Tadpoles wriggled, tiny and perfect. She carefully dropped them back into the lagoon’s scummy surface.
A sand martin dipped across the water, right in front of her, its wings swept back, darting and swooping in search of insects too small for her even to see. Watching it she found it hard to breathe, as if the bird was dragging her spirit through the light-filled air with it. All the darkness, the winter nights in the unhappiness of the house, the nagging, unhealed wound that was the loss of her father - none of it seemed real or important, compared to the martin’s graceful joy.
Shade came to sit beside her. ‘This lagoon,’ he said. ‘It looks as if the river once ran here. See? It curved around in a loop, and joined up down there, somewhere. But at some point the stream cut across the neck of the loop, and left it stranded.’ He pointed to the far bank. ‘You can see where it’s cutting back into