their heads. ‘My name is Novu.’
‘Ana.’
‘Ice Dreamer.’
These names were strange to Novu, but he was used to that. ‘Ana. You live here?’
‘Yes. Etxelur is my home. My father is the Giver today—’
‘I meant to ask you about that,’ said the woman, Ice Dreamer. ‘He got Zesi to agree in the end?’
‘Not without a fight. And in return he had to agree to let her go on the wildwood hunt with the Pretani, and he wasn’t happy about that.’
‘I can imagine.’
Ana looked at Novu. ‘Zesi is my sister.’
‘Ah. And what exactly is this Giving?’
‘Everybody comes together and gives everything they bring,’ Ana said. ‘My father organises it. We have plenty to give ourselves, oils and meat from a whale, the produce of the sea—’
‘We have a similar custom in my country,’ Ice Dreamer said. ‘Every summer we would come together and share. Those who had gone short in the winter are helped by the generosity of their neighbours.’
‘Knowing that next year it might be their turn to give.’
‘That’s the idea. So why are you here? To Give?’
‘No,’ Novu said. ‘I came with a trader. He hopes to do business. I travel with him, but I don’t trade.’
‘Then what do you do?’
‘I make bricks.’ He used a Jericho word; there was no word in the traders’ tongue.
Ana frowned. ‘What is a—’
How do you describe a brick? ‘A block.’ He mimed with his hands. ‘Made of clay and straw. Like a stone.’
Ana pointed. ‘There are stones lying around all over the place.’
‘Not like my bricks.’
‘What do you do with them?’
‘Build houses.’
That made her laugh. ‘We make houses out of wood and seaweed.’ She pushed a wisp of her red-gold hair out of her eyes, her freckled face scrunched up against the sun. ‘Is this place different from where you come from?’
‘It couldn’t be more different.’
‘Do you like it, though?’
Novu glanced around, at the sea, the beach, the children, the laughing people. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It would be good to stay here for a time. Though I’ve no idea what I’d do here.’
‘Make bricks,’ Ice Dreamer said, and she laughed too.
A man’s voice could be heard shouting, before the platform.
Ana jumped up. ‘The races! I’ll talk to you later, Ice Dreamer. And you—’
‘Novu.’
‘Yes.’ She stared at him for one heartbeat longer, then ran off.
Dreamer picked up her baby, sitting her on her lap.
Novu touched an unfinished blade. It was bigger than any spear point he’d ever seen, longer than his outstretched hand when he laid it on his palm. The shape of a leaf, it had two worked faces, a fine edge, and peculiar fluting channels down at the thicker end.
‘I haven’t been here long either,’ Ice Dreamer said now. ‘Ana’s a good kid. Reserved, mixed up, but good-hearted.’
‘I never saw a blade like this before.’
‘It is the way my people, the True People, always made them.’ She pointed. ‘You see, you use pressure from the bone tools to work either side of the blank, shaping the edge. And then the fluting, which is used to attach the blade more firmly to its shaft - you knock out a thin section of flint to achieve that.’
‘It’s bigger than any blade I’ve seen.’
‘It is meant to bring down bigger animals than you have seen, I imagine. Bigger even than the music deer. I have made these before, but under instruction . . . My craft is poor. But I will improve with practice.’
He blurted, ‘Could I have one of these?’
She seemed surprised. He continually had to remind himself that people generally didn’t want things, not outside Jericho. But she said, ‘Of course. Come back when I’ve finished one.’
He nodded. ‘Thank you . . . Where is your country?’
‘To the west of here.’ She pointed at the sea. ‘Further west than you can imagine. And yours?’
‘Further east than you can imagine.’
‘We are both far from home, then.’
‘We are.’
She asked, ‘Why did you come here?’
‘It was more a case of leaving home. And you?’
‘That’s a long story.’
‘I have time,’ he said.
‘And so do I. Here. Hold the baby, while I try to finish this blade . . .’
The baby was warm in his lap, heavy, and he thought she smiled at him.
27
The dozen runners jostled behind the line scratched by the Giver in the sand.
Shade, braced to run, looked along an empty stretch of beach lined by cheering children. It looked an awfully long way to the prize at the far end, a big convoluted shell full of rattling stones that hung from a pole. Only one