The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,149

the cleared ice, and crouched beside her, his face a mask of concern. “Are you sick?”

“I . . . I just need a short rest.” Embarrassed, Yaz tried to turn the conversation in another direction. She looked toward the frozen whale. “It’s said that Zin, the first man, was swallowed by a great whale and lived for forty days and forty nights in its belly before his escape.”

“Who?” Erris gave her a curious look.

She met his look with surprise. “Zin!” Erris might have been born long ago but not before the first man. She told the tale.

* * *

HUA, LEAST OF all the Gods in the Sea, made Zin, the first man, from salt water, the bones of a tuark, and the skin of a whale. While Aiiki, least of all the Gods in the Sky, made Mokka, the first woman, from ice, clouds, the whispers of four lost winds, and a colour stolen from the dragons’ tails.

Zin and Mokka lived upon the ice in a tent twice as tall as a man and as wide as a harpoon throw. They pitched it for years at a time, for in those days Hua concerned himself with the affairs of men and kept a hot sea open even during the fiercest of winters, and Aiiki sang her songs so that the winds sheathed their claws and kept their fangs hidden.

When their food ran low Zin and Mokka would take it in turns to go out upon the sea in their white boat while the other stayed to carve kettan from the teeth of lesser whales, cutting out the forms of the children they would have, children who would carry the story of their lives far across the ice, to be told until the last star burned red and faded from the sky.

Zin and Mokka waited for their children for untold years, long enough for the touch of fingers to wear the first of their kettan smooth once more, erasing the story that the knife had set there, long enough for stars to turn from white to red and fade like embers into nothing. But still no child came to their tent.

Zin set out upon the sea and he called to Hua who had made him and asked why he had been given no son. Mokka went bare-armed upon the ice and she called to Aiiki who had made her and sang her lament for the daughter who had never come.

But it was not Hua who answered Zin upon the waves. Instead, the greatest God in the Sea rose from unknown depths. Hoonumu, he who dwells beneath the light. Hoonumu rose in the form of a great whale, black as night and twice as vast. And the whale swallowed Zin without answer, taking him and his white boat into the void that was its belly.

And it was not Aiiki who answered Mokka but Allatha, the greatest God in the Sky, she who first sets the stars aflame and who snuffs each of them out when their time has been spent. Allatha descended in the form of a snow hawk with wings of ice and flame. She told Mokka that she had asked for a gift larger than the world, for birth is a kind of fire, and there is no gift more precious than fire. It cannot be given back, it can spread unchecked, it grows without limit, able to destroy worlds and leap the black chasms between them. Hua and Aiiki had made between them one man and one woman. But if Hoonumu and Allatha gave Mokka children then there could be more men and more women than fish in the sea or birds in the sky.

Mokka said only that she would pay the price, for the ice had always been lonely even with two. And the Gods in the Sky and the Gods in the Sea said that if she could bring her man from the belly of a whale then ever after she could bring a child from her own belly.

It took her forty days, and how she did it is another story in and of itself, but Mokka succeeded, and in saving Zin she opened her womb and became the mother of us all.

* * *