Bronze Summer n-2

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘What about Xivu, the Jaguar man?’

  ‘Oh, he went off with the first families to leave,’ Mi said. ‘He didn’t wait to be asked!’

  Vala glanced south again, at the calm sea, the litter of fishing boats. Everything seemed normal, if you looked away from the mountain. ‘All right,’ she said to Okea. ‘Come on into the house, kids — you can keep Puli amused while I finish the stew.’

  Mi came willingly enough, but Liff hung back. He was holding out his hands. Small flakes of grey were settling on his palms.

  When she looked up, Vala saw ash raining down, thickening all the time.

  From Deri’s boat, the cloud rising from the Hood was an extraordinary sight. With the island itself a stripe of grey-brown on the horizon, you could easily see the sheer scale of the cloud, like an immense tree of steam and smoke that had taken root in Kirike’s Land. And after the noon blast, which from here had sounded like drawn-out thunder, the cloud had grown bigger yet, and it had spread out sideways, feathering.

  Deri and Nago were out on the ocean to the south of Kirike’s Land, just the two of them in a hide boat big enough for eight rowers. They had set off at dawn, loaded up with nets and wicker baskets and bait for the fishing. It was midsummer, the weather was calm, the seas should have been jumping with cod, and Deri had been looking forward to a long, fruitful day, just him and Nago out on the boat. And as Nago, a distant cousin of Deri’s, kept his mouth shut most of the time, it would be a quiet one too, a break from the noisy chaos of his father’s household, the kids and dogs everywhere — not to mention the midsummer celebrations.

  But the catch had been poor. Maybe it was because of the booms from the mountain, the faint whiff of sulphur you could smell even out here, the tremors that made the sea itself shiver and froth. Maybe the fish had been scared away. And now that cloud just grew and grew.

  ‘So,’ Deri said, at some point long after noon. ‘Do you think we should go back in?’

  Nago sat at his end of the boat. He was thin, with a cadaverous face with sunken cheeks and a nose like a crow’s beak. His habit of staying motionless for long periods of time made you wonder if he was awake at all, or even still alive. Deri had never known such an incurious man. But Nago had lived all his days on the island, and he ought to know its mountains and their fiery moods better than Deri. At last, having thought hard about Deri’s question, he shrugged. ‘Why should we?’

  Deri found it hard to say. Because the tide and winds might be wrong, on such a strange day as this. Because he had a vision of Medoc and Okea and Vala and the kids, and Tibo, all watching the cloud, waiting for him.

  Perhaps for once Nago understood Deri’s mood. ‘They’ll be all right,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The family. I mean, your father went up the mountain yesterday with Tibo and that Jaguar girl, didn’t he? Medoc’s older than you and me put together. If he thinks it’s safe, then it’s safe.’ Nago glanced at their meagre catch in the bilge. ‘Anyway we haven’t got enough fish yet.’ He slid back until he was lying on a heap of netting in the prow of the boat, and closed his eyes.

  He was probably right. Deri determined to stop fretting.

  But that cloud spread higher and wider across the sky. It was feathering to the west now. Soon it drifted across the face of the sun, which dimmed to a silvery disc. The whole sky began to take on a strange, glowing green tinge.

  Then ash began to fall, a gentle rainfall of fine dust and a few heavier flakes. It settled on the boat and gathered in scummy swirls on the sea itself. This kept up until everything, the boat itself, the fish in the bilge, the bare skin of the sleeping Nago, was stained pale grey, the colour leaching out.

  And then, in mid-afternoon, the mountain gave a second shout, even louder than the one at noon. Deri thought he felt a kind of concussion in his chest. An even greater volume of black smoke began pouring from the mouth of the tortured mountain, feeding the huge spreading cloud above. And it seemed to him that even as it mushroomed higher, its lower layers were beginning to descend, to fall back to the island.

  Nago grumbled in his sleep, and spat ash out of his open mouth.

  22

  The mountain’s second shout hit Tibo like a punch in the back. He was knocked sprawling, on his face this time, and went slithering down the ash-strewn slope.

  He looked back over his shoulder at Caxa and Medoc. Somehow they had stayed on their feet, Medoc leaning heavily on the Jaguar girl, the two of them stumbling clumsily down the slope. Tibo saw this in glimmers of daylight under a sky that was turning black as night, with the ash falling all around. When they reached Tibo they both slumped to the ground.

  Medoc cried out as his wounded leg was twisted again. Then he pulled his pack around his neck in search of a water sack. ‘I remember the last time the Hood blew its top — I was a boy — the ash came down on the fields. We tried to keep the cattle off it, but you can’t stop them eating the grass. They came down with a kind of murrain. Within a day they couldn’t walk, and in a few days they died. Nothing we could do.’

  Caxa, breathing hard, lay on her back, her arms and legs splayed. That seemed a good idea to Tibo. He sat down and lay on his back, his head swimming. He felt as if he had not properly woken up since the first shout at the summit had knocked him unconscious. As if the whole day was a nightmare.

  ‘We said we’d always remember,’ Medoc was saying now, in his droning old man’s voice. ‘The priests wrote it down. Remember what to do with the cattle when the ash falls… No! Get up!’ Medoc limped over to Tibo and began shaking him. ‘Tibo, son! Get up! You’ll die if you lie there.’

  Tibo pushed him away, annoyed. ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Help me with her. The girl.’ Medoc crawled over, slithering over the ground like a slug, his bad leg leaving a trail of blood in the ash. ‘Come on, Tibo!’

  So Tibo sat up, and his chest ached, his head swam some more. He leaned over Caxa, dug his hands under her armpits, and with what was left of his strength hauled her to her feet. The girl coughed and shuddered, looking around blearily, her face drained of blood under her mask of ash.

  ‘I saw it before,’ Medoc said. ‘The last time. Especially on the lower ground, in hollows. The cattle lie down in there and just die. Maybe something comes out of the ground.’

  Tibo said, ‘Well, we’re not dead yet-’

  There was a scream, coming out of the sky, like the cry of some bird of prey. They ducked instinctively. Tibo glimpsed something falling, trailing smoke. A rock smashed to the ground only a few paces away, shattering, spilling red-hot fragments.

  Caxa stared, and said something in her own tongue.

  More unearthly shrieks. Tibo looked up through layers of billowing smoke to see more glowing rocks flying in the air, each a red-hot mass within a black crust. They landed at random, making the ground shudder with each impact.

  ‘We must go,’ he said. He got his arm around Medoc’s waist, and Caxa took his other side. They hurried on down the mountainside, slithering and stumbling.

  ‘Faster,’ Medoc urged them. ‘Faster!’

  As the afternoon wore on the column of smoke and ash climbed and broadened until it covered the sky over the village, blocking out the light altogether, and darkness closed in.

  People came out of their houses, those who had remained. Some carried torches of burning reed and lamps. The sun itself was only faintly visible, dropping down the sky to the southwest, a pale disc intermittently visible through scudding clouds of smoke, but there was light around the horizon, an eerie yellow-green. It was an extraordinary sight, on what was the longest day of the year — it was oddly exciting, a world transformed. The big bonfire was lit early. The kids ran around in the ash fall, chased by the dogs. From Adhao’s house, one man produced a flute of carved bone that he began to play, and the children danced around the bonfire. There was talk of starting the roast for the Giving. Half the village had fled, but there would be that much more for those who remained.
/>   Then the pebbles started to fall from the sky.

  At first it was a novelty. The little stones fell in a sparse rain, coming down through the ash, pattering to the ground. The children, amazed, ran around trying to catch them.

  Vala picked one up, a disc shape the size of her palm. It was pale, full of broken bubbles, remarkably light.

  ‘Fire-mountain rock,’ Okea said, at her elbow. ‘We collect it. It’s the stuff you use for scraping dead skin off your heels.’

  Vala had never known where that useful rock had come from. The sky!

  The fall grew harder, and began to cover the ground. Soon the rock was ankle deep, and it fell with a steady hiss. Vala began to grow uncomfortable at the hail of impacts on her head and shoulders. The children, still excited, kicked and scooped the heaps of the stuff that started to gather. Then a child cried out as a heavier piece knocked her to the ground, leaving a splash of blood on her forehead. Her mother swept her up and hurried into her house.

  Vala snapped, ‘Mi. Puli. In the house, now.’

  The children came running as best they could, pushing through the layer of warm pebbles.

  Inside the house Vala picked up little Puli in his swaddling, and they gathered around the hearth, the fire not yet lit. Okea lit lamps, and handed out dried fish to the older children. She moved calmly, as if determined not to frighten the children. Vala felt a surge of gratitude. The woman had been a mother herself, after all.

  And all the time the rock poured from the sky, hammering on the sloping thatch roof.

  Out at sea the bits of rock fell all afternoon. Deri and Nago pulled their tunics over their heads, but the rock pounded their bare shoulders and legs, and it gathered on the water, rock floating like ice, forming floes that scraped against the boat’s hull as they tried to row. The sun was hidden, the sky black save at the horizon. It was a nightmarish journey, without end.

  They had to stop again to bail the boat, not of water, but of rock fragments that had gathered in the bilge. The larger ones were warm to the touch. As he shovelled, Deri looked over his shoulder. While they were rowing he had to turn his back on Kirike’s Land. Now he was shocked by its transformation. The island was almost entirely obscured by the monstrous, blooming cloud. Deri thought he could see flame shooting up from the ground as if from a tremendous bonfire. And lightning flared in the cloud itself, sparking, filling it with a purplish light.

  ‘Ouch.’ Nago, his tunic wrapped neatly around his head, picked a bit of black rock from a crater burned into his skin, and regarded it between thumb and forefinger with curiosity, before flicking it over the side. ‘That’s new. That one burned me. If this rock fall continues we might end up walking all the way back.’

  Deri laughed. ‘You’re one of the strangest men I ever met, cousin. But I think I could be stuck out here with worse companions.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same about you.’

  Another red-hot pellet fell, and embedded itself in the boat hull. Deri beat it out with his hand.

  But another fell. And another. The men had to use bilge water cupped in their hands to douse the red-hot cinders before they could set fire to the boat, and shook scorching fragments off their bare skin.

  Wood cracked. From outside the house came a crumpling noise, a cry of pain.

  Liff rushed to the doorway, peering out through the continuing rock hail. ‘It’s Pithi’s house! It’s fallen down!’

  Vala came to see. The disaster was only dimly visible through the rock fall, people pushing out of the debris with their arms over their heads, sheltering infants under their bodies.

  Okea was at her side. ‘We can’t sit here until this house falls in too.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We must go to the harbour. Maybe we can find a boat — Deri might be there.’

  ‘But Medoc and the others-’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for them,’ Okea said.

  ‘We could have done this half a day ago,’ Vala said, anger and fear turning to resentment. ‘When the mountain first shouted.’

  Okea was not perturbed. ‘We can argue about whose fault it was later. I will try to help you with the children. But you can see how it is with me. If you choose to go without me-’

  ‘No,’ Vala said. ‘We all go. But the falling rock — we’ll need some kind of cover.’

  ‘My ox-hide,’ said Okea. ‘If we hold it over us — you, me, the girl — perhaps that will be enough.’

  So they got ready. Vala had the children don their best leather leggings, and they all strapped water bottles to their waists. Mi took her favourite bow, made of good Kirike’s Land ash, and slung it over her shoulder. Vala picked up a whining Puli, and tied him to her chest inside a spare tunic knotted behind her back.

  Then they formed up into a tight group, Vala in the lead, Mi at the back, Okea and Liff between them, with the ox-hide spread over their heads, and they pushed out into the unnatural dark. The rock fell on the thick leather with a roar, and its weight made them stagger. But it was not the fresh-falling rock that was the worst problem but the layer of it on the ground. It was already over Vala’s knees, almost up to poor Liff’s waist. It was all they could do to wade forward through the heavy, rasping stuff, each step an exhausting shove. Okea seemed barely able to walk at all. They couldn’t speak, the roar of the rock on their ox-hide was too great for that, and there was nobody around to help. Soon Liff was weeping steadily.

  And from the north came yet another tremendous boom.

  23

  The three of them came stumbling into The Black, Caxa and Tibo to either side of Medoc, their tunics over their heads, battered, exhausted.

  The village was scarcely recognisable. The thick rock fall and the grey ash had changed everything, the colours, the very shape of the land. The houses looked as if they had been stamped on by some tremendous booted heel, the thatch roofs imploded, the big support beams sticking up into the air like snapped bones through flesh. They found the wreck of Okea’s house, smashed and flattened like the rest. Of the people there was not a sign.

  They huddled together, like three ghosts, Tibo thought, grey from the ash, even their ears, their noses, even their lips around pink mouths.

  ‘They aren’t here,’ Medoc shouted over the clatter of the falling rock.

  Caxa pointed to the ruined house. ‘We could search it.’

  ‘No,’ Medoc gasped. ‘There’s nothing for us here. Come, come.’ He grabbed their shoulders, urging the two of them on.

  They had no choice but to go on, stumbling through the heavy fallen rock along the trail that led from the village down to the sea. But Tibo saw Medoc’s face, ash-covered, twisted with pain, and he saw how hard this choice had been for him. Surely his instinct had been to fall on the ruin of the house and dig, dig until he was sure that nobody lived. Medoc was saving them, Caxa and Tibo, or trying to. Was this how it was to be an adult?

  They didn’t try to speak. Tibo could see little in darkness broken only by a faint glow from the horizon, the occasional glow of fire or a burning rock. As they struggled on he utterly lost track of time, of where he was.

  And then they came upon the bodies.

  The three of them stood together, wheezing for breath. At first Tibo thought they were just lumps on the path, shapeless mounds of ash or rock. Then he saw a hand, small and open, sticking up into the air, with a bracelet of broken shell around the wrist.

  ‘Look,’ Caxa said, pointing. ‘Two adults. Children beneath. Cradled. Your family?’

  ‘No,’ Medoc said, grim. ‘I recognise the little girl’s bracelet. Okea made it for her. These are some of Adhao’s family. People from the village. Come on.’ The three of them stumbled on into the burning dark, heading downhill.

  And they came on another group of people, sitting by the way, huddled under an ox-hide.

  ‘I recognise that hide,’ Tibo said, wondering. ‘It is aunt Okea’s.’

  Medoc forced himself forward, bellowing, ‘Okea! Vala! Is that y
ou?’

  Tibo saw faces peering from under the ox-hide: Vala, Okea, Mi, Liff, even little Puli strapped to his mother’s chest. All of them. They all tried to huddle under the ox-hide. Medoc hugged Vala. Tibo grabbed Mi and Liff, and old Okea. Even Caxa joined in, submitting to hugs from the children.

  ‘You haven’t got very far,’ Medoc admonished. ‘Look at this!’ He extended his wounded, blood-soaked leg. ‘I climbed down off a mountain with this and I still caught you up.’

  Vala shook her head, angry despite her tension, her fear. ‘Even now you criticise me, husband. Even now! Will I ever do anything right?’

  Okea held a bony finger to her lips. ‘Enough. You can only move as fast as the slowest person in the group, and that’s me.’ She laid her hand on Liff’s head. ‘Vala, you go ahead. And you young ones. Take the Jaguar girl. Get to the coast and find Deri, if he’s there — get off the island. We will follow-’

  ‘No,’ Liff protested. ‘We won’t leave you.’

  ‘You aren’t leaving us. You’re just going on ahead, to make things ready. Isn’t that sensible?’ And she looked them in the eye, Vala, twelve-year-old Mi, fifteen-year-old Tibo.

  Tibo looked at his grandfather, and again he saw the pain of choosing in his face. He said briskly, ‘If I know my father he’ll be fretting like an oystercatcher over its nest. The sooner we get to the shore and let him get back to fishing the better.’

  Medoc put his heavy hand on Tibo’s shoulder and squeezed.

  They began to stand. Okea stepped out from under the ox-hide, and winced as the rock pebbles battered her scalp. Medoc hobbled to join her. Okea waved her arms, as if chasing away ducks. ‘Go, go!’