Stone Spring

by Stephen Baxter

  Maybe the whole cliff was riddled with caves, with clefts and passages everywhere. His imagination ran away. You could get lost. You could wander here forever! Maybe there were whole tribes of people wandering in the dark, feeding on spiders or rats . . . Oddly he didn’t feel frightened by this idea. It would be like a huge, natural Jericho.

  The passageway closed in, without revealing anything of interest.

  He backed out to the cave, where Chona was still snoring, and tried the next passage along. This was clogged by dried brush that he had to push through. But after a few dozen paces the passage began to open out, the roof rising up, and he found himself in another chamber, longer than Chona’s, with tall, smooth, sloping walls. He thought he saw more of those dangling formations on the ceiling. He raised his torch to see better.

  A horse bucked at him.

  He stumbled back against the wall, nearly dropping the torch, his breath scratchy, his heart hammering. A horse! How could a horse be here? But he heard nothing, smelled nothing. He dared to raise the torch again.

  The horse was painted on the wall. It was almost life-size. And it wasn’t a stick figure, like the art of Jericho; a bold black outline was filled with shading, brown and gray and white, and the hairs of its mane were picked out one by one. He stared, astonished, and he wondered if some god had made this thing. But then, just below it, he saw the mark of a human hand, outlined in red paint.

  He stepped up to the horse and touched it. He could scratch away bits of the horse under his nail, just powder, red ochre, black charcoal. When the torch’s fire had danced, he had thought that this image, so lifelike, had jumped out at him.

  He had never been moved much by the spirit world, never impressed by the priests’ capering and gabbling. But there was a sense of age in this cave, age and deep time. If the horse’s spirit was still here, it would not harm him now.

  A voice, faint, reached him. “Boy? Boy! I need you . . .”

  “Chona?”

  The trader stumbled into the cave. His legs were bare, and his erection stuck out like one of the formations on the cave roof.

  Novu snapped, “What are you doing?”

  “Taking what’s mine. Come on, boy. I haven’t had a good hump for days. You’ll do. I’ve watched you, the way you look at people. I know you’d like men as much as women, if you ever got the chance . . .” Chona reached for him. Novu stepped back. Chona stumbled to his knees.

  Novu laughed at him. “You sure about this? You won’t be able to sell me as a virgin, then, will you?”

  Chona knelt, breathing hard. “You, you,” he said, and his speech was broken by coughing, “you worthless little turd.”

  “And you’re too feeble for your own hand tonight. Sleep is what you need.”

  Chona fell back onto one arm, awkwardly. The erection crumpled. “You little turd.”

  Novu put one hand behind Chona’s head, and lowered him to the floor. The trader’s pale flesh shone with moisture. Novu pulled off his own skin-shirt and began to dab at Chona’s face. Chona’s eyes closed, as if he was slumping back to sleep. Novu wiped a bit of drool from his open mouth, almost tenderly.

  Then he pushed the bit of skin into Chona’s mouth.

  The trader didn’t resist. Novu pushed in more skin. Chona gagged, and jerked.

  Novu kept one hand over his mouth, and crawled forward so that he knelt over the trader, pinning Chona’s chest with his weight, holding down his arms with his legs. Chona twisted now, and bit. But Novu pushed the whole of his hide shirt over the trader’s face, and folded his arms before him and leaned forward, pressing down with all his body’s weight. Chona couldn’t move his arms or his head, but his legs kicked and thrashed.

  Novu, his eyes closed, started to count. “One. Two. Three . . .” He got to twelve, then twenty, then fifty, and then worked his way up to the big traders’ numbers Chona had taught him.

  Long before he reached a hundred, Chona was still.

  When Novu came out of his cave, the morning was dry and bright. Yesterday’s rain gleamed on the grass, and pooled in muddy footprints. Novu thought the air felt cleansed. He walked down to the river and took a long, luxurious piss.

  When he walked back, Loga was sitting outside his house. Smoke from the night fire seeped out of the house’s thatch. Loga was eating something, the baked corpse of some small animal spitted on a stick.

  Novu stood before him, and waited.

  Loga glanced over at the cave. “Chona?”

  “Dead. The sick—the sickness.” Novu stumbled over the traders’ tongue.

  Loga nodded. “Jericho curses. Seen it before. Don’t go there myself.”

  “Wise.” Novu glanced around. “This place. Many rivers run from here?”

  “Four.” Loga used his teeth to pull the last of his breakfast off the stick, and then started using the stick to sketch maps. This was what traders did, draw maps. “Four rivers,” he said. “East. Jericho.” He pinned an anonymous bit of mud.

  “The way we came.”

  “Yes. South. Middle ocean. West. Great ocean. North. Much land, cold ocean. Four rivers, four ways.” He eyed Novu. “Alone?”

  “Me? Yes.”

  “Jericho boy?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Slave?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You go home? Go east. Easy down the river.”

  “I don’t think so. You?”

  “North.” He sketched again. “Big country.” He jabbed the stick to the left: “Albia.” Right: “Gaira.” Center: “Northland. Big country. Boat, easy on river.”

  “Your boat. Big boat.”

  “Yes.”

  Novu considered. “I come?”

  Loga frowned. “Why?”

  He meant, what was in it for Loga. “Strong,” said Novu. “Paddle. And, Chona’s goods.”

  “Mine now?”

  “Some.”

  Loga considered. “Fetch goods. We talk.”

  21

  Ice Dreamer lay in a heap of furs like a bug in a cocoon. She slept, or woke in a daze that was no different from sleeping, save for the continuing pain of torn thighs, aching breasts, a deeper hurt within.

  Somehow, even in her bloodiest reveries, even when she didn’t know who she was, Ice Dreamer always knew she was on a boat.

  Her world was sky. By day it was either an unbearable bright blue, or was choked with gray clouds. By night there were stars, a silent forest of them. Yet the sky’s dark was broken sometimes by sheets of green light that rippled and folded.

  And when the rain fell, or the snow, a blanket of skin would be pulled across, enclosing her in a creaking, rocking chamber of leather and wood and smoke, and pale, glimmering firelight.

  Other sensations. Water cool in her mouth. Another liquid, heavier, salty and rich, warm, a soup.

  The heat inside her. That was the first thing outside herself she was clearly aware of. A warm mass of tissue and blood, it was in her, and of her, and yet not her. She folded her thoughts around it, felt its sleeping weight. It was a comfort.

  And then the faces.

  They hovered over her in the tented dark at night, blurs in the faint yellow lamplight, or they were there in the day, leathery bearded faces framed by hoods of fur, weather-beaten skin pocked by frostbite scars. The faces of men. At first they blurred in her mind, but they gradually separated into two. One older, his face rounder, who eyed her skeptically. The other younger, hair red and tightly curled, nose straight, eyes a startling blue, who looked at her with more complicated feelings. A kind of compassion. But even as he looked at her his attention seemed turned inside, into his own soul.

  Men’s faces. A memory sharp as a stone blade cut into her mind, of the Cowards’ eager faces over her.

  In that instant she remembered who she was.

  She sat bolt upright.

  In response to her sudden movement the boat rocked. The men turned, alarmed, and jabbered in some unknown tongue. Working together quickly and ex
pertly, they stuck their blades flat in the water to stabilize the boat.

  It was a bright, clear day, the sun low behind her. She glimpsed sky, and gray water scattered with ice floes. Two men sat before her in the boat, huge in their fur hoods and cloaks and mittens, paddling patiently with big leather blades fixed to poles.

  She was suddenly aware of her heavy belly. The baby. It felt big, bigger than she remembered; oh, earth and sky, was its time close? And Moon Reacher—she remembered now—she looked around for the girl, but she was not here. Only the two men and herself in this pitifully small boat, alone on the endless water.

  The men’s breath steamed around their heads as they watched her. They seemed wary of her. The older one, at the boat’s prow, stayed where he was sitting. Roundface, she called him. The younger one, Longnose, shipped his blade inside the boat, and, shuffling, came toward her.

  She cowered back. Her weight made the boat tip up.

  Roundface jabbered, “Whoa, whoa!” Longnose leaned back quickly. The boat settled again, rocking and creaking.

  Longnose tugged off his mittens, showing dirty hands, and he spoke again. His tongue was like none she had ever heard, not even the Cowards’. He seemed to be smiling, behind that beard.

  “My name is Ice Dreamer,” she said, or tried to; her voice was a croak, her mouth dry as dust. “Ice Dreamer,” she said again. “Ice Dreamer.” She pointed at her chest. “And if you come any nearer I’ll jump over the side.”

  He listened carefully. “Ice—Ice—”

  “Ice Dreamer. Dreamer.”

  “Ice Dreamer.” His accent was thick, almost incomprehensible. He pointed to his own chest. “Kirike.” And the other man. “Heni.”

  “Kirike. Heni.” They were meaningless names, and too short. Maybe these men didn’t have totems. Her throat remained dry. She dipped her hand into the water; she didn’t have to lean far over the boat’s shallow side. When she lifted it to her mouth the water was so salty it made her gag, and she spat it out.

  Heni spoke again. Kirike took a small skin sack and threw it carefully over to Dreamer. It landed heavily, and when she picked it up she could feel liquid slosh inside. Its neck was fixed by a splinter of bone. She opened it, sniffed suspiciously, and then took a sip. It was water, cold, a little brackish, not salty. She drank deeply, letting the cool stuff slide over her throat. “Better,” she said. “Better,” more loudly. Her voice was working. She sang a snatch of song, a hymn to the coyote.

  That surprised the men. They both burst out laughing. Immediately she remembered where she was, alone with these two men. She stopped singing.

  Longnose—Kirike—held his hands up again. He began to speak to her, earnestly, gesturing. He was clearly trying to explain something to her. She just sat and listened. He had a tattoo on his cheek, above the beard, concentric rings and a tail. She had seen it etched in the rocks of the coast, where her walk had ended. He spoke slowly and loudly, as if she was deaf. Heni nudged his back, and they had a short jabbered conversation. Ice Dreamer thought the meaning was clear. “She doesn’t understand, idiot. Try something else.”

  Kirike looked at her, a bit helplessly. Then an idea struck. He rummaged in the bottom of the boat, and he came up with a wooden bowl, covered by skin. He took off the skin to reveal a puddle of some kind of broth. He stuck his finger into the broth and licked off heavy droplets, making a satisfied noise. “Mmm-mm.” He held it out to her.

  She took it. Cautiously, she dipped in her own finger and tasted the cold stuff. It was thick, meaty, salty, rich. Memories flooded back. Lying half-awake under the furs, she had tasted this stuff, this broth; she had eaten it before. Kirike smiled. He mimed spooning the stuff up into his mouth, then pointed at her. He had fed her.

  She couldn’t remember it all. Maybe she would never remember, not properly. But she began to work out how she must have gotten from that barren beach with Moon Reacher, to here, on this huge, limitless lake, in this boat with these men. They must have landed on the beach in their boat. They must have found her. They could have killed her. Instead, evidently, they had taken her onto their boat. And they had cared for her.

  She was still heavily pregnant. Her thighs and her crotch and her deep innards still ached from the attentions of the Cowards. But she was not dead. She was not even hungry. Her head was clear. And it was because of these men.

  “Thank you,” she said. Their faces were blank. She still held the bowl. She drained it of the last scrap of broth, and handed it back to Kirike, nodding. “Thank you.”

  A grin broke across his face, like the sun breaking through cloud. “Thank you. Thank you,” he repeated.

  She looked around the boat again. “The girl,” she said. “With me, the little girl—Moon Reacher. On the beach.” She desperately mimed—like me, shorter—I held her like this . . . She cradled the cold air like a baby.

  Kirike seemed baffled, but Heni spoke softly. Kirike nodded. He reached into a fold of his tunic, and produced a lock of nut-brown hair, tied up with a bit of bark rope. He passed the hair to Dreamer, and she teased at it so that it caught the low sun. It was Moon Reacher’s, no doubt about it. Kirike spoke steadily to her, his expression grave. His meaning wasn’t hard to understand. The child is dead . . . We couldn’t save her . . . Or perhaps, She was already dead when we found you. Dreamer recalled how cold and still Reacher had been, in those last days. Had the child’s spirit already vanished from that pale, frail body, even as Dreamer had cradled her, trying to give her warmth?

  Moon Reacher, dead like Mammoth Talker and all the others. There was no consolation to be had when the young died. Yet Dreamer felt nothing. Maybe her own spirit had gone, leaving this battered husk of a body behind.

  The men were watching her. They were being kind, she saw. They were giving her time, letting her get used to being alive again.

  But, behind them, ahead of the drifting boat, a huge mass of ice stuck out of the water like a fist. “Look out!” she yelled, and she pointed.

  The men turned, shouted, and grabbed their paddles. As they dug at water littered with flecks of ice, they snapped at each other and cursed in their own language. Dreamer wondered what strange gods they invoked.

  The sun set. Its light made the floating ice blaze pink, though where larger lumps stuck out of the water she could sometimes see subtler shades, purples and grays fading from blue. The men resolutely paddled their boat away from the sunset, heading east—just as she had walked east from her lost home, east until she had run out of country altogether.

  As the sun crept below the horizon, the light faded, the cold gathered, and Heni and Kirike shipped their blades. At the boat’s prow was a scorched platform of wood, which Heni now detached and stuck in place at the boat’s midsection. It had a worn hollow, and here he set bits of dry moss, wood shavings, and scraps of wood and bone. Then, from a fold of his outer skin, he produced an ember, wrapped up in moss and greasy leather. He set this on the scorched block and blew it until the moss and kindling caught. He nursed the nascent fire, leaning over it to shelter it from the breeze, feeding it one fragment of fuel after another.

  A fire on a boat!

  The boat’s frame was sturdy lime and ash, and its ribs were of bent hazel, tied together with plaited cords made of twisted roots. The outer skin was fixed to the frame by robust stitches, the holes stopped with a mix of animal fat and resin. The People had used boats, on the rivers and the lakes. She had never seen any boat as big or as elaborate as this one. And she certainly hadn’t ever seen anybody start a fire in a boat. You’d just put into shore for the night, and build your fire there. If they were so far from the shore, this must be a very wide lake indeed.

  Both Kirike and Heni, with glances back at Dreamer, knelt, pulled up their tunics and pissed over the side of the boat. Their urine steamed, thick and yellow. Kirike pointed to a bowl near Dreamer’s feet. They must have been keeping her clean. She felt a stab of shame, and clutched her skins closer.

  Then, when the fire wa
s crackling healthily, Kirike lifted a pole, a stripped sapling, from the bottom of the boat and set it upright in a socket. He unfolded grease-coated skins and set them up in a kind of tent, tied to the top of the pole and fixed to bone hooks around the rim of the boat. It was low; to get inside you had to crouch down under the shallowly sloping skins, and you certainly couldn’t stand up. Dreamer vaguely imagined that if you raised the tent thing too high the whole boat might topple over. But the skins were heavy enough to shut out the wind, and the fire’s warmth soon filled the little space.

  Once the tent was sealed Kirike and Heni loosened their clothing, shucking off their heavy mitts and boots. Kirike set up a couple of lamps, wicks burning in some kind of oil in stone dishes, and put them at either end of the boat. A soft light suffused the boat—the light she remembered seeing reflected from their faces, in the dark times of her illness.

  Kirike and Heni started unwrapping bits of food. Kirike offered her strips of meat, dried and salted. She took them cautiously. The meat was tough, leathery, but she found she was hungry, and it was satisfying to have something to chew.

  As they ate Kirike dug out more packets, carefully wrapped in skin. He showed her a collection of big shells, each bigger than Kirike’s widespread hand, which he seemed very proud of. The shells were strung on a bit of rope. And they had tools, stone blades and bone harpoons and spear-straighteners. These looked like artifacts of the Cowards, and she wasn’t interested. He had nothing that might have come from the People—none of the big fluted spear points that had once been so prized. Kirike and Heni talked amiably as they picked over their trophies, here in this covered-over boat.

  It wasn’t like being in a house. It was too small, and the boat creaked and groaned in the swell, and if you put your foot down incautiously you could find yourself stepping in the cold water that constantly seeped through the skin’s seams. But nevertheless these two men trusted their boat, as they clearly trusted each other. Dreamer felt oddly safe in its rolling embrace.