Stone Spring

by Stephen Baxter

  The priest nodded. “It is said a rook always comes back to her old nest.”

  Knuckle grunted. “Just as you have come back to yours—even though the ocean told you it didn’t want you anymore.”

  Ana said, “This is our home. Our ancestors’ bones are piled deep in the middens.”

  The snailhead raised a shaved eyebrow. “That’s your choice. So why have you asked us here? I think you want something,” he said bluntly.

  “I suppose that must be obvious,” said the priest. “But you’re right. We have something to show you. Come. Just a little further.”

  They walked away from the beach and cut south across the island, picking their way along a trail that led through sea-battered dunes, and then around the island’s central hillock.

  They soon broke through to Flint Island’s south coast, where they had a clear view of the promontory just on the other side of the bay. On the narrow beach here logs had been heaped up, stripped of their bark. A couple of men were working on them, using heavy flint axes to sharpen one end of each log.

  While child and dog ran off to play with another mound of seaweed, the adults shared skins of water, carried by the priest.

  Knuckle looked around, sniffing the cold air. “Never came here.”

  “There’s no reason why you should,” Novu said, stepping forward. “Yet it’s an important place.” He waved a hand. “You can see we’re at the mouth of the bay. The narrowest point, where Flint Island comes closest to the mainland. When the tide rises the water rushes through here to fill up the bay. When the tide goes out the current is just as strong the other way. The kids like to swim here.”

  “Never much liked swimming myself. So what are those lads doing hacking away at logs?”

  Novu took a deep breath, and Ana remembered how hesitant he had been when he had first described his grand scheme to her and the priest and Dreamer, in the confines of her house. It was all founded on Ana’s determination, but it was Novu’s vision, and now he had to describe it all over again.

  “We want to build a dyke across the bay. Just here, between this headland and that promontory, across the bay’s neck at its narrowest.”

  Knuckle frowned. Ana wondered if he was familiar with Novu’s Jericho word “dyke.” “What? Another causeway?”

  “No. Well, you could walk across it, it will be wide enough, but it’s not just a causeway. It will be a kind of wall. Look around. Once, this bay was dry land—that’s what the Etxelur folk say. Their grandparents mined flint here. But then it became marshy, and then salty, and the grass and the trees died, and the houses had to be moved up to the beach. Now it often floods high beyond the beach, even at a normal high tide. And if you get an exceptional tide or a storm—”

  “The sea has taken the land back. Just as in the south, our home under the cliffs of white rock. That’s what the sea does.”

  “Yes. But that’s what we want to fight against. We’ll build a dyke, right across the bay. It will rise up high above the water—above the high-tide level. So then, you see, the ocean won’t be able to break into the bay again. The bay itself will be like a lagoon, isolated from the sea.”

  “No more flooding,” Knuckle said.

  “No more flooding.”

  “Iƒ you can build this dyke.” Knuckle stepped forward and peered at the sea, where it ran between headland and promontory. “How? You built the causeway where the old one ran. There is no causeway here.”

  “No. In fact the seabed is deeper here, because it’s been scoured by the tides. That’s why we need the logs, these sharpened stakes. You see, we’ll drive them into the sea-bottom mud, in parallel rows—”

  “You built dykes like this before?”

  “No,” Novu said defiantly. He’d faced this question before. “But my people have. I’ve seen it done.”

  “Hmm. Seen a bird fly. Doesn’t mean I can do it myself. Doesn’t mean I should try.” He turned to Jurgi. “You will defy your gods?”

  The priest said, “We fight the ocean, but not our gods. When the great cold retreated, our ancestors walked into this land behind the little mothers. While the mothers built the hills and river valleys and beaches, the people named each living and non-living thing, and gave each a story. We made the land hand in hand with the gods. There’s no reason the gods will be unhappy if we build it again.”

  Knuckle eyed him. “You’re a clever man, priest. I think you have a way of saying what needs to be said. And when will you start to build your wall?”

  Novu gestured at the men sharpening the logs. “You can see the work’s already started. But the spring equinox will be the key time. The days of the low tide. That is when the seabed will be easiest to reach.” He walked to the sea’s edge and sketched great arcs with his hands. “We plan to work out from either side of the bay, and meet in the middle.”

  Knuckle turned and looked around at them, Ana and Novu and the priest, and the two men desultorily hacking at the logs. Ana imagined what he saw: scrawny people in their ragged clothes, stick-thin already and with the hungriest part of the winter still to come, and yet here they were talking of expelling the sea itself. Knuckle said gently, “Ana, Jurgi, you have done well to survive. But this wall across the sea is a dream. Look at you. You don’t have the strength . . . Oh.”

  Ana smiled.

  “This is why you asked me to come here. You want us to help build the dyke?”

  “There are more of you than us now. I don’t know if we can do it alone. We’ll try. But with your help—”

  “We’re half-starved ourselves.” He glanced at Cheek, who was tugging on a piece of seaweed with the dog. “I see a busy year, full of the work of staying alive. That will be hard enough.”

  “I know what I’m asking.”

  “Do you?” His face grew harder. “You Etxelur folk look down on us, for we are newcomers to your land. Why should we come here now, risk our own chances of life, just to help you?”

  Jurgi said, “But it isn’t just about us. Think. The sea is rising. We know that. Our grandmothers were driven back from the floor of this bay, just as you had to retreat north when the sea lapped higher against your white cliffs. We could give up. We could simply walk away from here, and go south—but you’re already there. And as the sea rises more and more, as we head further south and others come pouring north—”

  “All right!” Knuckle snapped.

  Ana nodded. “So will you help us?”

  He looked around, at the channel into the bay. “I don’t know. Not for me to say, not alone. The elders will talk about it. That’s all I can do.”

  Novu said urgently, “But you must make them see—”

  Ana touched his arm, hushing him. She said to Knuckle gravely, “Thank you. We can’t ask any more of you. Look, you’re our guests here. Let us feed you. If you’ll come to our house—”

  Knuckle glanced up at the sun. “Yes. We need to eat. Which is the quickest way back? Eyelid, Cheek—this way!” And he marched off across the beach.

  55

  The First Year After the Great Sea: Spring Equinox

  Ana led her sister up the rough trail to the top of Flint Island’s solitary hill.

  It was a bright day, and though the breeze that blew off the sea had a bite in it, the sun was strong, for perhaps the first time this year, Ana thought, after what had seemed a long, cold winter—hot enough to make Ana sweat under the pack of water skins she carried on her back. Zesi was additionally laden with her new baby, just a couple of months old, a little boy she’d defiantly called Kirike, who she carried in a sling. Zesi kept up a tough pace, and if she felt any weakness from a winter of hunger and the aftermath of a long and difficult labor she seemed determined to show no sign of it. But Ana saw how pale she was, how hard she was breathing.

  It struck Ana that Zesi didn’t speak to her baby once during the climb—whereas Ice Dreamer talked to Dolphin Gift all the time, and she was already responding with gurgles and smiles.

  Responding
to the warmth, chaffinches were working the exposed ground, a gang of a dozen of them busily and expertly poking in the grass, their round pink bellies bright in the low sunlight. Mixed in with them were bramblings, so like the chaffinches save for the white flashes of their bellies, visible as they ducked and bobbed. The sisters startled the little birds, and they fluttered into the air, spiraling in pairs to the safety of the trees’ lower branches.

  They passed the flint lode, a dent in the hillside, but nobody was working today. A pool of stagnant rainwater lay in the bottom of the working, where Ana saw bright beads of frogspawn, each with its telltale black dot, another promise of new life.

  Then they reached the shallow summit of the hill, a place of sparse grass and rocky hollows where more rainwater pools glimmered. Here sat a tremendous stone that the people called the First Mother’s Knuckle Bone, for they imagined it had been spat out by an ice giant when he consumed her huge body.

  Zesi paused by Knuckle, the sleeping baby lifted by each heavy breath. “So? Here we are. What do you want?”

  Ana slipped off her pack and dug out a couple of water skins; she threw one to her sister, who caught it one-handed. “Zesi, I need to talk to you about the dyke. Novu, the priest, the others, are waiting to see you later. But I wanted us to speak first.”

  “So why come up here? Why not speak in the house?”

  Ana stepped to the edge of the summit, looking south. They stood over the mouth of the bay. Its enclosed expanse swept off to their right, while to the left was the open sea where the people’s boats were scattered. Everywhere the sun reflected from the water.

  Ana pointed down at the mouth of the bay. “There. That is what I brought you up here to see . . .”

  The tide was rising, and you could see the water rushing to fill up the bay, small waves breaking against the rocks of the promontory on the far side. And you could also see two fine lines curving out from the land, one from the headland on the north side, one from the promontory to the south. A gap still lay between them, in fact there was more gap than line, but the intent was clear.

  “Novu’s folly,” Zesi said dismissively. “I saw it before. From you standing on that mound of mud in the rain with a spade, all the way to this. And you brought me all the way up here just for this?”

  “Down on the coast all you can see is the problems. From up here you can see the dyke, the whole thing, as Novu dreamed of it.”

  Zesi grunted. “ʻDreamed’ is right. But it isn’t finished.”

  “Well, no. The work is going slower than expected—the snailheads may yet help us; they haven’t decided; we never have enough people—”

  “I know you don’t have enough people. Most of them have been out with me on the northern shores, hunting cockles at low tide. We can’t eat a stranger’s dreams. And we’re already past the equinox. You said you hoped to be finished by now.”

  “We did. It’s going to be harder to work through the days of the higher tide, but it’s not impossible. Novu says we can still finish it if—”

  “If, if, if. Always ʻifʼ with that fool. Never ′when.’ ”

  Ana sighed. “This is what you’ve been saying all winter. Even though nobody supported you at the meeting when you challenged me. You’ve been going around attacking the dyke, attacking me. Putting people off, word by word.”

  Zesi patted the baby on her chest. “And I’m going to keep on saying it. Just be grateful I was stuck in the house for as long as I was, little sister, or that dyke wouldn’t have been started at all.”

  “Look, Zesi, I don’t care about beating you. I don’t even care if you beat me.”

  “Well, that’s good, because you will be beaten.”

  “All I want is for the dyke to be finished.”

  “It never will be. Get used to the idea. Are we done here? Then let’s go find the other idiots, and get this over with.” She crumpled the empty water skin, threw it back at Ana, and began to stride down the trail that led to the mouth of the bay.

  Novu was waiting for them at the bottom of the trail. Zesi walked straight past him, ignoring him, and headed to where Dreamer and the priest were waiting further on, at the abutment of the dyke itself.

  Arga was here, working with a heavy scraper at the end of a thick log. When she saw Zesi coming she ran to her cousin. Zesi smiled and leaned down, so Arga could see the baby in his sling; Arga made cooing noises, and tickled the baby’s face. Her knees were grimy where she’d been kneeling to work.

  Ana followed with Novu, more slowly. “At least she behaves like a human being around Arga. But what’s Arga doing here anyhow? She hasn’t got the muscles for heavy woodworking.”

  Novu shrugged, looking tired, unhappy. “Look around. Nobody to collect more logs, nobody to work on those we have left. Things aren’t going well.”

  “Maybe Zesi really is getting to them.”

  “Either that, or it’s just the turning of the seasons. People have other things to do, in the spring.”

  “Well, we must try to speak to Zesi. That’s why I brought her here.”

  They joined the priest. He waited with Dreamer, who had left her own child at home this morning; she stood tall in a simple smock, her rich dark hair tied back, her arms folded.

  “So,” Zesi said, looking around at them all. “You’ve got your whole gang here, little sister. Two outsiders, and a priest who’s away with the spirits.”

  Jurgi just laughed. “Good morning to you too, Zesi.”

  Dreamer stayed as ice cool as her name. “Outsiders? Were we outsiders during those long nights in the house, Zesi?” When, as Ana knew too well, it had been the priest’s medical expertise and Ice Dreamer’s patient support that had gotten Zesi through her labor.

  Zesi was too tough to be deflected by that. She sneered and turned away.

  Novu said impatiently, “Zesi, you’ve come all this way. Let me at least show you what we’ve built. Come, walk with me.” He led the way out onto the tongue of the dyke, which pushed out from the shore and out across the mouth of the bay. It was little more than a single pace wide, but it rose up above the water surface, offering firm footing.

  The others followed, including a skeptical Zesi. Arga ran ahead of the others, skipping, confident.

  Zesi at least seemed intrigued by the construction. “So this is what happened to all those logs we cut.”

  “Yes. Look—they have been driven into the seabed, sharpened end first. It wasn’t as hard as it looks for the bed is very soft here, thick with mud. We build two parallel rows, as you can see. We jam them in as close together as possible, and caulk them with tallow, as you would caulk the seams of a boat. Then we drop rocks into the space between them, gravel and mud and sand and brushwood—anything we can carry, really—to force the water out. And that’s the dyke, and it’s waterproof, or as good as. Look.”

  They had already reached the end of the dyke, as far as it had been built. Looking out Ana could see the other side, reaching toward her from the promontory on the south side of the bay mouth. At least people were working over there, hauling big bags of rubble out from the shore.

  Zesi patted her baby absently as she looked around. “The logs will rot in the water. The whole thing will just crumble and wash away.”

  “But this is just a start,” Novu said eagerly. “We can pile on more material, more rocks and mud, over the logs to seal them in. That way they won’t rot at all, and even if they did it would make no difference. When the first dyke is established it will be easy to build on it in future years.” He reached up. “It can go as high as you like, as we deal with freak tides—or with the sea rising.”

  “So when will it be done, brickmaker? You said it would be complete by now. You are no more than—what—a third finished?” She gestured at the heap of logs, abandoned on the shore. “Where are your workers? Where, indeed, are your logs?”

  Novu sighed. “You know as well as I do. We made a good start. But in the spring there’s hunting to be done, fishing, boats a
nd nets to be repaired. Nobody’s actually refused to carry on. But they’re drifting away. We can’t get everything done, and build the dyke—that’s what people started saying to me.”

  “And you’ve dragged me all the way to see this vain joke of yours because—”

  “Because we want your backing,” the priest said simply. “You know, Zesi, you fight for the respect you feel is your due. But you don’t need to try so hard. You are respected. You are your father’s daughter; you are a strong woman in your own right. People listen to what you say—and it’s entirely negative about the dyke.

  “I know it’s a difficult year. It will be a long time before we have anything but difficult years. But we have to find a balance between the needs of the present and this plan for the future. For if we don’t do this, sooner or later we will have to abandon this place, our ancestors’ land, and become rootless, like the snailheads. We are a great people. Remember that, Zesi. We once built the Mothers’ Door! And we forgot about it, nearly. We need to be a people who can do something more than just survive—”

  “What we need is less talk from you,” Zesi said bluntly. “If you thought you would sway me with this nonsense, this walk into the sea, you haven’t. I’m going to keep on arguing against you until this foolish distraction is abandoned, and we get back to what’s important in life. I’m going back.” She held out a hand. “Arga. You come too. Enough of this.”

  But Arga was staring south across the bay. She pointed. “Look!”

  Ana turned. There on the water, coming around the point of the bay, was a small fleet of boats. Even from here she could see that the people paddling them were snailheads. And behind them came what looked like a raft, wide, thick, huge. It was logs, a mass of them, strapped together and floating on the water.

  “I don’t believe it,” Dreamer said.

  “I do,” Ana said, warm deep inside. “It’s taken a while for Knuckle to come through. But here are the snailheads, coming to help us.”

  One of the snailheads was standing on his boat, waving and shouting.