Stone Spring

by Stephen Baxter

  “Those days are gone,” Dolphin snapped.

  Kirike, more circumspect, asked, “So what do you have to trade?”

  “Ah. I thought you would never ask.” Hollow slipped off his pack, crouched down and unfolded a parcel of skin to expose a straight-edged block of stone: yellow-brown, carefully worked. Hollow stroked its surface. “Good Pretani sandstone. See how finely grained it is? Easily worked.” He rapped it with his knuckle. “Yet heavy and hard-wearing. Look, you don’t have to know anything about stone to see its quality. If you have the best flints in the world in Etxelur, we Pretani surely have the best stone. If we can make a trade the bulk of it will be brought to Etxelur by boat, down the rivers and along the coast—”

  Dolphin shook her head. “Why would we want stone?”

  “For your walls. Your dykes, your channels cut in the ground. Ask your genius from the east—Novu. Ask him about Jericho, where they face their great walls with stone, not bricks or mud. When he sees this stone he will hunger for it, believe me.”

  “So why are you showing us?”

  He stood up. “Because it’s as you said. There is bad blood between Etxelur folk and Pretani. Those who make the decisions in Etxelur, especially Ana herself, won’t have anything to do with Pretani.”

  “So that’s it,” Dolphin said. “Well, I won’t help you get to Ana. As far as I’m concerned you can shove this stupid stone up your hairy Pretani ass.”

  He was unperturbed. “That’s disappointing.” He looked at Kirike again. “I did know your father. It would be good to speak of him.”

  Kirike blushed. To Dolphin’s disgust, she saw that this blatant appeal to blood ties, from a man who looked so much like him, was swaying Kirike, who had grown up knowing neither of his parents. Kirike said to Dolphin, “He’s right about Novu. He often talks about stone buildings in Jericho. And the bad blood between Etxelur and Pretani can’t last forever. I can’t see what harm it would do, Dolphin. Just to get Ana and Novu to look.”

  Dolphin glared at him. “Are you mad? Pretani aren’t traders. They are killers who take what they want. You—Hollow—you’ve come here, you’ve learned our language, you’ve found out our names—all for a few boatloads of stone? What is it you really want?”

  His vaguely good-humored expression didn’t falter, though she thought there was a greater lividity to the kill scars on his forehead. He murmured, too softly for the others to hear, “Even if there was some grand scheme, I wouldn’t tell you about it, would I? Remember, girl—you’re an outsider. Foreign blood, like your mother.” He bent to pick up his stone block. “Kirike—maybe we could talk about when I could meet Ana?”

  Dolphin stormed away, crossing the rafts, making for the dry land. She didn’t bother to check if Kirike was following her.

  Qili hurried after her. “I’m sorry. He seemed harmless enough—and anyhow I couldn’t get rid of him. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble . . .”

  But Dolphin was in no mood to listen.

  67

  “What do you mean, we should be having more children?” Arga was indignant, almost shouting. “Since when did you become a little mother, Ana?”

  “Maybe we should calm down,” said Jurgi, glancing uneasily at the door flap of the stuffy raft-borne house.

  Ana just glared at Arga, apparently unmoved by her outburst.

  It was dark in this house despite the brightness of the day, and they had lit some of the whale oil lamps they had brought from Etxelur; their smoky glow underlit Ana’s face, making her look even older than she was, severe.

  It was the day before the Etxelur water council. This was another invention of Ana’s, a meeting she held every quarter around the time of the equinoxes and solstices, as a way of ensuring all the complicated activities in Etxelur were fitting together properly. They might have come all the way to the World River estuary but Ana wasn’t going to let the chance of a council go by. And as she customarily did, Ana had summoned Jurgi, Novu, Ice Dreamer and Arga in advance of the council to see if they could guess the concerns that might be brought up, and to practice their answers. They’d all done this before, and the arguments were typical.

  But Jurgi was far from comfortable. They were guests in a house loaned them by estuary folk, on a raft that rode the body of the World River. This wasn’t Ana’s house, from which people kept a respectful distance; anybody might be listening to their arguments. He said now, “Let’s keep our voices down at least.”

  Novu was sweating heavily, his face slick, irritable. “Maybe we should just go and sit out in the open and have done with it. Anything’s better than this stuffiness.”

  Ana grunted unsympathetically. “I thought you and the priest enjoyed making each other sweat in the dark.”

  Novu snapped back, “And I am getting sick of the way you speak to us.”

  Ice Dreamer smiled. “I suspect she’s just jealous of the consolation you two have found together. She is alone, more alone than any of the rest of us.”

  “And you’re alone too,” Ana shot back, “since my father spoiled your plan to crawl into his bed by getting himself killed.”

  “Shut up,” Arga said. “Shut up. I can’t stand your bickering.” She glared at them, one after another. “Didn’t you hear what Ana just said? She wants us to have more babies. Jurgi, you’re still the priest. Can’t you tell her why that’s so wrong?”

  “Yes, tell me, Jurgi.”

  He bit back a sharp response. “Arga has a point. It may be different in Jericho. But all across Northland, and even in Albia and Gaira, I never heard of any people who didn’t space out their children.”

  “This is the wisdom of the little mothers,” Arga protested. “You can’t have too many children, not too soon, not close together. It’s always been this way. For when the flood comes, or the famine, and you have to run—”

  Ice Dreamer said, “It is the same in my country.”

  Ana said dismissively, “Yes, yes. You can only carry one child; the others must be able to run—or die. But times are different now. We of Etxelur don’t have to run anywhere. And in the meantime we lost half our number to the Great Sea, and we haven’t recovered yet, nor will we for a generation or two at this rate. We need more people, more than ever before—”

  Arga snapped, “More people to build your dykes and reservoirs!”

  “Exactly.” Ana waved a hand. “Look where we are! We have come all this way just to beg the loan of a few lumps of muscle from the river folk. Imagine if every woman in Etxelur had a child, and then another, and another. In fifteen more years we’d have a strong cohort of workers. We could do our own work, fulfill our own dreams—”

  “Your dreams,” murmured Arga.

  “And we wouldn’t have to use up our precious flint persuading somebody else to do it for us.”

  “They may not accept it,” said the priest uneasily. “The people. They’ve followed you this far, Ana, but—”

  “If you back me up they’ll swallow it,” she said, sounding uninterested. “Just say it’s the will of the mothers. That always works.”

  Jurgi felt a spark of anger at her casual insults. “Take care, Ana. I am still a priest, your priest, and you should listen to what I say. You don’t see all. You don’t hear all. They come to me sometimes. They complain to me. Argue about whether the mothers really want us to do this, or that. I try to persuade them it’s so. I’m not sure if I always succeed.”

  Ana became thoughtful. “So, even after all these years of us working together, they still come to you without telling me?”

  The priest stiffened. “The people’s relationship with the little mothers has existed as long as the world. Long before you or I were ever born.”

  “But the fact is there are still two centers in Etxelur. Two sources of decision-making. Or at least that’s how the people see it, evidently.” She stared at him. “I think I’m going to have to do something about that.”

  He felt vaguely alarmed, having no idea what she might mean.<
br />
  Arga was still angry at Ana. “I’m telling you the people won’t stand for it, this business of the babies. If the priest tells them they must, they’ll challenge him. That’s what I think.”

  “She may be right,” said Ice Dreamer languidly.

  Ana thought it over, and nodded. “All right. Maybe it’s too early to bring it up at this council. We’ll leave it until the autumn equinox, and give ourselves time to work out how to argue for it. But argue it we will, for I’m convinced this is the only way forward for Etxelur . . . Until next time. Now, Novu, what’s this rubbish I hear about stone from Albia?”

  “It’s far from rubbish,” Novu said. He shifted stiffly, and from the pile of goods beside him he produced a heavy block of stone, wrapped in skin. Unwrapped, it seemed to glow in the soft, diffuse light of the lamps. “Look at this stuff. Now, Ana, yes, it’s Pretani, and I know we have had our problems with them. But Kirike brought me this, and he thinks they are sincere, they really do just want to trade. I think we have to consider it. Just think what we could do with this—our dykes covered in this fine stone rather than my clumsy mud bricks and plaster!”

  Arga said, “Once again your dreams expand. Think how many more babies we will have to conceive to build everything out of stone!”

  But Ana wasn’t listening. She leaned forward and ran her hand over the stone’s smoothly worked surface.

  68

  Me was prodded awake in the usual way, by a wooden spear shaft in the small of the back.

  He sat up. He had barely slept. He was stiff from lying on the dew-soaked grass with the others. The tether was tight around his neck.

  Above him the branches of a big spreading oak obscured the gray light of morning. But he was under the tree and not in it, for the grounders would not let the Leafy Boys climb. And this isolated tree stood in a clearing. It was agony for any Leafy Boy to be trapped down on open ground. Even when he started to move and got the stiffness out, the dread would linger.

  The grounder who had prodded him walked around, kicking or poking the other Leafies. Then he paused by the side of the tree, propped his spear up against the trunk, and opened his hide trousers. Me saw his thick piss spray in the air, bouncing off the trunk, the golden droplets oddly beautiful where they caught the light. Then the grounder walked off to where his fellows had spent the night, gathered around their fire.

  The other Leafies stirred, a dozen small forms emerging from heaps of dead leaves. They were all naked, filthy, miserable, and they all had tethers tied tight around their necks, fixed to a single stake in the ground. One girl moved stiffly, and Me saw from the bruises on her thighs and small breasts that the grounders had come for her in the night. He had a vague memory of a disturbance, a rustling of leaves, a scream muffled by a hand over a mouth. He had just lain still, thankful that it was not him.

  Another grounder came over with a hide sack and dumped out a pile of offal, twisting gray guts. Before the grounder had turned his back the Leafies fell on it. The offal was tough and tasteless and the stomach contents were acrid, but the Leafies fought and snarled over it like pigs, their small backsides in the air, their faces red with blood. Me used his weight and strength to shove little ones aside. He was not shy; if you didn’t fight you went hungry. Sometimes the grounders let their dogs go for the food, so you had to fight them off as well.

  Me saw one small boy pushed out of the feeding group. This hungry little boy had been losing the fight for food for days, and was starting to look pale, scrawny. He pawed at his tether. The grounders wet the knot by pissing on it before tightening it, and when it dried out the rope contracted, making it impossible to pick apart even with a Leafy’s small clever fingers. If they saw the boy trying the grounders would knock out his teeth; he would live, but he’d starve.

  When the food was gone, the Leafies got as far from each other as they could, and began to perform their pisses and shits. Me, squatting, was ferociously thirsty, but the grounders never brought water. The Leafies would have to find what they could for themselves in the course of the day. Some days, in fact, they were left tethered where they had been during the night and not moved at all, and Me would finish the day enraged by thirst.

  But today, it seemed, was not going to be one of those days.

  The grounders were already moving. One of them kicked dirt over the fire. The others lifted their hide cloaks over their shoulders, and picked up their spears, and tucked knives into their skins. They started shouting, laughing, throwing punches at each other. Me, with a shudder of dread, recognized their mood. It was going to be another day of running and fighting and killing, and the grounders were getting themselves ready.

  One of the grounders came over to the Leafies. He slashed through their tethers, wrapped the ropes around his wrist, and snarled at the children until they moved.

  The grounders formed up and set off across the clearing at a heavy jog. The Leafies, driven ahead, ran in the horror of the open air. If one of them stumbled the reward was a kick or a prod with a stabbing spear.

  But as Me ran, as always, the cold of the night worked out of his bones and muscles, his legs pumping, the breath sliding into his lungs. Me was young and healthy. He would have enjoyed the run, if not for the sheer terror of the openness, and the uncertainty of what was to come.

  Before the sun was much higher in the sky they came to a landscape that was even stranger to the Leafy Boys, a place where water glimmered everywhere, in streams and ponds choked with reeds, and shallow islands rose up, and there was scarcely a scrap of forest.

  The grounders charged on, making for the bits of high ground, driving the Leafies on through mud and marsh and shallow open water. Soon Me’s bare legs were soaked, and clinging mud dragged at his feet. Huge flocks of birds rose up and flapped away, cawing their disapproval, and the air was full of noise and sprayed water. All the Leafies were terrified. But when he got the chance Me scooped up water, shook out the living things that swam in it, and sucked it down his dry throat.

  One boy went down in a flooded gully, gurgling in terror. Me saw it was the little boy who hadn’t been able to fight for the food. The grounder holding the tethers had to stop and drag the boy’s scrawny body out of the murk, yelling with anger and impatience. But after a few paces the boy fell again. The handler hauled him up once more and shook him.

  The boy spewed water from his mouth. He reached out to the grounder, like a baby reaching for its mother.

  The handler thrust the boy into the water, driving down his neck with his strong outstretched arm. One of the other grounders called over. The handler shouted back, laughing, keeping his arm in place. When he raised his arm again the boy dangled, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, his lips blue. The grounder dropped him in the water, cut the tether with a slice of his knife, and turned to run on.

  Me and the others had no choice but to follow. He knew he would never think of the boy again.

  They approached one of the larger islands. There were grounders living here. Me could see houses, squat cones plastered with dried reeds, with smoke seeping out. A bigger fire burned in an open hearth, and there were stands where fish and eels were drying. Boats clustered, broad, flat-bottomed, some dragged up onto the dry land, some on the water where men pushed them to and fro with long poles. There were grounders everywhere, adults working in the water or loading eel on the racks or just lazing around, and children, many naked, their skinny legs muddy.

  This was the target, then. The grounders and Leafies ran on without breaking stride.

  A woman with a basket of fish saw them first. She just stared, for a long heartbeat. Then, yelling warnings, she dropped her basket and plunged into the water to grab one of the children.

  More adults came out of the houses. Some of the men ran to a stack of weapons, like spears but with hooked points, perhaps meant for catching fish. One man, on a raft floating on the water, poled desperately to get away from the island.

  All of this was too late, for the ground
ers were almost on them.

  They let the Leafies go in first. Me scrambled up a shallow muddy beach. Children ran screaming, but Me charged through a pack of them, using his fists to slam them aside.

  Soon Me and the others were in among the houses. Adults turned to face them, armed with spears and clubs. The girl who had been used during the night was close to Me, and she seemed filled with rage. She leapt at a man who was swinging a club. Me joined her, going for the man’s legs as her lithe body wrapped around his neck. The man got in one blow with his club that winded Me, but then the girl’s teeth were in his throat.

  And now the grounders were on the island, roaring and laughing as they swung their weapons. Me saw one island boy armed with a spear, facing a grounder. The grounder stumbled, and the boy had a moment of advantage. But he hesitated. With a swing of the blunt end of his spear the grounder smashed the boy’s skull.

  Now dogs came running through the houses, snarling and snapping, to take on the Leafies. Me got hold of a dead man’s club and swung it at the animals.

  The air was filled with screams and cries, with the crunch of bone and the howling of the dogs, and the stink of blood.

  69

  Shade waded to the island, with Hollow and Bark at his side, their feet and legs caked in mud.

  The fighting was done. The adults were dead or subdued, the survivors bound together near the ruin of their big outdoor hearth. Shade could hear that his men were still busy with some of the women. The small children had all been killed or driven off. Some of the men were still walking around the island, throwing little carcasses into the muck, and using the poles the islanders had used to push their flat-bottomed boats to shove the surviving kids back into the water, ignoring their cries and pleas.

  The Leafy Boys, those who lived, had been fixed with their tethers, and had been thrown the carcasses of dogs to eat. It was extraordinary to see the naked creatures rip the skin of the animals with their teeth. The islanders cowered from them.