Stephen Baxter: Stone spring

‘But he isn’t.’ Zesi folded her arms. Her face was set, her eyes clear, her red hair scraped back from her head in a practical knot. ‘Well, I’ll do it. Although the mothers know I’ve enough to do already, with the Spring Walk only days away. The low tide isn’t going to wait until we’re ready, is it?’

This was how Zesi had been since Sunta’s death. With her father’s continuing absence Zesi had taken on the roles of both the family’s senior woman and senior man. For all her complaints about it, Zesi seemed filled with energy by the burden of her dual role.

But Ana became aware that the priest hadn’t replied.

‘I did wonder,’ Jurgi said slowly, ‘if Ana might be the one to bear Mama Sunta’s bones to the midden.’

‘I’m capable of doing it,’ Zesi said. ‘And I’m older.’

‘Of course you are capable. But custom doesn’t dictate that the oldest should do this.’

Zesi sounded sceptical. ‘Then what does custom dictate?’

‘That whoever was the last companion of the dead should be chosen. Ana, Sunta was with you on the night of your blood tide. You should be with her now.’

Ana knew that Zesi didn’t like to be away from the centre of things. But after a long pause Zesi said, ‘Fine. That’s fitting. I’ve got plenty to do anyhow.’ She stood, unwinding her long legs, and grudgingly kissed the top of Ana’s head. ‘Say goodnight to Mama Sunta for me.’

So it was decided. The next morning, just before dawn, the priest called again at the Seven Houses. Glimpsed through the flap of Ana’s house, he was a silent, spectral figure, with his deer-skull mask hanging eerily at his neck and his charm bag slung at his waist, a fold of ancient seal hide.

Ana had barely slept. The thought of what she must do today filled her with dread. Perhaps that was the owl within her, battling with her spirit. But she slid off her pallet, pulled on her skin boots, and wrapped her winter sealskin cloak over her shoulders.

She glanced around the dark house. Gall was asleep, flat out on his pallet, face down, mouth open, nose squashed out of shape, snoring. The hair sprouted thickly on his bare back, and in the dim light of the fire Ana saw an infestation of bugs stirring through that greasy forest.

Zesi was awake, however; Ana saw her eyes bright in the firelight.

And Shade rolled out of bed. She saw that he had his boots and cloak ready by the side of his pallet.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Coming with you,’ he whispered back. ‘To the midden.’

‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ She glared at the priest, beyond the door flap. ‘Is this your doing, Jurgi?’

The priest spread his hands. ‘We need somebody to dig. Shade said he’d do it. Would you rather do it yourself?’

‘Please,’ Shade said. ‘I knew Sunta too.’

Jurgi beckoned. ‘We’ll discuss this outside. Don’t wake the others.’

But of course, once they got outside, all three bundled up in their winter cloaks, and Jurgi had handed Shade his shovel made of a deer’s shoulder bone, there was no point debating it any more. Ana stomped away, with bad grace.

The laying-out platform was set up on a dune matted with marram grass. It was a frame of precious driftwood, taller than a person, long enough for three adults to be laid end to end – or several infants.

The priest and Shade stood by while Ana climbed a step up to the platform. Here was Mama Sunta, a bundle of ragged deerskin and bones and bits of flesh. At least there was no sign of the growth that had eaten her from within. The bones were cold and shone with dew.

From this slight elevation, Ana looked around. It was still not yet dawn; the sky was a high grey-blue, scattered with cloud. The air was very cold, and the dew was heavy. Mama Sunta had lived out her whole long life in this place, and Ana saw traces of Sunta’s long life and her work wherever she looked. From here the Seven Houses were all visible, and Sunta’s own home was a mound of kelp thatch the deep green of the sea. The ground between the houses was thoroughly trampled. On the landward side, downwind from the prevailing breezes, was a waste pit and racks where early-season fish were drying. Sunta had always been the best cook. A rubbish tip was full of broken tools and bits of old bone and stone, hide and cloth. Sunta had always emphasised to the children that nothing was ever discarded here, just put aside until it came in handy. A space trampled flat and stained with old blood was used for butchery, and in a smaller area nearby stone was worked. Both places had been barred to the children by Sunta, for fear of their bare feet tearing on flint shards or bone scraps.

A dormouse scuttled past Ana’s feet, fresh out of its hibernation, busy already, early in the year, early in the day. In a world without Sunta.

The priest was watching her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘You know, I often come out like this. Before the dawn. Just to walk around by myself.’

‘I know you do. You probably shouldn’t be alone.’

‘But people…’ People shunned her, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. ‘People can see the owl in me. I’m bad luck.’

‘I don’t think you’re bad luck. That midwinter day was Sunta’s time to die, as it was your time for the blood tide. I know it’s affected you. But just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean they’re linked.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s a funny thing to say. I don’t remember the old priest talking like that.’

‘Well, I’m a funny sort of priest. You must give people time, Ana. A chance to know you, now you’re a woman. And you need to give yourself a chance to get over this – to get past your grandmother’s death. Why do you think I insisted it must be you who buries her today?’

‘For Sunta’s sake.’

‘No. For you.’ He touched her arm. ‘Come now, we should get to the midden before the sun is too high.’

So Ana lifted Mama Sunta. Most of the joints had lost their ligaments, and as she lifted the skeleton it broke up, and Sunta’s skull rolled backwards, revealing empty sockets where worms moved sluggishly in a kind of black muck.

Shade, watching her, said, ‘In Albia we hang our dead in the branches of a tree, an oak if we can find one. And when the birds and the worms have done their work we plant the man in the ground, and put an acorn on top of him, so a tree will grow and hold his spirit.’

Ana understood by now that Shade’s language had no word for ‘woman’, no distinction between ‘his’ and ‘hers’, as if women were an inferior sort of men.

‘But our great men, like our father when he dies, we will plant a whole tree on top of him. I mean, we dig it up roots and all, and make a hole in the ground, and put the living tree over him…’

Ana ignored him as she worked. Gently but reverently she wrapped the bones in a parcel made of the remains of Sunta’s clothing.

Carrying the body – it was shockingly light – she stepped down from the burial platform. With the priest and the Pretani boy to either side of her, she began the long walk around the bay. In the uncertain light it was sometimes difficult to see the track. But she glimpsed frogspawn massing in the dense water, and crocuses thrusting green shoots out of the dead brown earth. She could feel the change in the world, feel the spring coming, like the moment of the turning of a great tide. And yet her grandmother, in her arms, was dead.

They walked silently. Jurgi, beside her, was an extraordinarily calming man, Ana thought, with his open, beardless face, his blue-dyed hair tied back in a tail, and those sharp brown eyes that seemed to see right into her spirit. He was one of the few who had never recoiled from Ana because of her dread Other.