Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Epigraph

Then

Now: Sunday Morning

Then

Now: Sunday Evening

Then

Now: Monday Morning

Then

Now: Monday Morning

Then

Now: Monday Afternoon

Then

Now: Tuesday Morning

Then

Now: Tuesday Afternoon

Then

Now: Wednesday Morning

Then

Now: Wednesday Morning

Then

Now: Wednesday Afternoon

Then

Now: Thursday Morning

Then

Now: Thursday Afternoon

Note

About the Author

Also by Peter Dickinson

Copyright

About the Book

One small body curled among the mass of sleepers. Different. Yes, I’m different . . .

Four million years ago, then, a young girl – Li – lives with her tribe along the shores of a mothering sea. But Li is different. A thinker, a questioner, her sense of wonder and intuition could help shape the future of her race.

In Africa, now, on the site of that very same plain – Vinny visits her father who is working as part of a team searching for fossil remains of our ancestors. Fascinated by the tiny fragments of bone that are painstakingly dug out of the ground, Vinny’s curiosity helps lead the team towards a major discovery . . .

PETER

DICKINSON

A BONE FROM

A DRY SEA

Myth in all tongues credits the dolphins with

Making the bays they visit happy, waking

Song in flint cottages that lacked it long.

Man haunts what shores he can .

THEN

THE CHILD CLUNG to the rock, letting the broken waves of the bay wash over her, cooling the fierce sunlight. She was not afraid. The sea was her home.

Light dazzled off the water, but she kept her head above the surface and gazed steadily towards the mouth of the bay. She was on shark-watch. Out on the open shore grown males would keep watch, but a submerged rock-shelf barred the entrance to this bay, so it was safe to let the children learn the duty.

She was hungry. For days now the wind had blown hard from the south-east, driving the ocean rollers before it. The tribe used the bay because there were caves in the low cliffs, deep in two of which fresh water trickled down the rock. But food inside the bay was scarce, so normally they would have hunted the rocky inlets beyond for shellfish and shrimps and crabs and the little octopi that hid under boulders.

But with a wind like this the dark green rollers pounded in, hurling their foam to the cliff-tops and then dragging anything loose back seaward in their weight of water. Anyone who tried to feed out on the open shore would be swept away to where the sharks cruised, or break an arm or leg, or crush a foot. So by now all the tribe were hungry.

A hand touched the child’s flank beneath the water. She glanced down, grinned a greeting as her mother rose beside her, and returned to her watch. Her mother had brought her two mussels, barely the size of a fingernail. Her mouth watered as she heard the crack of shells being pounded open, and she was putting her hand down to take them when she froze, pointed, yelled the warning Big wave , and immediately added the snapped-off hoot that meant Shark!

When each roller reached the submerged shelf at the bay’s mouth it rose to a wall, ridged with foam, and seemed to hang for an instant before it crashed into the bay. In that moment before wave-break the sun lit it from beyond. Now a giant wave, two waves in one perhaps, had come. It seemed to rise as high as the cliffs behind the bay and then poise at the entrance for longer than an ordinary wave. In its green-lit depths hung a darker, curving shadow as big as four grown males. Then it crashed down and its foam creamed over the bay.

The noise was enough to startle even people used to the surprises of the sea, so many of the tribe surfaced to look. The child was standing on the rock now, pointing and yelling. Her mother was racing for the shore. As the wave-thunder died and before the next wave crashed in they heard that the yell was Shark! , but mostly stayed where they were – it was only a child, mistaken, probably, or mischievous. Then the mother reached the shore and joined in the cry, and the whole tribe streamed for safety.

The shark had vanished. It must have been swimming along the shoreline, hunting perhaps for someone desperate enough to go foraging out in the open, when the monster wave had picked it up, a moving mass of water too powerful for it to be able to fight its way against, and so it had been tossed into the bay.

The child yelled again and pointed with her web-fingered hand. She had glimpsed the long shadow gliding beneath the ruffled surface a few paces from her rock. A moment later the dorsal fin broke the surface as the rising sea-bed forced the shark upwards.

The people yelled. The shark veered along the shoreline through a spatter of hurled rocks, and away down into deeper water. It vanished for a while but circled round by the rock again, and again the child yelled and pointed, and again the fin emerged. This time the people were ready, and larger rocks hailed round it. And again. And again.

At first they were trying to drive it away so that they could return to the water, but soon they realized it was trapped. Except in the moment when a wave came pounding in, the entrance to the bay was too shallow for it to pass. So now the tribe were the hunters and the shark the prey, if they could find a way to kill it. They spread along the shore, harrying it on.

The child watched from the rock. Now that her eyes understood what they were seeing she could trace the shark’s movements all round the bay, except through the turmoil at the entrance. She turned steadily, one arm raised to point, helping the others follow the track of their enemy. They surged along the shore, leaping from rock to rock, hurling anything they could lift. Cushioned by water few of these missiles can have hurt the shark much, but it grew half-mad with fright and began to break from its circuit and make dashes across the bay, sometimes actually rubbing against the rock where the child stood. She kept to her task, unalarmed.

A shark must swim to keep water moving through its gills, or it will die, so this one couldn’t lie in the deep centre of the bay, out of the tribe’s reach. Round and round it had to go, enduring their attack. Now they grew bolder, some dashing into the water as it went by with rocks in their hands to pound at the passing flank. These blows too did little damage, but the sense of dominance increased, infecting them all. Excited young males ran into the water ahead of it, ready for their attack. The cliffs echoed with the tribe’s yells.

On the far side of the bay, a male plunged in and followed the shark’s path towards the rock. It looked like more bravado, but when he reached the rock he climbed out and stood beside the child. He was her uncle, a senior male, already beginning to challenge the aging leader, and he was taking this chance to increase his prestige by directing the shark-hunt. He watched the shark make two more circuits while the child pointed its path, but next time, as soon as it was safely past the rock he grunted Go away and pushed her into the water. She swam quickly ashore, glad to be out of the sun and free of the ache of pointing all the time.

She didn’t join the others along the shoreline, but climbed to a patch of shade beneath an overhang, where she could sit and watch the hunt, while the tribe dashed in and out of the water, screaming and smiting, and beating the surface into gouts of spray. She alone seemed not to be swept up into the frenzy. She wanted to see.