Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter Page A

playing and mock-hunting on the beaches of Etxelur. At first Heni had been the leader, the guide, at times the bully who forced Kirike to learn fast. As Kirike had grown he had eventually overtaken Heni in maturity, and now Kirike, as Giver, relied on Heni as his closest ally. Kirike couldn’t pick a better companion to have got lost at sea with. But today he did stink, and Kirike pulled a face.
    Heni grunted and took another oyster. ‘Well, you’d be rank if you had to sit through another blubber feast with those Hairy Folk.’ You always had to eat with the strange dark hunters down the beach before they’d consider a trade. ‘Mind you, the turtle soup was good, in those big upturned shells.’ He winked at Kirike. ‘And that little woman with the big arse caught my eye again.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’
    ‘This time she submitted to a little tenderness from old Heni. We snuck off into one of those funny little shacks they have.’ Houses made of skin stretched over the ribs of some huge sea beast. ‘We didn’t get to threading the spear through the shaft-straightener, if you know what I mean, but—’
    ‘You sure which hole was which under all that hair? You sure it’s even a woman? I’ll swear she’s got a better beard than I have.’
    ‘Yes, but you’ve got bigger tits as well. She’s not that hairy. They just wear it long, that’s all. Gives you something to grip onto.’ Heni lumbered to his feet, stood over their boat, rummaged in his leggings, and with a sigh of satisfaction pissed over the skin of the hull. When he was done he lifted the boat by its prow so that his urine ran in streaks. The boat was a frame of wood and stretched skin. You could clearly see where they had patched it during the winter months here on this beach, with new expanses of deer hide, scraped and soaked in their own piss. ‘Look at that,’ Heni said. ‘Not a leak.’ He eyed Kirike. ‘So if the boat’s ready . . . time to go home? You’ve been saying all winter that you’d try to be back for the Giving.’
    Kirike looked out to sea. As always when they spoke of going home he felt a deep dread stealing over him. ‘Maybe a few more days,’ he said. ‘Collect a bit more meat. Work on the boat some more while we’ve got the chance. Put some more flesh on our bones before we face the ice again . . .’
    ‘There’s no reason not to leave now,’ Heni said bluntly. ‘Look. I understand. Or I think I do. Remember, it was me who went out in the boat with you in those first days after Sabet died.’
    Sabet, Kirike’s wife, had died as she laboured to give birth to a dead baby the previous summer. The baby wasn’t expected; he had thought that Sabet had put the dangers of childbirth behind her years before, when Zesi and Ana were born, and they were safe. The shock, the sudden end of his long marriage, had broken his heart.
    ‘You weren’t much use then, I’ll tell you that,’ Heni said.
    ‘I know. But I didn’t want to be anywhere but in the boat. All those people, the women, Sabet’s sister, her mother, the girls . . . If I thought I could have got by in the boat without you I would have done.’
    ‘Well, I was there. And I was there when that storm pushed us west. That gave you an excuse to stay out for a few more days, didn’t it?’
    ‘I couldn’t help the storm.’
    ‘No. But then you said we had to sail north.’
    The storm had caused them two days and nights of non-stop bailing: no paddling, no sleeping, no eating, you pissed where you sat and drank and ate one-handed, and with the other hand you bailed. When the storm had blown over they had no idea where they were. They were out of water, had lost their food, their catch and their fishing gear, and the boat leaked in a dozen places. It was obvious they’d been driven west, for that was the way the storm had blown them. South: that was the way to go. If they’d headed south they would have hit the shore of Northland, or maybe somewhere on the Albia coast.