‘You can use more of it.’ Avatak picked up a length of gut, and ran his fingers along the ropy stuff. ‘Squeeze out the blood like this, and boil it up. The liver is considered a treat, by the way, for the hunter who brings the animal in. There are ways to treat the hide so it’s easy to wear — you dry it, rub it to keep it supple. I will show you. Oh, and the eyes. .’ He plucked an eye from its nerve stalk, popped it into his mouth, and chewed hard; it burst with a crackle, and cold fluid filled his mouth. ‘Mm,’ he said around the mouthful. ‘Delicious. A treat for the kids.’
Crimm stared. ‘Ha! Well, I must try it myself. Look, Avatak — would you help with something else? We have sickness here.’
‘I saw your wife.’
‘We all suffer to some extent. But especially my wife’s little niece. Please.’
He led Avatak back up the beach to the cave, outside which Pyxeas sat, cradling an empty soup bowl, and Avatak was impressed that he had managed to finish a meal for once. Pyxeas had Muka help him up, and with the others followed Crimm into the dimly lit rear of the cave.
But Pyxeas paused by the fire where there was a heap of paper, evidently used as kindling. He ruffled through this, appalled. ‘By the mothers’ mercy — did this come from the Archive? I know this work — on the philosophy of the motion of the planets — centuries old! And it’s been used to light a fire for a bunch of-’
‘Not now, master,’ Avatak murmured firmly.
Pyxeas fell silent, visibly angry.
They walked deeper into the cave. At the back a little girl, not more than five years old, lay on a heap of skins. A woman, perhaps her mother, stood back as they approached, hope and fear obvious in her face. Avatak became aware that they were all watching him, all the Northlanders, and he felt a stab of self-doubt.
‘Just do your best,’ murmured Pyxeas, leaning on Muka.
Tentatively Avatak bent over the little girl. Listless, lethargic, she did not resist. He saw she had spots on her skin, on her face and arms and, he saw when he lifted a blanket, on her legs. She had evidently been suffering from nosebleeds, and when he gently opened her mouth he saw teeth missing from bleeding gums.
‘She’s been so down,’ said the mother. ‘So miserable for so long.’
‘Many of us have the same symptoms,’ Crimm said. ‘To one degree or another.’
‘And you know what she asks for, all the time? Cabbage! Who would have thought it? But you can’t grow cabbage in all this snow and ice.’
Pyxeas grunted. ‘I bet that’s the answer. You people seem to have plenty of fish and meat to eat, but not a scrap of green.’
Avatak felt faintly irritated, for Pyxeas was right. ‘We call it the bleeding fever. Yes, it comes about if you don’t eat all you need.’
‘I need cabbage,’ whispered the little girl, and her mother stroked her head.
Pyxeas said, ‘So what’s the answer, boy? Should we boil up some seaweed?’
‘No. Not that. We call it mattak. You can chop it into small pieces and eat it raw, or you can fry it and boil it to make it easier for the children. That will stop this sickness.’
Crimm frowned. ‘Mattak? What is that?’
‘The skin of a whale.’
There was a long silence.
Crimm said, ‘And to get hold of that. .’
‘First you have to catch a whale.’ Avatak grinned. ‘It’s not hard. I will show you.’
Crimm clapped him on the back. ‘You see? I knew you could help us! Why, with your help we’ll be able to prosper — to do more than survive — we can live in this place as long as we want-’
‘No,’ Pyxeas said. Suddenly he groaned, and leaned more heavily on Muka. Avatak rushed to his side, and helped lower him to the ground.
Crimm said, ‘No? What do you mean, Uncle?’
Pyxeas looked up. ‘Oh, you have done well — despite your barbaric consumption of books to light your fires. Yes, you are prospering. Yes, Avatak, if you can, show them how to catch whales, and all the other skills you have brought with you from the Coldland — skills you have used to keep me alive for so long.
‘But, Crimm, Muka, the rest of you — you cannot stay here. For the ice will not let you. And before you leave here you have a great assignment.’
Avatak said gently, ‘There is no scholarship here. You can see that.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see it. I was a fool to hope for more. Yet there is a duty to be fulfilled even so. Come, boy, help me back out into the light, may as well enjoy the daylight while we have it. .’
77
They sat on the growstone beach. Pyxeas was given a heap of blankets, and Avatak and Nelo sat with him, Nelo sketching intently. The folk of the little village, what was left of Etxelur, gathered around them: Crimm and his wife, the other adults, and the children who stood and openly stared at the newcomers with their exotic looks, their strange clothes. It was afternoon now, and the sun, hanging in a clear sky, cast a light of a strange quality, a rich golden yellow, on the face of the Wall behind them.
A small child, it might have been either a boy or girl in its bundle of furs, walked boldly forward, sat on Pyxeas’ lap, and started to pull at his wispy beard. It struck Avatak suddenly that there were no old people in this village — none at all, save Pyxeas.
Crimm smiled at Pyxeas. ‘That’s your great-grand-nephew. He’s called Citeg. He’s evidently a philosopher, like his uncle.’
Pyxeas, cradling the child, seemed to gather what was left of his strength. ‘Indeed. What a tableau we must make — draw us, Nelo! Draw us for history. Myself the elder, who remembers the world before the coming of the longwinter. You adults who are living through this age of transition. And now this little one on my lap, one of a new generation rising already, who knows nothing of the days before the longwinter, and who will grow up thinking all this is normal — to live on a growstone beach, to trap seals to survive. Thus we humans forget the pain of the past. I sometimes think this is the little mothers’ greatest gift, for otherwise each of us, even this little one, would carry inside his head the burden of ten thousand years.
‘But we must not forget. We as a people. Ana, who founded the Wall itself, knew this long ago; we could not forget the great floods of the past, for if we had we would have been doomed to suffer them again. And we did not forget. We wrote down our memories, and organised ourselves, and remembered.
‘Now we face the greatest calamity of all — this longwinter. A flood of cold that will last many thousands of years. Yet we understand why it has come about — I, Pyxeas, a handful of scholars in Carthage, and now these brave boys who brought me home. Knowing why it happens is a long way from being able to turn it back, from warming the world! Only the mothers can do that. But if we understand, if we anticipate, then we can plan. But we can only understand if we remember.
‘I came here hoping to find scholarship surviving. Even I, Pyxeas, I admit, underestimated the damage done by the long-winter in its first few seasons. But what I have found here is you, Crimm, and your people, and your admirable determination to survive. And so I have modified my goals.
‘I have written down my conclusions. I have already sent copies to scholars around the world, from Cathay to Egypt to Carthage. There will be a New Etxelur, built on the Carthaginian shore. That too has copies. But we know the world is in flux, and who knows what will survive of that?
‘But here we are, at the Wall, at Etxelur. And I want you to help me now. I have copies of my findings, stored in my trunk, my conclusions set out. I want more copies made, more sets compiled — more trunks filled. I know you can write, Crimm, you others — you haven’t forgotten yet. And I want these copies distributed in safe places the length of the Wall, as far as you can reach.’