A Bone From a Dry Sea (20 page)

‘But I started it.’

‘And your dad backed you up.’

‘He didn’t have to. It wasn’t really important.’

‘I bet it was, too.’

The sobs came under control. Vinny blew her nose and let May Anna clean her face for her. They walked back slowly towards the camp, with Vinny talking about what had happened in bits and pieces, as they came to her. May Anna clucked and muttered sympathy.

‘And Sam left you to tell me,’ she said sadly.

‘He wants to get his notes written up so we can leave tomorrow.’

‘I guess so.’

At the camp May Anna went and kissed Dad and patted his shoulder. Vinny had stayed out of earshot, so she didn’t hear what they said, but it was only a few words. Then May Anna fetched drinks for all three, and she and Vinny went and watched the shadows stretch as the sun went down behind them. They didn’t talk much. May Anna was obviously shocked and depressed by the news, and didn’t pretend about it.

‘Can’t you come with us?’ said Vinny. ‘You’d cheer Dad up. Me too.’

‘And me, but I can’t, Vinny. I have to earn my own bread. Joe’s not a forgiver-and-forgetter. Either you’re for him or you’re agin him. And this is really exciting stuff here – if I’m in on it, that’s my career made. I want to come back next year. I’m sorry.’

In the last light they heard the engine of the truck, then saw its dust-cloud, grey in the shadow of the hills and golden as it rose into the sunlight. As it neared, its horn began to sound a triumphant, sneering da-didi-da-da.

‘Bastard,’ muttered May Anna. ‘And he’ll be jolly Joe Hamiska too, all evening, I bet.’

She was right.

THEN

THEY CROUCHED TOGETHER
, too shocked to stir, moaning over their hurts, gazing at the terrifying change and then turning their heads away. Or they peered out to sea, in case another monster wave might be preparing. For a long while the upshot spray fell over them, like the finest of fine mist, but at last it thinned and blew away and the sun began to beat down full strength on the headland, forcing them to move. They crossed the crest and looked south to see the same weird ocean churning down the shore, familiar only in its broadest outline of headland beyond headland, but with all its detailed landmarks – outlying pillars, known cliffs, rock islets – changed and gone. In the end they made their way back down to the place where the bay had been, because they could see that at least they ought to be able to climb down there to nearer sea-level.

The cataract which had been the backwash of the tsunami had diminished now into separate streams and falls, foaming down the tumbled rocks. In a crevice high up, Rawi found a huge fish, as large as her own body, stranded there by the wave. They heaved it out and dragged it to a place where a fall tumbled on to a boulder and sent a continuous pleasant spray across a flat shelf
beside
it, and stayed there through the middle of the day, eating when they wanted, touching and stroking each other often, watching the dreadful swell slowly subside and restore itself to a steady pattern of waves, and gradually as they did so becoming used to the idea that they at least had survived, that the tribe was not gone, because they themselves were now the tribe, and that tomorrow would come.

Towards evening they started to explore, visited the sea and found it weirdly cold with the in-mixing of waters heaved from the sunless deeps, scrambled about the rockfall, discovered enough stranded fish to feed the whole tribe many times over, and came to a place where a section of cliff had fallen away whole and become propped across two other pieces, making a kind of cave where they could sleep. There they spent a restless night, waking each other by the cries of nightmare, clutching together for comfort and then moaning themselves back to sleep.

Li woke a little before dawn. She too had been re-dreaming the tsunami, but this time not with terror. The terror had come before, had been Greb. She had been alone on a shore and he had been advancing on her, his mane immense, like a black sun with his snarling face in the middle of it, and in her nightmare she’d cried to the dolphins, and the sea had simply risen round her at their bidding and swept Greb away, leaving her alone and safe on the beach. She had been waiting for the dolphins to return and dance with her, and woke with a pang of grief that they hadn’t come. Yes, she thought as she woke, that was what had happened. It was the dolphins who had sent the wave. They had done it to save her from Greb.
Hadn’t
she seen them racing in front of it, not, as she’d first thought, trying to escape it, but leading it on, showing it the way, having arranged for her to be safe on the headland? She didn’t know why so many of the others had had to die too, but she accepted it because the dolphins had thought it was necessary, and they were wiser than she was. Still, it made her feel strange.

Kadif was now the natural leader of the group, but he was hurt and unsure of himself. Goor was in no mood to challenge him. The others simply waited for Li to decide. She took them south. There were so few of them now that they could probably find enough food wherever they chose to forage, but with the water-caves gone they must have somewhere else to drink, either the pool or the river to the north. The pool was a place of happiness, but at the river, without land-watch or sea-watch, they would be in great danger. There was no choice.

They went slowly, clinging to the unfamiliar shore in almost constant alarm, each night having to find a new place to roost. On the third morning they came on the stranded dolphin. It lay far up one of the shingle beaches where the tsunami had tossed it, dead. Already the orange crabs had been out to scavenge at its body. Enormous numbers of them must have been killed by the tsunami, but some had survived. When Li first saw the body her heart leaped, because it seemed clean and undamaged, and she thought that if they could haul it back to the sea it would come alive and swim away, but moving closer she saw that the eye was a hollow pit, ravaged at the edges, because crabs had made their way in there and burrowed in the flesh beneath. When
she
touched the flank, which she had known as living flesh caressing against her in the song-filled water, she could feel the skin lying against the ribs with nothing at all beneath them. Shocked, appalled, she led the way on.

That night the true rains began. The earlier downpour had been a freak, perhaps connected somehow with the upheavals beneath the ocean. These, though they came without the days of tension before, were otherwise normal, heavy and steady, driven by the threshing onshore wind, lasting a few days and then passing away to leave a calm clear sea and sparkling air. On the headland beyond the bay where the dolphin lay, the group had found an excellent roosting place, where a fallen slab leaned against the cliff well above wave-reach, giving them shelter from both wind and rain. With all they needed for drink falling direct from the sky they stayed there and waited the rains out.

Before they moved on Li felt compelled to go back and look at the dead dolphin again. By now the crabs had stripped it completely and only the skeleton was left, a fine white structure, the arched ribs joined to the supple spine which ended in the snouted skull with its huge eye-socket. To Li, dead though it was, and gone, it still seemed to have power. The empty eye looked as if it knew things she could never know. She saw, amazed, that it had a hand like hers. The long thin fingers which had been hidden in the flipper now lay across the ribs, still joined to the stubby arm and shoulder-blade. Some of the finger-bones had fallen away. The shoulder-blade was loose and when she picked it up the arm became separated from the hand, and then the
arm
fell away too, leaving her holding just a flat triangular bone. That would have to do. She would have liked to take the head, but it would be far too heavy and difficult. This flat bone would be enough. She carried it back to the others and led them on.

Beyond the next headland a fresh change began. If they’d been travelling further inland they would have been aware of it far sooner, a smothering layer of heavy grey dust spreading over everything, mile after mile, thicker and thicker to the south and west, the outfall of the volcanic eruption. They had for some time been aware that there was a different taste in the sea, but it hadn’t been enough to trouble them, and except in occasional pockets the tsunami and then the ordinary waves and the rains had scoured the shoreline clean. But now, further in under where the main plume of the eruptions had been blown, that had not been enough. When they reached the long beach behind the water pool they found it not white but dark grey. The beach itself had totally changed shape. There was no water pool.

They hunted desperately for it. With the beach behind so altered they could no longer be sure exactly where it was supposed to be, and plunged around searching at random. It took them a long while to realize that it was in fact gone. Perhaps the earthquakes had closed it or perhaps the colossal shifting of sand beneath the tsunami had for the time being blocked it off, but they didn’t wonder about causes. It was just another terrible change, part of all the other changes. They gathered miserably in the shallows and looked at Li.

Without her they would probably have turned
back
north, in an unreasoned hope that the water-caves might somehow have come back, but Li had no such hope. The discovery of the dolphin’s body had changed her. Through the bone she carried it seemed still to be speaking to her, telling her that even its death was part of its song, which she must understand. It said that there was no life for the people any more on this shore. They must go away, or they too would die. The water-caves were closed. The pool was gone. When they reached the shrimping beach there would be no glimmering harvest in the shallows, however many full moons came and went. They must go.

Where?

Li already knew the answer. There was another place. She had seen it on the day she had watched the spider, and often since then, when the tribe had been at the shrimping beach, she had crossed the dunes during the long wait between high tides, climbed into the leaning tree and looked west. Often, too, she had seen the place in her dreams. It was important to her because it was part of the process in which she had first become fully aware of herself, and had begun to wonder at the hugeness of the world and the otherness of all the things it held.

The retreating tsunami had left every hollow filled with salt water, but there were places where the rains that followed had collected in sufficient quantities to dilute it to a point where they could drink it, so that by the time they reached the shrimping beaches they had made up for not finding the fresh-water pool. The beaches were utterly changed. The shoreline here had actually risen, so that the waves lapped far further out
than
they used to, and the dunes behind were no longer a series of hummocks but a single level flat, runnelled where the water had coursed back towards the sea. The altered level meant that the shoreline continued ahead, with the flattened reed-beds already starting to dry out. It would have been possible to continue south, looking for a new and hospitable shore, but instead Li led the way inland.

The leaning tree was gone, washed away or buried in sand and ash, but the marsh was still there, stretching away and away, and beyond it rose the line of blue hills.

Where the ground started to slope down towards the water, Li stopped and pointed. The others gazed ahead, muttering surprise and doubt. Nothing stirred. The tsunami had flattened the reeds, and the rise in land-level had brought the mud-banks from which they grew up above the surface, so that they lay like mats or floating islands between the patches of water. In places further out, the islands seemed to join together and become a path. The water itself looked calm and safe.

Come
, she said, and clutching the dolphin’s blade-bone to her chest walked confidently down the slope.

NOW: THURSDAY MORNING

VINNY SLEPT LATE
. The first sound she heard was Dr Hamiska’s laugh braying through the camp. She lay for a moment, wondering how she could once have thought it was a cheerful sound. Then she remembered the first drive out to the site, when he was telling her about fossils and things. He’d been really interesting. They’d both enjoyed it. There were probably lots of people who still thought he was terrific, and from their point of view they weren’t wrong. It was just sad that he’d shown Vinny his foul side.

A faint sound from inside the hut made her open her eyes. Dad was sitting at his folding table, writing. He didn’t stir or twitch when the laugh rang out again. He was using his work to shut all that out, to shut everything out – Mum, May Anna, Vinny. No, wrong again. He had noticed she was awake and stopped writing.

‘You’ve slept all right,’ he said.

‘Yes. What’s the time? Didn’t you?’

‘Bit after seven. No. I’m no good at rows. God, I’m glad it’s all over. Look, Watson took the spare jeep into town, so as soon as he gets back we’ll push off, and that means that someone can helicopter back with the Craig people and pick it up.’

‘How long have we got?’

‘Plenty of time. Assuming Watson didn’t crash the jeep, driving a load of girls round town, and assuming he managed to get up this morning, he should be back around lunchtime. That’ll give us just time to clear out before the Craig people show up.’

‘In a helicopter!’

‘They’re the ones with the money. Why don’t you go and find some breakfast? I’ll come when I get to a stopping place.’

He worked on steadily while Vinny dressed. Before she left she went and stood by his chair and put her hand round his shoulder, looking down at the neat straight lines of his notes. His handwriting was almost as small as print, but beautifully clear. He hesitated, wrote another couple of lines, put his pen down and folded his hand over hers.

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘It’s been a great help not having to go through all that out there alone.’

‘Oh . . . Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.’