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of heath which was still dry and protected from the wind. I sat there, looking out to sea, uncertain what to do. And then I saw the colour of the stone. Juice-red like elderberry stain. I’d not seen that before. Arrowheads and knives in red would cause a stir. I’d bring my uncle here and my six cousins. We’d carry rocks back home.
    I chose a piece about hand-sized and wedged it between my feet, its upper, rounder face well clear. I did not expect to make a tool. I simply thought that I would test the blades and edges at its core. I hit it with a stone of equal weight and size and colour. One blow. Both stones – the one in my left hand, the one between my feet – broke open and apart. They crumbled like a fist of clay. It felt as if I’d brought two drinking pots together. All I had was shards, none bigger than my thumbnail. I tried it once again, with different stones. More shards. More random piles of stone.
    I cannot say how foolish and how alarmed I felt, sat there, seduced away from a little food and warmth by one lost ship, my one hand red from seablite, the sea shore red with stone. I had encountered there a rock unknown to all my neighbours. A stone so soft – I soon would learn – that the sea could break it up. A stone so soft it couldn’t crack a skull. Was this some illness, some disease? Imagine if the illness spread, if it made its way along the coast to infiltrate the flint pits on the heath. A picture came into my mind which left me smiling and breathless with its implications. Leaf’s youngest daughter was carrying a heated stone, a juice-red stone, across the workshop. She placed it on her father’s anvil on his knees and, spacing her legs for a firmer stance, held the stone in place. Leaf positioned his sharpened antler tine upon the stone, his hands as steady as his eye, and struck it with a wooden mallet, certain of his craft, and grateful for the chance to work on something new.’

9
    ‘I N FACT , it might have been a dream. I fell asleep, my head upon my hand. The walking and the wind had tired me out. When I awoke I couldn’t see the sea, I couldn’t tell the colour of the rocks. There was a mist and it was dusk and all that mattered was the distance from our village and the fear of being stranded in the night. You’d all be just as fearful, that’s for sure. The beach is fine by daylight, but at night it is too open and too cold. There might be wolves. There might be worse. And yet to walk back along the cliffs could not be done. I’d fall. I’d shred myself on thorns. I’d drown in rain and blackness and in leaves. I stood and looked inland across the heath. I filled my lungs with damp and heavy air. “Who’s there?” I said. And then I raised my voice and called, “Who’s there?”
    I was answered by a dog. Its bark was wolflike for an instant. My stomach and my bowels made soup. My legs gave way. I’d never known such fear, not even when young leather-purse, the bowman, had come blundering through the bracken to retrieve his arrow, his stave circling in the air, my right arm lost. That was in the day, and I was close to home. Now I stood as still as stone, breathing through an open mouth and planning what I would do when the pack had sniffed me out. I’d run into the sea. Would that have done the trick? Can wolves swim? I wouldn’t know. There were no wolves. There was another bark, high-pitched and servile. It was a single dog. And there behind its call, just lit and barely visible, the grey on grey, was a streaming plume of smoke.
    Now you see me running on the saltland heath, sending rabbits to their burrows, putting up the roosting birds. I didn’t care. There was a smudge of safety in the air. If there were fires and dogs then people were close by. I’d pass the night with them. They wouldn’t harm a one-armed man, a youth, a boy. I’d eat, sleep, go home in light. I’d take an elderberry stone.’

10
    ‘A LL WE HAD to eat that night was slott. The woman