Free Bronze Summer by Stephen Baxter

and spare scraps of cloth and other bits of discarded rubbish waiting for a fresh use. This big clear space was the hub of Sunflower, which was actually a network of connected communities. From here you could see down the avenues that radiated away to north-east and south-west, links to smaller satellite settlements. The avenues were separated by stands of willow and alder, carefully tended and coppiced.
    A bird flying high overhead, Milaqa thought idly, would have seen concentric bands of trees and hazel scrub surrounding this central hearthspace, a map like the classic Etxelur circles-and-bar symbol, like the ancient earthworks of the Door to the Mothers’ House that stood beneath the Wall itself. The whole of Northland was like a map, a landscape Northlanders had written on all the way back to the divine Ana who, it was said, had first refused to allow the sea to overwhelm her coastal homeland.
    And today all of Northland seemed to be full of her cousins and aunts and uncles, all adults judging her, or so it seemed, while the children and the dogs swarmed in the spring sunshine, flocking like birds.
    ‘Here comes trouble,’ Teel murmured.
    Ximm was approaching them. He was a short, stocky man, older than most at somewhere over forty, and though he wore sensible working clothes he had a cap of polished black leather on his head, indicating his membership of the House of the Beetle. Behind him his wife Enda was glaring at Milaqa, harsh and judgemental.
    And, trotting up beside Ximm, Milaqa saw Voro, the young Jackdaw.
    ‘Oh, by the mothers’ milk, not Voro. Not today. If he does all that puppyish stuff . . .’
    Teel laughed. ‘It’s not his fault he likes you. I think he’s here to talk to you about your induction prospects. He’s doing well, you know, the Jackdaws tell me—’
    ‘I’ll throw up over him.’ Milaqa was serious.
    ‘ Don’t do that. Look, Hadhe – I see Riban over there.’ Riban, another remote cousin, was in the House of the Wolf, training to become a priest. ‘Maybe he can give her something for her head. And her gut.’
    ‘Ah,’ Hadhe said. ‘Good idea. Not that she deserves it. Come on, little one.’ Hadhe jogged away, trailed by Blane.
    Ximm and Voro came up. Voro, twenty years old, was lanky, clumsy in his ill-fitting tunic. ‘Hello, Milaqa.’
    Milaqa looked away.
    Ximm had thick red hair, a family trait, frosted now with grey. His face was broad and kindly, but his look was sharp. ‘You’re very welcome, niece.’
    ‘Am I?’
    ‘Well, you were supposed to have been here not long after sun-up.’
    ‘She hadn’t even gone to bed by sun-up, by all accounts,’ Teel said.
    Ximm held out his arms and beamed. ‘But never mind. You’re here! And it’s your day, Milaqa, the Family Day in your sixteenth year. The day the clan comes together, to celebrate the House choice you are to make.’
    She shrugged. ‘If I could make a choice.’
    ‘Well, it’s not easy for everybody.’ He winked. ‘And I’ve swum in a few buckets of mead in my time too. But we’re proud of you even so, Milaqa. Proud of what your mother achieved – to become the Annid of Annids! And her with a grandfather who hunted seals on Kirike’s Land. Why, I dare say there hasn’t been such a step up since the days of Prokyid. We’re going to celebrate you today, no matter how you feel about it.’
    Family Day was a loose Northland tradition centred on the spring equinox, when a clan would come together to commemorate their origins with a day of honest work. And in every family, Milaqa thought sourly, you’d find someone like Ximm, coming to the fore on such a day as this. The forgiver. The jolly one. The growstone that held the family together. Ximm had been born in Kirike’s Land, and though he had left that remote island at the age of five she thought she could still detect the twang of a Kirike accent in his voice. She imagined how the House elders back in the Wall would laugh at him if they could hear