CIRCLES OF STONE (THE MOTHER PEOPLE SERIES) (13 page)

Zena ran down to
the lake, calling frantically to Tipp.  When she got there, the hippos had
returned to the water, but they were still fighting, bellowing loudly and
tearing at each other's thick hides.  Rune lay in a crumpled heap near the
place where she had sat so peacefully. 

She and Tipp
looked down on the old female.  Tipp began to sob.  Tears rose in
Zena's throat, too, but they did not come out.  It seemed as if her
sadness was too great for tears. Rune had cared for her and protected her, had
taught her from her great store of living knowledge.  Now she was gone.

Dak came up behind
Zena.  Grimacing with emotion, he knelt beside his mother and pulled her
into his arms.  He held her for a long time, his head bent with grief;
then he carried her to a safe place among some tumbled boulders at the edge of
the lake.  Gently, he lowered her broken body into a protected
crevice.  All that night, he watched over her, hardly aware of the others
as they came to see what had happened.  Sadly, Zena gestured to the
hippos, and made the sound for
dangerous animals
.  They
understood.  Each of them came up to Rune and touched her gently, their
faces twisted with sadness.  Her death left a massive gap in their
lives.  Though she had been old and frail, Rune had been their leader, the
one who had accumulated the wisdom and judgment to see them through almost any
disaster. She had led their travels, monitored their behavior, helped them when
they were sick or fearful or uncertain.  Often, they went to the place
where she lay and sat there with her, to pay their respects and remember some
of the things she had taught them.

A few days later,
rain began to fall again.  The lake grew wider and deeper as the torrent
continued, and before long, the lapping water reached the rocks that held
Rune's body.  The lake enfolded her in its grasp, and when Dak next went
to look at her, she had vanished.

Her final
disappearance made everyone uneasy.  Squabbles broke out in the group, as
if without Rune's alternately sharp and patient guidance, they did not know how
to behave.  Klep punched one of the twins when he took a piece of fruit;
the other twin came to defend his brother, and Dak tried to restrain all of
them.  Tipp jumped up and down, excited by the unaccustomed
disturbances.  Zena, however, was irritated, and she snapped at them
sharply, just as Rune had once done.  Immediately, they were quiet. 
After that, they looked to her for leadership.  She was the one who was
most like Rune, and they trusted that she, too, would lead them well.

When the dry
season came again, Zena took them first to the marshes, as Rune had.  But
just as the rains had been unusually hard and long, so the heat and dryness
that followed were more intense than ever before.  Even the swamps were
drying up.  Food was hard to find, and the once-lush ponds had turned to
thick mud that sucked at their legs.  One of the twins started to wade
toward the clearer water in the middle.  Zena pulled him back quickly, remembering
the experience with her mother long ago. 

The next day, she
led them on again, across a wide plain.  The vast expanse was littered
with termite mounds, some as tall as Klep, to sustain them as they traveled,
and they found three unprotected ostrich eggs to eat as well.  Water was
harder to find.  They had brought wet mosses from the swamp, but all
moisture was soon sucked from them by the terrible heat.

They settled that
night in a dry stream bed.  Zena dug into it with her stick until a small
puddle of water appeared.  The others copied her, so that each got at
least a dribble to sustain them.  But in the morning, Dak found a good
place, where a larger puddle formed.  Zena bent down to drink as deeply as
she could before they left, and gestured to the others to do the same. 
She wished they had kept the mosses, so they could saturate them again, but
they had long ago been discarded.

Her eyes lit on
the three ostrich eggs.  Loath to relinquish the new objects, Tipp and the
twins had kept them even when they were empty.  Zena picked one up and
regarded it speculatively. The thick shell was intact except for a hole at the
top, where they had sucked out the contents.  She lowered it into the
puddle and watched with satisfaction as water slowly oozed in.  Dak and
Lop filled the other eggs, and once again they set off for the sanctuary of the
river.

The river did
provide sanctuary for a time, but then, just as it had when Zena was young,
drought began to stalk the land.  The rains never came that year or the
next, nor did they come for three more years after that.  Ponderous gray
clouds filled the sky, but no moisture came from them.  Only deafening
claps of thunder emerged, and lightning.  The jagged streaks lit up the
sky as they plunged toward the dry earth, sparking fires that burned feverishly
across the parched plains.

The river ran
sluggishly, then became still.  Its once-abundant water coalesced into hot
brown puddles that shrank visibly every day, leaving white-edged rings on the
drying mud.  The grasses withered and burned as fires raged across them,
but no new shoots appeared against the blackened earth as they usually
did.  Berries failed to grow on the bushes or fruits on the trees; insects
ceased to buzz and chirp.  The birds and animals that fed on them vanished,
and after that the larger animals began to disappear.  Only predators
thrived, for a time, and then even they began to grow desperate.

Zena watched and
remembered.  The terror and loneliness of her early years returned as she
saw the land dry out, the plants and animals disappear.  But it was water
that worried her most.  Every day, she eyed the shrinking puddles and
wondered how they were going to survive if the rains failed for still another
year. 

Early one morning,
Klep came up to Zena and touched her shoulder.  The twins were behind
him.  There was a terrible sadness in his eyes that she did not at first
understand.  He pointed into the distance and said the word for
go
. 
He hugged each of the others, repeating the word.  The twins did the same,
lingering longest with their mother, Myta.  Then the three males turned
and began to follow the river downstream.

Tipp lunged after
them, as if to follow.  They waved her back, and she returned to stand by
her mother.  Sobs wracked her body.  Every day since her birth ten
years before, the twins had been her constant companions.  Now they were
leaving, and she might never see them again.  All vestiges of the
happiness she had felt when the two young males had hugged her drained from her
face.

Zena placed a comforting
arm around her shoulders.  Dak came close, and Myta.  As always, Lop
stood a short distance away.  Together, they watched until the three males
were out of sight.

Zena stared at the
place where they had disappeared, and her eyes burned with tears she refused to
shed.  The others depended on her to be strong.  Klep and the twins
were right; they would have more to eat alone, and the group would fare better
without them.  The twins were almost as big as Klep now, and needed a lot
of food.  Still, she did not want them to go.

It was the
beginning, she knew.  First one would go, then another, and finally all of
them would have to separate.  Soon, there would be no choice.

She turned and saw
Dak watching her.  She went to him and held tightly to his hand.  To
think of leaving Dak was more than she could bear.  He was her special
companion, the one who was always there to help and comfort her.  They
held each other for a long moment. Then Zena pulled reluctantly away.  The
sun was high already, and they must begin the arduous search for food.

In the days that
followed, Zena and the others stayed close together, suddenly more fearful than
before.  Without Klep and the twins they felt strange, as if they were
missing some integral part of themselves.  Klep especially had made them
feel safer, for he was the largest and most fearless of all.  But even
worse than the fear was the sorrow.  Tipp could not stop crying, and
Myta's face was a mask of grief.  Zena saw tears in Dak's eyes as
well.  Klep was his brother, the one he had cared for and taught. 
Now he was gone.

She watched their
faces despairingly.  The bonds the group had developed were different than
anything she had known before.  They cared deeply for each other, and
suffered when they were apart.  But she could think of no other
solution. 

Dreams began to
torment her at night, as they had when she was young and all alone.  She
saw the vulture that had terrified her so long ago, watched it plunge from the
sky, its savage beak ready to tear into her flesh.  Before it reached her,
it became the tiger, the huge, ferocious tiger.  She was running, and it
was behind her, ready to spring.  She heard herself scream -

Zena sat
abruptly.  Something
was
screaming.  The dream was still in
her mind, and she could not tell if the screams had come from her throat, or
from some other.

Dak lifted his
head and stared at her, his eyes wide with fear.  He picked up a big stone
and sprang to his feet.  Zena jumped up beside him.  The screams came
again, long, deep yells that resounded in the quiet night.

More noises came,
strange, wild noises.  Never in her life had she heard such a fearful
racket.  Her small son and Myta's daughter woke and added their terrified
howls to the clamor.  Tipp huddled beside them, shivering with fear. 
Zena grabbed her stone and stood over the children defensively.  She had
no idea what sort of animals might make such an uproar, but whatever they were,
they were coming closer.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

The sounds were
almost upon them. Zena and Dak stared at each other in bewilderment. It was
shouts they were hearing, not screams. Shouts, and something that sounded like
laughter.  What kind of creature would shout and laugh?

Dak suddenly
leaped over the wall of thorn branches they had placed around the shelter to
protect them, and ran into the clearing. Horrified, Zena lunged after him to
pull him back. He was peering into the darkness and shouting as if demented,
and he paid no attention to her frantic tugs.

"Home!"
he was saying, over and over again. An answering cry came from the woods beyond
the clearing.  Dak sprinted in that direction and disappeared among the
trees. 

Zena stood still,
and a spasm of joy constricted her chest. It could not be...

Tipp came running
out of the shelter and grabbed her mother's arm.  A gamut of emotions
crossed her face.  Confusion showed first, then astonishment, then a
sudden spurt of hope.  After that came a burst of pure happiness. 
Her mouth creased in the widest smile Zena had ever seen.

"Two!" 
she called out excitedly, for that was how she had always referred to the
twins.  Laughing and crying at the same time, she ran after Dak.

Zena saw them
then.  Four shadowy figures had appeared at the edge of the woods, their
bodies almost invisible against the backdrop of trees.  They were laughing
and talking and crying, jumping up and down and hugging each other.

Tears poured down
Zena's face.  She had not wept when Klep and the twins had left, for she
had wanted to be strong.  But now she made no attempt to control the flood
of emotions that surged through her.  They had returned.  Klep and
the twins had come back, and her troop was whole again.

Klep strode over
and hugged her warmly.  He waved jubilantly to Lop and grabbed his arm,
shaking it over and over again.  The twins leaped wildly around Tipp,
pulling at her hair in their teasing fashion, making sure she knew how glad
they were to see her.  Their eyes sobered when they saw their
mother.  She pulled them into her arms, her face twisting as she wept with
joy.  They stroked her gently until she recovered, all the while trying to
comfort their little sister, who was still crying in confusion.

Klep called to the
twins, his deep voice booming into the darkness, and the three of them ran back
into the trees.  Tipp's eyes widened in consternation.  Were they
leaving again?

A moment later
they reappeared, carrying something heavy. Zena stared, astonished, as they
dropped their burden at the edge of the clearing.  It was the carcass of a
pig, and almost all the meat was still on it.  Pigs were fast and
dangerous, and they had sharp, tearing tusks.  Never before had they
managed to capture one, at least not a big one like this.

With a few words
and many dramatic gestures, Klep and the twins described their adventure. 
They had spotted the pig trapped in mud, nearly dead, but they were afraid to
pull it out lest they be trapped themselves.  They prodded it with sticks,
and its frantic movements brought it a little closer to the edge of the muddy
pit.  Finally, it came close enough so that they were able to pile
branches on the mud, to stand on, and wrestle it out.  Then they had
looked at each other, remembering those they had left behind, knowing they were
hungry.  The pig would feed all of them for days.  And so they had
come home again, lugging their prize.  They had shouted and laughed and
made up loud combinations of sound-words all the way, to frighten off any
creature that might try to attack them, or snatch the pig.

As soon as there
was light enough to see, they butchered the pig with their sharpest stones and
stuffed themselves joyously on the tender flesh.  It tasted magnificent,
but the smell of blood was strong.  Vultures were soon circling overhead,
and Zena could hear the whine of hyenas nearby.  In the daylight, they
would not come close, but as soon as darkness fell, they would attack, unless a
lion or tiger got there first.  They would have to be careful.

Lightning jagged
across the sky toward the end of the day.  Once again, clouds were
beginning to form, but it was still too  early to hope for rain.  A
patch of brush in the distance began to burn.  Zena called to her son,
Hoot, named because of the hooting sounds he liked to make, and Myta's
daughter, who was his constant companion, and wandered toward it. 
Sometimes fires flushed out birds, and their eggs were left behind.  Eggs
would be good for the children.  Hoot was as tall as Screech had been when
he had died, but he was much thinner.  He was always hungry.  In five
years of life, he had known nothing but drought.