The Blessing Stone (3 page)

On the other side of the main fire, the males were gathered. Once a young male became too old to stay with the females and babies, he went to sit with the older males, to watch and to imitate scarred and calloused hands as they chipped flint tools and sharpened long sticks into rudimentary spears. Here the young males, no longer under their mothers’ dominance, learned the ways of males: how to fashion wood into weapons and rock into tools; how to identify animal spoor; how to smell the wind and scent a prey. They learned the few words and sounds and gestures the males used for communication. And, like the females, they groomed one another, plucking live things from tangled hair and plastering mud on one another’s bodies. The mud, as a protection against the heat, insect bites, and poisonous plants, had to be reapplied every day and was an important part of the nightly ritual. Young males jockeyed for the honor of grooming Lion and the older males.

Snail, so named because he was slow, was bellowing his protest at having to sit guard. After an exchange of shouts and angry fists, Lion settled the dispute by cracking a spear over Snail’s head. The defeated man shuffled off to his post, wiping blood from his eyes. Old Scorpion rubbed his left arm and leg, which were growing strangely numb, while Lump tried to scratch an itch he could not reach, resorting to the nearest tree where he rubbed himself up and down the rough trunk until his skin broke and bled. Occasionally they glanced across the fire at the industrious females, creatures the males subconsciously held in awe because only females created babies, the males being unaware of their own part in the process. Females were unpredictable. A female who wasn’t interested in sexual copulation could be vicious when forced. Poor Lip, who used to be called Bird Nose, had gotten a new name after an encounter with Tall One. When he had tried to penetrate her against her will, she had fought back, biting off part of his lower lip. It had bled for days and then oozed pus, and when it finally healed it had left a puckered gap so that his lower teeth always showed. After that, Lip left Tall One alone, as did most of the other males. The few who did try to mount her decided after an exhausting fight that it wasn’t worth it, there were plenty of compliant females around.

Frog was sulking by himself. For the past year he and a young female, named Anteater because of her passion for honey ants, had enjoyed a special togetherness, like Baby and One Eye, who were currently cuddling and fondling and enjoying sexual pleasure. But now because Anteater’s belly was swollen with child and she wanted nothing to do with him, Frog’s advances were met with slaps and hisses. He had seen this happen before. Once a female gave birth, she preferred the company of the other females who had children. Together they would laugh and chatter as they nursed their babies and kept an eye on the toddlers, while the scorned males were left to their solitary pursuits of tool- and weapon-making.

The mother-child bond was the only real bond the Family knew. If a male and female paired, it was rarely for long, the course of their relationship running hot with passion and then dying out. Frog’s friend Scorpion squatted next to him and cuffed his shoulder in sympathy. He, too, had experienced closeness with a female until she produced a baby and then wanted nothing more to do with him. Of course, there were those, like Honey-Finder, who remained affectionate to one male, especially when he tolerated her babies, as Lion did. But Scorpion and Frog had no patience with the females’ babies and preferred females who were thus unencumbered.

Frog felt the heat rise within him. He looked in envy at One Eye and Baby, fondling and grooming each other. One Eye enjoyed sexual release whenever he wanted, Baby being so constantly willing to allow him. They were currently the only pair-bond, sleeping together, sharing affection. One Eye even tolerated Baby’s children, something few males did.

Eyeing the females, Frog decided to try to interest a few by showing them his erection and giving them a hopeful look. But they either ignored him or pushed him away. So he went back to the fire and raked through the coals. To his delight he found an overlooked onion, charred but edible. He took it to Fire-Maker who immediately grabbed the morsel and got down on her hands and knees, supporting herself on one arm while with her free hand she chomped away. It didn’t take Frog long. He was soon finished and shambling to his nest-bed for sleep.

When Lion finished eating, his eye fell upon Old Mother who was sucking on a root. Lion and Old Mother had been birthed by the same female, they had suckled the same breasts and tumbled together as youngsters. When she had produced twelve offspring, Lion had been in awe of her. But now she was growing feeble and the dim notion formed in his mind that food was wasted on her. Before she could even react, he strode past her, snatched the root from her fingers and popped it between his teeth.

Seeing what had happened, Tall One went to the dismayed Old Mother, making crooning noises and stroking her hair. Old Mother was the oldest member of the Family, although no one knew exactly how old since the Family did not reckon by years or seasons. If anyone had counted, they would know she had reached the advanced age of fifty-five. Tall One, on the other hand, had lived for fifteen summers, and she knew vaguely that she was the daughter of a female Old Mother had birthed.

Watching Lion as he circled the camp before settling down into his nest-bed, Tall One felt a nameless unease fill her. It had to do with Old Mother and how defenseless she was. A dim recollection came to the young female’s mind: her own mother, having broken a leg, was left behind when she could no longer walk, a lone figure sitting against the trunk of a thorn tree, watching the Family move on. The group could not be burdened with a weak member, for the predators were ever watchful in the tall grass. When the Family passed that way again, they had found no trace of Tall One’s mother.

Finally everyone began to settle down for the night, mothers and children curling up together in their nest-beds, the males on the other side of the fire, finding comfortable spots, lying back to back for warmth, tossing and turning to the sounds of growls and barks nearby in the darkness. Unable to sleep, Tall One left the nest-bed she shared with Old Mother and made her way cautiously to the water. A short distance away she saw that a small herd of elephants—all females with their young—had gone to sleep for the night, slumbering in the manner peculiar to elephants: by leaning against a tree or one another. When she reached the water’s edge she looked at the surface of the pond covered in thick volcanic ash. Then she looked up at the stars slowly being devoured by smoke and she tried again to understand the turmoil in her mind.

It had to do with the new danger.

She looked back at the camp where seventy-odd humans were settling down for the night. Already, snores rose up to the sky, and nocturnal grunts and sighs. She recognized the moans and gasps of a pair engaged in sexual release. A baby wailed and was quickly hushed. The unmistakable sound of Nostril belching. And the noisy yawns of the males guarding the perimeter with spears and torches to protect the Family through the night. They all seemed unconcerned; for them, life was going on as it always had. But Tall One was troubled. Only she sensed that the world was not right.

But in what way? Lion was leading the Family to all the ancestral places where they had roamed for generations. They found the food they had always found; they even found water where it was supposed to be, albeit covered in ash. There was security and survival in sameness. Change frightened the Family. The concept of change never even entered their minds.

But now it was beginning to—at least in the mind of one young member.

Tall One’s dark brown eyes scanned the night, watching for any suspicious movement. Ever alert, her guard never down, Tall One lived as the Family lived, by wit and instinct and a strong sense of survival. But tonight was different, as the past few nights had been, ever since the sense of a new danger had been born within her. A danger she could neither see nor name. One that left no spoor or prints, that did not growl or hiss, that possessed neither fang nor claw, yet which made the small hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

She searched the stars and saw how they were being gobbled by smoke. She saw the ash raining down from the sky. She surveyed the soot-covered water and inhaled the stench of sulfur and magma from the distant volcano. She saw the way the grasses bent in the night wind, how the trees leaned, and which way dried leaves flew. And suddenly, with a leap of her heart, she understood.

Tall One held her breath and froze as the nameless menace took shape in her mind and she grasped all in a staggering instant what no other family member had grasped: that tomorrow’s water hole—despite what generations of experience had shown them—was going to be covered with ash.

A shriek tore the night

Weasel, in the grip of birth pains. The females quickly helped her away from the camp and into the secrecy of the trees. The males didn’t follow but instead jumped nervously to the periphery of the camp, clutching their crude spears and collecting stones that might be thrown at predators. As soon as the big cats and hyenas heard the cry of a vulnerable human being, and smelled the blood of birth, they would come. The human females instinctively formed a circle around Weasel, facing outward, yelling and stamping their feet to cover up Weasel’s cries of pain and defenselessness.

She had no help. Clutching the trunk of an acacia, Weasel squatted and pushed, laboring hard while in the grip of cold terror. Above the screams of her female companions, had she heard the triumphant roar of a lion? Were a pack of cats about to fly through the trees, fangs and claws and yellow eyes, to tear her to pieces?

Finally the baby came and Weasel immediately brought it up to her breast, shaking and stroking it until it cried. Old Mother knelt beside her and massaged Weasel’s abdomen, as she had done to herself and her daughters over the years, coaxing the placenta to be delivered swiftly. And when that, too, was born and the females hastily buried the blood and the afterbirth, the Family gathered around the new mother to look in curiosity at the squirming creature at her breast.

Suddenly, Barren pushed through and snatched the suckling infant from Weasel’s arms. The females ran after her, hurling rocks. Barren dropped the baby but the females kept after her until she was caught. They tore branches from trees and beat her with them, mercilessly, not stopping until the bloody form at their feet was unrecognizable. When they were certain Barren no longer breathed, they returned to the camp with the baby that was, miraculously, still alive.

Lion decreed that the Family must move on, quickly. Barren’s corpse and the birthing blood would attract the dangerous scavengers, particularly the vultures who could be determined and fearless. So they broke camp even though it was still night and, armed with torches, made their way across the open plain. As they trekked beneath the full moon, they heard behind them the animals rush in and growl savagely as they tore Barren’s body to pieces.

Another dawn, and light ash continued to sift down from the sky.

The humans began to stir, waking to noisy birdsong and the chatter of monkeys in the trees. Watching for predators now that the periphery fires had burned out, they made their way to the water hole where zebras and gazelles tried in vain to drink. The water could not be seen for the thick coating of soot that lay upon its surface. But the humans, able to scoop away the volcanic fallout with their hands, found water below, albeit gritty and foul tasting. While the others began to dig for eggs and shellfish, and search the shallows for frogs and turtles and lily roots, Tall One turned her eyes to the west, where the smoking mountain stood against a sky still dark with night.

The stars could not be seen for the great clouds of smoke that billowed out in all directions. Turning, she squinted at the eastern horizon, which was turning pale and where the sun would soon appear. There the sky was clear and fresh, the last stars still visible. She looked back at the mountain and experienced again the revelation of the night before when, for the first time in the history of her people, she had taken separate parts of an equation and fitted them together in an answer:
the mountain was spewing smoke…the wind was blowing eastward…therefore contaminating water holes in its path
.

She tried to tell the others, tried to find words and gestures that would convey the essence of this new peril. But Lion, acting only on instinct and ancestral memory, knowing nothing of the concept of cause and effect but understanding only that the world had always been one way and would always be so, could not make such a mental leap. What had the mountain and the wind to do with water? Taking up his crude spear he gave the command that the Family move on.

Tall One stood her ground. “Bad!” she said desperately, pointing westward. “Bad!” Then she gestured frantically eastward, where the sky was clear and where she knew the water would be clean. “Good! We go!”

Lion looked at the others. But their faces were blank because they had no idea what Tall One was trying to say. Why change what they had always done?

And so they abandoned camp once again and started their daily foraging while watching the sky for vultures, which could mean a carcass and the possibility of long bones filled with tasty marrow. Lion and the stronger males shook trees to bring down nuts and fruit, and seedpods that would be roasted later in the fire. The females crouched over termite hills, inserting twigs to draw out the fat insects and eat them. The children busied themselves with a nest of honey ants, carefully biting off the swollen nectar-filled abdomens while avoiding the ants’ sharp mandibles. With the food coming in such meager portions, foraging never ceased. Only rarely did they come upon a newly dead beast not yet discovered by hyenas and vultures, and the humans would strip off the hide and gorge themselves on meat.

Tall One walked with dread:
The water will be worse ahead.