As evening came, the trading slacked off, and Lin no longer modeled the skirts. She removed her hand skirts, closed her left hand tight, and looked around. The nudity of her body did not bother her; it was standard for children, but her hand was always a concern. She saw that someone had started a large fire. It seemed to be a boy, which surprised her, because this was normally a man’s job. So she went over for a closer look—and was further surprised. It was a girl! Rather, a woman, for she had her baby parked nearby.
The woman saw Lin looking. “Hello, girl,” she called. “Do you like fire?”
“Yes,” Lin confessed.
“Well, come help me build this up,” the woman said. “It needs to be big enough for everyone to sit around.”
But if she started using her hands, her extra finger would show. So Lin tried to demur. “I—”
“Or would you like to hold Crystal while I fetch in more wood? I don’t like to leave her alone.”
“Oh, yes,” Lin agreed. She loved holding babies. Then, belatedly, she introduced herself. “I’m Lin, of Sam’s band.”
“I’m Ember, of Joe’s band,” the woman replied. She picked up the baby, passed her to Lin, and followed a path out to forage for more wood.
Lin sat holding the baby girl, gazing into the fire. She liked Ember, because Ember trusted her with her precious child. And babies didn’t care how many fingers a person had.
But there was a woman staring at her. Lin knew who she was, from memory and descriptions: the notorious Sis, Bub’s sister or consort; it wasn’t quite clear which. That was one case where the distinctions between sibling, friend, and lover seemed seriously blurred. By all accounts Sis was a beautiful but sharp-edged creature, who would do whatever she thought she had to, to get her way or her brother’s way. She must have noticed Lin’s hand, and was contemplating some mischief. But she did not approach, and after a while went elsewhere, to Lin’s relief.
A man advanced to the fire, carrying a huge armful of wood. He dumped it down beside the sticks already there. He glanced at Lin. “Why, hello, Ember,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not Ember,” Lin protested quickly. “She went to fetch wood.”
He paused, seeming surprised, looking at her more closely. “Oh, I thought you must be Ember, because you are holding Crystal.”
“No, I’m Lin, of Sam’s band. This isn’t my baby. I’m not old enough to have one.”
“But pretty enough,” he said. “Are you looking for a man?”
“No!” she exclaimed, fearing a frightful misunderstanding. Didn’t he see that she was a naked child?
But he laughed. “I shouldn’t tease you, Lin. I am Scorch—Crystal’s father. I am glad to see you taking good care of her.”
Lin just stared at him, flushing, not knowing what to say.
Ember returned with more wood. “Are you teasing innocent girls again, Scorch?” she asked as she set down her load.
“Only the pretty ones,” Scorch said. “See what a fine baby this one has.”
“But I’m not pretty,” Lin said, hopelessly flustered. “My hand—” Worse yet. She shouldn’t have mentioned that.
Scorch glanced at his wife, evidently realizing that his teasing had gone awry. Ember squatted before Lin, but didn’t take the baby. “Look at this,” she said, stretching out one arm. There was a long ugly burn-scar on it. “And this.” She showed a knee, blotched with scar tissue. “I have such marks all over my body, because of my trade. Does that make me ugly?”
“Oh, no!” Lin cried. “But—”
“And Scorch has worse marks. But I think he’s handsome, and he thinks I’m beautiful. Are we mistaken?”
“But you got those marks from fire,” Lin said. “They are normal.”
Ember reached out and took Lin’s left hand. “I see several perfect fingers here. Who is to say what is normal?” She glanced at Scorch. “Would you mate with such a woman?”
“One as pretty as that?” he replied. “I wouldn’t even notice her hands.”
“But others—”
Ember nodded. “But I take your point, Lin. There are those who judge by the wrong things. Keep your hand hidden, if you wish; we will not discuss this further.” Then she took back her baby.
Lin remained by the fire, liking these folk, who had gone out of their way to reassure her. Maybe there would be a man for her after all, when she came of age.
When the fire was high, the others took places around it. It was time for the entertainment, while several men roasted a slain ox and carved off hunks of the meat for all present to eat. Others set up a vat made from a hollowed log, filled with water and a number of squished fruits and berries to flavor it. Each person could dip a cup in it to drink. Lin was intrigued by the tang of it, and not long after she drank she felt pleasantly/slightly dizzy. That made the activities that much more fun. The nubile girls came out to dance, forming a ring around the fire, showing their breasts and kicking their legs high so that their leaf skirts parted and showed the men of other bands what they had to offer. Jes was there, and she looked pretty good in the skirt, but she was too tall and spare and homely, compared to the other girls. Which was too bad, because Jes was a really nice person.
“But one is missing,” a woman said. It was Sis. “That girl should join them. She’s pretty enough.” She pointed to Lin.
And Lin didn’t have her hand covers now. She would stand exposed to all the folk of the gathering. She would embarrass herself, and her band. Which was what Sis intended: to shame the band her brother disliked. To turn Lin’s prettiness against her by exposing her deformity.
She wanted to demur, to get out of this, but all eyes were turning on her. What could she do?
Then Ember spoke. “Isn’t that Lin, who modeled the skirts, enhancing them with matching hand sets? Yes, she must dance for us—with the three skirts together.”
Lin called down silent spirit blessings on the woman for that considerate suggestion.
Flo got up and hurried across to Lin, carrying the things she needed. Sam followed her, evidently having been advised what to do. “Yes, the dance of staff and hands,” Flo said.
Suddenly Lin realized what they intended. They did have a dance they had devised without hand decorations. Now the little skirts had been made a part of it.
In a moment the skirts were on, and she was facing her band brother, the leader of their band. “We will show them how we dance,” Sam said somewhat grimly. He was angry about the spot they had been put in, but his anger was not directed at Lin.
And so they danced, as the nubile maidens gave way to leave them room. Sam was massively muscular, and he carried his heavy staff, potentially deadly as a weapon. But he used it in the way they had when relaxing as a tribe alone, swinging it grandly at her, low, so she could nimbly leap over it. She did so, her skirts swinging around her body and hands as she turned.
Sam swung again, this time at her head. She raised her hands in foolishly inadequate defense—and the staff bounced off her crossed wrists. There was a murmur of surprise from the folk watching; Sam had made it look real, as they did in the game. He could make his muscles bulge with the force of his strike, yet Lin’s touch would deflect it. It was part of the game they played. Now it made the miniature skirts seem magic.
The audience loved it. It did not take the people long to figure out the device, but the notion of a little girl having such power against a huge man was hilarious. And Lin realized that the two of them were good at it; it was a dance, because their moves were practiced. He had the power and balance of the effective hunter he was, and she had the nimbleness of the child she was.
They circled the fire once, then finished with a flair: He aimed a huge blow at her, but she pranced in close and kissed him on the cheek. He staggered back, as if suffering a mortal blow, while she lifted her hands in victory. Everyone laughed.
Then they sat down, and the regular show continued. Lin had been too nervous to be dizzy while afoot, but now she was giddy with r
elief and flushed with success. She had danced, and not made a fool of herself. Now she could enjoy the rest of the gathering without fear.
A hand touched hers. It was Bry, giving her a friendly squeeze. “You were lovely,” he murmured.
“I think I was,” she agreed, appreciating his appreciation and support.
“They were laughing with you, not at you.”
“Yes.” That was what made it so good.
When the girls were done, a man with a good voice led the group in singing hunting songs. Then came a storyteller, who held all the children and a number of adults rapt with his tales of the history of their tribe, to which all three bands belonged, speaking the same language. He told how they had come from a huge wonderful land under the setting sun so long ago that even the sun hardly remembered it, and followed the paths along the line between the mountainous terrain and the great restless sea, until they found this, their homeland. He told how life had been wonderful, until the land dried up and the game fled, so that they had to flee too, staying always near the water. But now they were in the land the spirits liked, and were doing well.
Lin had heard the tales before, but they always fascinated her. Normally there was just her band, the women foraging in their territory while the men hunted, with occasional contacts with their neighboring bands. But this gave her a much larger view, and she realized that they were part of a people whose ancestors went way back to that strange good land where the sun set, and that if that land hadn’t dried up, the people would still be there. That was an awesome concept.
At last it was time to sleep, and the three bands withdrew to their sections, and the people lay down under their blankets of leaf mat and fur. Some of the young women, Lin knew, would get under the blankets of men they had encountered today. The men really liked that. Tomorrow the bands would return to their own territories, and resume ordinary life. Until the next gathering, with other bands.
It was fun, yet routine. But Lin had gained something precious, this time: hope for her own future.
When groups of people exceeded a certain size, the rivalry and quarrelsomeness of the males became disruptive. This effectively limited the size of individual bands, and of tribes. But there was a counterforce that seems to be unique to mankind: thé arts. The human species appreciates such arts as song, dance, tale-telling, and tapestry weaving, and this appreciation enables larger groups to assemble without quarreling unduly. People can sit and watch a performance, their attention diverted from their immediate rivalries or grudges, and can participate in group arts, their energies expressed positively. Thus the bands of people who appreciated the arts grew larger than the bands of those without art, and they had more power. If a band of ten encountered a band of twenty, competing for a given resource, the band of twenty would normally prevail. If a tribe could muster more and larger bands than another tribe could, it was likely to prevail. So the arts may have been mankind’s secret weapon. Art may be what distinguishes our species from all others, and what enabled us to marshal sufficient cooperating numbers to conquer the world.
Chapter 6
SPIRIT GIRL
Mankind traveled the path of least resistance and best food supply, the boundary between land and sea. There was always vegetation there, and fish and clams. Such association with the water inevitably led to the development of rafts or boats, which were extremely useful for carrying possessions as well as people. Such boats would gradually become more sophisticated with experience, and increasingly seaworthy. Their advantages of convenience and safety could have been such that a culture evolved that was tied into them; women and children would remain in covered boats, rather than in any landbound dwellings, and much foraging could have been done directly from them. When a storm threatened, they would have brought the boats to shore, perhaps beaching them and tying them to trees—and remaining in them as shelters. Such folk could have traveled extremely rapidly, as human migrations go, and quickly traversed all the available coastlines of the world, and explored the larger rivers. They did move on down to Australia perhaps 50,000 years ago; increasingly earlier indications are being found. Since Australia was not connected by land, they had to have been able to cross some open sea. Thus we know they had boats 50,000 years ago, despite having found no direct evidence of them. Similar boats could have taken them on up the east coast of Asia—all the way to Beringia, the land that once connected Siberia to Alaska—and on down the American west coast, and on to the east coast, by circling South America or crossing the narrow land in Central America and resuming water travel on the other side. No barrier of ice would have balked them, because they would simply have boated around it, bundled against the cold and drawing their food from the sea. Until they reached the warmer latitudes, and foraged again from the land as well It could have happened—but did it? The setting is the east coast of South America, 33,000 years ago.
“STORM,” JES SAID TERSELY. “GET to cover.”
Bry looked. She was right; clouds were looming ahead, piling high above land and sea. Clouds always seemed un-moving when looked at, but could expand alarmingly when not watched. He grabbed a paddle, and so did Jes. He was a child and she was a woman, but he knew how to use his paddle, and she was much like a man in physical structure, so they were able to help. They stroked from either side, balancing against each other, making it efficient.
Ned turned the rudder, causing the long boat to turn toward land. Sam hauled harder on the oars, driving it swiftly through the water. He had more arm power than the rest of them put together, and was the main propulsive force.
The other boat turned similarly. Dirk was rowing that, while Flo steered. He saw his sister Lin in the other boat, watching out for rocks. She was too small to be of much help with paddle or rudder, but she had sharp eyes and her clever fingers were excellent when weaving baskets or tying skirts. The other women and children stayed out of the way. None of them wanted to get swamped in a storm.
But they ran afoul of a bad current that tried to carry them back out to sea. This was unfamiliar territory, so they did not know the local problems. The water had its paths, just as did the land, and once they were known they were useful; but when they were strange, they were treacherous. Ordinarily they could simply work their way around the adverse current, but at the moment they couldn’t afford the time. The storm was advancing rapidly.
“There is a fair current behind us,” Ned said. “Turn; it’s our best chance.”
Sam lifted his oars, panting, while Bry and Jes paddled in opposite directions, causing the craft to turn about its center. The boat looked clumsy, but wasn’t; it had an outrigger to stabilize it, and a keel to steady its direction. They had traveled far in it, forging on northward toward new shores. Because the old shores to the south were losing their vitality, getting fished and foraged out. It was always necessary to move on after a time.
They started moving back, while Ned searched for a suitable emergency harbor. He called out the new direction, and the boat moved toward it, followed by her sister craft. But the storm came faster, and now its winds reached out and tried to suck them into the darkness of it. They pushed the craft aside, away from the proper course.
“Rock!” Ned cried in alarm.
It was on Bry’s side, almost submerged. He stuck out his paddle to push against it, to ease them by it without damage. All of them were versed in such emergency measures, because hidden rocks were a common threat to fragile boats. But a wave crashed into them from the other side, half swamping them, and the sudden force of the current jerked Bry’s paddle out of his hands. He was off-balance, his support suddenly gone. He screamed as he fell into the rough water.
His head went under before he got oriented and stroked for the surface. He was a good swimmer, of course; all the shore folk were. But a fierce current caught him and hauled him around beyond the rock and out to sea.
He had just one lucky break: he saw his paddle floating beside him. He grabbed it and hung on as the full fury of the sto
rm struck. He knew his family in the boat would not be able to help him; they had to make it to shore in a hurry, or all would perish. So he didn’t even concern himself with that. He simply clung to his paddle, knowing that it would help him float without wearing himself out. He was in trouble, but knew that the danger would be much worse if he lost his common sense. Right now he had to focus on staying afloat.
The storm beat down all around him. But he had been in rough water before. He relaxed, his arms locked around the paddle so that it kept his head lifted, and held his breath each time the waves got too bad. He could ride it out, because he mostly floated up and down with the waves, letting them carry him where they would. He hoped they would not take him impossibly far out to sea, because if he couldn’t see the land, he wouldn’t know where to swim. However, he did know that the land was toward the setting sun, so he might find it anyway.
There was a jolt, and pain in his side. He had been swept into a rock. He looked, and saw no blood in the swirling water, which was a relief. It was just a bruise, not a wound. It was not good to bleed in the water, because that attracted sharks and crocodiles. If one of them came, he would be quickly finished.
Could that be the realization of his curse? To get cut in the water, so that the predators of the sea would tear him apart? Bry tried not to think of that, but it was impossible not to.
As it happened, the storm soon passed, and daylight remained, and the land was not far distant. He looked around, hoping to spy a boat, but there was nothing. He didn’t know if they had made it to shore, or sunk, or been carried out of sight. But the boats were tough and stable; probably they were all right, somewhere. All he had to do was find them.
First he had to get to land, because it wasn’t safe in the water, now that it was calming. He oriented his paddle for swimming, and started toward the shore.
Ouch! His left side hurt the moment he tried to stroke with his arms. His ribs had been bashed in, and though it didn’t hurt much when he breathed shallowly, any greater effort quickly brought warning pain.
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