by Don Dewey
“Normally it’s simply a matter of setting an internal clock. It’s as natural to us as the ability to wake at a certain time is for those people who can do it, and we ‘program’ ourselves in a way, as they do, to wake after a certain length of time. It’s far from precise, and we really don’t know exactly how it’s done. I think each of us, the first time, thought we were really letting ourselves die. Insects and the bacteria that send the dead back to dust and dirt seem to avoid us in that state; why, I don’t really know, even now. I do know that the first time I “skipped,” I did think I would die, but I also couldn’t bear to give up all my wealth, so I took some with me. Let’s face it Kenneth, money is a form of score keeping in this world. I have a high score. Think of the old Pharaohs hiding their wealth in their tombs. I don’t really think they intended to take it into the afterlife; it was just a way to hang onto what was theirs. I suppose they hoped that by doing so it wouldn’t become the property of someone else.
“But Max arose, gathered his things, his wealth, and left the cave.
“Gheret did the same thing actually, and his is a very interesting story, so I believe I’ll share the next step of his journey before I give you the other side, as it were, because there are very definitely two sides to us.”
Chapter 8
Gheret’s Return
Shaking himself awake, Gheret took stock of his surroundings, and slowly tried to rise. It was like rising from being seated too long in the same position, but much more intense. He really thought he was finally dead, after far more years than a man should live. But he was pretty sure a dead man shouldn’t be breathing, or feeling so cold. Especially he shouldn’t be hungry, and Gheret was very hungry.
This was the first time Gheret had slept the long sleep of a “skip,” and he was as surprised as anyone else would have been, had they still been alive to see him. He had stayed with his first people for many generations as he should have aged, but didn’t. In that setting, little attention was given to such a life. Life spans were so short as to make it problematic to track anyone’s length of years. In their minds, he just made it from their generation to the next. There was no record-keeping except stories, and nobody would likely challenge him anyway. In reality he had been with them for many hundreds of years, and helped shape their tribe and culture from the crudest of beginnings to what it was today. But he hadn’t done this particular thing before.
He was pretty obviously alive, but also hungry, cold, and uncomfortably stiff. After lying there awake for awhile, he struggled upright and staggered from the caves, to a far different scene than he’d left. The forest was thinner and it was much warmer than he remembered for the season when he entered the cave. This area had always been warm, but not like this. He decided then and there that he would live in a cold climate, and start over. And so he did.
His travels took decades, but then, he had the years in which to do it. That journey also included additional long skips, one near a sweet water lake as big as an ocean. He stood and just stared out at it, amazed at the immensity of the vast lake, and its lack of salt.
He eventually ended in an upper western arm of the North American continent, where there was snow and cold aplenty, and game, and fewer people than in the lands he’d traveled to get there. The people, who called themselves Inuit, were welcoming and friendly. He stayed with a small tribe while he learned their language and ways. They were patient people, and had learned how to survive in a harsh environment. He liked them, and he liked their fortitude. Particularly he liked the igloos he examined as they visited tribes much further north. It sparked an engineering mind-set he hadn’t been aware of in himself. He learned their way with the spear, the bow and the knife, and they found that he had skills to teach them as well. They were intuitive people, and intelligent. It didn’t take them long to realize that he was different in ways other than his looks. He had no epicanthic folds, the uniquely angled eyes shared by some races, and he was taller than the tallest of them. His strength was a wonder to his new people. They had many hunters, but none with his natural strength and prowess.
What set him apart most was his fearlessness and ability to do nearly anything he attempted. He decided to hunt one of the great bear of their area, which stood six feet taller than he was when on its hind legs. He insisted on going alone, and was gone far too long. They had long since given him up for dead. But then he returned, hauling a great brown hide. The scars on his back and sides were still healing. The elders of the tribe knew he shouldn’t have survived that hunt, but the fact that he did made him not just a great warrior, but a wonderful addition to the tribe. No other individual could provide food and safety for the tribe like Gheret.
***
Eventually he married one of the tribe. At the age of becoming a woman, just 14 years, Annu’e was lovely, with raven hair and smooth skin, darker than his own. Her eyes too were dark, and she captured his heart with them. She was a tiny thing, standing four feet seven inches tall, weighing maybe ninety pounds.
Through their years together they eventually had three children, all boys. He was somehow surprised at that, because they didn’t have a child for nearly ten years. Then the boys came, one each year. Of all the children he was aware of who had sprung from his seed, none were girls. He filed that away to give it further thought at another time. These three sons were each one year apart, and he taught them great skills. At eleven, twelve, and thirteen they were skilled trackers, and could follow an arctic hare, nearly invisible in the snow, and get close enough to take it without a bow.
As they grew in years, they also gained in strength, skill, and of course the desire to be men. That winter Gheret took them, all three of them, on the great hunt. His farewell to his wife was the same as always: he expressed his love and told her if he did not get back that she should not mourn long, and be glad for the time they had together, and for their sons.
His oldest son, Achar, was the biggest, nearly as large as a grown man. He was arrogant and fairly mean spirited, but obedient to his father and respectful to his mother, which was about all Gheret required from them. Achar wasn’t particularly interesting as a person. Even as they readied the final preparations for the hunt, Achar was trying to bully An’Kahar. “Just carry it!”
“Carry it yourself, you great moose!” An’Kahar yelled back.
Achar attempted a back hand swing at his smaller, more nimble brother, who dodged him and kicked a foot from beneath him. Achar fell, cursing An’Kahar.
His middle son, Luntar, was a good boy, adequate in all that he did, and intelligent. While being adequate, Luntar was not particularly interesting either. As he walked by his feuding brothers, Luntar whacked An’Kahar on the side of his head, stunning him and sending him to the ground. He kept walking toward their sled, ignoring both his brothers.
An’Kahar was the youngest. Gheret watched as his son got to his feet. Now that boy is interesting. He was very intelligent, scheming and manipulative. He could get his older brothers to do most anything for him, convincing them through some odd or twisted logic that they should do his work for him. As An’Kahar started toward Achar to keep the fight going, Gheret stopped the quarrel. “Enough! To the sled, now!” Obediently the boys headed out.
Together they traveled for two days, camping in the dry, sheltered areas under the great pines, out of the snow. When they were just hours from the prey, Gheret sat them down and explained his plan and their parts in it. “You, Achar, and you Luntar, will make the kills. You will lie in the snow as I’ve taught you, with lances just under the powdery snow. When the beast comes at you, wait till it’s almost on you, get to your knees, brace your spear on the ground and let it impale itself. You each know how to do this from all the practicing.”
An’Kahar was incensed and broke into the explanation. “But father, I’m skilled and can…” He got nothing else out because his father sent him flying with one back handed blow. There was no explanation, no warmth or comfort following that painful strike. Gher
et continued as though there had been no interruption, although Achar and Luntar cast amused glances at their brother.
“You, An’Kahar, will go far around them and then drive them to us. Don’t presume to tell me how this shall be. I’m the last line, in case we don’t get two as they come by. But I’m sure you boys will make your kills.” With a curt wave of his arm he sent his youngest boy to circle around behind the prey.
An’Kahar, thin, wiry, and cunning, took his time circling around behind the herd. His anger and resentment after his father had struck him was slowing his steps. He was ashamed before his brothers, and in some pain as well, although he shook that off as they’d all learned to do. Finally, hours later, he’d circled in a wide path, and the caribou were just ahead, between him and his family. He took out the metal pieces that were connected by twine, and his spear. He raised himself up and challenged the great beasts with a roar, racing toward them and screaming at the top of his lungs, all the while shaking the string of metals together to make a loud and scary noise, at least to the brutish caribou. They were magnificent creatures, any of which could have crushed this boy with their great antlers. But startled, they yielded to their flight reflex. Off they ran at full speed, An’Kahar at their haunches, screaming and waving.
In mere minutes the distance that had taken him hours to carefully traverse were eaten up, and the caribou were racing directly toward Gheret. His older sons were invisible, hidden in the snow, lances ready.
Achar was first, and rose up perfectly, impaling the rushing beast on his long lance. The weight and momentum of the animal meant that it couldn’t be stopped with the lance, only killed. As it died with its great heart pierced, it nearly crushed Achar as it fell on the lance at the place Achar had just vacated. His move was practically perfect in that he held the lance until the heart was pierced, but moved so quickly after that was accomplished that the beast dropped next to him and not on him. Even a successful kill could leave a hunter maimed.
Luntar however, was not so smooth. He jumped from the snow late, and his lance was not set firmly at the base, so the speeding caribou was only dealt a glancing blow with the lance, which didn’t deliver even a crippling blow, let alone a deadly one. Luntar was thrown to the side, hurting his left leg as he hit. The maddened caribou rushed on, mindless now in its fear and panic, Luntar’s lance hurting it as it bobbed and held to the beast with several inches of the blade in its muscle. Unfortunately the caribou ran near Gheret, but not into his lance. Gheret leaped up, hurled his heavy lance at the stampeding caribou, causing it to stumble as the spear hit. With several lifetimes of skill, Gheret chased the great beast, leaped on its back and held onto its broad antlers. Anchoring himself with one arm, he drove his knife into the thick neck repeatedly, and as the beast dropped on its side, he had his knife at its throat, ready to finish it. But the mighty heart of the caribou was already beating its last, and the bellows of its great lungs released their last gust of warm breath.
An’Kahar, still running, stopped at Luntar and accused him of the hunting disaster. “You missed and you put our lives at risk!”
“You’re fine An’Kahar, just back off!” answered his angry brother.
“We could have lost the prey, all because of you!” An’Kahar wouldn’t let it go. Being both arrogant and now defensive, Luntar struck An’Kahar’s face, holding his knife in his other hand. With no hesitation and with great skill An’Kahar retaliated by smoothly slipping his own knife into his brother’s side, deeply enough to open an artery that even that healthy young body couldn’t survive. Luntar dropped, the snow around him turning bright red. As he toppled face forward, he died with a confused, still not sure what had happened.
An’Kahar knelt by his now dead brother and cleaned his knife on the edge of his brother’s coat. He silently waited for his father to do whatever it was he would do. Against him An’Kahar knew he had no chance. So he waited, his anger at his brother fading and being replaced with a bit of horror at what he’d done.
Gheret stepped to him, lifted him to his feet, and struck him a blow that An’Kahar would never forget, no matter how long he lived. He spun across the snow, bleeding from his mouth, sure that his teeth were coming out, almost blind from the force of the blow. Yet he came to his knees with knife in hand, prepared to sell his life dearly, even if that price was his father. Gheret came to him, knelt before him, and said in a quiet voice, “My son, was your brother no more than the animals we killed, that you’d take his life so quickly? Answer me!”
An’Kahar considered his answer before he spoke, knowing his life would be forfeit if that was what his father chose. His words were those of a defensive boy, sorry for what he’d done but refusing to admit it. “Father, he was weak, missed his mark, and then attacked me. It was my right to do as I did. I’ll miss my brother, but I don’t regret the choice I made.”
“An’Kahar, don’t fear me. What you have done, you’ve done. If Luntar had been more of a man, he could have killed you. Had he been more aware of what he was doing, he would at least still be alive now. But he was not, and you acted as he acted. I assign no blame here; there is only hurt. I grieve at his loss, but am proud of your prowess. We’ll care for his body, and we will have to haul his part of the hunt with us now.” With an extended hand, he took his youngest son’s hand and lifted him to his feet.
As they prepared Luntar for his crossing to the next life, or so his mother believed, Gheret gave thought to his sons. He thought about his surviving two sons: they must be hard and determined to deserve life, and the two he had left were all of that. After they were done preparing Luntar’s body, they had to prepare the caribou meat and hides for the journey home. Then they camped and turned in. A troubled young An’Kahar tossed and turned, but never fell asleep.
It was a sad homecoming. Gheret had to tell his wife, Annu’e, of Luntar’s death, and she took it hard. Life went on, however, and they adjusted. In this frozen land, life was more often hard than not. She was made of firm stuff, this little woman he loved, and would be fine. He hadn’t told her of An’Kahar’s actions, only that Luntar had fallen in the hunt. It was not unusual for a young man, or one of any age actually, to fall to the prey. He didn’t want her to hate An’Kahar, who was a product of this harsh place.
Chapter 9
Gheret’s Fall
Gheret found himself growing closer to his sons. Losing one made the others more precious in his eyes. Achar was a bit distant, and closed off. By nature he was independent and tended to be a loner. An’Kahar however, ironically the one who cost Gheret his other son, was warmly affectionate and soaked up his father’s love at every opportunity.
Gheret liked his life in this cold, barren wilderness. He liked the challenge, the struggle to show that he deserved to live. His sons had grown into fine men, taken wives, and had children of their own now. Gheret doubted they’d live as he had, evidenced by Luntar’s death. Since one was already dead, it was likely they were all normal, and would live a few decades and then die. His wife Annu’e was well up in years, as the tribe reckoned years, and he knew that soon he must do something about that. Yet he still hunted like a young man, and was the most respected and feared man in not just the tribe, but in all of the people when the tribes gathered. He still went on the great hunt for many days, and many miles. He could still pull a sled with a caribou carcass in it for days to return home. And because he could, he continued to go on his wolf hunt, alone, every couple of years. As he left the last time, he gave his aging wife a hug and assurances of his love as he had so many times before. He spoke of their sons and how proud they had made him. He knew that when he returned he must arrange for a new life for himself in another tribe, or elsewhere. He couldn’t live and longer among his adopted people, always the same age. Though the idea of watching his wife’s life slowly end was distasteful to him, he knew he wanted to stay with her, but could not. He would still be himself, unaged, and known by the oldest of the tribe for too long.
He took a
long route to his hunt, stopping by the homes of Achar and An’Kahar. He said his farewells to Achar and his family, and the visit was as he expected. It was just a visit.
At his youngest son’s home, however, An’Kahar grabbed Gheret in a hug and didn’t seem to want to let go. Though sometimes misplaced, An’Kahar had great passion.
After leaving An’Kahar’s family, Gheret hiked many, many miles, enjoying the solitude of the mountains and the snow. Ever since he had emerged from his long sleep he’d noticed that his interest, his zeal for life, was strong. He could barely recall why he’d gone off to die. On this long and arduous hunt an occasional great cat would track him, but he was too skilled to be taken: he was the hunter, not the prey. The cold was more intense than he’d ever experienced before. He laughed when he relieved himself, for his water went from a steaming stream to hitting the ground as a solid and hard ice a moment later. As impervious as he seemed to be to weather, this chill settled into his bones.
The wolves hunted in packs, but he hunted alone. He knew that they could take his life and divide his body between them as the spoils of the fight, but only if he weren’t sharp. It was that kind of challenge that helped him savor life. So he tracked the pack for days, finding remains of their kills, eating little himself, and being very, very careful.
