‘It wasn’t just you two,’ said Sara in a loud voice. ‘We all joined in.’
‘That’s true,’ Mary laughed. ‘Everyone’s been doing something. It helps to pass the time.’
I could see that the younger ones hadn’t been particularly thrown by telling them the whole story. If anything it had been the older group who had looked most worried. Maybe they’d worked out, like Ivy, that they didn’t need to get any older to be useful to the tribe.
‘We’ve found lots more things to eat,’ Emma said with a grin on her face. ‘Jenna’s been getting poor Matt to dig up roots all over the place.’
‘And loads of nuts,’ added Stevie.
Even as they talked about their new discoveries the questions still kept coming. I wandered out of the cave to make sure Sam and Ivy would give the answers. Looking back I heard:
‘So you killed the tiger thing?’ Stevie asked and stared at Sam with a mouth that had stayed open ever since we had returned.
‘Not exactly ...’ Sam tried to explain. I laughed as Sam’s descriptions became more fantastic – with Sam as the hero.
I went to sit on the rocks. I didn’t know until Jenna told me later that the rock I sat on had been named ‘Alvin’s rock’ by everyone else. The late afternoon sun turned the sky orange and I looked down the slope to the forest below stretching to the river. I found the view reassuring; it had become familiar in a strange place.
‘You found a way home then?’ Jenna joined me.
‘I think only Alice Tregarthur’s dad really knew that ...’
‘But he’s gone,’ interrupted Jenna. ‘Mary and I have also kept something back. We discovered another grave by the river ...’ she paused. ‘... near the cave where you found the old bones. Mary said she had a strange feeling there, so I went back with her and in the bushes we uncovered another grave and a cross with ‘Dad’ scratched on it.’
‘I suppose we should have expected that from the note Alice left about going back alone.’ I stared out over the trees. ‘That means there’s no one here who knows how to get back. But even if there was I think the earthquake changed things. David didn’t know anything about earthquakes. He said they just used the tunnel. I should have got more information from him.’
‘And your mum?’ Jenna sounded unsure.
‘Mum ...’ Neither of us knew how to talk about this. I picked up a stone and hurled it as hard as I could down in the trees. ‘Jen, I just don’t know what to believe.’
‘But the grave. Why would David invent that?’
‘I don’t know if he did. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to believe it.’
Jenna changed the subject: ‘So we’re stuck. Do you think Crow’s tribe will come after us here?’
‘Don’t think many of them survived. It was awful. I don’t think Crow and the rest of them really understood what was happening. It had been fixed by the older Tregarthur and the previous chief. It was almost like it had become a religion. Crow treated the cave with the drawings like a church. And when I read the animal names out in his language he was more than amazed – I think he thought it was some kind of magic.’
‘So we’re safe?’ Jenna didn’t sound safe.
‘Probably not. You think there’s something else?’
‘Yeah,’ she said and seemed to hesitate. ‘There must be other tribes. Ryan met up with one of them. I guess one of them will find us here eventually.’
‘That’s true. I see what you mean. They probably don’t do neighbourly visits. It’ll be just like the bad stuff back home. No one wants a visit from my family. What did Ivy say about evolution – the strongest win.’
‘And I don’t think they’ll care too much about women’s rights either,’ Jen tried to laugh but I could see that it probably wasn’t just Crow’s lot who wanted some new breeding stock.
Jenna moved on. ‘How long do you think David was here?’
‘He said about a year. It must have been quite a long time because he wasn’t wearing any of his own clothes, only caveman stuff and he looked pretty wild and rough.’
‘So if no one knows how to get out of here what’s going to become of us? Jenna prodded me again. I gave her a hug. I wasn’t sure how things were between us – having spent time apart, but I soon found out. It was ages before I had enough air to speak. Then I caught a smell of roasting meat, my stomach rumbled and I got up.
‘Don’t know what we can do with Demelza,’ Jenna said still sitting.
‘I don’t know how bad it was for her,’ I said sniffing the air wanting to see what there was to eat.
‘It might not only have been things she saw. You’ve no idea what happened in their camp.’ Jenna stood. ‘It’s just one scary thing after another, but come on. At least you can think about it after eating some of our best food. The rest have been waiting to do this for you.’
She led me back to the cave and the fire. Matt had roasted a large lump of deer. We had more to catch up with. I saw how Jack had developed Sam’s attempts at smoking meat; different roots had been discovered; stews had improved.
After a while Mary chipped in with her newest discovery. ‘What do you think this is?’ She held up what looked like a dirty lump of grease.
She received only rude answers. Mary took a burning stick from the fire; she lit her candle and showed off the blackening soot flame.
‘We need to work on the soot,’ she explained as she started coughing from the smoke and she blew it out. ‘But at least it should give us some light at night if we want it.’
‘I think if we melt the wax again then we can get out the bits from the fat. Cleaner fat should burn without making all that smoke,’ Jack added. I could see they were a team. I think Jenna was happy about that.
In the dark of the night, with no lighted candle yet, most of the rest went to their separate bed areas, covering themselves in skins. Zog curled up next to Lisa. Sam and Ivy, exhausted from the journey, soon slept on their rush beds. I couldn’t sleep. I could hear the others tossing and turning. What we had told them still fresh in their minds – worries that some of Crow’s tribe might have survived and would come after us. I escaped to my rock, sitting with a faint light from the moon and a glow from the fire in the cave. My mind too full of questions to be able to sleep. Was there something we’d missed?
‘Have you noticed anything?’ Jenna said, joining me again and sounding as though she would give me something more to worry about.
‘What? Apart from providing people for a new tribe even though we have our own Neanderthal baby in the cave? Then there’s a crazy girl in the corner, the two inventors in love at the back of the cave and the fact that we seem to be a zillion years from home.’ I paused. ‘No I guess I hadn’t noticed anything,’ I laughed. ‘But I suppose there’s something worse?’
There was.
‘It’s getting colder. I think winter is coming.’
Winter
-18-
‘Winter?’ I repeated. Winter to me meant Christmas. That time of family arguments when everyone came together and started shouting at each other, not that I had any family anymore.
‘I don’t know if I can cope with winter. What do I have to do?’ I said suddenly very tired.
‘Alvin ...’ Jenna paused, seeming to search for the right words. ‘You don’t have to do anything, just be ... well ... just be Alvin.’
‘Eh?’
Jenna tried to explain, ‘The rest of them sort of do everything for you. When you were away they kept saying ‘I hope Alvin likes this’ with every new thing. Now you’re back they feel safer – just look at them tomorrow.’
‘Jenna, you’re talking about me, Alvin. I only came on this trip to escape. Now you’re telling me I’m some sort of saint?’
‘No, but you’re the only one who can do it.’
&n
bsp; ‘How did it happen?’ I was really puzzled.
‘You were the only one who made decisions,’ Jenna said.
‘Jen,’ I said. ‘I can see through you. I know it was you that decided pretty much everything, you’re still doing it, you’re good at it. You’ve just set me up.’
‘No I didn’t,’ Jenna said with not enough force, and then after a pause: ‘Do you mind?’ and she pulled me to her.
‘Of course not. We wouldn’t have survived without you.’
‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t look up to you,’ she said smiling and she punched my shoulder.
‘Ow!’
I hadn’t thought about winter. On our journey to the sniffer cave it had felt cold, but we had been high up in the mountains.
Jenna and the rest had time to see the changes happening around the cave.
‘Sara was one of the first to notice the plants and the leaves were changing colour. Like autumn at home she said, but happening much faster,’ Jenna told me. ‘Even the days have become cooler and everyone has started to wrap themselves in deer skins at night. Jack puts more wood on the fire.’
‘So what do I do about winter?’
‘Say a few good things about what they do and it’ll get sorted.’ Jenna gave me another hug. We went into the cave. I’d forgotten how loudly Matt snored.
On the morning after our return I woke, late and quite comfortable on my pile of rushes with a deer skin blanket, and I heard and saw a scene of activity. Bizarrely, it reminded me of Crow’s camp. I sat up and watched the others.
Mary and Ivy were using bone needles. Sara and Stevie had just returned to the cave and chattered away to Emma and Zoe, I heard them say: ‘We’ve found some eggs!’
Demelza still looked zombie-like, but Zog had taken an interest in her and Lisa sat with them both, doing something I couldn’t see. Maybe Jenna was right when she’d said they felt safer. Despite being stuck in this strange place they looked almost happy. Even Ryan seemed to have recovered a bit, although he spent most of his time alone.
All this activity was making me forget about Mum and the promise. I could see Jenna really was getting everything together. It needed doing. Could we survive a winter. Easy back home just to nip down to the shops, but here?
What was going on? Next to me, by the fire, Jack and Matt were chiselling at long thick pieces of wood. I sat up, puzzled.
‘We found a better way to catch the deer ...’ Jack started to explain.
‘The bow and arrows didn’t work?’ I interrupted.
‘Couldn’t hit a thing,’ Jack said.
‘Me neither.’ I thought about the small animals that had run out of the sniffer cave. Now I remembered that I’d left the bow in Crow’s hut.
Jack went on, ‘Anyway, we’ve found an easier way of catching them. There’s a big hole on the other side of the river. We stick some sharp stakes at the bottom of the hole. Then we chase the deer into it. Not very nice, but it works.’
‘The stakes have to be very sharp,’ said Matt, testing the end with his finger.
‘If you put them in the fire for a bit, then you can get a sharper point.’ Jack showed me a dangerous looking blackened spike.
‘Want to come with us?’ said Matt, getting up.
‘Us too.’ Ivy and Sam appeared, sounding jealous that the hunting had been going quite well without them.
‘Jack!’ Mary said loudly.
So while we went on another deer hunt, Jack stayed with a list of tasks Mary had ready for him. Stevie caught us up at the waterfall and we crossed the river together. The barrier hadn’t been replaced.
‘Didn’t think we needed to after you came back,’ Matt said, sounding guilty.
I wondered if ‘Saint Alvin’ had to protect them by magic.
‘We’d better put it back ...’ I stopped, not wanting to say more.
‘What, in case Crow’s tribe come after us?’ Matt did it for me.
There hadn’t been any sign of the Stinkers, but Matt’s words made crossing the river an anxious trip again. Matt led us to the hole and secured his newly sharpened stake.
When we got back I heard Mary’s voice. ‘It’s just so difficult all the time. So many things to do – hunting, searching for food ... on and on ...’
Jack interrupted, ‘We wouldn’t keep doing those things unless Jenna kept us at it. I remember the days when someone said they couldn’t be bothered and the feeling spread. She almost threw them out of the cave.’
‘That’s responsibility for you,’ I said, finding Jenna who just snorted.
Mary hadn’t been listening and had more tears in her eyes. ‘We won’t survive winter.’
‘We certainly won’t survive if all we do is stand around and blub.’ Jenna made things happen. If anyone could make us survive winter then it was Jenna.
The colours of the leaves weren’t the only change that happened as winter approached.
‘The birds are going – each day the flock gets smaller,’ Ivy and Sam reported returning from collecting chuckerns.
‘Migration?’ suggested Jack. ‘Away from the cold?’
‘I wonder what Crow’s tribe did in winter.’ My words seemed to scare everyone.
‘Will they come after us?’ someone said.
‘I think we’d have seen them by now.’ I often looked out over the river wondering who was out there. Part of me wanted to go back to the grave. To find out what? I didn’t know. But if the weather got much worse it would be impossible to survive without shelter, we would be safer here in the cave.
‘Maybe they used to go somewhere to avoid winter,’ Stevie suggested.
‘Perhaps ...’ I stopped. ‘But I don’t think it would be any use us leaving here. When we went to the top of the mountain, we saw nothing but trees stretching for miles and miles. I don’t think we could find anywhere better. Anyway, I still feel we should stay here in case something happens in the cave. Maybe someone will get through from the other side of the tunnel. That’s obviously the only way back.’
‘I agree. We’d get lost,’ said Jenna. Then since we were all standing in silence and doing nothing, she turned to Ivy and Sam. ‘But if the chuckerns are leaving, you two better catch some and see if we can keep them alive?’
‘Yes Miss,’ whispered Ivy as they left and Sam stifled a laugh.
Jenna carried on organising every day. ‘Collect more wood ... catch more deer ... find more roots ... get on with you!’
If anyone complained she used my name: ‘Alvin wants you to ... collect more wood ... catch more deer ...’
And they did it, while I watched and helped and sometimes went hunting. We added to the wood pile and started another pile in one of the other caves. Ivy and Sam caught chuckerns and brought them back alive. They’d tried to catch some of the birds that laid eggs. The egg-laying birds were further away from the main flock. Zach had missed them.
‘He would have clubbed them all to death.’ Sam’s comment met silence as his words brought back memories of the death of Trog. I still wondered if killing Trog counted as murder, as Stevie had once asked. Zog grew bigger every day. She had never seemed to register her mother’s death. What would she be like as she grew up? Would she ever be able to talk? Would she want to learn what happened to her mother?
Jack, Sara and Emma tried to make a cage for the chuckerns using branches and creepers but the chuckerns kept escaping. Eventually they worked out that if they tied their legs together the birds couldn’t escape.
‘You’ll have to feed them,’ Jenna pointed out.
So Ivy and Sam were sent to search the river bank to see what the birds ate and collected up armfuls of rushes, covered in seeds. Jenna said we needed more so they collected more. The birds went into another of the small caves.
Any fru
it soon became rotten until Mary discovered it could be preserved by drying it in the sun or, as the sunlight became cooler, on stones heated in the fire.
‘They taste quite good – a bit like raisins.’ Jenna tried them. ‘You three!’ She stood over the three from the junior school. ‘Get out and collect as much fruit as you can.’
‘And nuts as well,’ she shouted as they left. Jenna was getting fiercer.
‘We are nuts,’ Stevie shouted back, but they did what she said.
We caught and killed a few more deer to smoke. Jack and Sam had worked out an easier way to smoke meat. But the deer had started to leave and soon there were none on the plain.
‘How about the fish?’ I asked.
‘Can’t seem to catch them. We tried a spear but they’re too fast. Might try using a bone hook.’ Jack seemed to spend all his time thinking like this, planning new things to help us survive.
Jenna looked out of the cave. ‘We need to cover the entrance, otherwise the rain and wind will get in. Matt! Where are you?’
Everyone helped Matt to tie branches together and cover them with deer hides.
Demelza stayed the same. Jenna put her back on pounding work. They’d found a lot more grain on the other side of the river. Demelza ground more each day, making a powdery flour. Mary stored the flour in her pottery jars.
One day, Lisa couldn’t find Zog and searched everywhere before hearing her whimpering at the back of the cave. Zog had managed to slip into a hole behind a rock.
‘Alvin, Matt – help!’ Lisa cried out and we rushed over to her.
Jenna watched as we heaved at a large boulder trapping Zog in the hole.
‘I didn’t know that hole was there.’ Jenna walked over and looked into the space that appeared after the rock had been moved. She threw in a small stone and after several seconds we heard the stone plop into water below.
Tregarthur's Promise Page 16
