by Doug Kelly
Using the thin rope for the string of birds he already wore, Aton wrapped it around the two dead turkeys’ feet, and hung the string on his neck, wearing them across his shoulders like a feathery shawl. The sun was getting lower, so they judged it best to return to their dwelling. Toward evening, thoroughly tired because of their excursion, they arrived back at the rock shelter. Aton inspected the ground for fresh paw prints or any sign of the cougar’s presence that had been impressed into the dirt since they had left to follow the stream in search of game, but he found none. He entered the shelter with their day’s catch of fowl.
Hauk went to gather clover along the stream. After he filled the reed basket, he stood motionless by the bridge, his arms crossed, gazing over the lake. The horizon was lost toward the west in a thick bank of black clouds that were spreading rapidly. The wind was already strong, and increased with the sun’s descent. The whole sky appeared threatening, and the first symptoms of a violent storm were clearly visible.
Inside their cave, a good fire crackled beside the hearth. Aton had just thrown on an armful of dry wood, and the flames cast a bright light into the darkest corners. Rather than wait for Hauk to return from the stream, he immediately began to prepare a meal. They both needed something solid and warm to eat, because they needed to increase their strength for the impending journey out of this wilderness. He kept the string of little birds for the next day, but he plucked the turkeys, which he skewered to sticks, and roasted them over the blazing fire.
With a mound of fresh clover held securely in his reed basket, Hauk rushed back inside to escape the bad weather, and he dumped the pecans from his pockets onto the ground beside a flat stone, on which he intended to crack the nuts open later that evening. Some large raindrops had fallen on him as he had run for shelter, so he was slightly wet. Bad weather had arrived. A furious gale blew from the west. The lake roared as it slapped the beach. The storm dashed the heavy rain into particles like dust. Eddies of wind whirled and gusts from this maelstrom lashed the stream that ran near their abode. The storm pushed the smoke from the campfire back through the opening, filling the interior.
Therefore, as the birds cooked, Aton let the fire die down, and only preserved a few glowing embers buried under the ashes to keep drying the meat, changing it to jerky for their trip to the dormant volcano. The turkey constituted the only hot item on the menu that evening. They ate the clover raw, by the handfuls. The long excursion had rendered them very hungry, so they devoured it with immeasurable contentment, and considered it excellent. They went to rest where they had fallen asleep the night before, but this time only with glowing embers instead of bright and warm, yellow flames. Outside, as the night advanced, the tempest also increased in strength. The wind howled around their cave’s opening with each terrible gust. After a loud crack of thunder, Hauk rose and went to the entrance of their rock home. There was not much to see other than a terrible storm, so he returned to the fire, where the embers glowed beneath the ashes.
Regardless of the storm’s fury, Aton had fallen asleep quickly. Anxiety kept Hauk awake. Worrying about the storm and hungry cougars that prowled at night, he tossed around restlessly on his sandy bed. Now and then, his eyes, heavy with fatigue, closed for an instant, but later that night, a sudden frightful noise reopened them almost immediately.
“Listen, Aton, listen! You need to wake up!”
Aton, still groggy, strained his ears, but he could hear no noises beyond those caused by the storm. “It’s the wind.”
“No. I thought I heard a cry for help.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I know what I heard.”
“You’re tired and your ears are playing tricks on you. Go to back sleep.” Aton rolled over and turned away from Hauk, but a short moment later, they both heard the unmistakable beat of drums. Aton, instantly after hearing the steady beat, sat bolt upright, eyes as wide as dinner plates.
“Hear that, Aton? I wasn’t dreaming.”
“Maybe it’s just the wind,” he suggested, reluctantly. “You heard a cry for help?”
“And I heard a scream.”
Aton swallowed the knot in his throat and felt it travel all the way to his stomach. “Get your sword. We need to see what’s out there.”
“That might not be a good idea.”
“We need to find out who is out there before they find us.”
“What about the cougar?”
“Cougars don’t scream or beat drums. Get your sword.”
Hauk complied; he attached his sheathed sword to his belt, and he watched Aton get his club instead of his bow.
“A club?”
“I can’t get my bow wet. Besides, it’s dark. I couldn’t see good enough to shoot anyway.”
They had great difficulty walking after leaving their cave. They crossed the wet, slippery logs of the bridge, and it was easy to see how much higher the water had risen, almost touching it. The wind drove them back, but they succeeded after exerting great effort against the squall, and could only remain standing by leaning against each other. They looked around, but did not speak. The darkness was intense. The lake, the sky, and the land were all mingled in one black mass. Not a speck of light was visible. They remained there for a few minutes, overwhelmed by the wind, and drenched by the rain. The storm was violent, and was perhaps at its height that very moment. Not a single ray of light from the moon pierced through the clouds.
Gradually, the rain subsided, but the wind was terrific. The gale had shifted, now blowing from the south, and consequently into their faces. They sometimes went slower than they liked, and had some difficulty in keeping their feet, but their inherent tenacity gave them strength enough to continue through the dense woods. They pushed against the wind and found their way into the depths of the dark forest, Aton in the lead. Hauk thought he saw a cougar in every dark place; the shadowy forest deeply troubled him. They went blindly to the south, away from their shelter, as the only direction they thought possible to have been where they had heard the sound of humans. The drums had ceased long ago, and neither of them heard anything other than the stiff wind. They had walked aimlessly to the south and arrived at the lakeshore, so they decided to turn to their right and go back home, following the beach. The wind was dying. The storm was ceasing. The last low mutterings of the thunder had died away in the west. Rain stopped falling, but clouds still obscured the sky.
After emerging from the forest, and while plodding along the beach to get back to shelter, it was obvious that the clouds had slightly risen, and the wind, slower and absent of rain, was very warm. They could see that day was about to break. High above them, where the fog was less thick, gray shades bordered the clouds. Under an opaque belt of receding darkness in the early morning sky, a luminous line clearly traced the horizon. As they continued walking home on the empty beach, on the right, they could see parts of the coast begin to illuminate with the morning sun. After daybreak, the clouds lifted rapidly. Aton and Hauk had gone farther than they had ever traveled in this direction, and could now just see the cliff near their temporary home come into view. Their cave was waiting for them to the north. They were following a very flat shore bounded by a reef of rocks, whose tops scarcely emerged from the lake, because they were in deep water. On the right, the country appeared to be one vast extent of sandy fields, bristling with thistles and their purple flowers. The shore had offered no resistance to the stormy waves of the lake. The scruffy land next to it had only a few trees, inclined in the direction of the prevailing winds, their branches projecting in that direction, too. Beyond this was the seemingly endless border of the forest.
After agreeing that they would never solve the source of the mysterious noises, they quickened their pace. All they wanted to do now was get home and rest. It seemed to them that their fatigue was never ending. With the exception of a boulder ahead of them on the beach, the shoreline was monotonous.
Just as they passed that large gray rock, a long moan cam
e from behind it. They ran around it from opposite sides. A naked man, skin as pale as the sand, with long braided hair and beard, had leaned against the rock for shelter from the storm, and he had curled in the fetal position, with his back to the boulder, and was lying on his side, hands bound together with a long, thin strip of leather around his wrists. His eyes remained closed, and he moaned deliriously again. Aton knelt and touched the man on the shoulder. The bound man flinched, but did not utter a word. Aton tried to roll him onto his back, and the man winced with pain and seemed to try to scream, but he only emitted garbled noises. Then Aton saw that the captive had the shaft of an arrow projecting from his back. Apparently, he had lost a lot of blood, and one lung had collapsed, making it difficult for him to breathe. Hauk cut the man’s bindings, and his arms fell limply. Aton propped up the stranger by firmly holding onto his shoulders and torso. From this position and in the increasing light of day, Aton could see the great extent of bruising around the man’s neck, under his long black beard, salted with strands of gray hair. The marks on his throat indicated that his abductors had choked him, and that the effect of a violent constriction around his neck, from brutal hands or rope, had apparently halted his ability to speak.
“Get him a handful of water,” commanded Aton. “His lips are dry and cracked.”
Hauk, at his friend’s request, ran to the lake for water. He went knee deep into the lapping waves, and with cupped hands, scooped up as much as he could. Aton tilted the man’s head backward so that Hauk could pour into the man’s mouth what had not spilled during his jaunt back to the boulder. The cold water produced an almost immediate effect. The injured man’s chest heaved and he seemed to try to speak as his eyelids snapped open, but his eyeballs had already rolled back, revealing just the white sclera. In the shadow of the boulder, his eyes had quickly opened, appearing like two flashes of sheet lightning on the dark horizon, before collapsing shut. His body went limp. Aton felt for a heartbeat, but there was none. Aton’s hand did not rise and fall on the corpse’s silent chest, because the man was dead. Satisfied that he held a dead body, Aton let go of the torso, and the corpse fell over, so he removed the arrow to inspect its construction. At the end of the reed shaft was an arrowhead made from chipped flint. Fish-bladder glue covered twisted wrappings of sinew, securing the arrowhead’s stem to the reed shaft. They went back to their cave with a very clear understanding that they were not alone.
CHAPTER TEN
Aton and Hauk slumbered past the morning hours, because the nightlong trek through the woods and the return trip up the beach to their cave had exhausted them. Hauk woke with the noon sun. Like usual, he was the first to wake, although it was already midday. They had spent the night searching for the source of the mysterious noises, and had concluded with finding a dying man who could not speak, but he did not have to say a word for them to understand the gravity of their situation. On their walk back to their rock shelter earlier that morning, Aton had confessed that they could be in close proximity to cannibals. This was his fear, and because of this fear, he did not want to delay collecting a supply of food and climbing to the peak of the dead volcano. From the summit, they would scan the landscape and determine where they were so they could conclude the direction in which they should travel to leave this endless wilderness. It would be foolish to commence a trek into the unknown interior just yet. With no boat or horses, they would have to walk their way out of this jungle.
They needed to find a city or at least a village where they could establish themselves and start new lives with new identities. They would have to reinvent themselves, and now both had the resources to buy new lives. They could start over, but they would have to escape this place first. Therefore, the best idea that Aton could summon was to hike to the top of the dormant volcano, and look around for any indication of human inhabitation, at least a village, a road, even just a simple trail. All they needed was to see something that showed in which direction they should go; any hint would do. Hauk agreed to the plan and suggested that they should commence that journey after another hunt for meat, a quest for delicious flesh, so that they could dry it into jerky for their trip out of this great forest bordering the lake.
Hauk clumsily dropped an armful of dry wood onto last night’s glowing embers. A bright flame illuminated the hollow interior of their stone home, and Aton woke.
“What time of day is it?” asked Aton.
With a quick glance at the bright light outside their cave, Hauk replied, “By the length of the shadows, I guess high noon.”
Not quite mentally focused yet, Aton tried to rub the tiredness from his face, but after rolling around on the sandy floor during his sleep, fine silt and sand had covered his hands. As he rubbed his eye sockets with his dirty hands while trying to wake himself, he accidently massaged gritty filth into his eyes, stinging them. He cursed aloud and stood, hitting his head on the rock ceiling, and cursed again while Hauk tried not to chuckle at his clumsiness.
“That’s not a good way to start the day, my friend.”
Aton rubbed the throbbing bump on his head as he took a few deep breaths to clear his mind. He usually did not sleep that far back in the cave, under the lower ceiling, but because he had been extremely tired from their recent, fatiguing, all-night adventure, he had slept where he had reclined.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Aton, ready to change the subject. “We need to get going and find more food if we want to get out of here.”
Before leaving, they ate some of the dried turkey and pecans, and washed it all down with a little fresh water, drawn from the river in an immense shell. This time, the two hunters, instead of following the course of the river, plunged straight into the heart of the forest. The monotony of the trees appeared the same as the previous day, but less threatening than during their nighttime excursion.
They went into a clearing where the remnants of burned trees littered the ground. Time and the elements had worn away the charred remains, and termites had helped nature reclaim the trees that had died but had not burned. Black and rotten stumps pocked this void in the woods, which was crisscrossed with charred and decomposing logs. It appeared that this section of the forest had suffered from a raging fire, only as long ago as it had taken some saplings to emerge from the ground to the height of a man. Here, the grass was easy to walk through. Then the open space passed; the undergrowth thickened again, and the woods became almost impenetrable.
Without any beaten track, it was difficult enough to find the way among the groups of trees. They marked their trail by breaking off branches with their clubs so that they might recognize their path home. Aton thought he might have been wrong not to follow the stream, as they had done on their previous outing in search of food, because after walking part of the afternoon, they had not seen any game. Even the little birds were invisible from the ground while they hid in the treetops. He thought they might have to return to the marshy part of the forest, where they had snared the turkeys with string made from twisted plant fibers. On second thought, where they had caught the turkeys was too far from this location. The sun was getting lower, so they decided to head back to the cave, following their trail of bent and broken tree branches. At the fringe of the clearing, near the location of the old forest fire, they found a thicket of blackberry bushes, covered with the first of the season’s dark and juicy berries, ready for picking. Having seen this delicious treat, they thrashed their way through the grass and suffered countless scratches to their forearms as they picked the sweet fruit. After they had their fill, they sat in the grass and rested. Now they were thirsty and regretted once more that they had ventured away from such an easy source of fresh water.
Aton’s eyes were closed, and he was tired. Both of them were ready to take a nap when he heard grunting and rustling in the tall grass on the other side of the clearing. Aton’s eyes snapped open; with a finger to his lips, he cautioned Hauk to be silent, and his friend understood. Aton nocked an arrow. When crouched, the grass came to
the level of their eyes. They stayed low and observed the moving weeds. Hauk quietly put his club down, and was ready to quickly unsheathe his sword. To their relief and delight, it was a feral hog. For a moment, they had feared it was a cannibal crawling through the weeds, tracking them. Hauk let go of the sword and wrapped his hand around the wooden club as if he were shaking hands with an old friend. He could taste the pork as he waited here with his lips slightly parted. Although he was very thirsty and his mouth had felt extremely dry, hunger made the saliva flow from the corners of his cracked lips. He whispered the words, “Shoot it,” to Aton, and encouragingly, but gently, pushed him toward a bountiful supply of meat on four hooves waiting for an arrow to bring it down. Aton delayed launching an arrow until the hog was intensely rooting into the dirt, which was still soft from the previous night’s rain. At the proper distance, he raised the bow, bent it, and a second after he released the arrow, it penetrated behind the shoulder blade, easily piercing the thick, dark, bristled hide. The boar bolted away with a screech, awkwardly colliding into the weathered, charred remnants of a tree trunk. Hauk leaped his way over clumps of tall grass to the injured creature and hit it five times on the skull before it completely collapsed. Aton retrieved his arrow to use on another hunt.
