Girl had an odd thought: Maybe Big Mother was looking after her. She dismissed it right away. As Big Mother always said, the dead can’t see a body from the other side of the dirt. But there was a feeling that lingered. Maybe because she could no longer feel her mother in sleep, she needed to feel connected when she was awake.
Wildcat came up, rubbed against Girl’s legs, and squinted his eyes to ask for meat. His timing was always perfect. She laughed and gave him a large chunk. His pupils dilated at the size. Still wary of the many pairs of feet belonging to the family that had kicked him over the years, he snatched it and darted off to eat under the cover of brush.
Soon, Wildcat had finished eating and was back at the woodpile by the hearth hoping to catch a red squirrel. Though Girl was sure he registered the absence of bodies, nothing changed his instincts. He approached this day exactly as he had the one before.
It was only then that Girl thought about the one body that was still in the hut, Runt. She climbed back up and pushed aside the flap of hide that hung over the door. For a minute, she couldn’t see in the dark and could only hear the boy’s breath. After a restless night, he was still sleeping off the terrors of the day before. He had a funny way of sleeping: on his stomach with his legs pulled up so that his bum waved in the air. She had never seen a child sleep this odd way. Slowly her eyes adjusted, and she could make out the edges of his body. His back looked soft and small. His skin was surprisingly bare; only the finest of hairs were visible in a crack of light from the door. She wondered if more hair would grow in along his back. For his sake and the lovers he might want to attract later on, she hoped it would.
Runt sighed in sleep. She hadn’t given too much thought to the boy before beyond the practical steps of caring for him. She had taken part in raising him, the way they all did. Whoever was cooking would make sure he ate; whoever was sleeping would pull him in; they would all tuck him somewhere safe while they went hunting and make sure he got instruction through the year. The family knew that their children were different from the babies of the beasts around them. While the badgers could leave a baby in the nest while they went to forage for food, a child of the family could rarely be left unattended. The red deer’s fawn could walk within hours of birth, whereas the family had to strap a baby to someone’s back for more than a year. It was a lot of work to raise such slow-growing offspring, but the effort they put in eventually came to good. Now, though, there were no other hands to care for Runt. It was all on Girl’s back.
Girl only foggily remembered the day Runt had been found wandering by the river at the meeting place. None of them could guess whom he belonged to. The family who brought him lived far up one of the forks of the river. They pointed back to show they had found him on the way. Perhaps he had been traveling with an adult who was taken by some kind of disease, beast, or misfortune. Big Mother had searched and sniffed as best she could. She never found any clue.
Runt’s limbs were oddly slim. His chest was as narrow as a leg. Girl had got more used to his looks, but at first she’d worried that his bulging eyeballs might pop out of his head. His forehead was flat and his chin protruding. With such poor looks and physique, she doubted that he would ever mate. As he grew, he made up for his weakness by his willingness to work. Though he seemed slow to develop, when he figured out a task, he would take it on. This was the reason he was fed by the family. Runt’s desire to be useful had kept him alive.
The boy sighed again and lowered his bottom down to the hide on which he slept. Girl heard it then—a shallow rattle like beans that had dried in a pod. She froze on the spot. It was the unmistakable rattle of a snake. Waiting, she scanned the dim hut to see where it was. If she stepped on the long body, it would bite.
The crisp mornings meant it was a dangerous time of year for snake encounters. The snake bodies cooled overnight and it was only the touch of later morning sun that woke them. Once, when Girl and Him were small, Him had found a poisonous snake with a rattle, and he took it for dead because it was so still. He had wrapped it around his neck, pretended it was twine to tie his toy spear, and kissed its scaly nose. When he tired of it, he dropped the long body on a rock. It soon warmed. Girl remembered watching Him’s jaw go slack as the warmed snake slithered off into the brush.
But Girl’s problem was that this snake had woken up—the rattling sound told her as much. Slowly, she pushed aside the flap of the hide for more light. For all she knew, the snake could be curled up by her own foot. She might have narrowly missed stepping on it when she entered. But it wasn’t there or on the floor around her. She looked up to the boughs and scanned slowly, carefully. That kind of snake was colored to look like bark and could be hard to spot in the branches of the hut. They weren’t usually longer than her arm, but size meant nothing when it came to the strength of their poison. One fang-full from an adult was enough to take a body down.
The boy was on his stomach. For a moment, Girl’s eyes played tricks on her. She wondered if Big Mother had made Runt a necklace while Girl was away, for there was something on his neck. She knew it was the snake draped across him, but her mind grappled for anything else. If Girl rushed forward, the snake might strike him in defense. If he sat up, it would do the same. She opened her lips to warn him, but even that could set the snake off. It had already given them a first warning with its rattle. Snakes rarely gave two.
Girl did the only thing she could think to do: She held her breath. In doing only that, she felt weak and inept. This small boy had no one but her, and she could think only of not breathing. And seeing him lying in the nest, bare back exposed to the snake, his helplessness transferred to her. A snakebite was a horrible way to die. It took days of agony, skin turning black, and the body blowing up big because it was already rotting from the inside. Her heart thumped with dread because she knew that if he suffered, it was her fault alone. It was one last change and she wouldn’t recover. She was acutely aware of her failing and fragility.
Waiting, watching. The snake lay over Runt’s back as it nosed at the hide. It looked as if it wanted to crawl under the covers to find the dark places beneath, but the hide was folded and there was no way in. It slithered farther, and Girl bit back a gasp. The sliding might wake Runt. But the boy didn’t stir. His soft, dark eyelashes touched his cheeks. The snake nosed and poked and decided it didn’t have time for the hide. It slithered forward and soon the rattle was clear of Runt’s back. It pushed into the thick wall of branches.
Girl quickly backed out of the hut and picked up her spear. She took two steps over to the small hole to see that the snake had come out the other side. It wriggled on the rocks in a curve as the tip of Girl’s spear slammed down. In one stab, she pinned the back of its head to the rock. With a stone, she smashed its head.
Later, when Runt wriggled out from the hut rubbing his eyes from sleep, Girl called him down to the fire. She sat with a stick in her hand, the meat of a snake curled around it and cooking. He barely looked at Girl, just came and pushed her torso back so that he could sit on her lap. He laid his head on her chest and breathed deeply, like this was a usual thing. He seemed to transfer his affection from Big Mother to Girl without much effort. Maybe it was her age, maybe he saw the two women as one and the same, or maybe it was this thing about Runt that she could never quite put her finger on. He was different in many ways.
Runt reached his hand up. He flapped his fingers twice and waited. Girl placed a piece of cooled meat in his palm. His fingers curled and she heard the good sounds of sucking and chewing. Part of her admired his ease. Runt knew where his meat would come from. He knew who would keep him safe. She wished for the same.
Girl told Runt to play for a while so that she could take stock of what they needed in order to make the migration to the meeting place. She could choose the best sacks for water and the best spears for protection. She could wrap extra meat in a soft hide and carry it on her back. They would take an extra fur for warmth. Once there, she would build a shelter out of fresh pine bough
s.
Runt squatted in the dirt, playing with something. She absent-mindedly looked over and was surprised to see it was her shell. Hand to throat, she realized it must have come off her neck. How did she not notice this before? She leaped forward. Maybe she lunged at Runt too quickly, but there was anger in her action. It wasn’t his shell. She wondered if he had stolen it while she slept.
“Ne.” She grabbed it back.
The movement and the sharp word surprised Runt. His eyes went wide. He stared at her, shocked for one beat of his heart. And then in the next, his face cracked and melted into tears. She had suddenly become so important to him, like the sun. The anger in her face filled Runt with heat. He wailed and screeched in a way that she could barely stand. She put her hands over her ears and pressed to muffle the noise.
“Ssshh,” she said to silence him, but it had no effect. “Crowthroat,” she said, placing her fingers against her thumb to show him he was making too much noise, like an awful crow. He kept wailing and shouting unintelligible sounds. The force from his throat filled up the camp. There was no space left for her words.
Girl sat heavily on one of the logs near the hearth. She kept her hands over her ears and lowered her head, waiting for the sound to stop. How had Big Mother kept him quiet? She had never heard the boy cry like this. After a while, the wailing stopped. She slumped with relief and took her hands away from her ears.
She felt a soft hand on her back and startled. It was only then that she realized how vulnerable they had just been. With her senses turned inward, any beast could have staked its claim. With only two in the family, it was only a matter of time before another one tried.
But it was only Runt with red, bulging eyes and hiccups. His small cheeks were puffed out. He lowered his eyes for a moment. She gave him a soft click. He took this as a chance to push onto her lap again. She sighed and let him. He had something else in his hands now—the horns. She had forgotten to put them on when she woke. Or maybe forgotten wasn’t quite it. It was more that she had never thought to put them on. She nodded to let him know this was good. He put the horns up to her forehead. She tied the thin tendon, chewed soft by Big Mother, under the thick plait of hair that hung down her back.
Girl lifted her head and Runt looked at her admiringly. With thin fingers, he tucked in a loose strand of hair. He adjusted one horn so that it stood straight. A look of strength and pride came onto his face. He held up a palm to her. She held up her hand and their skin pressed, his fingers reaching only the middle joints on hers. His skin dark and soft like shale; her skin light and rough like granite. They pressed their palms together harder. He gestured toward her neck and the shell to ask if she wanted help tying it. Big Mother had given it to Girl when she was about Runt’s age.
The shell was the size of a walnut and large enough to make sounds when held to an ear. Big Mother had held the shell for Girl to listen. That was how Girl knew that it matched the shadow stories. She knew that the woman had traveled far away to where the water tastes like sweaty skin. There were bad stories about the sea, but good ones too: It goes on for a long time until it drops off into a land that belongs to the biggest fish. Those fish dive and send ripples through the water in a wave. These continue from the land of the big fish and they come to the shore to pound and play on the sand. Sometimes the pounding makes the water froth like in the rapids of a river.
Girl showed Runt how to put his ear to the shell. He listened to the sound of the waves as they crashed in the sea. He closed his eyes and maybe he felt the tumble of the surf, the fine dirt in his teeth, and the smell of wet rocks. It wasn’t just the sound; maybe he could taste, smell, and feel the ocean, an echo from his past. It was something that rumbled deep in his blood. With the shell to his ear, he looked like he was there.
Later that night, Runt tossed and turned and waved his bottom in the air in his sleep. With her eyes open a crack, she could see his swirl of hair—the color of black moss—and his broad mouth and white teeth. Then he woke and leaned in close to her, trying to see if she was asleep, unsure if he would get in trouble for waking her. His soft breath brushed her cheek. It smelled like mint. He had a strange habit of eating things that were green. Wildcat did too. She sometimes caught the cat chewing blades of grass. But Runt’s appetite for it was larger. He would sniff strange plants, lick his lips, and stuff them into his mouth before she had a chance to stop him. She worried that one of these times he would end up nipples to the sky. It hadn’t happened yet.
Girl rubbed the boy’s back and soon he was tired again. She told him to pee in the tree boughs by the door; a little pee to mark their place went a long way to warning off beasts in the night. After that, he ate a small strip of meat, sipped some water, and yawned. He curled into her, ready for sleep. She watched the rise and fall of his belly slow. Small hands curled beneath a soft cheek. His lips went slack. Girl couldn’t settle back down. She lay back and blinked in the dark. Tomorrow would be a hard day of preparation for the fish run. She squeezed her eyes shut but found it hard to sleep. Despite Runt by her side, the body of the family was missing.
17.
Girl got up before the sun to start the fire. She squatted back on her heels to watch. As the sun rose, it kissed the top of the cliff. The fish would start their journey soon. It was time to go to the meeting place.
Girl didn’t put on her horns. She tucked them into a fold of the hide that she would carry on her back as a pack. Her belly wasn’t showing, but she knew that she was pregnant. She could tell by taking one sniff of her morning pee. The awareness made her feel unsure about what their reception at the meeting place might be. If other families had had a lean year, then, as an unknown adult, she could be seen as competition for food. They might drive her off and expect her to fight her way back to show her strength. Her fertility could mark her as a threat. However, if times had been good, the families might happily welcome her in. They might see her resemblance to Big Girl or remember that her family had good land. There were as many possibilities for her reception as there were forks in the river. She didn’t have the experience to know how the water might flow.
Not wearing her horns was a signal that she would submit, but it was also a sign of what was happening inside her. The pregnancy seemed to be altering how she felt. The brave swell that once came so often to her chest had melted back as the ice and snow receded. She was now strangely timid and undecided. And that was why she tucked the horns away. She would enter the meeting place as a girl. That much would stay the same. She could slip in as a girl and watch the others before she made a move.
All the times she had been at the fish run were one big picture in her mind: how she would smell the matted fur of the bears long before seeing them, the spreading green of the needles on the trees lower down, the stimulating combination of new families and foods. She longed for the days when she could youthfully mix in with the strange, new bodies and sniff while knowing that she still had a firm place at the hearth of Big Mother.
Girl let Runt have a last long sleep in the hut while she ate. She buried the best bowls and tools that they didn’t need to bring along. When Runt was up, she settled him in to eat meat and drink. She piled the sleeping hides in the middle of the hut to keep them protected. She put rocks around the edge of the hut to hold it firm if the wind grew fierce. She pulled their cached packs out of the tree and lashed sacks for water onto the outside.
Runt stood nervously by the hearth. She walked up to him with the shell and tied the lash around his neck. His lips spread back in a huge grimace and he let the tips of his fingers run across the shell. For strength on the journey, she gave him the Sea.
Ready, he turned his back to her, and she looped the straps over his shoulders. She kept a hand on the pack to hold him steady. He bent his knobby knees, braced himself, and nodded that he was ready. She let go of the pack. His legs quivered like green boughs, but they held. Girl heaved her own pack onto her back. It was heavier than she liked, but she didn’t know how long
they would be gone. She would be responsible for setting up their camp at the meeting place. Everything they needed would take a year to make by herself, so she had to bring sacks, foot covers, lashes, and stone teeth. Those things, along with a spare spearhead, sleeping hides, an extra cloak, and dried meat for the journey, made for full loads. With so few bodies, they had lost the indulgence of traveling light.
Girl let Runt go first so she could keep watch. He staggered in the direction of the river, and she chewed on her lip as she wondered if he was traveling more sideways than forward. He stepped over a branch on the ground and this seemed to be his undoing. He lost his balance and his knee buckled. The pack lurched to the side and pulled the boy’s body down.
In three strides she was beside him. On his back, arms and legs thrashing, he looked like a turtle flipped onto its shell. She bent to grab him by the pack and hoist him up.
“Ne, ne,” he said.
He pushed at the air with his hands to tell her not to help him. He was determined to get up on his own. Finally, he caught onto a root with one hand. He pulled to roll his body around so that the pack was on his back. On hands and knees, he fought for balance. The strain showed in his face, his teeth bared like the most frightening beast. Girl had to cover her mouth for fear she would laugh.
Runt got one foot up and pressed. With a roar, he pushed with the other leg, and he was up. A wobble to the front and a lurch to the side; his feet darted around as he tried to find a stance that would allow him to balance. Eventually, he got it. Arms out, fingers splayed wide, he stopped for long enough to still the pack. Holding his breath, he took a cautious step and then one more. Slowly, he made his way toward the river. Girl felt proud that he was trying so hard as she ambled behind him. She also felt that it would be a long day. Wildcat seemed to think the same. He was in no hurry as he took to the brush and followed.
The Last Neanderthal Page 14
