The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  He drew her into the circle of his arms and she brushed his cheeks with her mouth. His breath was hot on her neck; she felt his manhood hard against her. He lowered her to the cave floor, and she drew him down upon her. He called her Lali and feverishly stroked her limbs. She murmured “Zant” and opened herself to him. He was bigger than Doron in all ways, and the feel of him took her breath away.

  Bellek, waiting outside on the rocky ledge, and understanding these things, hunkered down and began to pick nits out of his hair.

  Zant stayed with Laliari for seven nights and seven days, during which time they explored and discovered one another, spending the daylight hours in fishing and hunting and the nighttime hours in passionate embraces. When he finally departed they knew they would never see each other again. Laliari’s place was with her own people where, although she did not yet know it, she would one day wear the gazelle antlers. And Zant must hurry north to join his clan, not knowing that because of their form of hunting, whole herds of mammoths, horses, reindeer, and ibex would be driven over the edges of cliffs, many of them to the extinction of their species. Zant and his people would migrate north in ignorance of the fact that their own race was on the verge of total extinction, for reasons that would still remain a mystery 35,000 years into the future, when he and his kind would be called Neanderthals.

  After Zant had gone, Laliari sadly collected her things and prepared to go back to the lake with Bellek when she found tucked into one of her baskets the little figurine with the blue baby-stone in its belly. A final gift from Zant.

  As they traipsed across the plain, Laliari assisting Bellek for now he limped, they both silently wondered if the camp would still be there since they had been gone for so long. But then they saw the smoke from the campfires and heard on the wind the laughter of children. And when they drew closer they saw—

  Ghosts!

  Bellek stopped short and made a strangled sound in his throat. But Laliari’s eyesight was better and so she could see that the men in the camp were not ghosts but their very own hunters, once believed lost in the sea but now very much alive. They picked up their pace and soon Laliari was running, desperately searching for one familiar face in the group. And then she saw him.

  Doron, who had survived drowning in the angry sea.

  They had been swept miles downstream, they explained dramatically to their excited audience, and deposited on the shore—the opposite shore from where the women were. And so they had had to wait for the tide to change and for the Reed Sea to withdraw before they could cross. They had had no idea where the women had gone. It had taken them days before they picked up the band’s trail, after that they had simply followed Bellek’s magic symbols, which he had carved into trees during the women’s progress up the river valley.

  And now here they were, the clan reunited once again. Laliari looked at Doron with tears of joy but in her thoughts, Zant…

  That night, as Bellek regaled everyone with the tale of their sojourn among the caves—even though he had spent most of it asleep—and as Laliari passed the fertility figurine around the circle for everyone to marvel over, there suddenly came a shout from the edge of the camp. One of the hunters who had been appointed to moon-watch came running into the light, waving his arms, a wild look on his face. Everyone jumped up and ran through the trees and into a clearing where they saw—

  Everyone gasped.

  The moon was rising big and round and bright in the starlit sky.

  The Gazelle Clan held a big celebration that night in which Bellek dispensed the magic mushrooms. Soon, everyone around the campfire was delighting to hallucinations, intensified colors, and a glorious sense of well-being. Their hearts swelled with affection for one another, their pulses quickened with desire. Couples paired off, Doron guiding Laliari to the privacy of reeds and cattails. Bellek found himself cuddled in the arms of two rapturous young women. And Freer, Doron’s fellow hunter, sought comfort between the hot and welcoming legs of No Name, forgetting her outcast status.

  The next morning, everyone agreed that it could be no coincidence that the moon had returned with Laliari and Bellek. And Laliari, herself trying to explain the stupefying phenomenon, said the moon must have come with the blue stone the stranger in the cave had given her.

  The others were dubious of Laliari’s conclusion and quietly decided she was wrong, until a month later when most of the women in the clan discovered they were pregnant, including No Name. The figurine was examined more closely this time and now there could be no mistake: there were the breasts and abdomen of a pregnant woman, and at the center of the blue crystal a baby could clearly be seen.

  The stone had brought the moon, and therefore life, back to the clan.

  And so another celebration took place with everyone singing Laliari’s praise. As she modestly accepted the honor, thinking sadly of Zant but happily of Doron, she failed to see on the other side of the circle a pair of eyes watching her—Keeka, who was not at all overjoyed to have her cousin back from the caves.

  Revenge was on Keeka’s mind.

  She had been secretly glad when Laliari’s exploration of the caves had stretched into weeks. Although she had been frightened, like everyone else, that Bellek might be dead and that they were now without someone to read the omens and guide them, she had secretly hoped her cousin would never come back. And then when Doron and the other survivors had shown up, Keeka had seen her chance to make Doron hers. It had almost worked, too. He had started sitting beside her during the evening meal and showing interest in sleeping with her—and then Bellek and Laliari had stepped out of the mist!

  In the seven years since, Laliari had risen in status among the clan because they believed her fertility stone had brought the moon out of hiding. So powerful was the blue stone that even barren She Who Has No Name had given birth and now she had her old name back and was respected as a mother. The clan had elected Laliari the new Keeper of the Gazelle Antlers. Now she had three children, Doron slept in her hut instead of with the hunters, and everyone loved her. Keeka, in her jealousy, could stand it no more.

  But the method of revenge had to be carefully thought out. Laliari must not know that it was Keeka who had killed her, otherwise Laliari’s ghost would haunt Keeka for the rest of her life. But how to kill someone without their knowing it? All the methods she could think of—using a spear or a club, pushing Laliari off a cliff—lacked the necessary anonymity. And she couldn’t fool her cousin the way she had fooled old Alawa. When Keeka had crept into the old woman’s hut to strangle her—which she had been forced to do after she had overheard Alawa tell Bellek that they must kill the little boys, Keeka’s boys!—she had covered her face with mud and disguised her hair with leaves, convincing the old woman that she was a ghost. But Laliari was of sharper mind and eyes, she would know who her assassin was.

  The women were out on the rolling plains gathering spring plants. In their new home the clan had adapted to a new seasonal rhythm. Instead of being governed by the annual flood of a river, as they had been in their ancestral valley to the west of the Reed Sea, they were now regulated by the cycle of autumn fog, winter snow, flowering spring, and summer heat. They had had to learn new migratory patterns of game and birds, and when to go in search of edible wild fruits and grains. Grass skirts were no longer sufficient against the winter cold, and so they had learned to fashion tunics and leggings out of animal skins. In the winters they retreated to the warm, dry caves in the cliffs, but emerged in the spring to build grass shelters by the freshwater lake.

  And so it was that Keeka, along with the other women, was foraging for food when she came upon a plant she had never seen before. Its origin lay far to the north, in the mountains of a country that would one day be called Turkey, and over the centuries the seed of this plant had been carried on wind and wing to land and take root along the shore of Lake Galilee. Keeka, with her woven baskets and digging sticks, paused to contemplate the unfamiliar tall red stalks and broad green leaves. The clan had fo
und many new foods in this valley, so this one was no surprise. However, as she bent to uproot one, she saw something that made her freeze.

  Dead rodents lay on the ground among the new plants.

  Keeka gasped and backed away. There were evil spirits in this place! As she traced a protective gesture in the air and hastily murmured a spell, something about the dead rodents made her stop and give closer scrutiny to them.

  She realized after a moment that the animals must have been nibbling on the leaves of this new plant just before they had died. In fact, one was still alive, writhing in convulsions. An instant later it stiffened and lay dead. Keeka kept her distance, fearful of the poisonous spirit that inhabited the plant, but she didn’t run away because an unexpected vision was forming in her mind: Laliari lying on the ground like the rodents, killed by the plant’s evil spirit.

  Suddenly she saw her instrument of revenge.

  Filled with giddy excitement, Keeka rushed to the water’s edge and coated her hands with fresh mud. She then chanted protective incantations as she gingerly coaxed the rhubarb from the soil. Hastily dropping the plant into her basket, she rushed back to the water to wash and scrub her hands clean. As she did so she smiled at her cleverness, for it would not in fact be she herself doing the killing, but the malicious spirit in the plant. As she hurried back to her basket and its lethal contents, she thought of how life was going to be after Laliari was gone, and her smile widened in delicious anticipation of luring the handsome Doron into her hut.

  The clan’s initial attempts at making clothing out of furs had been abysmal failures—for the pelts of such goats as they could find grew hard and stiff and unmalleable—and so Laliari’s people had shivered all through their first winter in the caves. But Laliari had seen how soft and supple Zant’s furs had been, so she and her kinswomen had experimented all the next summer in stretching and scraping the hides until they dried to a comfortable softness. Then she devised bone needles for piercing the skins in order to draw fibers through for seams. That was why she now stood on a windy hillock wearing a long tunic of warm and pliant goatskins, her feet clad in fur boots, her eight-month-old baby snug in a sheepskin pouch on her back. Laliari’s two little boys, Vivek and Josu, were warm in capes and leggings made of soft gazelle skin as they chased grasshoppers.

  Laliari was a distinctive figure as she stood tall and proud on the hillock, scanning the new green growth for the first fruits of spring, for on her head she wore the clan’s gazelle antlers, tied firmly beneath her chin with animal sinew. She was thinking of a garlic patch that grew down by the stream, but unfortunately it was too early to pick them. Garlic had to wait for midsummer, which was too bad for the clan had developed a taste for it. She peered at the ancient, massive fig tree that grew on the hill, and studied the green fruit. Not yet ripe. It would be another cycle of the moon before the clan would taste of the figs’ sweetness. Finally, she spotted a mulberry bush remembered from the year before, and she was delighted to find the first early berries ready to be picked.

  As she collected the mulberries into her basket, the breeze shifted and bathed her in a delicate perfume—the scent of deep blue hyacinths, blooming in the thousands over the hills and meadows. Blossoming, too, almost overnight, were fields of blinding white narcissi. After spending dark months in smoky caves, the people of the Gazelle Clan were reveling in spring’s rebirth.

  Laliari herself was filled with inexpressible joy. The little baby girl asleep on her back, and close by, in the tall sweet grass, her two precious sons.

  Her eldest boy, Vivek, was six years old with thick brows overshadowing his eyes, and already at such a young age was showing signs of the heavy jaw he would someday have. His resemblance to Zant came as no surprise to Laliari since it was Zant’s fertility figurine, with the blue baby-stone in her belly, that had given Laliari the child. Laliari’s second boy, Josu, was a bright little four-year-old with curly golden brown hair and chubby arms and legs. Tomorrow was the day of his nose piercing. There would be a big celebration and he would be given his own little ax and a shell necklace made of good-luck talismans.

  It was hard to remember now the terror she had once felt in this land, or that her people had ever felt like strangers here. The clan had come to love this place by the freshwater lake. She lifted her face to the breeze and thought of Zant. She hoped he had found his people, that he was happy now, and hunting with them. Laliari had never gone back to the cave where she first met him, for a child lay buried there and Bellek had declared the cave taboo.

  Hearing a high-pitched whistle, Laliari turned to see her cousin Keeka come walking up. Despite the chill in the air, Keeka was bare-breasted and proudly displaying a beautiful periwinkle necklace one of the hunters had made for her. Keeka had put on weight in the years since their flight across the Reed Sea; once the clan had settled here by the lake, Keeka had reverted to her old habits of hoarding food.

  However, to Laliari’s surprise, Keeka had come to share this time. She held out a basket containing broad green leaves and declared that it was a wonderfully delicious new plant she had discovered. Laliari gratefully accepted the basket and offered Keeka a basket of mulberries in return. As Keeka went off smiling, already pushing handfuls of mulberries into her mouth, Laliari took a small nibble of the new plant and found the rhubarb leaf unremarkable.

  “Mama.”

  She looked down to see Josu’s little hands reaching, so she handed a leaf to him and then gave one to the older boy. Vivek tasted the leaf and, making a face, spit it out. But Josu happily munched on his piece of rhubarb.

  Having filled two large baskets with mulberries, Laliari called her boys to her and they headed back to the camp on the shore. Other women were arriving now with their gatherings: dandelion greens and wild cucumbers, coriander seeds and doves’ eggs, as well as a good haul of bulrushes for making baskets and for their edible piths. Men returned to camp with netted fish, baskets of limpets, and two young goats freshly skinned. All would be apportioned out according to rules, and everyone would eat well.

  While ritualistic incantations were chanted, the meat was butchered and roasted and handed around, first to the hunters’ mothers, then to elders, and so on with the hunters themselves receiving the last. Laliari breast-fed her baby and saw to it that her boys received enough food. While Vivek happily scooped yolk from an egg, little Josu continued to grasp the rhubarb leaf in his hand, nibbling at it all the time. Someone had come upon a field of early wheat and had shared it out. Each person bundled the stems together and held the ears over the fire until the chaff was mostly burned off. Then they rubbed the ears between their palms to get the wheat grains out and pop them into their mouths.

  After the meal, the camp turned noisy as usual, with the women attending to grooming and basket-weaving, the men to sharpen flint knives and talk of the day’s hunt. It was some moments before Laliari noticed that Josu was complaining of pain in his mouth. She took a look and saw curious lesions on the insides of his cheeks and lips. She was instantly alarmed. Had an evil spirit entered him? Josu did not yet have the protective piercings in his nose and lips.

  “And here,” he added, pressing his hands on his abdomen.

  “You have pain there?”

  He nodded.

  Laliari’s heart jumped. The ghost had entered his mouth and was now in his stomach!

  As she tried to think of what to do Josu started to shake. She drew him into her arms. “Are you cold, my precious one?”

  Big round eyes stared back at her as the tremors suddenly grew worse.

  Now other women came around, inspecting the boy, putting their hands on him and murmuring concern.

  Laliari held him close and rocked him. When he suddenly started wheezing and gasping for breath, Laliari cried out for Bellek. By the time the old man arrived with his amulets and spells, the rest of the clan was gathering around to watch. Bellek examined the boy and set about immediately to working his medicine. As the flames from the various fires da
nced beneath the stars, casting the humans in alternating glow and shadow, he placed powerful talismans on Josu’s body, chanting mystical spells as he did so. Then he dipped his fingers into jars of pigment and painted healing symbols on the boy’s forehead, chest, and feet.

  Josu’s breathing grew worse.

  At the edge of the group, as she tossed nuts with supreme indifference into her mouth, Keeka watched in detachment. Due to her own basic greed it had not occurred to her that Laliari would offer the rhubarb leaves to her children first. So now the evil spirit had entered the boy instead of Laliari. Keeka was intelligent enough to know she wouldn’t have another chance and that Doron was not to be hers. Still, she derived some satisfaction from the look of terror on her cousin’s face, and the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  By now Josu was unconscious and the whole clan looked on, speechless.

  And then suddenly he began to convulse.

  “Save him!” Laliari cried as she held him.

  As old Bellek quivered in indecision, the convulsions stopped. “Josu?” Laliari said in sudden hope.

  The boy’s chest expanded in a deep breath, then he released it in a long, ragged shudder. And then he was still.

  The silent-sitting was the most profoundly sorrowful sitting the clan had ever performed, and even when they started to tear down the camp—for now they must move on and leave Josu’s little body to the elements—still no one spoke, their movements heavy and plodding, their faces etched with grief.

  But it was urgent that they leave, now that the ritual had been performed, and while the others shouldered their burdens to begin the trek farther along the shore, Laliari did not move. She remained beside her son’s corpse, her face whiter than the remnants of snow on the distant mountains. The clan members milled about nervously, terrified of the bad luck she was bringing upon them.