“Genesis,” Luke said.
Orion nodded. “The giants I speak of are around eight to ten feet tall.”
“Are they warriors? Did you see them?”
“Don’t go across the mountain, Luke.” He took Luke’s hand. “They are evil, fallen angels or worse. You have no reason to go there.”
Luke felt the immediate change in Orion’s demeanor.
“Hear me good on that, Luke.”
“I understand.”
Luke had enough on his plate without worrying about giants, which were probably just bogeymen anyway. Luke already knew the Florians were a warrior tribe, and they were intent on doing him harm; but now he knew that may be the only possible way home. They had the door between the two dimensions. Luke hoped it swung both ways. He had to find out, no matter the dangers.
The Frelonnians were Moon’s people. Orion had said they had been tolerant of him because of Adam, but they didn’t want him among them. Adam lived with them but often visited his father. They were warriors, too, and they could be just as vicious as the Florians.
The next morning Luke packed his things for the trip back. He had to find Moon. He should not have left without telling her. And he found he missed her.
Orion walked down to the prairie with Luke and Adam. “Luke, if you don’t find the way back to Arkansas, you are welcome here.” He offered his hand and Luke shook it.
“Mr. Williamson, I appreciate your offer, and I thank you for all this.” Luke raised his quiver.
Orion looked across the prairie and then back at Luke. “If you find a way back, will you travel to Alabama and tell my family that you found me?” He handed Luke a little carving. It was a mammoth fashioned from ivory. “Give this to my daughter if you do. It’s very important to me that she receive it.” Orion rubbed his great beard. “If not her, maybe a grandchild—some descendant. Tell them it is the key.”
“The key?”
Orion patted Luke’s hand. “Just humor an old man.”
Luke placed the carving in his pack. If he went through the portal, he hoped he didn’t wind up in the 1850s. “I will be glad to deliver it.”
“It’s very important to me.”
“I promise. If I make it back, your descendant will get it.”
Luke and Adam started across the prairie. A small herd of wild horses mingled with a few mammoths. It was a moving sight. He turned back to see Orion going back up the trail. He did look like Moses.
Chapter 8
They came to a small river where Adam had left a dugout canoe. Luke ran his hands across it. Black char came off on his fingers from where it had been burned out. Days had gone in to making it—burning it out and chopping away the wood. Seeing it meant more to Luke than admiring a fine new car. He had always wanted to build one—it would have been the ultimate challenge in bushcraft, but there was little need for it in the Ozarks. Luke finally got his fill admiring it and boarded it with Adam. They started down the lazy river.
“Why are we going back a different way from the way we had come?” Luke said.
“This will be faster,” Adam said. “This river goes downstream to the village.”
“Why didn’t we just take this way in the first place?”
Adam grinned. “Did you have a canoe at the village?”
“I take your point.” He turned back toward the front and stroked the water with his paddle.
The river was fresh and pristine. It was like traveling through a Bierstadt painting, with the broken golden prairie, red and yellow trees along the river’s edge, and snow-capped mountains in the distance. Luke spotted birds in the trees along the bank that he knew well, but he also saw some he didn’t know. There were pigeons and big woodpeckers and unique-looking sparrows. He saw birds with long tails and some with fat beaks. It truly was a naturalist’s dream. A birder would be in heaven. Luke pulled his binoculars from his pack. It was simply amazing. Everything his binoculars fell on was beyond belief.
“What’s that?” Adam pointed toward the binoculars.
Luke handed them back to him. “Don’t drop them. It will be a surprise when you look through them.”
Adam nodded as he took the binoculars. He did almost drop them. He looked at Luke wide-eyed. “Make things come close.” He put them back to his eyes and tried to look at everything.
“They are called binoculars.”
Adam handed them back to Luke. “Good. Good binoculars.”
Luke laughed and Adam laughed back as they rounded a bend. At the same time, they spotted a big, bull mammoth standing in the middle of the narrow river. They quickly paddled backwards, but they were too near for the large animal’s comfort and most certainly their own. He raised his trunk and bugled, and then he charged them, just as Luke had seen elephants do on TV. Luke grabbed an overhanging limb at river’s edge and held it. They were getting ready to exit the canoe when the giant beast stopped about twenty yards away, making a big wave and spraying water. Luke felt he had to keep his mouth shut to keep his heart from leaping out. The bull trumpeted again and then slowly turned, climbed out of the river and started across the prairie.
Luke turned to Adam and let go of the limb. “Whew, that was close.”
Adam laughed and made a motion with his arm, simulating the mammoth’s trunk.
Luke watched as the mammoth went through the tall grass. Beyond, he saw smoke rising over the prairie. Adam stopped paddling—he had spotted it too. There was something familiar, but strange, about the smoke. Then Luke realized what it was. It was smoke signals.
Adam turned in the canoe. “Meat camp. We go help.”
“Help do what?”
“Help with meat.”
“I don’t know, Adam. I think we should get back to the village. Moon will be looking for me.”
Adam pulled the canoe to shore. “We leave it here; come back to it later.”
“You know what. On second thought,” Luke said. “I think it would be a grand idea to go traipsing across the prairie. If we’re lucky, we could be eaten by a dinosaur.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
They cleared the tall rushes and trees at the edge of the river and entered the prairie, but the smoke was farther than it appeared from behind the trees—a lot farther.
They struck out toward the smoke. Luke didn’t know what was about to happen, but he had no choice but to go along. He had no idea where he was, nor how to get back to the village and Moon.
Adam climbed a hill and motioned for Luke to follow. When they made it to the top, the vista spread for miles. The prairie ran to the ends of sight. It was like two prairies, a high one and a low one. Where the high one ended, there were canyons and cuts. After that, the lower canyon picked up again and ran until it touched the sky. A picture or a painting could never do the scene justice.
Luke pulled his binoculars from his pack again. In one of the canyons, the Frelonnians had made a camp at the entrance of it. There were fires burning and people milling around like they were having a cookout or picnic. Then Luke scanned to the base of the canyon cliff. There were bison lying scattered among the rocks with people walking among the dead animals.
Adam tapped Luke’s shoulder. “Good! Many buffalo.”
Luke understood now. He had read about this. The American Indians would drive the bison over the steep cliffs to their deaths. That is exactly what had happened here. Now these people were butchering and processing the dead animals.
Adam started down the hill and toward the mouth of the canyon. Luke followed.
Adam walked into the camp with his hands high into the air, chanting and yelling. The people looked up from their work and yelled back. Adam pulled his bone knife from his belt and joined in the butchering.
The process was like a factory. The men butchered the animals with tools made of bones, antlers, and even sharp rocks they had picked up from the ground. A modern butcher with his steel knives could not have been more efficient.
The wome
n cut the meat up further and placed it on smoke racks as Luke himself had done many times. They scraped the meat from the buffalo hides and bones. This was not a hobby—it was existence.
Luke walked up to one of the fires to find kids cooking pieces of meat stuck on the ends of sticks. A pretty girl of about twelve offered Luke a piece of meat. He started to decline, but being hungry, he took it. It was a piece of tongue. Luke hesitated, but then crammed it into his mouth. It was good, but needed a little salt.
Luke walked among the people. He recognized some from the village. He watched them as they worked. Luke had played the game of being primitive; now here he was in a real world of primitive. These people could not put away their simple tools and animal-skin clothes when they were tired of them and then put on their slippers, get their remote control and watch the television. They couldn’t get the bologna from the fridge and make a late night sandwich. This was it. This was everything.
Luke stood over a young man skinning a big bull. The man had a long flake of flint. Luke had never seen anyone skin an animal as fast as this man was doing. And he was efficient too. There were no holes in the hide. It would be used for clothes or shelter. The man sliced the meat into thin strips and laid them on the skin. Young boys and girls gathered the meat from the skin and took it to one of the smoking racks. This was a factory.
The butchering went on into the night. Not all the meat was used; too many animals had been driven off the cliff. Soon the wolves were circling the camp, and guards were positioned to keep the beasts away. It was an awful sound when they did get to one of the buffaloes that the people had not butchered. The movie sound effects had wolves all wrong. They were much more gruesome. There were no wolves in the modern Ozarks, only coyotes; and now being near them, Luke had a sudden appreciation for the danger. He strung his bow.
The next morning Luke and Adam were back on the river. If Luke ever made it back home to Arkansas, he would never forget the experience at the canyon. He would use what he had learned there. If he were stranded in this world for all time, he would have to use it here, no other choice.
The river carried them along at a good clip, and soon they were back at the village. Luke waited at the river as Adam went to retrieve Moon. Luke was worried about going into the village without her. He didn’t know if it would be safe.
He sat at the river’s edge, skipping flat rocks across the surface of the river, thinking about all that had transpired. He had always wondered what it would be like to go back in time and live like prehistoric man with his primitive weapons and tools. Now he knew. Now he knew for sure. It was almost as he had imagined. Almost. He had always been able to use modern things when he grew tired of playing prehistoric. Now it was real—real all the time.
Adam came back. “Sha-She gone.”
Luke stood. “Gone?” He looked toward the village. “Where?”
“Sha-She just gone. Not say where.”
Luke sat down on a rock. What was he going to do now? Where was he going now? He suddenly felt alone, like the last man on earth. He looked up at Adam. At least he had Adam and Orion.
Adam took Luke’s hand and pulled him from the rock. “We go find Sha-She.”
Luke felt hope. “You can find her?”
Adam looked at him as if he had said the most stupid thing ever.
“How can you find her?”
Adam smiled and pointed to Luke’s feet.
At first Luke didn’t understand, but then he got it. “Boots. We are the only ones around with boots. You can track her. Of course you can.”
Adam climbed back into the canoe. “We go.”
Luke looked around, then back to Adam. “How can you track Moon’s boots if you are in a canoe?”
Adam laughed and shook his head. “You are funny, Luke.”
Luke didn’t see anything funny. Nevertheless, he climbed into the canoe; he had no other options.
The river widened beyond the village and moved smooth as a painter’s brush stroke. The ride and the natural world around Luke took his mind from his predicament, if only for a brief time. Otters swam and played in the river like rascals. All manner of waterfowl flushed from the water’s edge.
Luke, in the front of the canoe, stroked the water with his paddle, thinking of the pristine world around him. He couldn’t help it. It moved him to the depth of his soul just to be in this unique world. He could survive here—he could thrive here. This was the place of his dreams. This was the playground he pretended to be in while roaming the Ozark Mountains. How many nights had he lain on his wool blanket—not some modern hi-tech sleeping bag—by a small fire, looking up at the stars and wishing for such a place? How many times had he fallen asleep by that fire and dreamed of such a river?
Luke slowly scanned his surroundings. He was here. He was actually here, but it was so very hard to comprehend. He had won the lottery. The smell of fall hardwoods and falling leaves filled the air as the river entered a beautiful forest.
A sweet, soothing melody drifted from the back of the canoe. Luke turned to see Adam whistling. It was such a soothing tune, a strange deep whistle, not at all a high, tinny sound. It almost seemed to be coming from a wooden or bamboo flute. Adam smiled. His teeth were white as if he had just come from the dentist’s office. His long auburn hair flowed down to his strong shoulders. He looked like something off the cover of a paperback novel. He resumed the whistling as he stroked the paddle through the water. Luke wondered what Adam would think of his world. What would he think of cars and planes? Of course, he would not like it. How could he? This world was so much better.
Luke turned and pulled at the paddle. He drew in a deep breath and took the time to appreciate it. The air was sweet and clean. He would never be able to describe it to anyone who had never breathed it. But then, he thought, he may never have the chance to try. He was torn. Was that a good thing or bad?
“Sha-She’s tracks will be there,” Adam said as he pointed ahead.
The canoe’s bottom began bumping the river bottom and then came to a stop on a shallow shoal. Adam jumped out and pulled the dugout to the shore.
“How do you know her tracks will be here?”
Adam pointed to boot tracks in the mud. “There.”
Luke smiled. Of course. This was the first shallow ford in the river. If she were going to cross, it would be here.
Adam tapped Luke’s shoulder with his fist. “We follow?”
“Let’s go,” Luke said as he began following the tracks.
Adam grabbed Luke’s arm. Luke turned to see Adam looking down the riverbank. There were tracks in the mud—bare feet.
“Scrain,” Adam said.
They ran back to the canoe and gathered their weapons. It didn’t take Adam long to pick up the trail like a hound. He was soon running, and Luke raced just to keep up. Adam reminded Luke of one of those African trackers he had seen on television.
Luke fell in with Adam’s rhythm, letting him find the sign. Luke was too busy worrying that the Scrain would catch up to Moon before they could save her. He was all screwed up inside—scared, anxious, and angry.
A small prairie bordered the river, but it soon bumped up to a thick forest. Adam never checked up, but Luke felt as if the trees were closing in on them. He remembered the Scrain hiding in the pecan trees, and he didn’t want to be surprised again.
Finally, Luke had to stop; he was out of breath. Adam ran ahead a ways before he realized Luke wasn’t behind him. As Adam walked back, Luke panted and said, “I have to rest a few minutes.”
“Maybe I should keep going,” Adam said.
“No. Give me just a minute.” Luke leaned on his longbow and took slower and deeper breaths. “I may not be able to find you.”
Adam nodded. He wasn’t breathing hard at all. He picked a stone off the ground and scraped at the point of his spear. He touched the point with his finger. It was sharp.
Luke wondered if Adam had killed before. But he knew the answer. This was a wild place, and you
had to do what was needed to survive in it.
Adam tossed the stone. “We go now?”
Luke took one more deep breath. “We go.”
A little piece farther they came to a small creek, and Adam bent to examine tracks. Luke immediately saw bare feet tracks on top of the boot tracks. They jumped the little creek and continued, but Adam put his arm out and stopped Luke.
“What?” Luke said, but then saw a Scrain coming down the trail toward them.
Luke and Adam leaped from the trail and prepared to ambush the man. But the man began staggering and then fell before he got to them.
Adam turned to Luke. “You stay.” Before Luke could protest, Adam was sneaking down the trail with his spear at the ready. When he moved up to the man, he raised the spear to strike, but he let the spear down.
Luke went to Adam. Adam turned to him with a look of disbelief.
Luke looked down at the Scrain. He was cut up like a jigsaw puzzle. One of his ears was cut off and an eye was butchered out. Luke turned and threw up.
Adam stared up the trail, saying nothing. He was like a statue.
Luke wiped his mouth. “What is this? What does it mean?” He was more afraid for Moon than ever. He was afraid for himself.
Finally, Adam looked back down at the Scrain. “We move slower now.” With that, he stepped over the Scrain and started up the trail.
Luke looked back down at the dead man. No, he damn sure wasn’t in Arkansas anymore.
Adam moved ahead like a marine on point. Luke stepped around the man and followed.
After a short time, they came to some small, rocky hills. Lying at the base of one of the hills was another Scrain. They walked up to him together. Adam scanned the area like a soldier waiting to be ambushed.
“My god!” Luke said. The Scrain was cut up like the other, but this one had his privates cut off and placed on his chest.
Portal to the Forgotten Page 9
