“Lug is a stone-cold fun read. The talented David Zeltser spins a clever prehistoric tale of friendship and adventure, with a charming trio battling some fearsome bullies and beasts as the Ice Age dawns. The humor is as sharp as the tigers’ saber teeth.”
—Nathan Bransford, author of the Jacob Wonderbar series and How to Write a Novel
“Any kid who’s not extinct should love Lug’s rough-and-tumble romp through the world of dodo birds, jungle llamas, and cavemen.”
—Anne Nesbet, author of A Box of Gargoyles and The Cabinet of Earths
“David Zeltser’s debut shows that courage takes many forms, and that the struggle to fit in while being true to yourself hasn’t changed much in the past million years or so.”
—Barry Wolverton, author of Neversink
“David Zeltser has unthawed a glacier of a story that will melt your heart and leave you laughing out loud. Lug and his crazy cast of supporting characters deserve five caveman clubs for this hilarious saga of old traditions, dodo birds, and new beginnings.”
—Crystal Allen, author of The Laura Line and How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy
“Suspenseful and smartly humorous, this novel delights with its themes of brains over brawn and the power of friendship.”
—ForeWord Reviews
First published by Egmont USA, 2014
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806
New York, NY 10016
Text copyright © David Zeltser, 2014
Illustrations copyright © Jan Gerardi, 2014
All rights reserved
www.egmontusa.com
www.davidzeltser.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zeltser, David.
Lug and the dawn of the Ice Age / David Zeltser; illustrated by Jan Gerardi.
1 online resource.
Summary: Lug is a cave boy who would rather paint than fight. When he is banished from his clan, he and his two friends discover that the Ice Age is coming, and must figure out how to save their people.
ISBN 978-1-60684-514-1 (eBook) — ISBN 978-1-60684-513-4 (hardcover)
[1. Prehistoric peoples—Fiction. 2. Glacial epoch—Fiction.]
I. Gerardi, Jan, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.Z3985
[Fic]—dc23
2014005907
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
v3.1
For my wife, Fiona, my daughter, Naomi,
and all the kids brave enough to speak up
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1: Blood and Guts
2: Little Slug
3: A Caveman Council
4: Into the Jungle
5: Piggyback
6: Echo
7: The Beast
8: Everything Changes
9: A Short Chat with a Mammoth
10: Cave Art
11: A Small Change in Plans
12: Big Game
13: A Question of Trust
14: Smilus
15: Big Big Big
16: Dawn of the Ice Age
17: Hog Wild
18: Ladies First
19: A Crazy Idea
20: Lug the Great
Acknowledgments
If you are looking at my cave paintings, I have succeeded. If not, we humans are probably extinct. You see, the world began to get colder—much colder. And my clan initially reacted by doing this:
That’s right, a whole lot of NOTHING.
When that didn’t work, we did something, but it might have been too late. If you, my clan’s descendants, are still around, I hope this story will inspire you to pay attention to the big changes happening to your world. If you are extinct, sorry.
“OWWW,” I MOANED, gingerly feeling the plum-sized bump on my forehead. I opened my eyes and found myself sprawled and drooling on a cold limestone slab. From the golden tint of the light streaming in through the mouth of the cave, I judged that it was afternoon. But where was I?
Slowly turning my throbbing head, I glanced around and nearly fainted—there was blood pooling on the floor next to my face. Suddenly, a purple liver plopped into the red puddle with a squish. I breathed a sigh of relief.
My mother, Lugga, stood over me, gutting a big freshly killed dodo bird. Her long chiseled face, chestnut-brown hair, and banana-leaf top were speckled with bird blood and cave dust, and, as usual, she was up to her elbows in dodo guts. Next to her stood my father, Big Lug, a large, baby-faced, bald man with two chins and one tooth—and he did not look happy. He leaned on his trusty stone club, which was slightly bigger than me. From this close I could see the countless scars and bloodstains on his huge hands—the result of a lifetime of bashing things.
“You think that little bump hurts?” asked my father as he casually reached into the dodo bird’s chest and tossed a heart onto the glistening pile of guts next to me.
“Huh?” I said, rubbing my bump again and trying to remember how I’d gotten it. “What happened to me?”
“What happened to you?” My father’s usually calm brown eyes were filled with worry. “What happened is that you wimped out!”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I noticed that my mother’s cheeks were wet with tears. I couldn’t remember anything about the morning. Except for the mysterious bump on my head, everything in our family cave seemed normal. I decided it was best to pretend I knew what they were talking about. “You’re right,” I said, “I totally wimped out!”
“Don’t be a Neanderthal,” said Mom. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
I swallowed and shook my head.
I heard a giggle behind me. My older sister, Windy, sat cross-legged at the back of the cave, plucking another freshly killed dodo. She had the round baby face of our father, minus a couple of chins. Lumpkin—our fat little cave cat—was lying on her lap, lazily batting at a floating dodo feather.
“What’s so funny?” I grumbled.
“Nothing,” said Windy. “Except how dumb you are. Does that bump on your head contain your entire brain?”
Leaning against the wall next to her was a small stone club I’d never seen before. “What’s that?” I asked.
“That,” said my father, “was supposed to be your caveman initiation gift.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to smile gratefully. “It’s … it’s … just what I’ve always wanted.”
Windy laughed louder this time. “All you want,” she said, “are some of those weird rocks that make colors.”
“No I don’t!” I lied.
My father frowned at me. I was a terrible liar.
“Dad,” said Windy, “remember the time Lug got bashed in the head and ran home and made a little picture with his blood?”
My father’s frown deepened.
That happened when I was five, but my sister loved to remind us. A kid named Bonehead had bashed me with a rock and—to my everlasting regret—I had not bashed him back. But I had realized that I could use my blood to paint a colorful picture. It was awesome. I had bashed myself to get more blood, but then Mom made me stop. Later, when I was exploring a cave, I stumbled on a crumbly rock that had streaks of red in it. I crushed it into powder and discovered that, when mixed with spit, it made a beautiful bloody color that would stick to cave walls. Best day of my life!
“You better watch out,” said my sister, “or you’ll end up like Crazy Crag and—”
“That’s enough!” snapped my father. “Windy, go and tell Boulder your brother’s awake.”
She stomped out.
My father and I sighed simultaneously. We had the exact same sigh. It was about the only thing we had in common.
“Why does Boulder need to know?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm. Boulder the Bountiful was the Big Man of our clan, and I’d always had a feeling he didn’t like me very much.
“Lug,” he said, “Boulder is holding a Clan Council Circle about you right now.”
“WHAT?” I stood up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, “Boulder wants to banish you.”
THE MEMORIES CAME back like a sudden volley of stones whacking me on the forehead. The trouble had begun when I’d leaned out of a dank hunting cave by the river that morning and peeked around at a herd of macrauchenia. The beasts had stood hoof-deep in the oozing mud of the riverbank, sucking up the brown water with their flexible little trunks and dumping it into their big toothy mouths. I had felt the cool wind gusting through the trees and shivered.
For months now, it had seemed to me that our normally steamy jungle air had been slowly getting colder. The usually shiny green leaves on the gourd trees were a strange yellowish brown and now carpeted the forest floor. The beautiful red and violet orchids that normally grew in the sunny spots of the jungle had paled and shriveled. Even the gourd fruit—whose fuzzy pink shells my clan folk used to cover their private bits—were smaller this year, resulting in many uncomfortable glances and awkward silences. I had asked around and no one could remember seeing so many bare trees, not to mention bare bottoms. In my head a small warning voice had been growing louder and louder. “Lug,” the voice kept saying, “this is big.”
Yes, the events of the morning were all coming back to me. There had been seven other boys in the hunting cave with me. We were all about the same age, but I was the shortest and skinniest by far.
“You guys chilly at all?” I whispered to Chip and Rock, a tubby pair of twins.
“Shut …” Chip grunted, squinting his eyes like he was trying to remember something.
“… up?” Rock volunteered.
The first twin gave a satisfied nod, confirming that up was indeed the word he was looking for. I looked around the cave at the other boys. None of these chunkers were shivering like me.
Rock pointed at the largest macrauchenia. “Good beast!” he grunted.
“Yah!” said Chip, ogling the animal. “Good for headstone!”
No one else in my clan seemed to care that it was getting colder. All they ever cared about was playing in the next big headstone game against the Boar Riders.
Headstone is a game where you bash the opposing players’ heads with stones. In order to increase the risk of major injury, all players are also required to ride large animals while doing their bashing. My clan rode macrauchenia—fierce, striped jungle llamas with impressively long necks and short trunks—and so were known as the Macrauchenia Riders. Our neighboring rival clan—the Boar Riders—mounted huge razorback boars and got a big kick out of calling us Llama’s Boys. Not to be outdone, my clan had dubbed the Boar Riders Piggybacks. Beyond shouting at each other every few years at the Big Game, the two clans never spoke. I had been taught that the Boar Riders were probably secret cannibals with no laws and fewer table manners, and that thrashing them in the Big Game was the most important thing a Macrauchenia Rider could do.
In our clan, a caveboy could only become a caveman by catching a wild macrauchenia, breaking it in, and riding it in the Big Game. If you failed at any step, you were considered unworthy, cast out into the jungle, and expected to politely die. In all the stories I’d heard, only one banished caveboy was said to have survived into cavemanhood. They called him Crazy Crag, and some people whispered that he was still out there roaming the forest. I’d never seen Crag myself but, if he was alive, I kind of envied him. I was pretty sure he didn’t have to play headstone and could do whatever he wanted. Not that I wanted to be all alone in the jungle. I guess I just never felt like I belonged in my clan.
All the fathers had sat in the back of the hunting cave that morning and grunted excitedly. Tradition held that the boy who caught the biggest beast before the Big Game would someday become the clan’s next Big Man.
“Go, BONEHEAD!” cheered Boulder the Bountiful, our current Big Man. Even in the dim dawn light, I could make out Boulder’s hulking form in the rear of the cave. He had a blackbird’s nest of a beard that hid his face in secret shadow—nearly everything but his eyes, which were a cold milky blue.
“Bonehead … head … ed,” the cave walls echoed.
Bonehead glanced back at his father with a predatory grin. He was built like a slightly smaller version of Boulder except he was bristle-skulled, with small watery blue eyes and a thin-lipped mouth that had more gaps than teeth. But the most distinctive thing about Bonehead was the foot-long white bone that pierced his nose. He had once killed a baby jungle llama for it.
Unfortunately, Boulder’s bellow did more than just encourage his son. It also startled several of the macrauchenia into glancing up.
“You first, Little Slug!” hissed Bonehead when he saw this.
I tried to ignore him, but his best friend, Bugeyes, chimed in. He was another specimen you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark cave. Bugeyes was not as big (or dumb) as Bonehead, but he was twice as ugly, and with a surprisingly high-pitched voice for a kid his size.
“Lug’s too small to be a slug,” squeaked Bugeyes. “He’s more like the flea I squashed in my armpit this morning!”
Bonehead laughed like a snorting pig.
The rest of the jungle llamas lifted their heads, craned their long necks, and peered at the cave suspiciously.
“Biggest beast mine,” Bonehead growled at me, suddenly serious again. “Got it, flea?”
I couldn’t help staring at the repulsive little black whiskers sprouting above his lips and made a mental note to add those to my next painting of him.
“Fine with me,” I whispered. I was much more focused on surviving the next hour than in becoming the tribe’s next Big Man someday.
“Fine with me. Said flea!” jeered Bonehead, looking around to make sure everyone had heard this piece of poetic brilliance.
All of the other boys laughed nervously, not wanting to get on Bonehead’s bad side. All except for a silent burly kid called Stony, who was gently cradling a bright orange tree frog with his thick banana-like fingers. Stony had wide-set hazel eyes and a wild tangle of dusty brown hair crowning his sloping forehead. Although Stony never spoke, he did have a very expressive unibrow. It wiggled on his low forehead like a giant fuzzy caterpillar as he flashed me a friendly, if slightly moronic, bucktoothed smile.
I turned away and forced myself to focus on the herd of macrauchenia. I hated being called small by Bonehead and Bugeyes but, as my mother liked to say, right now I had bigger stones to split. Despite their cute little flexible trunks, jungle llamas possess strong biting teeth and explosively powerful legs that can smash in your head like an overripe gourd fruit. I had spent many quiet mornings observing them and painting pictures of them on the walls of my secret art cave. I knew their strengths, but what were their weaknesses?
“Give me bigger stone.” Bonehead’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
I turned back and saw him trade with Bugeyes, then tuck his new stone into his banana-leaf sash.
*You’ll notice that “Stone good for art” is not listed. Our Clan Council considers making art to be uncaveman-like behavior—a waste of time when you could be bashing perfectly good heads with perfectly good stones. That is why I kept my art cave a secret.
I tried to picture which way the jungle llamas would take off when all eight of us gave chase. Looking downriver I could make out the gray limestone cliffs that housed our village caves. Upriver I glimpsed the clearing that served as our clan’s headstone practice field. Across the water, rising out of the jungle,
loomed the great misty peak of Mount Bigbigbig. The base of its southern slope was not far from the opposite bank, but I had been taught that the mountain was sacred and should never be climbed. And I knew that beyond it was the territory of the Boar Riders. Of course, the other possibility was that the macrauchenia herd wouldn’t run away at all, but simply charge the first boy to emerge from the cave.
“You first, Little Slug!” Bonehead commanded, elbowing me in the ribs.
I picked up a rock, fixed my gaze on a young doe—the smallest macrauchenia in the herd—and took a deep breath to calm my racing mind. Then Bonehead shoved me out of the cave.
“LUUUUUUUUG!” cheered a familiar voice from the back of the cave. I glanced back and was amazed to see my father smiling proudly at me. Then it dawned on me that he thought I’d charged out of the cave first. Of course, I hadn’t charged out at all—I’d been thrown out. Still, my father was proud of me, and for a moment I was as happy as a dodo in springtime.
“YAAAAAAARGH!” roared Bonehead, shooting out of the cave just after me. He was followed by all the other boys—including Bugeyes, Chip and Rock, and the silent Stony bringing up the rear.
“YAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!” roared our proud fathers in unison behind us. The macrauchenia chase was on.
I slowed down. My chosen doe was standing her ground, obviously unimpressed with me. When I was a short stone’s throw from her, I stopped to see what all the other guys were up to. On my left, I saw Bugeyes brandishing a stone as he stared down a jungle llama that was desperately trying to look away. I could relate to that animal.
Behind Bugeyes, Chip and Rock had trapped two macrauchenia between themselves and the river. Then a sickening thud to my right revealed Bonehead grabbing hold of the largest beast and bashing it into submission with his rock. Only Stony and I did not have a llama, but Stony wasn’t even trying. He was happily sitting on a rock, licking his frog.
“Think!” I said to myself, looking back at the doe. “Think!”
Lug, Dawn of the Ice Age Page 1
