“Unfortunately, Boulder did a little sneaking of his own that day. He saw me going up the mountain and tattled to his Big Man father. They both wanted Boulder to be the next Big Man, and they somehow got the notion that I’d be his main competitor. They were wrong. I just wanted to invent and discover things. But they managed to get the council to banish me. And … well … now I talk to rocks.”
I smiled.
“Glad that cheered you up,” he said.
“I have some good news for you, Crag. Boulder has left the clan.”
“Really?” he said. He picked up the dark gray rock he called Cole and stroked his magnificent whiskers with it. “So, Lug, if you don’t catch jungle llamas and bash heads, what do you do?”
I noticed that the rock was smudging his whiskers a dark gray. “May I?”
“What?”
“Um … hold Cole?”
Crag suddenly looked protective. “Be gentle with him. He looks scary but he’s really very sweet.”
I took it. Cole didn’t feel like a rock at all—it was much lighter, like dried wood. I walked over to the nearest cave wall and began using it to draw a picture of Crag.
He watched in silence.
Crag stared at the picture of himself at his fire, while the real firelight and shadows danced over it. I glimpsed two tears travel down his cheeks and disappear into his whiskers before he turned away and looked at his woodpile. After a moment’s thought, he pulled out a strong and sturdy stick the size of my arm and pushed one end of it deep into the blaze. It lit with a great crackle. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “Here is your fire.”
I took it and peered at the flame. “I wish I could give you something in return.”
“You already have,” he said. “Now get out of here before Cole gets cranky!”
I CAUGHT SNATCHES of the cats’ growls as we thundered through the dark jungle, our path lit only by the flaming torch at the tip of Woolly’s trunk. As the last of the sun’s rays disappeared, the mammoth and I raced toward the sounds of sharp claws scrabbling down tree bark.
Once the tigers reached the ground, they were as silent as death itself. The crowd stood stock-still in the dark public clearing, listening intently.
Our torch suddenly emerged from the trees. A shout went up. The people saw how close the cats really were and ran screaming in all directions. The tigers’ eyes—wide and ghostly in the darkness—blazed in the sudden light. I dismounted and took the torch from Woolly. It was about half as long now.
“So you have the storm light too?” Smilus hissed, his voice as cold as the night air. “I thought it was just that madman on the hill.”
“Wrong again!” I shouted, trying to sound as dramatic as Crag. “The storm light comes from the sky, and we have tamed it to do our bidding. It will devour anything it touches.”
Smilus eyed the flame. “And what happens when it finishes up that stick?”
I glanced around. “Woolly,” I said, “hand me that branch.”
The young mammoth pulled a fallen branch out of the snow and passed it to me. I thrust it into the flame. It did not light up. I tried again. Still nothing. Stone it! It’s wet, I thought, suddenly remembering Crag’s warning.
The cat grinned, his monstrous teeth gleaming a vile yellow in the firelight. “After it devours your stick, I will devour you,” he said, stepping closer.
I kept the torch between us. He gave a silent nod to the tigress, and she came at me from behind.
I spun toward her. “Stay back!” I shouted.
The cats came from all sides now, forming a slowly tightening circle. I wheeled around, brandishing the torch in every direction. The ring of tigers seemed to whirl and close in around me.
The fire slowly consumed the stick, and I felt the terrible heat of it on my hand. The shorter the torch got, the more desperately I wanted to drop it. But I also knew that this flame was the only flicker of hope my clan had. I thought again of Mam’s words about the future and on whom it depended. I held on even tighter.
Smilus took a step toward me. “And now,” he hissed, “we’re going to tear you limb from—”
“No!” said a barely visible figure emerging from the jungle. The figure dismounted from a macrauchenia. “No you won’t.”
I lifted up the torch to see who it was. Smilus did not wait for me, springing toward the flame with a vicious roar. I tried to move it out of his way, but he was intent on batting it, and the torch’s flame accidentally brushed a line of fire across his side. He landed on top of the tigress with a yelp, the flames quickly spreading from his oily fur coat to hers. In just a few moments the entire ring of tigers was ablaze.
Shrieking, the cats hightailed it into the jungle. But this only fanned the flames. Soon we heard a dozen or so faint splashes, each followed by a shrill screech. I smiled as I recalled how cold the water was, and how the giant hairless cats must now be crawling up onto the muddy riverbank and scampering off with their bald tails between their legs.
“Lug the … Great!” shouted my dad, giving me an affectionate whack that nearly knocked me over.
The crowd cheered.
I hugged my dad again and then rushed toward the dark figure on the edge of the clearing. I raised my torch and saw Crag’s wrinkly, bewhiskered face and the bundle of dry sticks he was carrying. He solemnly pulled out a stick from the bundle and touched it to my flame. There was a murmur of excitement as his torch blazed to life.
I gratefully dropped my old burnt torch in the snow and watched it go out. I turned to the crowd. “It was Crag who gave us fire!” I said.
They gazed at the thin, bewhiskered man. With Boulder and his gang gone, the faces that greeted him were mainly full of curiosity and wonder. He stared right back at some of his old childhood friends, his sprightly blue eyes twinkling in the firelight.
Crag walked to the center of the clearing. He wiped the blanket of snow off the Shiny Stone and placed his bundle of sticks on top of it. The crowd oohed and aahed as he touched his torch to the pile and a merry fire crackled to life. The Shiny Stone had never shone like this before.
“Crag the Fire Giver!” I said.
“Crag! Crag! Crag!” chanted the crowd.
With both clans working together by torchlight, we quickly collected a good supply of branches. Crag showed us how to stack the wood just close enough to the flames to dry it out without burning. He also showed us how to roast bits of dodo and bananas on sticks. Soon mouthwatering aromas wafted through the air.
As we feasted around the fire, Crag told of being up on the mountaintop as a banished boy and seeing a great bolt of storm light strike a dead tree. He told of how the flames danced from branch to branch, and how he took a single burning twig back to his cave. “All of the light you see now,” he said, “is descended from that single spark.”
It was amazing to see Macrauchenia Riders and Boar Riders sharing a fire, and I recalled how my mother had once told me that we had all come from the same family.
My sister and I sat in the warm embrace of our parents as Mam told of the mammoths’ great migration south. She told of the many wondrous sights and strange beasts. She told of the buried villages and their heedless residents, now frozen in the snow. Stories drifted through the night air like the countless brilliant embers of the fire.
Finally, when all had had their fill of food and tales, each clan went back to its village. My family insisted on going to see my art cave, and we spent the rest of the night there. My dad held up the torch, wanting to know the story behind each painting.
And that is how it went, at least for a while. There were beasts in the forest and biting cold, but also friendship between clans, a fire in each cave, and a story around every fire.
Bigbigbig thanks …
To my wonderful team at Egmont—Andrea Cascardi, Jordan Hamessley, Michelle Bayuk, Margaret Coffee, Regina Griffin, Alison Weiss, and Bonnie Cutler.
To my amazing agent, Catherine Drayton, and InkWell Management (especially Lisa Vanterpool, M
asie Cochran, and Nat Jacks).
To my friends, supporters, and early readers—Al Gore, Alexis Gallagher, Angela Grossman, Anne Nesbet, Barry Wolverton, Beth Alpert, Bruce Coville, Burton Ritchie, Caroline Lawrence, Caroline Thompson, Crystal Allen, Dan Evans, Daniel Handler, David Baltimore, Deborah Halverson, Elizabeth Law, Erika Zavaleta, Gordon Korman, Greg Ferguson, Irwin Jacobs, James Campbell, Jarrett Rutland, Jay Leibold, Jen Rofe, Joe Greco, Judith Morgan, Linda Lichter, Mary Baldwin, Max Faugno, Melissa Manlove, Nathan Bransford, Patrick Carman, Peter Lerangis, Rob Taboada, Steven Chu, Will Wister, and the Gurevich, Jain-Metzger, Nodelman, Olafsson, Rukin, Sawhney, Weiss, and Yuger families.
To fab artists Jan Gerardi, JP Coovert, and Michelle Gengaro. To my teachers and friends from CDS, Mt. Carmel, Harvard, SCBWI, Leela, and BATS Improv. To the Zeltser ladies—Asya, Aurora, Naomi, Sage, and Aunt Sarah! Most of all, to my wife, Fiona Dulbecco, and our parents—Tamara, Alex, Maureen, and Renato—for all your dedication and love.
Lug, Dawn of the Ice Age Page 9
