The SealEaters, 20,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  “No,” the chief answered honestly. “If anyone here would understand that explanation, it would be At. He talks with those who seemingly could be but aren’t.”

  “Oh, I see what you mean,” Momomu said with enthusiasm. “I had never thought of At’s talking with the gods as having anything connected with my relaxed thinking place, but I can see now that there may be a link I hadn’t recognized. I wonder whether At relaxes his thinking place as I do mine.”

  “You should ask him sometime,” Whug suggested.

  “Hi, Chief,” Belah said with a great smile. “Have you been inside?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Whug admitted.

  “Come in, then,” Belah invited, holding the skin that stretched from the top crosspiece to the ground between the middle of one side to the tree attachment.

  Whug stepped inside and instead of the dark that met him in his hut, light entered into this one. The floor was even and filled with dry soft sand. He guessed there would be no need of evergreen branches on the floor. But what he saw struck him. There were wooden box-like structures arranged on the floor. One was large.

  “Is that where you go black?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes. Try it. The skins Momomu prepared are so soft and comfortable. I’ve never gone black so well,” Belah said showing how pleased she was.

  Whug laid himself down on the sleeping place. Lying there he could see out of the opening where the roof began its slope. He could see the hill tops in the distance. The sleeping place was like none he had ever felt anywhere. His entire thoughts of Momomu changed in an instant, though the change had been growing since he came to examine the structure.

  Whug stood up and looked around him. Beside the head part of the sleeping place, there were projections from the tree where limbs had been. Those limb projections held Momomu’s spears standing straight, ready to grasp if needed at night or anytime. There were other four-sided objects with seeming solid tops that held stacks of skins and other things, such as winter clothing and boots. Other things such as bladders had their places either stacked or hanging on projections from the trees. Everything was neatly placed in this spacious hut.

  Of one thing Whug was certain and he told Momomu and Belah when he left, “There will soon be many of us living in huts like this in the forest. Do you think they’ll call us the Forest People?” He laughed.

  “No,” Momomu said, and with Belah they chorused, “We are SealEaters!” They laughed as Whug turned with a grin to leave.

  Chapter 2

  Murke’s Story

  Murke fell and fractured his skull on a rock. Blood poured from the wound as he lay on the ground. Then, the blood stopped flowing. Not long afterwards a white, thin, almost invisible mist rose from Murke’s unmoving chest. It rose up slowly, exuding from Murke’s chest as if a non-palpable part of him were diffused to the air, manifested as living while leaving behind a cicada type non-viable shell. It should have moved, as the rising of mountain mist in the warmth of a morning sun to the sky above. Instead of rising it hovered over the tunic Murke wore. The white mist moved in the way of an oily substance on a pond, not separating from the water but not joining with it either, certainly not rising upward. The mist joined with nothing. It collected itself, moved from Murke’s body to a rock ledge several body lengths away, and it rested on the rock ledge which overlooked a wide valley below with a lake where geese floated with their little ones following in a line behind.

  While the white mist lodged on the rock ledge, two people buried the body. They lacked enough dirt to cover the left hand of the body, so it remained sticking out of the soil resting on a rock.

  The formless white mist made no apparent acknowledgement of the burial. It simply rested, as if focused on the lake. One could conclude that the part of the mist that arrived at the rock ledge first was its actual front and had adequate vision and intent to arrive there when leaving Murke’s chest. That front faced the lake.

  ‘Every time I see a lake, I think of my name! Why did my father, Amoroz, have to name me Murke? I’ve wondered about that all my days. Murke! A water bird, but not a bird of the sea. A bird with strange feathers atop its head. A water bird of the lakes. SealEaters are not Lake People, but there is a lake downhill from me now. I can see it easily from here. I need to stand up. It’s just so inappropriate for me to have such a name. Water bird of the lakes? Almost embarrassing. We are SealEaters. Water birds don’t eat seals. But that’s my name. Is anybody listening? Why doesn’t anyone answer back? How I wish I could talk to my father! I must hear a human voice, even if it’s my own. I’m confused, a little disoriented. Where am I?’

  ‘My father. Oh, he was wise to send me instead of going himself on the voyage to find land for our people. My father is a man of great courage—on land. He hates the sea.’

  ‘What in the name of all the gods is wrong with me? I’m confused. I’m so pale I can almost see through myself. Something’s wrong. I’ll stay calm. I have to stay calm. I’ll talk it out, and maybe my memory will return to my thinking place.’

  ‘The sea trip was terrible. I’ve never been so frightened. The day of the whale killer was enough for me. Oh, I’d seen whale killers, those black and white whales that seek the young of other whales. They surround the babies, separate them from their mother, and kill them for their food. It is the way of life of the sea. This time it was different. We had hauled out on some sea ice that was low and appeared flat on the top. All of us were tired. I wanted to rest. First, we hauled up the bundles which were all tied together on one long cord to keep them secure. Each boat had its own corded bundles. Then, we hauled all the boats up except Reg’s giant boat. Rowers on Reg’s boat had to tie that one up to a spear we secured in a crack in the ice. Seals began to haul out on the ice we were on, but at the time we didn’t need any more seals to eat. We ignored them. They were on the other end of the ice. But the whale killer didn’t ignore the seals. The whale killer swam through the water toward the ice we were on, its giant top fin cutting through the water like a new knife through boneless meat. It didn’t care about us. It wanted the seals on the other end of the sea ice.’

  ‘At first it tried to throw itself upon the ice far up enough to reach a seal, but it fast learned that wouldn’t work. Then, it decided to try to tip the ice over to slide the seals off into the water. Of course, that would have slid us and our boats off into the water. Quickly, Blad and I tied ourselves to a spear in the ice and took our sturdiest spears to which we’d tied a recovery cord. We tried numbers of times to spear the whale killer. Once it realized we were after it, its attention turned to us. Blad with a terrible shout finally speared it in an eye. He lost his spear, but the whale killer left us. Later, the seals also departed. I’ll never forget that as long as I live. The beast had huge teeth! It also had a very bad attitude.’

  ‘One thing made us laugh. It was a rude laugh, because we laughed at Reg. We did try to conceal it, but that was difficult. When the seals departed, some of them decided to use Reg’s boat for a resting spot. You know seals don’t smell good. Reg was furious when he discovered their presence on his boat. He had to fight to remove them permanently from his boat. Then, when his back was turned, they’d hurl themselves back in the boat. Reg became furious because we laughed so loud, he could hear us. It was just something nobody ever expected to see. I will admit that they didn’t smell as bad as the ones back home on the Seal Beach. That far out on the water, they probably didn’t wallow in their own filth as they do at the Seal Beach.’

  ‘As if that weren’t enough, the sea ice is everywhere out there. To think of becoming lost at sea is a horror. Among us there were four boats. SealEaters had to stay together. We could move a little faster and easier through the ice than Reg’s boat could. Often he snagged the arm of his boat on the sea ice that didn’t show above the water. In our boat I could reckon our direction according to the sun during the day and at night by the star that never moves. That’s only partly helpful when the sea ice is
tall and along most of our route it was very tall. If we could’ve just gone in a straight line, it wouldn’t have taken so long. As it was, we meandered in and out of the huge masses of ice seemingly forever.’

  The mist rose a little and then settled back on the rock ledge.

  ‘I guess I’m complaining a lot. It makes me and my family look bad. My complaints are not without reason, though that doesn’t make it right. That trip was the fright of my life. In some ways I’m happy not to have had to make the trip home and back here again to re-locate our people. Or do I still have to do that? It’s so strange that in some places my memory is terrible. I just cannot remember some things at all. In other ways, well, my memory is clear, and I miss the others. I don’t see any of them anywhere and fear they may have abandoned me. Why would they abandon me? I just don’t understand. Maybe they went to hunt? I seem to have no food.’

  The white mist stretched itself taller and turned around stretching more and contracting as if in some great indecisive moment. It settled back on the ledge.

  ‘The storms out there on the sea were the most frightening. The water rises in huge waves like nothing we’d ever seen. In the extremely tall waves of storms, there is the fright of the giant pieces of ice. During the storms we were able to see the size of some of those giants. Consider a person. The part of ice you see above the water is very large. Compare it to the top of a person’s head. All the rest of the body lies under the water. In storms the wind pushes the huge ice around as if it were nothing. One of those huge pieces of sea ice could kill your boat and all in it. Once I saw a giant wave overturn one of the enormous chunks of ice. To see something that big roll about in water nearby—that is the worst thing I ever saw. Yet, what could we do? In a storm you just have to hope the gods are with you. Most of the time we held on and rode it out, trying to keep all our things in the boat. I was the oldest on my boat. I had to appear courageous and knowledgeable for the others. I was so scared. I wanted to hide my eyes from the storm like Torq and Wapa did. Torq was only seventeen and Wapa was twenty-one. At thirty-seven, I was supposed to be a seasoned mariner. I wonder whether there is such a thing as a seasoned mariner. I tried to assure their help to keep the front of the boat headed into the waves. All I know is that when the others went black from exhaustion I’d occasionally let myself cry silently. The rest of the time I’d pretend to be brave, shouting out to them to row. By the gods, some of those waves were tall! If there could be a pure torment, a storm at sea with sea ice—that’s pure torment.’

  On the rock ledge the white mist took a horizontal alignment though not perfectly flat. There were parts of the mist thicker than others, and there was constant motion though hard to detect as would be seen in clouds in an almost windless sky.

  ‘In storms, the wind would blow small amounts of water from the peaks of the waves at the boat. If we hadn’t had such good protection from our furs and gut coverings, we could have been stoned to death from liquid water. I know that makes no sense, but a small amount of water hurled by the fierce wind can feel just like a rock! A trick of the gods, making a liquid feel like a solid. I would have been quite content not to learn these things.’

  ‘Sometimes we’d have a favorable wind and we’d put the sail up. That was my favorite time. It meant the sea ice was not tall and we could make good time moving through it—except for Reg in his big boat that kept hanging the arm up on smaller ice pieces. Reg is a terrible example of a mariner—or person for that matter. He’s demanding of everyone but almost never goes out of his way for anyone else. We kept waiting for him to be abusive to Vaima, but he just seemed to want her to row while we were on the water.’

  The mist arose again to a vertical plane almost appearing in a human form, but remained attached to the rock ledge.

  ‘One thing Reg was good at was spearing seals while they swam in the sea. More than once he gave us seals he’d speared when we’d speared none. He seemed to enjoy spearing seals and was very good at it. Well, from his youth he did practice even when he wasn’t hunting. He’d take armloads of grasses and build a heap. Then he’d put a small piece of skin on the heap and practice still spear thrusts, and then he’d practice running at the heap from all angles and thrusting as he moved. Some SealEater hunters would practice, but they never stayed with it as long as Reg did. Reg’s spear tip hit the skin almost every time.’

  ‘We became lazy when the seals hauled out on Seal Beach. Kills were simple. Very easy. Our harpoon skills for seals in water had deteriorated from lack of use. Not Reg’s skills which were sharp as ever. On the boat when Reg offered one of the smaller boats a seal, he didn’t even ask for anything to be given back to him. It was a side of Reg I’d never seen. He did, however, make us feel incompetent, but that didn’t bother me. What concerned me was securing food when my belly was empty and we had none. Reg wanted to make us feel as lesser people all the time, so his castigation that accompanied the gift of a seal, when we had none, came as nothing new. I learned at a young age, and with help from my parents, to become used to it and not take it, as if it were our lack of worth—which it wasn’t. It was his lack of real strength of character according to my father. Reg had to keep saying how wonderful he was, for it was certain nobody else would tell him that.’

  The mist flattened out again on the rock ledge. It appeared to cling there, wrapping under the edges of the rocks.

  ‘Unless we caught them on the ice, we had to clean the seals on the boats. We skinned them in the boats and cooked them on the slate flats we’d brought for making fires. We always shared the liver raw when we reached it. It was so good! And warm. What was critical was to keep our embers alive. We needed fire for cooking our meat and melting ice for water. Occasionally, someone would lose an ember and we’d have to bring our boats close together to start a fire from the fire on another boat. Oh, we could have done it the hard way, but that takes a long time and with the wind out there, it was next to impossible. Toward the end of the voyage, we had to start eating things raw because we didn’t bring enough wood and charcoal for many fires. Mostly our meat remained in frozen strips.’

  The mist rose up and began to move back and forth about the distance of two man-lengths. Had the mist been a person, it would have been pacing.

  ‘And, why I keep wondering, am I reduced to talking to myself or the imaginary person I hope is listening? Are you out there listening to me? Are you? That was louder. Did you hear it? I remember falling. That’s all I remember. Then, I opened my eyes in this empty world, or is it just the same empty world we explored, looking for a home? It’s all so confusing. By the gods I’m lonely. I’d do just about anything to hear a human voice right now. This is painful. I don’t remember ever being alone. I don’t like it.’

  The mist moved from the rock ledge to the body that had just been buried. A single hand was exposed. The mist, almost appearing in the form of a human, bent over the grave. It moved to take a better view of the hand that lay exposed.

  ‘My hand lies there resting on a rock. How can that be? I cannot seem to make my fingers move. How can I see the back of my hand at ground level with no arm while I stand above looking down? I thought the sea crossing was frightening. This is worse, because it suspends and reshapes reality. I don’t think I feel anything. Does my body have weight? I seem to be able to move, for I’ve been pacing, but it’s not by walking? I don’t even understand my own words. I must have gone black in the sun and have overheated. I’m just so terribly confused. Nothing makes sense. I’m beginning to fear this perhaps as much as I did the sea crossing.’

  The mist returned to the rock ledge.

  ‘I must pull myself together before I glide away as an eagle on the wind. When I was a little boy, I would sometimes dream of gliding down from the heights. My father told me to wake up when that happened, and he cautioned me not to linger on the thought. I don’t know whether he thought I’d jump off a hill. I certainly had better sense than that! Maybe he thought I’d become confused as I am now. I�
�ll go back in time memory and come forward. Perhaps that way I can remember what is hidden from my thinking place.’

  ‘Mongwire and I were the same age, though he was an elder and I wasn’t. He was an elder, because he and my father and Whug, Reg, Forth, and At all had the same father. Their father is dead now. Their father’s name was Elunkatimal. I don’t remember him. I was my father’s first son. Mongwire and I used to play together. Akla joined us when he was old enough. We wanted to be great hunters. We threw pebbles at targets day after day. We were born just after the terrible sickness. There were very few children then. My father’s father had many sons, but seven died from the terrible sickness. Their fathers also died from it. The SealEaters scattered for the time of the terrible sickness. During that time there were a few wars. Both sides of the wars were fighting the terrible sickness, so the wars weren’t very long. At least that’s what my father told me. We know that far to the east there are many wars. There have been some people who entered the valley beyond the tallest hill, but they never seem to stay long in my land. Climbing the hill from that direction isn’t easy.’

  The mist began to move back and forth again.

  ‘I wonder where Mongwire is. He has to be on this new land somewhere. I feel as if someone is missing.’

  ‘I still have a sense of awe that all the boats made it to land at the same time. We didn’t lose a single boat or SealEater. When we turned southward after moving west for a long time, we came across endless coastline where the ice sheet lay so very tall against the sea. Our surprise was great when we saw the end of the ice sheet and the massive expanse of green grassland. My astonishment knew no bounds. It was wonderful. Of course, we still had to avoid the huge chunks of floating ice along the edge of the land, but we could see land, beautiful flat land as far as our eyes could see, it stretched out to the west before us. When we came to a river that emptied into the sea, we rowed up the river. It was a small river, but it gave us access to the land. We rowed for days. Occasionally we’d see mammoths. They moved across the grassland exactly as they did at home on the other side of the hills. They formed groups as they did back home. They would not go hungry in that grassland.’