by R Magnusholm
“Best of three?” he suggested.
“Okay.”
He retrieved the arrow and took another shot. This time, the arrow flew past the target, a foot to the left. He searched for it, cursing, found it twenty yards away, and tried again. The arrow nicked the sheaf on the right.
“We’ll count it as half a point,” she said.
He handed her the bow, picked up his trusty spear, and hurled it at the target in frustration. It struck dead center. “Bullseye!” Unlike the bow, he knew his spear and had practiced throwing it.
“Not bad.”
They recovered the arrow and the spear. Liz lifted the bow. Her first arrow nicked the target on the left.
“Half a point,” he said.
Her next two shots hit the target squarely. “Two and a half points.”
“The bow is yours, Liz.”
She shrugged modestly. “I had archery lessons thirty years ago.” In the diffused forest light, her eyes gleamed with reminiscence, and for a moment she seemed to transform into a young girl. “On a trip to Wales.” She counted twenty paces from the target and lifted the weapon again. The first shot flew wide, but her second and third arrows drilled the target dead center. “I’m out of practice, though.”
John tried to hit the sheaf with his spear from twenty paces, but only winged it. “I never tried archery, but it’s never too late to learn.”
“Well, we’ve plenty of food and plenty of wood for the fire, so we can practice all day.”
He said nothing. No matter how much they practiced, they’d never be as good at it as Stone Age savages who grew up with a bow. And there were only two of them . . .
Later that day, he opened his writing pad and wrote: Day 77. Made a bow and practiced archery. He supposed he’d have to make a second bow. He flexed his aching fingers and eyed the fresh splinter in his right thumb. So much work, so little time.
Chapter 25
The Song of Meat
A week later, they trudged through the snow to the deer trap site. They had been checking the trap once a day, but the animals stayed away from their contraption. But maybe, if the deer didn’t visit the trap voluntarily, they could stampede the herd and drive them into it.
Careful to keep themselves downwind from the site, they skirted the edge of a hawthorn thicket and peered around the brow of a low hill. The trap stood empty.
Slowly, they retreated and searched for a herd. It didn’t take long to find one. A dozen animals were browsing on willow bark and thin branches in the thickets by the stream. The bank was steep, so the animals would be unlikely to cross the stream. All he and Liz had to do was circle the herd and drive them up the path toward the trap.
John sensed Spot following just out of sight. Good. Deer feared wolves, so the three of them should be able to drive the herd in the right direction. He visualized Spot circling the herd and willed him to move.
The wolf emerged, loping between the trees, and John pointed him out to Liz.
The deer noticed Spot too and bolted, heading toward Liz and John. They sprang out of cover, waving their hands and yelling. The herd turned and fled up the path with Spot in limping pursuit. John and Liz ran as fast as their feet could carry them, paralleling the course of the forest stream to keep the animals going in the right direction.
From up ahead came the snap of the released pine sapling, followed by an agonized scream. He and Liz exchanged a glance and slowed their pace.
The deed was done, and the claret began to flow.
They rounded the corner and saw a reddish-brown, small-antlered buck slumped in the path, bleeding. Three prongs were stuck in its side. As they approached, the animal sprang up, thrashed and tore itself free of the trap. It fled up the path but didn’t get far. It tripped over its own hooves and plowed nose-first into a snowdrift. Blood bubbled and spewed out of its mouth with each exhalation. After one final, weak shudder, it lay still.
Real life’s not pretty, John reflected as he leaned on his spear to catch his breath. Kill or be killed.
Liz arrived, panting. She slung her bow over her shoulder and stuffed the arrow back into its woven quiver. Spot slunk around, whining, not quite daring to approach.
John pulled out his old cutlery knife that they’d sharpened to a razor’s edge. He’d wrapped the handle in tiger gut for a better grip. The innocuous piece of silverware was a small dagger now. Should they butcher the carcass where it fell and feed Spot? His furry friend certainly expected his reward. But how the hell would they drag a bloodied carcass for three miles back to camp? He’d have to drape the bleeding mess over his shoulders.
There were limits to what he could take.
“It’s a big one,” Liz said.
“Si, el gordo.”
“You’re such a show-off, John.”
“A braggadocio, you mean.” He crouched by the animal. “It must weigh as much as me.” He couldn’t figure out what deer species it was.
“Meat-meat-meat. Give-give-give,” Spot jabbered in John’s mind. He lifted his hands and pressed them against his temples. The jabbering continued unabated.
“Wait your turn,” John commanded in his mind.
He got back a stream of reproachful thoughts.
Liz began dismantling the trap. “We can’t risk venturing so far north. If the Others come this way, they might see our tracks in the snow.”
“There might be no Others.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“Yeah.” He cleaned blood off the carcass with snow, stuffed the wounds with dry grass, and heaved the body over his shoulders. He staggered under the weight. “Take my spear, please.”
Liz pulled a small slice of cured tiger meat from her canvas bag and threw it to Spot. “A consolation prize.” She picked up his spear, gathered the sticks of the dismantled trap, and they headed back to camp.
After a quarter-mile, John felt hot and spent. Even the snow getting into his shoes with every second step no longer bothered him. He let the warm and limp carcass slide off his back into the snow and lay down next to it, breathing heavily. Liz dropped John’s spear, her bow, and the bundle of sticks. Out of her canvas bag, she withdrew the firepot. A thin trickle of smoke coiled out of the center hole in the lid.
She set the pot down and started gathering firewood. “Let’s eat and lighten the load.”
“I second that motion.”
Dark green thickets of young firs surrounded them on three sides. Along the fourth, the stream burbled in its frozen banks. The far shore was another impenetrable tangle of firs. It was a secluded place, sheltered from the wind. Snowflakes began to sift from the pewter-gray sky, and John’s spirits lifted. The snow would erase their tracks.
In no time, a small fire blazed merrily next to the skinned carcass. John and Liz sat on fir fronds, roasting slabs of liver in the coals. At the other side of the clearing, the contented Spot gnawed on the deer’s head. He’d already devoured most of the innards such as the kidneys, lungs, and spleen. John had rinsed the guts and stomach in the icy water and hung them from a tree limb to dry.
Liz averted her gaze from Spot. “I can’t look at this horror anymore. You could paint the scene and call it cannibal’s picnic.”
“Perhaps we should trek south. Find a place where it never gets cold and live on nuts and berries.”
“In our world, we have malaria and yellow fever in the south,” she said. “God knows what they have here.”
“Well, that’s something to think about in the future.”
They devoured the hot juicy liver in silence. After he could eat no more, John glanced around the clearing and said, “How the hell are we going to carry all this mess home?”
“Simple,” Liz said. “Cut a long pole and tie the hunks of meat to it with deer guts alongside the sticks from the dismantled trap. You put one end on your shoulder, and I’ll put the other end on mine.”
“Pure genius.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Dad had the Special Force
s jungle training manual.”
John found a dead sapling that at some point had lost the battle for light and space. He cut it down, then chopped off the top end and branches.
Ten minutes later, their grisly load suspended between them, they moved out. The gnawed over antlered head swung at the bottom of the bloody mess. Liz led the way, with Spot bringing up the rear. The animal’s belly bulged with meat, and he moved sluggishly, but his sensitive nose still detected that a tiger had lurked nearby, and that a herd of aurochs was resting a mile away. The happy wolf shared all those fascinating details with John.
Spot saw them as a pack of three.
And there was something else that Spot’s nose detected. John received a fuzzy image of Liz with a pointy muzzle and wolf ears curling up with a litter of puppies. Spot’s simple-minded heart was glad. A great awe overcame John. Whatever event or force had brought them to this world, it had done so for a reason. He and Liz were a breeding pair, and their task was to populate (or re-populate) the world. Did it mean that the unknown entity would protect them from harm? Impossible to tell. They mustn’t get complacent.
Through Spot’s eyes, John saw himself walking through the snow with a pole on his shoulder. He too had a pointy muzzle and a rather lush tail.
In front of him, Liz’s bushy tail swept left-right, left-right with every step. John blinked hard, and the vision cleared. He was falling asleep on his feet—getting careless. And he couldn’t afford to be careless. He had a new life to protect and defend now.
“Liz, you’re not tired?”
“No more than usual.”
“The cargo isn’t too heavy?”
“I’ve carried heavier shopping in my days.” She laughed. “And I didn’t use a pole to share the load. What is it, John?”
“Spot says you shouldn’t lift heavy things.”
Her pace faltered ever so slightly, and she glanced over her shoulder. “He’s sure?”
“I don’t know. He’s got an overactive imagination.”
Chapter 26
Bad thing. Danger.
Fleet Woods
When the sun rose on their 100th day in the woods, John and Liz were preparing a breakfast of smoke-cured meat and hazelnuts. They sat on a pile of pine fronds in what they called the fire shed—a roomy three-sided open structure thatched with overlapping pine and fir branches. In the center of the room, the fire blazed warmly in a pit surrounded by stones.
John put a slab of smoked meat onto a crude chopping board and cut it into slices. “It reminds me of Parma ham.” He threw a piece to Spot who was nosing around the entrance. The old boy’s injured paw had healed, and he no longer limped.
“Nah,” she said. “It’s too smoky and salt-free.”
“I’m full.” He hauled himself to his feet and stretched. His head bumped against a hunk of dry-curing venison suspended above. “Back to work.”
“Who would have thought that Stone Age living was so much hard labor . . .”
“Doh. Me no work, me hunt.”
“Cut it out.” Liz chuckled. “No hunting today.”
Three types of meat hung from the ceiling, as a week ago Spot had led them to the leftovers of a dead auroch frozen into a snowdrift. Most of the carcass had been gnawed off by tigers, but one side had stuck to the ground and survived to provide a piece of hide eight feet long and six feet wide, as well as assorted scraps and pieces.
Now, this tough bovine hide, scraped and washed in the stream, lay outside, propped up by stones to form a rough basin. They had also made a rawhide bucket that John used to fill the basin with water. He’d stripped bark from several willow trunks, which had been cut down by beavers. After shredding the bark with his stone axe, he dumped it in the basin. By dropping hot stones into the water, they had brought it to a boil and cooked the bark into a rich tannin solution. The bucket and the assorted pieces of hide had been soaking overnight in the tub.
He stepped out of their shelter and crouched by the basin. “Hmm, it smells like strong tea. Cold now.” He reached into the basin and retrieved two stones, which he then rolled into the fire pit. Steam rose into the air, hissing like a scalded cat.
Spot growled, his white teeth gleaming, and backed away from the fire.
“Easy now, old boy,” Liz said.
With a forked stick, John rolled two different stones out of the fire and dumped them into the basin, producing more hissing and steam. He stirred the bubbling water with the same stick, then touched the surface gingerly. “Warmer now. Do you think I can have a bath?”
“Your skin will turn to leather.”
He pulled the rawhide bucket from the bark brew. It hung limply in his hand, dripping. “How long do we soak it?”
“No idea.” Liz crouched by his side and pulled out two tiny strips of auroch hide. She dropped one to dry on a stone by the fire and began scrunching and stretching the second piece. “Once these samples turn into proper water-resistant leather, we’re done.”
“Enough for two pairs of boots?”
“We only need one pair. My deerskin moccasins are fine.”
John glanced at his scuffed but reliable oxfords. They were fine for summer, not for walking in snowdrifts. He poured water from a plastic container into his Arsenal mug, added a pinch of frostbitten blueberry leaves, and fished out a hot pebble from the fire. He scooped it with a tablespoon and dropped it into the mug. He set the mug down and added two more hot pebbles, bringing the water to a boil. “Your herbal tea, Liz.”
“Thanks.”
He peered into the empty container and said. “I’ll get more water.” Melted snow just didn’t taste the same. No minerals.
He paused by the tub of tannin brew. Hopefully, they’d have the leather bucket properly cured soon, so the water supply situation would be solved. A rawhide bucket was okay for bringing water, but not good for storing it, as after a few hours the rawhide acquired the consistency of wet cardboard and lost its shape. They’d also get a cooking skin for making stews and maybe a separate one for tea.
Ah, what bliss would it be to eat warm stew with a spoon, drink tea, and bathe in an auroch leather tub . . . He picked up his spear, tucked his axe through his woven bark belt, and headed out.
Spot crouched by their deadfall barricade, sniffing the air and growling at the back of his throat. “Bad thing. Danger. Bad thing. Danger.”
“How far?” John asked. The smoke from the fire drifted past him into the woods, and he reckoned that no animal would dare to lurk that way.
“Near and far,” Spot spoke in his mind enigmatically.
“Liz,” he called. “Spot’s acting odd. Block the barricade behind me.”
“Maybe we should go together,” she said, taking her bow and quiver off the peg. A dozen fully fletched flint-tipped arrows poked out. She pulled one arrow out and nocked it.
John hesitated, then pushed aside the barricade. A rosy sun floated above the tree line to the east, filling the snowy woods with a fairytale glow. Blue shadows stretched across the snow. As far as John could see, no fiend lurked anywhere. And anyway, this was their home, their stomping grounds, and no despicable, stinking tiger would keep him from getting water for his morning tea.
His six-foot-long spear in one hand and the plastic container in another, he stepped outside. Spot whined plaintively, and instead of bounding out and ranging in front, he hung behind. John tensed. What if it wasn’t a tiger, but something worse?
Cawing harshly, a crow swooped overhead, soon to be joined by others. They mobbed something in the pines directly ahead. Suddenly, a large winged shape burst out of the tangle of branches and flew off, pursued by the cawing black flock. An eagle of some sort. John heaved a sigh of relief.
Chapter 27
And Now You See Me
John headed down the path, stopping and listening periodically. Halfway to the stream, he turned and flashed a thumbs-up to Liz. As he approached the stream, the ground level dipped. Dense juniper bushes crowded the path.
&n
bsp; If he were to set up an ambush, this would be the place.
He sniffed the air, breathing in the clean fragrance of wintry woods. Water gurgled over the rocks twenty yards away. He and Liz had been down this path hundreds of times before, and the trail of compacted snow felt solid and familiar.
Spot slunk beside him, his hackles up.
John sniffed the air again—this time establishing a tenuous mental connection to draw on Spot’s superior senses—and detected an unpleasant tang of something sour, something like a wet dog, but different.
He got off the beaten path into the snowdrift and peered behind a juniper bush. No one. He took a slow step forward and checked behind another bush. There were clawed footprints in the snow. Not tiger. Smaller and with claw marks facing inward as if whatever made the prints walked on inward-turning paws.
He sensed movement behind him and instinctively jumped aside, spinning around, dropping his plastic container in the snow. With a swish of displaced air, something heavy slammed into the ground in the spot he’d occupied a split second ago. A club.
The weapon was an extension of a brawny hand, which in turn was attached to a savage wearing an animal mask. The stranger stood seven-foot tall, towering over John.
For a split second, they stared into each other’s eyes, and he realized it wasn’t a mask but a real face. The stranger had small rounded animal ears atop his head, and what John at first mistook for brown fur clothing was the attacker’s own shaggy pelt. Some sort of harness crisscrossed the powerfully built body. Juniper branches were stuck behind the webbing. Camouflage.
What the hell?
A whirlwind of thoughts flew across his brain. A yeti? A teddy bear from hell?
