Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  Not to be outdone, Tik-Tik began hunting, for real. He could have let an adult teach him the ins and outs of the job, but preferred to learn it all the hard way, through long trial and error. And in this stubborn way, he developed his own, unique tricks and practices, that would eventually be passed on to others. He still had a hard time with rabbits, but with increasing frequency he began bringing home large birds and miniature goats.

  In the process he found he was journeying, by himself, farther and farther from the housing development. He was more and more wary of lions the further out he got, but he practiced his courage by chasing down and killing scorpions and snakes, and finally jackals, and bringing their bodies back as trophies. Although he was not the strongest or the fastest or the most sensible, Tik-Tik became known as the fiercest of the boys—a title which pleased him very well indeed.

  Meanwhile, also not to be outdone, the girls that were Tik-Tik’s age had begun constructing their own little houses on the outskirts of the development. Harv thought of them as playhouses, but to the girls it was serious business, and they set about trying to outdo one another by making bigger and bigger structures, and decorating the outer walls with leaves and flowers and rabbit pelts.

  One of these girls, by the name of !Ey-!Ey, invited Tik-Tik into her house one day. Tik-Tik had not spared much thought for girls in a long time; they were neither good nor bad, in the same way that trees were neither good nor bad that gave no fruit and were not suitable for making spears. They simply existed in the earth as objects to be seen and steered around, and perhaps sometimes used for shade, but otherwise ignored.

  However, on this day Tik-Tik felt a stirring within his loincloth, and for reasons he could not have explained or described, he consented to stoop down and crawl into !Ey-!Ey’s little dwelling.

  “Does Tik-Tik like this?” she asked, spreading her arms to point to the inner walls of the house, which were decorated with dried white flowers.

  “Mmm,” Tik-Tik answered noncommittally. He had no opinion about houses or flowers. However, when !Ey-!Ey spread her arms like that, he found his sight drawn toward her breasts. These had formerly been a pair of little brown spots on her chest, indistinguishable from those of a boy, but now they protruded outward, almost like those of a woman. When had that happened? He felt another stirring in the loincloth region. With no name for the feeling, he ignored it, but his body responded nevertheless.

  !Ey-!Ey seemed to notice this, and shyly hunched over, covering her breasts with one arm, and her loincloth with the other.

  “Does Tik-Tik’s blood burn?” she asked warily.

  “No,” Tik-Tik answered. The question annoyed him. He’d never known what that expression was supposed to mean, and he hadn’t asked to be in here with an insensible girl. “Why did !Ey-!Ey put flowers on walls?”

  The question seemed to surprise her. “Flowers are beautiful. Why does Tik-Tik bring home dead snakes?”

  “Snakes are dangerous,” Tik-Tik answered. Then, realizing this was about as sensible as the conversation was going to get, he said, “Tik-Tik will not stay here. Tik-Tik will hunt today.”

  “Mmm,” !Ey-!Ey said.

  “Tik-Tik hunts well.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Tik-Tik is leaving now.”

  He got up and did so.

  Over the next many days, though, he found the other girls pointing and giggling when he walked by. This irritated him, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. It was forbidden to strike or wrestle a girl, and he did not know anything to say to them to make them stop.

  Finally, annoyed, he went back to !Ey-!Ey’s little house to confront her about it. He had seen her go inside, so he followed her there, and yanked aside the little rabbit-pelt door.

  Startled, !Ey-!Ey once again put her arms across her breasts and loincloth.

  “Why do girls laugh at Tik-Tik?” he demanded.

  She paused, then answered, “Girls know Tik-Tik was here. Girls know Tik-Tik was looking at !Ey-!Ey’s body.”

  Tik-Tik felt the sides of his mouth and the center of his forehead pull downward. “How do girls know this?”

  “!Ey-!Ey told them.”

  “Why did !Ey-!Ey tell them?”

  “Mmm. Mmm. !Ey-!Ey doesn’t know. !Ey-!Ey wanted to tell somebody.”

  Tik-Tik thought about this. He could not particularly imagine wanting to tell anybody anything, unless it had to do with hunting or spears or snakes or lions or walking long distances. He particularly could not imagine wanting to tell girls about looking at bodies. It was not sensible.

  “Why does !Ey-!Ey cover !Ey-!Ey’s breasts and loincloth?” he finally asked.

  “Mmm. Mmm. !Ey-!Ey does not know.”

  “Do not cover them.”

  “What?”

  “!Ey-!Ey hears Tik-Tik. !Ey-!Ey should not cover !Ey-!Ey’s breasts and loincloth.”

  He waited to see if she would move her arms. Slowly, she did, although she was looking down at the floor.

  “Why does Tik-Tik want to see !Ey-!Ey’s body?” she asked quietly.

  “Mmm. Tik-Tik does not know.”

  “Does Tik-Tik’s blood burn?”

  “No,” he answered. But his hands reached out and touched her. He felt her neck, her breasts, her waist, her legs.

  She gasped and then moaned, and then pulled away, saying, “Careful. Long time !Ey-!Ey has wanted Tik-Tik in !Ey-!Ey’s house. But now Tik-Tik is here, and !Ey-!Ey’s belly will not be still.”

  With more curiosity than lust, he reached for her again, and felt the knot that held her loincloth on. His fingers moved to untie the knot. His lips moved to kiss hers.

  “!Ey-!Ey’s blood burns,” she said quietly, and reached for his own knot.

  * * *

  They remained in the little house for some time, and after that, Tik-Tik made a habit of visiting there every morning and afternoon. He had not asked for any adult advice about this, either, but he seemed to know what to do, and what he did not know, !Ey-!Ey seemed to. And what neither of them knew, they figured out by trial and error.

  The other girls laughed and pointed, but now Tik-Tik did not mind. Other girls were insensible. Other girls wanted their own boys in their own houses, and one by one, they achieved this ambition.

  Word got around in the housing development. One day, Grandmother asked Tik-Tik, “Is Tik-Tik doing something Tik-Tik should not? Tik-Tik is too young to roll with girls. !Ey-!Ey is too young to roll with boys.”

  “Tik-Tik is not doing anything,” he replied. He did not care what Grandmother thought. He did not care what anyone thought.

  However, one day when Tik-Tik had finally killed a rabbit, !Ey-!Ey said, “!Ey-!Ey likes rabbit. Tik-Tik should make fire and cook this rabbit for !Ey-!Ey.”

  This was another thing Tik-Tik did not know how to do, and so he went to Grandfather and asked, as quietly and discreetly has he could, how fire was made. Tik-Tik had seen the end of the process, when Mother rubbed two sticks together to create a flame, but the sticks were very particular in shape, and he did not know how they were created.

  Grandfather taught him how to find a good, dry stick and split it down the middle with his hand axe, and then carve it out with his knife, and save the shavings in a little pile. Grandfather taught him to find a smaller dry stick and sharpen it flat with his knife, making a sort of wooden knife-spear out of it, and then push the larger stick into the dust and rub it quickly with the smaller stick until it began to smoke, and then dump the smoking ashes into the pile of wood shavings, and blow gently until it caught fire.

  Grandfather made the procedure look easy, and Tik-Tik was deeply frustrated that he could not simply walk away and repeat it on his own. Instead, he studied with Grandfather for days to get it right, and for days more until he could perform it reliably every time.

  But soon he was making fire sticks for !Ey-!Ey and teaching her to use them, and he was bringing her rabbits to cook, and the other boys and girls were livid with jealousy. Again, Grandfather
was besieged with applicants. However, Grandfather suddenly died one day, and was buried out in the dust, away from the housing development, and the boys were forced to ask their own mothers and fathers for help. They asked Tik-Tik as well, but Tik-Tik would not help them. Why should he?

  Then one day, Mother gave birth to a baby boy. It cried all the time, and Mother was constantly cooing and fussing over it, and Tik-Tik was having none of that, so he simply moved into !Ey-!Ey’s little house full time. So did she, and for a time Tik-Tik and !Ey-!Ey lived almost as a married couple.

  However, they soon began to fight. Tik-Tik would reach for her, and instead of rolling with him she would push his hand away and say, “Tik-Tik should tell !Ey-!Ey about Tik-Tik’s day.” Or she would tell Tik-Tik about her day, and it was even more boring than Mother’s stories, because as far as Tik-Tik could tell, !Ey-!Ey never went anywhere or did anything more than a very short walk away from the housing development.

  Tik-Tik began complaining about this, and demanding to roll with her, and when she refused or started into another boring story, he would yell at her, or she at him, and then they would be fighting again. “!Ey-!Ey should be Mute!” he told her more than once. “Tik-Tik would love !Ey-!Ey if !Ey-!Ey were Mute!” And she would say, “Tik-Tik is Mute! Tik-Tik does not talk, only shout. Tik-Tik only wants to hunt and touch and roll and eat and fart and sleep.”

  It got so bad that Tik-Tik began sleeping at Mother’s house again, although he still spent as little time there as possible. Instead, he traveled. He gathered knapping stones from the hills, and spearwood from the trees, and he sometimes hunted monkeys and pigs by a very big watering hole. He encountered many people on his travels, both Talking and Mute. He encountered many women, and found that if he simply told them their eyes were pretty, or that their legs were smooth, or if he sang to them, then in many cases they would be drawn to him, and would roll with him right there in the dust, or invite him back to houses or playhouses, where he sometimes remained for many days before moving on again. He became known in many earths and housing developments not only as a fierce man, but as one who rolled with many women, never asking if they were married or whether any other man loved them. Never caring if they were older or younger than he was, or really anything about them.

  At one of his increasingly rare stops at home, Grandmother gave him a necklace, with the brightest blue bead he had ever seen.

  “Apparently Tik-Tik is man, now,” she said. “Grandmother thinks Tik-Tik is too young to be man, but apparently other women disagree.”

  “Yes,” he said to her. Rather smugly, Harv thought.

  “Men wear adornments,” she said, and placed the necklace around his neck, tying its leather cord securely in the back. Then: “This bead is soft. Do not treat it roughly, or it may crack and fall off. The cord may also break, or the knot may come undone. If Tik-Tik is man, Tik-Tik must be careful about such things. Tik-Tik should also dye Tik-Tik’s loincloth with red ochre or black coal, or rub it in the green grass.”

  “Tik-Tik will do this,” he told her, realizing that he would like to have a man’s loincloth, rather than a boy’s. “And Tik-Tik will be careful with this.” He fingered the bead, and felt things for which he had no words.

  But out in the world, he did treat the necklace roughly, never giving a thought to it as he climbed trees and chased through bushes and leaned hard against shovels and punch presses.

  His travels increased, until he discovered, all on his own, the housing development where his father and sister lived. Neither of them resembled his memories. Father was remarried, to a Mute woman, and now Tik-Tik fully understood the appeal of that. Father and the Mute woman had no children together, though, and Father’s skin was wrinkled, and his body was slow. He looked and moved like a Grandfather.

  Tik-Tik’s sister, !Ibi, was also not the same. She was not a girl, but a woman, who lived with a Talking man who never seemed to be quiet, even when it was time to sleep. They were not married, but had a baby girl and a toddler boy together, and the girl and boy were also never quiet, and Tik-Tik could not stand to be around them.

  All of this made Tik-Tik very sad, for the family he remembered did not exist anymore, and what did exist was something he did not want, or did not know how to make use of. He visited many times, but then resolved to stop, because his visits were not making anyone happy. And what was the point of life, if not to be happy?

  And so he continued his travels, and continued rolling in the dust with as many women as he could. This made him happy. Or at least, he thought it made him happy, until one day when he came upon !Ey-!Ey standing before an apple tree, with an expression on her face that Harv would describe as pensive.

  “Why does !Ey-!Ey stand before this tree?” Tik-Tik asked.

  She looked up, saw him, and turned away dismissively. “Why does Tik-Tik care what !Ey-!Ey does?”

  Tik-Tik looked at the tree, and saw there was a snake in it.

  “Do not touch tree,” he said. “Snakes are dangerous.”

  “!Ey-!Ey cares nothing about danger. !Ey-!Ey wants apples.”

  “Do not touch tree!”

  But !Ey-!Ey stepped forward, reached out a hand, and plucked an apple from one of the lower branches, not far from the snake’s head.

  “!Ey-!Ey does not listen to Tik-Tik,” she said, and bit into the apple.

  This puzzled Tik-Tik. He was finished with !Ey-!Ey, and had moved on to other women. Many other women. And !Ey-!Ey had moved on to at least one other man, that Tik-Tik knew of. How the girls pointed and giggled at him when that happened!

  “What is wrong?” he asked her.

  “Nothing,” she said, taking another big bite and throwing the rest of the apple on the ground.

  “Is !Ey-!Ey not happy with Cort?”

  “!Ey-!Ey’s happiness is no business of Tik-Tik.”

  He paused then. She seemed very angry with him, still. He knew he had caused her pain, but why would she still be feeling it? Tik-Tik was gone. Tik-Tik was no longer touching her, no longer yelling and sleeping and farting in her presence.

  “Please do not touch tree,” he said again, moving toward her.

  “Not another step,” she said. “!Ey-!Ey is not happy with Cort. !Ey-!Ey is not happy with Mik. !Ey-!Ey is not happy with anyone. !Ey-!Ey is especially not happy with Tik-Tik.”

  She reached for another apple, and was bitten by the snake. She pulled her hand back, but it was too late.

  “No!” Tik-Tik cried out.

  “See?” she said, holding up her hand for him to look at. Two spots of blood trickled out of it.

  “No,” he said again. “What has !Ey-!Ey done? Why has !Ey-!Ey done this?”

  “Actions have consequences,” !Ey-!Ey said, and collapsed into the dust.

  Tik-Tik had to leave behind his spear, and the bundle containing his knife and his axe and his ostrich egg, in order to carry !Ey-!Ey back to the housing development.

  “Why does Tik-Tik carry !Ey-!Ey?” she asked him at one point.

  “Because Tik-Tik does not want !Ey-!Ey to die,” he replied.

  To which she said, “Whether !Ey-!Ey will die has nothing to do with whether !Ey-!Ey is carried somewhere.”

  Tik-Tik’s belly would not be still. Tik-Tik’s forehead would not be dry. There was light wind in the earth, and some dust in the air. Tik-Tik blinked, but could not rub his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  At another point, she said, “!Ey-!Ey did not expect so much pain.”

  “No one knows pain of snake bites,” Tik-Tik told her gently, “Except people bitten by snakes.”

  At still another point she said, “!Ey-!Ey thought !Ey-!Ey would have more time. !Ey-!Ey thought !Ey-!Ey could walk back home and go to sleep.”

  To which Tik-Tik said, “!Ey-!Ey should save !Ey-!Ey’s strength. !Ey-!Ey can sleep in Tik-Tik’s arms.”

  “Mmm. That is all !Ey-!Ey ever wanted.”

  It was a long walk back to the housing development, and she said nothing further.<
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  3.5

  Nothing was ever the same for Tik-Tik after that. Although at first !Ey-!Ey’s parents and sisters did not blame him for what had happened, he could not help blaming himself.

  “!Ey-!Ey’s belly was sad,” they said. “!Ey-!Ey had sadness inside before Tik-Tik ever touched !Ey-!Ey. She became sadder when Tik-Tik left, but this is not Tik-Tik’s fault.”

  But he answered them: “Tik-Tik was bad to !Ey-!Ey. Tik-Tik has been bad to many people, and actions have consequences.”

  And this they could not deny. This they could not overlook, and so finally Tik-Tik did come to receive a measure of blame in their minds. But never as great as the blame in his own. He thought long and hard about what !Ey-!Ey had told him: that he never spoke, except to yell. That he might as well be Mute, for all the good his voice did anyone. Could his words have saved her? Had his touch somehow doomed her?

  And he wondered: why did he miss her now? Now, when she was gone and buried and dust? Why now, did he begin to feel the stirrings of love that she had wanted from him so desperately while still she lived? Could a man love a woman who wasn’t there?

  For a long time, he stayed in Mother’s house and did not speak. And then, when he emerged, he built a house of his own—a real one—and still did not speak. And then he went looking for his spear and knife and axe and ostrich egg, and when he could not find them, he set about replacing them.

  He went to the hills for stone, to the trees for wood, to the bushes for pelts and cords. He made an axe with a wooden handle, and a knife with a wooden haft, and a spear with an oversized stone head, and he made leather sheaths to cover all of their sharp edges. He spent many days fashioning his tools, and received many compliments, for they were in some ways the finest tools the Talking People had ever seen, and were widely copied thereafter.