Other Worlds Were Possible, page 16
Sensing that Dawn was about to propose an alternative to Serenity’s motion, Dusk got ready to object. Sensing that Dusk was preparing his own proposal, Dawn got ready to object. But neither Dusk nor Dawn presented a motion. And so neither felt the need to respond.
A vote was cast, and the result was unanimous: The clans-folk agreed to take Delight’s body to the nearest patch of trees.
***
The new day was welcomed with silence and sloth…
Barely a word was spoken. What was there to say? Everyone knew what they had seen. It was too late to save their forest. Perhaps one day they would return, remove the saplings, and plant a variety of trees. But that mission would have to wait.
They trudged ahead.
It was only once the sun had passed overhead, and begun its slow descent, that the conversation resumed afresh...
Some said it was the ancestors who had torn their forest to shreds; destroying their home, so they could move to a new location. But that did not explain the saplings. Why would the ancestors want so much rubber?
Others claimed that a typhoon must have been to blame. But that did not explain what had happened to the missing trunks and branches.
A consensus began to form: This was the act of an outsider. Someone so profane, they had no respect for the dead. Someone so ignorant, they thought they could plant a forest which only contained a single type of tree.
Who would do such a thing?
Hunter was a deeply troubled individual. But he was no fool. They had met a couple of simpletons, on their way to the Big Camp. But those men had been far too feeble to commit such an atrocity. Father Ralph had some peculiar ideas. But he had been in their camp all along.
It must have been a group of these Wogies; an entire army of this strange and foreign tribe. Those people really were a threat. They were not content with conquering the living. They wished to conquer the dead! They were not just waging war on their people, but on their land; on Mother Nature herself.
No! It was too far-fetched to believe. There must have been a more reasonable explanation. But what could it possibly be?
***
Time was the greatest healer…
Yes, they had borne witness to something horrific. And yes, they were facing a mortal threat. If a group could destroy such a sacred place, if they could attack Mother Nature, then who knew what else they would do?
But six days had passed, and the clans-folk had not experienced anything untoward. Their shock was beginning to thaw.
They had set up camp in one of the two oases which dotted their route. It was lusher than before. But the plants were still coarse; a dullish shade, with tough leaves and spiky flowers. Sunny respected them, for surviving in these inhospitable surroundings. But he did not particularly like them. They were too fearsome to love. Sunny’s feet were sore, and he was growing impatient; longing for their final destination, where the trees would be laden with blossom, and the flowers would be vying for the eye’s attention.
But they would not reach their Small Camp for at least a couple of days.
Sunny nodded at Hope.
She rolled her eyes, turned away, waited for a reaction, turned back, and took control; beckoning Sunny with her finger, before placing her hands on her hips; waiting for Sunny to approach her.
She grabbed his wrist, and dragged him behind the nearest mound; walking so quickly, that Sunny struggled to maintain the pace. He got his feet in a tangle, almost tripped, and almost stumbled over the debris:
“I… I…”
Sunny knew what he wanted to say. He had practised his speech, in his mind, on what might have been a hundred separate occasions. But now he had Hope alone, he could barely even speak.
“I… I would like… I think we…”
“Shut up!”
Hope shoved Sunny to the ground, with more ferocity than Sunny had experienced before.
“You’ve got no other girlfriends or boyfriends here, Mister Sunny Loverboy, so you thought you’d come back to old Hope? Eh? No choice. Miss Hope or Miss Nada. And, after nine long days, you supposed you’d settle for me?... What, Mister Lothario? You can’t speak? Did the serpent eat your mouth? Did you think you could just give me a nod, and then I’d come running? Eh? Mister Big Balls? Mister Snake Charmer? Mister Sower Of Fertile Seeds?”
Sunny was confused. Was this a game? Did Hope genuinely believe that he was the one who had taken several lovers, rather than spend time with her?
“I… I…”
“Don’t make excuses! You owe me. You owe me big time… What? You thought you’d get away with it? Eh? Creating a harem? Abandoning the one who taught you everything you know? Eh? Mister Little Boy In A Big Man’s Body? You’ve got an awful lot to learn!”
Hope ripped the loincloth from her hips, squatted over Sunny’s head, and brushed her vagina up his face; beginning at the point of his chin, proceeding as slowly as she could, before reaching the tip of his scalp.
She smelled of ginger and cloves.
Hope repeated the action, ever so gently, ever so many times. Whenever she sensed a movement, she shunted Sunny’s head; thwacking his face with her pelvic bone, pressing his skull down into the dust.
She released the pressure, and began the process afresh.
Sunny could not be sure if he was being caressed, attacked, rewarded or abused. It took a good while, before he even noticed that the force had increased. It took him even longer to realise that Hope was no longer going up and down, but following a circular path around his bulbous nose.
She locked onto Sunny’s lips, thrusting back and forth.
Sunny took the hint. He extended his tongue, running it between her labia, before focussing on her clitoris; sucking, blowing, sucking and...
Hope came, emitting a sound that was more angst-filled than ecstatic; a sort of hushed, primaeval yelp.
She rose to her feet, reattached her loincloth, kicked some dirt past Sunny’s face, turned and stormed away.
Sunny had no idea what had happened.
***
Sunny had almost given up on his previous plan. He could have Hope to himself, whenever they were away from the Big Camp. Surely that was enough?
Why did he even want to be exclusive? It was not the way things were done. Whilst he had refused to accept it before, he supposed he must have been manipulated. Father Ralph had played tricks with his mind.
Dinner was almost over…
The members of their clan had spent the afternoon catching fish in the oasis’s pool. They had returned the ones which were still growing, and the ones which looked pregnant. But they had kept around twenty fishes, roasted them, and eaten them along with some oranges. It made a pleasant change from their previous meals; a fairly monotonous combination of berries and dried meat.
Hope sat down beside Sunny, and squeezed his thigh.
“I’m with child.”
“Oh… You… But… Well…”
“Eh? Have you lost the ability to speak? Mister No Tongue, No Teeth, No Words?”
“I…”
Sunny nodded.
“Is that it? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
“Yes! I mean… Whoopee! I’m as happy as the sun on a cloudless day.”
“But no more sex till I give birth.”
“No… More... Steady your smoke… No more, what?”
“No more sex. Just stuff like we did before.”
Sunny nodded. He was happy for Hope, although he was flummoxed by his own imperceptiveness. How had he not noticed this before? Hope’s midriff had clearly expanded. She would probably give birth within four or five lunar-cycles.
Sunny was excited to meet the baby, although he was not entirely convinced by this chastity clause. That did feel a little extreme.
His thoughts were cut short by an eruption of noise:
Ewww! Oi! Ewww!
At first, it sounded like the type of roar that could have only been created by a prehistoric monster. Then their ears adjusted and the noise evolved; becoming more volcanic, like an explosion which had emanated from deep beneath the earth. It took them quite some time to realise that this cacophony had erupted from the mouth of one of their peers. Pumpkin was both shouting and gasping for air; creating a noise that was both loud and choked, squealed and strangled:
“Ancestor on earth! Ancestor on earth!”
Pumpkin was standing between two of the surrounding mounds. He appeared to be dragging something heavy, but it was too dark to discern the details. Sunny hoped he had hunted an animal. They had not eaten fresh meat for days. But the hellish nature of Pumpkin’s yelps, suggested that this was unlikely.
“The dead alive! The living dead!”
The clans-folk waited for Pumpkin to explain.
When it became clear that he had nothing to add, Landscape approached her friend, somewhat tentatively; stopping after every few steps, considering whether she should continue, peering back in search of support, before completing another few steps.
Sunny was the fifth person to stand. Or perhaps he was the sixth. He was the second person to reach Pumpkin. And he was one of the first to understand the cause of that man’s delirium: Pumpkin really had returned with something that looked like an ancestor. This was peculiar, since they had always considered their ancestors to be spirits; entities which had no physical form. And this thing, whatever it was, had an unmistakable outline. It occupied space, and must have weighed a lot. Pumpkin looked exhausted from the effort he had expended, dragging it back to this place. But this thing did not seem particularly human. It was other-worldly; shadowy, gaunt, and far too pale to be real. It had no eyeballs, only sockets. Its skin was far too tight.
Pumpkin’s peers appeared to agree. Some nodded, in the most pensive of fashions. A couple shuffled backwards, two toe-lengths at a time. One turned around to flee; returning to the collective embrace of the group.
Kitten tutted:
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
Her neighbours turned to face her, searching for an explanation.
But Kitten felt no need to explain.
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
Sunny looked up at Kitten, and looked back down at the “Ancestor on earth”. His peers were doing something remarkably similar, apart from Pumpkin, who was staring into the darkness.
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
A lone voice finally asked the question which everyone else was thinking:
“Auntie Kitten: Why do you tut at the ancestor?”
Kitten attempted to tut, and then to answer. But she was overcome by so much scorn, that she emitted more of a splutter than a tut, spraying saliva into the ether:
“Tut… Splutter… Mist… Tut… Ancestor? Have you completely lost your beads? Ancestor? Ancestor, this big fat hairy tuchus!”
They waited for more.
The leaves glistened in the moon-splashed light.
A bird whistled two solitary notes.
But still, Kitten remained silent.
“Not ancestors?”
“What? Have we taught you nothing? Or have your minds dropped out through your buttocks?... Since when did ancestors have bodies?... Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut… This ain’t no ancestor. This is quite clearly a tut-tutting corpse!”
After a moment of reflection, a few people crept forwards. Sunny supposed they must have believed Kitten. If this was not an ancestor, then there was no reason not to approach.
Health was among their number. She had set fire to a bundle of dried sage, which she was wafting above Pumpkin’s head; producing a crackling sound, and some pearly layers of smoke. This age-old ritual was performed to cleanse the air; to unburden the clans-folk of their stress. It appeared to be having the desired effect; dissipating the terror which had lurked in Pumpkin’s eyes, and relieving the tension which had caused his shoulders to crumple.
Seeing the transformation, judging it safe to advance, Sunny approached the corpse. He explored it with his eyes, before using his fingers; stroking its shoulder and pinching its arm.
“The Desert Woggy.”
“The man we tried to help.”
It seemed so obvious. It was a wonder it had not occurred to him before: This man must have died in the days which had followed their previous encounter.
If only he had not fired that gun and scared them all away! They could have escorted him to safety. He would still be alive today.
The conversation rumbled on:
“These Wogies aren’t so tough after all. Huh! They can’t even go for a walk without dropping dead like unwanted leaves.”
“We’ll be okay. They may destroy our forests, but they’ll never replace us. They don’t even know how to live!”
HOME, SWEET AND SOUR HOME
The clan had two sorts of stories…
Most were allegorical. It did not matter if the details evolved. Who knew? Perhaps Uncle Crow had once been a woman: Auntie Crow. Perhaps that person had a different name: Auntie Owl or Uncle Hawk. It was the moral of the story which mattered: Successful hunters had a duty to remain humble, to maintain harmony within the group. The fable was just a mechanism; a medium through which this message was conveyed.
But there was a second type of story. These were retold with such rigidity, they might as well have been scripted. The details were always the same. Almost every word was identical, whenever the tale was told.
This gave the impression, rightly or wrongly, that these stories were not fables. They were oral histories, which recounted real events from the past.
One such story referred not to an individual, an Uncle Crow or Auntie Rabbit, but to a group: The First Ancestors…
According to legend, the First Ancestors had lived in a time of plenty, when fruit juice flowed in the streams, the flowers were always in bloom, and the trees bore new fruit each morning. But what was particularly special, for a clan so devoted to hunting, were the animals who lived in that epoch. They were more varied than any set of creatures there had ever been.
Among these fabulous specimens, was an animal called a woolly mammoth. This beast was a colossus; double the height of most people, and almost two-hundred times the weight. Hunting a woolly mammoth was easy. The First Ancestors only had to chase it into a pit filled with spikes. And the rewards were great. A single animal could provide enough food to feed a clan for an entire season.
There was just one issue: Left out beneath the sun, their meat would soon decay. This problem was not insurmountable. The clans-folk could have dried or salted their food. They could have stored it in a cool, dry place.
But why go to all that bother?
To save themselves the trouble, the clans-folk gorged on that meat whilst it was fresh, and abandoned whatever remained. They kept the hides and tusks, but only if they needed them right away. Then they went out to hunt, killing a second woolly mammoth, and then a third; eating as much as they could, and abandoning the leftovers.
Life was easy for the First Ancestors. But their behaviour had consequences. They hunted so many woolly mammoths, that their numbers began to dwindle. It became more difficult to track them down. In time, they killed the very last one.
Still, there were other animals to eat…
When the First Ancestors arrived in their region, it was home to about twelve different types of large, flightless birds. Some were nearly three times as heavy as a human. The largest laid eggs which were a hundred times larger than a chicken’s. There were flightless geese and an array of primates, each of which tasted delicious.
These creatures had never seen humans before.
They looked at the First Ancestors. They did not see any sharp teeth, piercing claws or poisonous stings. And so they saw no reason to flee.
The First Ancestors had their fill; walking up to their prey, and stabbing them through with their spears.
But the good times were not to last. They killed so many creatures, their populations rapidly decreased. Within twenty or thirty generations, they had gone the way of the woolly mammoth.
The absence of these species had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. With fewer large animals, the smaller animals flourished. They ate all the fruit and nuts.
The First Ancestors could no longer find fruits to eat each morning. They had to trek to find that food, and they had to wait for it to come into season. The excess fruit did not fall into the rivers, flavouring them with juice. The clans-folk had to make do with plain old water.
Things would never be so good again.
***
The clan remained at the oasis for several days.
This had not been their intention. Other clans might have rested for many nights, whilst travelling between their camps. Some clans did not even have a Small Camp. They moved from one hunting ground to the next. But the Eagle Clan rarely stopped for more than a couple of nights in any location. Having left their land fallow, to allow it to recover; they were keen to discover what plants had regrown, what small creatures had come to eat those plants, and what larger animals had been attracted by this prey.
Indeed, they had been getting ready to leave, when they realised something was amiss. Pumpkin had not moved. He was still wedged inside the crevice, slumped down aside the remains of the Woggy’s corpse.
No-one dared to approach.
Someone said Pumpkin had been murdered. The whole thing had been an elaborate ruse, in which the Woggy had pretended to be dead, waited, and then slaughtered Pumpkin as he slept. Another person said that Pumpkin must have been possessed by the Woggy’s spirit. His body was alive, but the Woggy was inside, controlling his arms and eyes.
The truth was more mundane: Pumpkin had broken his leg, whilst dragging the corpse. This explained his fiendish screams.
The clans-folk took great pride in caring for the sick, disabled and elderly; nursing their peers back to health, and feeding anyone who was unable to feed themselves. It was in their own self-interest. One day they would be ill. They would require this kind of assistance.
That morning, there had been two schools of thought…
A vote was cast, and the result was unanimous: The clans-folk agreed to take Delight’s body to the nearest patch of trees.
***
The new day was welcomed with silence and sloth…
Barely a word was spoken. What was there to say? Everyone knew what they had seen. It was too late to save their forest. Perhaps one day they would return, remove the saplings, and plant a variety of trees. But that mission would have to wait.
They trudged ahead.
It was only once the sun had passed overhead, and begun its slow descent, that the conversation resumed afresh...
Some said it was the ancestors who had torn their forest to shreds; destroying their home, so they could move to a new location. But that did not explain the saplings. Why would the ancestors want so much rubber?
Others claimed that a typhoon must have been to blame. But that did not explain what had happened to the missing trunks and branches.
A consensus began to form: This was the act of an outsider. Someone so profane, they had no respect for the dead. Someone so ignorant, they thought they could plant a forest which only contained a single type of tree.
Who would do such a thing?
Hunter was a deeply troubled individual. But he was no fool. They had met a couple of simpletons, on their way to the Big Camp. But those men had been far too feeble to commit such an atrocity. Father Ralph had some peculiar ideas. But he had been in their camp all along.
It must have been a group of these Wogies; an entire army of this strange and foreign tribe. Those people really were a threat. They were not content with conquering the living. They wished to conquer the dead! They were not just waging war on their people, but on their land; on Mother Nature herself.
No! It was too far-fetched to believe. There must have been a more reasonable explanation. But what could it possibly be?
***
Time was the greatest healer…
Yes, they had borne witness to something horrific. And yes, they were facing a mortal threat. If a group could destroy such a sacred place, if they could attack Mother Nature, then who knew what else they would do?
But six days had passed, and the clans-folk had not experienced anything untoward. Their shock was beginning to thaw.
They had set up camp in one of the two oases which dotted their route. It was lusher than before. But the plants were still coarse; a dullish shade, with tough leaves and spiky flowers. Sunny respected them, for surviving in these inhospitable surroundings. But he did not particularly like them. They were too fearsome to love. Sunny’s feet were sore, and he was growing impatient; longing for their final destination, where the trees would be laden with blossom, and the flowers would be vying for the eye’s attention.
But they would not reach their Small Camp for at least a couple of days.
Sunny nodded at Hope.
She rolled her eyes, turned away, waited for a reaction, turned back, and took control; beckoning Sunny with her finger, before placing her hands on her hips; waiting for Sunny to approach her.
She grabbed his wrist, and dragged him behind the nearest mound; walking so quickly, that Sunny struggled to maintain the pace. He got his feet in a tangle, almost tripped, and almost stumbled over the debris:
“I… I…”
Sunny knew what he wanted to say. He had practised his speech, in his mind, on what might have been a hundred separate occasions. But now he had Hope alone, he could barely even speak.
“I… I would like… I think we…”
“Shut up!”
Hope shoved Sunny to the ground, with more ferocity than Sunny had experienced before.
“You’ve got no other girlfriends or boyfriends here, Mister Sunny Loverboy, so you thought you’d come back to old Hope? Eh? No choice. Miss Hope or Miss Nada. And, after nine long days, you supposed you’d settle for me?... What, Mister Lothario? You can’t speak? Did the serpent eat your mouth? Did you think you could just give me a nod, and then I’d come running? Eh? Mister Big Balls? Mister Snake Charmer? Mister Sower Of Fertile Seeds?”
Sunny was confused. Was this a game? Did Hope genuinely believe that he was the one who had taken several lovers, rather than spend time with her?
“I… I…”
“Don’t make excuses! You owe me. You owe me big time… What? You thought you’d get away with it? Eh? Creating a harem? Abandoning the one who taught you everything you know? Eh? Mister Little Boy In A Big Man’s Body? You’ve got an awful lot to learn!”
Hope ripped the loincloth from her hips, squatted over Sunny’s head, and brushed her vagina up his face; beginning at the point of his chin, proceeding as slowly as she could, before reaching the tip of his scalp.
She smelled of ginger and cloves.
Hope repeated the action, ever so gently, ever so many times. Whenever she sensed a movement, she shunted Sunny’s head; thwacking his face with her pelvic bone, pressing his skull down into the dust.
She released the pressure, and began the process afresh.
Sunny could not be sure if he was being caressed, attacked, rewarded or abused. It took a good while, before he even noticed that the force had increased. It took him even longer to realise that Hope was no longer going up and down, but following a circular path around his bulbous nose.
She locked onto Sunny’s lips, thrusting back and forth.
Sunny took the hint. He extended his tongue, running it between her labia, before focussing on her clitoris; sucking, blowing, sucking and...
Hope came, emitting a sound that was more angst-filled than ecstatic; a sort of hushed, primaeval yelp.
She rose to her feet, reattached her loincloth, kicked some dirt past Sunny’s face, turned and stormed away.
Sunny had no idea what had happened.
***
Sunny had almost given up on his previous plan. He could have Hope to himself, whenever they were away from the Big Camp. Surely that was enough?
Why did he even want to be exclusive? It was not the way things were done. Whilst he had refused to accept it before, he supposed he must have been manipulated. Father Ralph had played tricks with his mind.
Dinner was almost over…
The members of their clan had spent the afternoon catching fish in the oasis’s pool. They had returned the ones which were still growing, and the ones which looked pregnant. But they had kept around twenty fishes, roasted them, and eaten them along with some oranges. It made a pleasant change from their previous meals; a fairly monotonous combination of berries and dried meat.
Hope sat down beside Sunny, and squeezed his thigh.
“I’m with child.”
“Oh… You… But… Well…”
“Eh? Have you lost the ability to speak? Mister No Tongue, No Teeth, No Words?”
“I…”
Sunny nodded.
“Is that it? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
“Yes! I mean… Whoopee! I’m as happy as the sun on a cloudless day.”
“But no more sex till I give birth.”
“No… More... Steady your smoke… No more, what?”
“No more sex. Just stuff like we did before.”
Sunny nodded. He was happy for Hope, although he was flummoxed by his own imperceptiveness. How had he not noticed this before? Hope’s midriff had clearly expanded. She would probably give birth within four or five lunar-cycles.
Sunny was excited to meet the baby, although he was not entirely convinced by this chastity clause. That did feel a little extreme.
His thoughts were cut short by an eruption of noise:
Ewww! Oi! Ewww!
At first, it sounded like the type of roar that could have only been created by a prehistoric monster. Then their ears adjusted and the noise evolved; becoming more volcanic, like an explosion which had emanated from deep beneath the earth. It took them quite some time to realise that this cacophony had erupted from the mouth of one of their peers. Pumpkin was both shouting and gasping for air; creating a noise that was both loud and choked, squealed and strangled:
“Ancestor on earth! Ancestor on earth!”
Pumpkin was standing between two of the surrounding mounds. He appeared to be dragging something heavy, but it was too dark to discern the details. Sunny hoped he had hunted an animal. They had not eaten fresh meat for days. But the hellish nature of Pumpkin’s yelps, suggested that this was unlikely.
“The dead alive! The living dead!”
The clans-folk waited for Pumpkin to explain.
When it became clear that he had nothing to add, Landscape approached her friend, somewhat tentatively; stopping after every few steps, considering whether she should continue, peering back in search of support, before completing another few steps.
Sunny was the fifth person to stand. Or perhaps he was the sixth. He was the second person to reach Pumpkin. And he was one of the first to understand the cause of that man’s delirium: Pumpkin really had returned with something that looked like an ancestor. This was peculiar, since they had always considered their ancestors to be spirits; entities which had no physical form. And this thing, whatever it was, had an unmistakable outline. It occupied space, and must have weighed a lot. Pumpkin looked exhausted from the effort he had expended, dragging it back to this place. But this thing did not seem particularly human. It was other-worldly; shadowy, gaunt, and far too pale to be real. It had no eyeballs, only sockets. Its skin was far too tight.
Pumpkin’s peers appeared to agree. Some nodded, in the most pensive of fashions. A couple shuffled backwards, two toe-lengths at a time. One turned around to flee; returning to the collective embrace of the group.
Kitten tutted:
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
Her neighbours turned to face her, searching for an explanation.
But Kitten felt no need to explain.
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
Sunny looked up at Kitten, and looked back down at the “Ancestor on earth”. His peers were doing something remarkably similar, apart from Pumpkin, who was staring into the darkness.
Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut.
A lone voice finally asked the question which everyone else was thinking:
“Auntie Kitten: Why do you tut at the ancestor?”
Kitten attempted to tut, and then to answer. But she was overcome by so much scorn, that she emitted more of a splutter than a tut, spraying saliva into the ether:
“Tut… Splutter… Mist… Tut… Ancestor? Have you completely lost your beads? Ancestor? Ancestor, this big fat hairy tuchus!”
They waited for more.
The leaves glistened in the moon-splashed light.
A bird whistled two solitary notes.
But still, Kitten remained silent.
“Not ancestors?”
“What? Have we taught you nothing? Or have your minds dropped out through your buttocks?... Since when did ancestors have bodies?... Tut, tutty-tut-tut, tutty-tut… This ain’t no ancestor. This is quite clearly a tut-tutting corpse!”
After a moment of reflection, a few people crept forwards. Sunny supposed they must have believed Kitten. If this was not an ancestor, then there was no reason not to approach.
Health was among their number. She had set fire to a bundle of dried sage, which she was wafting above Pumpkin’s head; producing a crackling sound, and some pearly layers of smoke. This age-old ritual was performed to cleanse the air; to unburden the clans-folk of their stress. It appeared to be having the desired effect; dissipating the terror which had lurked in Pumpkin’s eyes, and relieving the tension which had caused his shoulders to crumple.
Seeing the transformation, judging it safe to advance, Sunny approached the corpse. He explored it with his eyes, before using his fingers; stroking its shoulder and pinching its arm.
“The Desert Woggy.”
“The man we tried to help.”
It seemed so obvious. It was a wonder it had not occurred to him before: This man must have died in the days which had followed their previous encounter.
If only he had not fired that gun and scared them all away! They could have escorted him to safety. He would still be alive today.
The conversation rumbled on:
“These Wogies aren’t so tough after all. Huh! They can’t even go for a walk without dropping dead like unwanted leaves.”
“We’ll be okay. They may destroy our forests, but they’ll never replace us. They don’t even know how to live!”
HOME, SWEET AND SOUR HOME
The clan had two sorts of stories…
Most were allegorical. It did not matter if the details evolved. Who knew? Perhaps Uncle Crow had once been a woman: Auntie Crow. Perhaps that person had a different name: Auntie Owl or Uncle Hawk. It was the moral of the story which mattered: Successful hunters had a duty to remain humble, to maintain harmony within the group. The fable was just a mechanism; a medium through which this message was conveyed.
But there was a second type of story. These were retold with such rigidity, they might as well have been scripted. The details were always the same. Almost every word was identical, whenever the tale was told.
This gave the impression, rightly or wrongly, that these stories were not fables. They were oral histories, which recounted real events from the past.
One such story referred not to an individual, an Uncle Crow or Auntie Rabbit, but to a group: The First Ancestors…
According to legend, the First Ancestors had lived in a time of plenty, when fruit juice flowed in the streams, the flowers were always in bloom, and the trees bore new fruit each morning. But what was particularly special, for a clan so devoted to hunting, were the animals who lived in that epoch. They were more varied than any set of creatures there had ever been.
Among these fabulous specimens, was an animal called a woolly mammoth. This beast was a colossus; double the height of most people, and almost two-hundred times the weight. Hunting a woolly mammoth was easy. The First Ancestors only had to chase it into a pit filled with spikes. And the rewards were great. A single animal could provide enough food to feed a clan for an entire season.
There was just one issue: Left out beneath the sun, their meat would soon decay. This problem was not insurmountable. The clans-folk could have dried or salted their food. They could have stored it in a cool, dry place.
But why go to all that bother?
To save themselves the trouble, the clans-folk gorged on that meat whilst it was fresh, and abandoned whatever remained. They kept the hides and tusks, but only if they needed them right away. Then they went out to hunt, killing a second woolly mammoth, and then a third; eating as much as they could, and abandoning the leftovers.
Life was easy for the First Ancestors. But their behaviour had consequences. They hunted so many woolly mammoths, that their numbers began to dwindle. It became more difficult to track them down. In time, they killed the very last one.
Still, there were other animals to eat…
When the First Ancestors arrived in their region, it was home to about twelve different types of large, flightless birds. Some were nearly three times as heavy as a human. The largest laid eggs which were a hundred times larger than a chicken’s. There were flightless geese and an array of primates, each of which tasted delicious.
These creatures had never seen humans before.
They looked at the First Ancestors. They did not see any sharp teeth, piercing claws or poisonous stings. And so they saw no reason to flee.
The First Ancestors had their fill; walking up to their prey, and stabbing them through with their spears.
But the good times were not to last. They killed so many creatures, their populations rapidly decreased. Within twenty or thirty generations, they had gone the way of the woolly mammoth.
The absence of these species had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. With fewer large animals, the smaller animals flourished. They ate all the fruit and nuts.
The First Ancestors could no longer find fruits to eat each morning. They had to trek to find that food, and they had to wait for it to come into season. The excess fruit did not fall into the rivers, flavouring them with juice. The clans-folk had to make do with plain old water.
Things would never be so good again.
***
The clan remained at the oasis for several days.
This had not been their intention. Other clans might have rested for many nights, whilst travelling between their camps. Some clans did not even have a Small Camp. They moved from one hunting ground to the next. But the Eagle Clan rarely stopped for more than a couple of nights in any location. Having left their land fallow, to allow it to recover; they were keen to discover what plants had regrown, what small creatures had come to eat those plants, and what larger animals had been attracted by this prey.
Indeed, they had been getting ready to leave, when they realised something was amiss. Pumpkin had not moved. He was still wedged inside the crevice, slumped down aside the remains of the Woggy’s corpse.
No-one dared to approach.
Someone said Pumpkin had been murdered. The whole thing had been an elaborate ruse, in which the Woggy had pretended to be dead, waited, and then slaughtered Pumpkin as he slept. Another person said that Pumpkin must have been possessed by the Woggy’s spirit. His body was alive, but the Woggy was inside, controlling his arms and eyes.
The truth was more mundane: Pumpkin had broken his leg, whilst dragging the corpse. This explained his fiendish screams.
The clans-folk took great pride in caring for the sick, disabled and elderly; nursing their peers back to health, and feeding anyone who was unable to feed themselves. It was in their own self-interest. One day they would be ill. They would require this kind of assistance.
That morning, there had been two schools of thought…
