CRO-MAGNON (34 page)

She glanced toward the two scientists and pulled her head back like a startled turtle. The door slammed.

Calder looked at Blaine. “Say, you don’t think she and Fedor . . .”

#

Blaine looked away, exasperated by her colleague’s pigheadedness. Didn’t he realize they were on the verge of something huge? Probably not. He was immersed in his body measurements and the admittedly entrancing cave paintings.

She knew what he was doing. He wanted to bring her back into what he probably considered the real world, and perhaps to personalize their relationship.

How would she feel about that? A first, she’d thought him insufferably pedantic. But gradually, under the trying conditions . . .

She shook her head. She needed to stay on task.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure I don’t know about Gulnaz and Fedor’s private lives. Anyway, it’s none of our business.”

“
Don’t be too sure. It could have a bearing.”

Blaine turned and walked toward the work trailer. “All this tension has gotten to me. I need a nap before lunch.”

Inside, she unrolled one of the mildewed sleeping pads that had come with the trailer, unzipped a tatty sleeping bag, and lay down. She heard Calder come in and go to the work table. Positioning the musty air pillow, she said: “Please work quietly.”

Her eyes closed. She felt drained from contending first with Fitrat and Salomon and then with someone who seemed to think more of his crude measurements and the meaning behind the woman’s wall paintings than of the unprecedented opportunity they’d been handed.

Of course, the paintings
were
intriguing. The first of this morning’s four pictures hovered in her fading consciousness: the gray-haired Neanderthal woman waving, the young Cro-Magnon woman clutching her baby, the two Neanderthal hunters accompanying her, the nearly grown wolf trotting behind.

Her mind drifted, marveling at the ability of the young woman to portray the people’s dour faces, the older woman’s compassion, and the young mother’s resignation. And with crude implements and a rough medium.

Surely, this was a woman of rare courage. What tribulations she must have endured in her young life. What a challenge she now faced, setting out into a bleak winter landscape . . .

Chapter 14

The day of Leya’s departure dawned cold and windy. After the clan’s customary breakfast of grilled deer meat, her efforts to introduce a more varied morning meal having failed, she made her goodbyes to the women. Wim, her pale eyes watery, clamped her in a hug and rubbed noses, a sign of deep affection.

“
Wim wish Leya stay.”

“
Thank you for being my friend.” Leya scrubbed at her moist cheeks. “I hold you in my heart, Wim, beside my own
mator.
”

“
Maybe I go . . .”

“
No,
Mut,
” Gar said, hovering nearby. “Winter trip too hard,” he gestured.

Wim nodded. With a final nose-rub, she stepped back, and Leya turned away before she could burst into tears.

Wrapped in her fur cloak, Brann snugged in his pouch on her back, she set out down the icy ravine with Gar, Puk, and Fel. Puk had insisted on escorting the party to the western edge of the clan’s territory, well beyond the place the tiger had been reported. From there, Gar and Leya would face an arduous trip along frozen river valleys and across icy passes in order to avoid the windswept tundra to the north, which was too harsh at this time of year for extended travel.

Even in the sheltered ravine, the way led across icy rock and crusted snow and through powdery drifts. Though Leya’s feet were encased in beaver moccasins insulated with cotton grass, they still grew chilled. She soon realized she had not fully recovered from her birthing ordeal, and several times she had to ask Puk to stop and rest.

The sun was high when Gar called a halt, and she sank down gratefully. Gar laid down his spear, adjusted the hang of his club, and pointed skyward.

“
Storm.”

Leya could see nothing but a washed blue sky and weak sunshine, but she had learned that these people were more prescient than her own in predicting weather. After a short rest she dragged herself to her feet, adjusted Brann in his sack, and started off behind Puk and Fel, Gar bringing up the rear.

The one-word forecast proved correct. By midafternoon, they were stumbling through a tunnel of driven sleet. They struggled up a narrow mountain trail clogged with slippery ice. Above reared a steep hillside with a mantle of precarious-looking boulders. At the high point, they walked below a scree of shale and rocks, a few of which littered the pathway.

As they stepped over blocks of ice and impacted earth, Gar took her arm. “No talk,” he whispered. “Rock fall.”

As if he needed to tell her, Leya thought.

The avalanche debris stretched for many lengths, skirting a nearly vertical drop to the valley floor. Finally they made it through, then shuffled down the slippery trail to a snowy vale. Puk used the butt of his spear to shatter a scrim of ice, and they scooped meltwater from a turbulent brook.

“
Bor and Odd see tiger tracks here,” Gar said. “Many tracks. Same animal.”

He and Puk looked around, but snow had drifted over the valley floor. As daylight faded, Puk led them up a slope of icy shale to a black hole in the hillside. After sending Fel into the narrow cave to check for hibernating bears, they crawled inside and sank down on the rock floor.

In the dim light, Leya saw the outlines of a small hearth. “Someone’s been here,” she said. “They might come back.”

Gar pointed to a pile of withered juniper branches against the rear wall, then to himself and Puk. “Hunting camp.”

After they redistributed the branches into three sleeping nests and set aside enough for a small fire, Leya was entranced to watch Puk use his fire drill to produce a powder that first smoldered and then flamed. She had heard of this ancient and time-consuming method, but her own people used flint and a yellowish substance they called
fer,
for which they traded flint and honey with the Tribe of the Great Plain.

Earlier in the day Gar had stripped some birch bark, and now he fashioned a liner in the manner Leya had shown them. They dug a small pit in the rocky floor of the cave, carried birch cups of water from the stream, and used heated stones to boil the water. Leya stewed three double handfuls of the concoction of jerked deer meat, marrow, and mixed berries that she and Wim had had prepared for the journey, and added some powdered gingko leaf. Exhausted as she was, she felt a sense of euphoria as she chewed the stringy meat and felt the soup’s warmth seep into her chilled fingers.

“
What did you people do about chilblains before I taught you about warm water and ginkgo tea?” she said.

With a grimace, Gar spread his ball-shaped fingertips and blew on them.

The clansmen were incredibly tough, Leya thought, and they possessed a rough-and-ready resourcefulness that exceeded her own people’s. But she had seen that the chill-that-would-not-cease sometimes affected them also, when warmth and massage with ground peppercorns and mustard were called for.

And why hadn’t the clan figured out how to heat water? She knew they were intelligent, or they could not have survived in this harsh land. But they didn’t seem to look beyond the needs of the moment, did not use the lessons of the past to plan their future.

But she did, and she considered what her and Gar’s reception might be if they managed to reach the People’s winter camp. How would Sugn react to her half-Flathead
baban?
Would Mungo still insist on making
tegu?
Would the tribe accept her and Brann? Or would Ronan turn her out, as Bor had been forced to do? And what about Gar?

Too exhausted to worry further, she lay down on her nest, gathered a mound of small branches for a pillow, and snuggled Brann against her breast. Why was Gar going to all this trouble for a Shortface? Was it only because Wim had prompted him?

Or did he . . .

Her eyelids grew heavy. Her final sense was of Fell tramping a circle alongside.

#

Two days later, the three travelers reached the cairn marking the pass that the clan considered the western edge of its current territory. Leya winced at the fact that her people were slowly pushing the clans into the badlands. She wondered how it would all end. Not happily, she feared.

Here, Puk would turn back. As they hunkered behind the rock pile to munch their noon meal of cold trail mix, he used his hunting knife to pry ice crystals out of his wolftail. He was the most fastidious of his people, Leya thought. She watched him brood.

“
Bor grows lame,” he said. “If can not hunt, can not stay leader.”

Gar glanced at his older
brut
. “Ull cripple. Odd slow.”

“
Caw want be leader.”

“
Ay.”
Gar’s prominent brow furrowed. “You next in line. Need watch him.”

“
You watch him. You bigger threat.”

Gar looked surprised. “Me?”

“
You lead hunts when Bor not go.”

Gar exposed his big teeth around a mouthful of food, a trait Leya would have liked to break him of. Strange, she thought, that he exhibited this barbarian trait when his
brator
was the most urbane of the lot. But she knew he had a good heart, the most important thing. She watched him ponder.

“
Votes what count,” he said. “I vote you. Odd follow Caw. Ull do what best for Ull.”

“
Ay.
Need get Ull’s vote.” With the usual mix of words and gestures, Puk said, “Maybe Caw force vote while you gone.”

Gar chewed some more, swallowed, and wrinkled his brow again. Leya realized he hadn’t thought of this possibility. He glanced at her, then back at Puk. He pondered some more.

“
Gar bring Leya home,” he said finally. “Hurry back.”

If Caw became leader, Leya knew, he would immediately appropriate Nim. An odious fate for the young girl. Puk would make a good leader and would be a civilizing influence. And if not him, Gar. She did not want them to miss out because of her.

“
I can go on by myself,” she said.

Gar glanced at her. “You and Brann not get through alone. I take.”

She sighed, torn between her worry for Puk and Gar and her duty to Brann. Once again, her presence was threatening the clan’s welfare.

“
The clan’s leadership is important,” she said.

Gar gave her a sidelong glance she could not fathom. “You important too. Gar make sure you get home, make sure others accept.”

Leya felt a thrill. Someone besides Wim and Fel cared about her!

But at what price to himself and the clan?

Gar’s offer to vet her safety was a touching gesture—could it possibly be more?—but the People despised Flatheads. They probably would not allow Gar to enter camp, much less to linger.

Would he even be safe? Ronan would not normally permit a visitor to be harmed. But the tribe had never hosted a member of the opposing society, and Mungo was a hothead.

#

Each evening as Leya and Gar huddled around a small fire, she tried, for reasons she was unsure of, to teach him the rudiments of her people’s language. He picked up new words readily, she found, but seemed to have trouble enunciating complex sounds.

The first night after Puk’s departure she prepared to accommodate Gar’s expected advances, even though her loins were still sore. After all, he was risking his well-being for her. But he seemed to sense that sex was not appropriate, and left her alone. Apparently, he did not regard her as a sex object as Caw had and as she knew Mungo did in her people’s camp. Rather, Gar treated her like a valued companion.

Even, she thought, with a certain deference.

On the second night since parting with Puk, after introducing word forms for past, present, and future, she reverted to the language of the clan and attempted to describe the exact location of the People’s winter camp in a protected valley several days to the west.

The next day, as the two of them and Fel negotiated one pass after another, she grew increasingly tired, even though Gar carried Brann most of the time. On the fourth day, as they hopped over a glacial stream at the bottom of a ravine, Leya noticed a spot of bright yellow poking through the snow. Stooping, she inspected the base of a weeping willow and discovered a crocus blossom. She felt reluctant to pick the early flower. But she knew that later she would have a use for it, so she snapped the frail stem and tucked the tubular bloom into her tunic.

In early afternoon Fel, leading the others by several lengths, halted and stood stiff-legged. His yellowish ruff bristled and he gave a low growl. Gar, bringing up the rear with Brann, rushed forward and stood brandishing his spear beside the nearly full-grown wolf, his free arm waving Leya back.

Her own neck hairs prickling, she plucked Brann from Gar’s back and began to retreat. She peered around, but didn’t see anything. A coughing roar shook the canyon walls. Her heart filled her chest as she spotted a knife-tooth tiger crouched in the crook of a double-trunked willow, its sinewy body stretched longer than a man was tall. Its yellow eyes flared, its jaws baring white fangs longer than her palm.