Hope of Earth (18 page)

There was a dialogue Flo wished she could hear. Ned seemed to be telling Wona to do something, and both Wona and Jes were demurring. That was unusual; Jes and Wona seldom agreed on anything. But Ned finally convinced them.

Lin was watching too, and she had sharper ears. “He told Wona to hang from the tusks!” the girl exclaimed. “But if she does that, she’ll pull the whole works down on their heads! She’s not
that
light.”

Indeed Wona wasn’t. She was entirely too slender for a grown woman, but she was adult, and weighed more than Lin or Bry. What was Ned thinking of?

What happened next astonished them both. Wona took hold of the bound central axis of tusks and held on. Ned dropped down and got out from under, leaving her hanging there. Then he pushed her, so that her body swung back and forth. Her scream was audible across the whole bone yard. Her feet kicked and her breasts stood out as she inhaled for another scream.

And the structure did not come tumbling down. It swayed just a bit, but held firm. What made it so strong?

“She’s yelling to him to get her down,” Lin said, beginning to enjoy the show.

“Why doesn’t she just let go?” Flo asked. “It’s not that far a drop to the ground.”

“She wants Ned to get her down. She says he put her up there. Maybe it’s a test of wills.”

A test of wills? Between Ned and Wona? But the two had nothing to do with each other. They might as well have been in different bands. Flo couldn’t understand any kind of contest between them. The useless woman and the brilliant stripling. They had no common ground.

Finally Ned came close, ducking his head as the woman swung toward him, her body turning as she lifted her feet high to avoid kneeing him in the head. Trying to dodge her, he dropped to the ground. Jes and Lin laughed together at the mishap, probably equally delighted by the man’s fall and the woman’s predicament. Ned looked up, and Flo saw him gape as if dizzy, before he got back to his feet. Flo knew what had happened; he had inadvertently seen right up under the woman’s skirt, when her legs were spread wide, a stunning view for a young man. Then he called instructions, and she straightened out her body, and Ned did what he had first intended: he caught Wona around her swinging hips and held her so she could let go of the tusks. She grabbed his head and slid down his front, pressing her bosom hard into his face as it passed.

Lin laughed again. “He played a trick on her. But she got back at him!”

Flo did not laugh. She had a sudden dark suspicion. Wona, however useless she might be generally, remained exactly the kind of narrow-waisted, plush-bottomed, firm-breasted creature young men liked to get hold of—and Ned was a young man. He would naturally not have any notions about his elder brother’s wife, and of course he knew Wona’s shrewish, idle nature. But young men did not necessarily think with their heads; their interest followed the direction of their penises, and those organs could readily be roused by the proximity of almost any appealing female form. Legends were rife with lovely nymphs whose only seeming purpose was to oblige the lust of whatever men were nearby. Wona had just come to work with Ned, helping him accomplish his purpose. She had enclosed his head with her thighs, and then shown him her bottom and rubbed his face with her breasts. Of course she was clothed in her hide vest and leggings, as all of them were; still, such contact would have its effect. Was she making a play for him?

Flo pondered that as the others resumed work on the bone house. Why would Wona do such a thing? She had never been keen on joining their band; her own band had wanted to get rid of her, and only after she married Sam had it gradually become clear why. Wona simply was no asset to any band, because of her indifferent attitude. She did not pull her weight. But she was cunning enough to know exactly whom she had to please, in order to get away with it. She pleased Sam. But Sam, like Dirk, was away from the band much of the time, because hunting big game was no sometime thing. They might have to track a given herd for several days before finding a vulnerable animal, and then pursue that animal for several days more. The meat and hide were invaluable when they came, but the price of them was the absence of the hunters much of the time. Flo could live with it, and it had seemed that Wona could—but now it looked as if the woman craved a bit of entertainment on the side. That was extremely bad medicine.

So Flo hoped that her suspicion was wrong. Certainly she would say nothing about it. Because if it was right, they would have one awful problem. Better just to believe what the others evidently did, that Wona had for once made herself useful when there was a difficult job to be done, and had suffered a small mishap when testing the stability of the structure, and not intentionally vamped anyone. That was definitely the best interpretation.

Lin took the new cord they had made and went to join the others. Flo stayed with Bry and the children, and worked on more cord. The house was taking shape now, and Ned’s design was impressive. The huge tusks served as the framework, and they were piling skulls and pelvises around the base, and weaving the long leg bones between the tusks. It was like a giant basket turned over, with bones instead of reeds. Individually the bones were nothing much, and in small groups they fell apart, but when the design was large enough, they could be woven into a durable structure. A basket of bones!

Finally Flo could remain apart no longer. She picked Bry up and carried him to the new house, calling to the children to follow. She set him on the lee of the structure, shielded somewhat from the continuing wind, and joined in the weaving of bones. This was after all her specialty, though she had never before thought to weave a house.

The work went well, with all of them participating, but there was no way to complete it by nightfall. Jes had to stop to prepare some of their packed dried meat, and Ned had to make a fire by the house’s entrance. Lin had to take a hide bucket to the river they had spied in the distance, for water to drink. That left Flo and Wona to tie the hides up inside the house. Fortunately most of them were already linked together; they had simply folded them in large segments after taking down the last shelter. So all they needed to do was use the extra cord to loop around the tusk and bone supports, to hold the mat of hides up. It was weird, having the hides inside the supports instead of outside, but it worked in its fashion. The bones broke up the wind, so that only eddy swirls got through, and the hides stopped most of those.

The fire started to warm the sheltered interior. The smoke blew off to the side, so that little of it got inside. The house was working. Flo brought Bry inside. At last he was out of the wind and in a halfway warm place. Now he could mend—if the spirits allowed it.

They snuggled down inside the bone house, and it was surprisingly comfortable. “You did well, Ned,” Flo told him.

“We had to have shelter,” he replied, glancing at Bry. But he was pleased. He was also thoughtful. She hoped he was considering the further prospects for building in bone, and not for getting close to dangling women.

The next day they did more work on the house, chinking the remaining gaps with smaller bones and anchoring the hides more tightly. They foraged for roots and berries, and did well enough, considering.

And Bry, warmed in the shelter, improved. The signs were subtle, but Flo could tell that he had turned onto a better path. He would recover. Her gladness was tempered only by her awareness of the way Wona looked at Ned.

N
ED STOOD FACING THE WALL,
troubled. He had followed the path to this strange place of the standing stones to paint a picture of an elephant, but he needed inspiration, and it wasn’t coming.

They were getting pressed. They had had a large hunting and foraging area, but other bands were moving in, and these bands were larger and stronger than their own. It was necessary to give way, but that meant that they had a more restricted region. Sam and Dirk were out hunting buffalo, but had to watch for the lions, complicating it. Flo and Wona were out foraging for sorghum and millet seeds, but these were less plentiful than before, because the group had been over this section too recently. Lin was taking care of the children, and Bry was helping her. Actually she was taking care of him, too, as he recovered from his injury and illness, but for the sake of his blunted pride they did not say that.

That left Ned and Jes. Ned did not like man’s work, and Jes did not like woman’s work. Ned was slight of build and tended to think too much, while Jes was as tall and lank as a man and dressed so that her breasts did not show. He had once thought he would fill out as Sam had and be a man, and she had once thought she would find the face of a woman, but both hopes had been disappointed. So they were cursed in their opposite ways, and much alike in person.

No formal statement had been made, but times were getting tough, and it was clear that the band needed to find a better way to get through this difficult time. Ned needed to join the hunts himself, or enable the others to hunt more productively. Jes needed to forage or weave or care for children, or find a way to get these things done more expediently. Or they both could go in search of mates, being now of age. As far as that went, little Lin was just about of age, and far prettier than any other in the band. Except for that hand.

So Ned was here to invoke the spirits’ aid for more ambitious hunting. The band had never been able to hunt elephants; they were simply too big and strong. But if they could find a way, they would have as much meat and bone as they ever needed. Tradition said that a suitable painting could capture the spirit of any creature and make it subject to the will of the painter. So if Ned could paint the elephant he had observed, and tie down its soul, they would succeed, and the lean times would be over.

But he couldn’t just sketch it on the wall. He had to paint its spirit too, or the effort would be for nothing. So he was spending some time in the mountains, wrestling with his thoughts, and Jes was serving as liaison between him and the rest of the band. Because in the past Ned had figured out things that had been significantly beneficial to the band, and enabled it to prosper while other bands suffered. The elder members respected his mind, so they were giving him the chance to use it again. If he could by some magic find a way to help the band despite its problems, find the way to catch the animal’s soul from afar—

Magic. He had never really believed in it, but perhaps this time the spirits of the band would commune with him. He stared at the blank wall, trying to see through it, to fathom whether there was any spirit in it he could talk to.

After a time the wall of rock seemed to waver, and it was indeed as if it became like clear water. He searched for the spirit in it, for every thing of nature had its spirit, but didn’t see it. Unless—there
was
something inside. A man, standing with a bow and one arrow. A hunter. Watching for his opportunity. Were there game animals in range? Ned stared into the stone, seeking some answer. Could that be his own spirit, ready for the hunt?