Mammoth Boy (28 page)

Then they both heard the distant flute-playing. In Guimera’s eyes Urrell saw the look, that remote look that was Agaratz’s.

The flute bade them depart. It was time to bury the hearthstones and turn towards home cave. They would just have time to reach the grasslands and cross them amid the heaving migrating herds of bison, horse and deer to reach the bluffs he knew so well, he, Urrell, clan leader, before winter set in.

When spring returned, he would take his woman upstream by raft along the Nani, to the island in mid-river where Agaratz, curled up and shrivelled in his pit with his forebears, would be awaiting their arrival and the libation of egg-yolk accompanied by the keening of Guimera in their antique tongue, evokatrix of memories of the age of the mammoths.

Finis