John Masters (2 page)

The Woman moved along the shore in a group of women and children, her baby in the crook of her arm. A snow flurry momentarily whitened the reddish hair hanging to her waist and speckled her naked body with large white splashes. She did not notice but went on turning over rocks, feeling under ledges and in crevices. When she found a shell, she cracked it carefully between two stones, poured the juice down her throat, and tore out the flesh with her teeth and strong nails. When she threw a shell down, the children pounced on it, snarling and snatching, until the winner ran a little way up the sandy slope to eat by himself.

The Woman hitched her baby around and pushed her nipple into its sucking mouth. Her body ached from hunger, and her throat hurt. Straightening her back, she glanced up the slope to the cave at the foot of the cliffs. She saw movement there, recognized the Old Woman, and growled, "It is well." The baby spat out her nipple and began to cry.

As the sun in front of them sank toward the crest of the Rock, they turned away from the water. The wind blew colder, driving sand stung her eyes, and the baby howled more loudly.

A half-formed girl, trudging in the lead, stopped suddenly with a low word—"Deer." The tracks were clear in the sand, coming from the sun, moving diagonally across the slope, and disappearing into the scrub on the flat land north of the Rock. The Woman saw from the size and spacing of the slots that it was a stag. It was the rutting season, and she could also detect the male rankness clinging to the sand.

They all stared a long time in the direction the deer had gone, then continued up the slope and onto a shoulder of the Rock, above the last low cliffs. Here the Woman just caught sight of a big bird's wing, flapping close to the ground on her right. A vulture. Vultures mean food ... a sharp pain twisted her belly. She stopped, as though to pluck some of the weeds growing between the stones. A pair of children paused by her and groped where she groped, pulling up the weeds, sniffing them, looking at her. One said, "Nothing," and they ran on. The Woman slunk away alone toward the three trees where she had seen the vulture. None of the others noticed for a time, then Big Woman cried, "What?" and the Woman with the baby broke into a run, the baby bounding on her hip. Three vultures took off heavily from under the trees, two remained on the prey. The Woman picked up a stone and hurled it as she ran. The last vultures rose, hissing, and she fell on the dead lynx, grabbed the red hole the vultures' beaks had opened into the stomach, tore out a piece of flesh, and crammed it into her mouth. She had her hand on another when the rest arrived. The other women grabbed and snarled, and the children reached between and under them.

When they had torn out what they could, Big Woman took the bloody carcass and slung it round her neck. They went on down to the lake in the gully. The Woman with the baby felt good, and her belly had stopped aching. In the gully there were trees and another cave. No one lived in it, but there was a trickle of water and shelter from the wind. The Woman knelt, cupped her hands in the lake, drank, and then held water for her baby, but it would not drink. The low sun shone full on her, and she pushed back her hair to let the warmth touch her body. Yawning, she reached slowly out toward one of the little green cucumbers that grew among the rocks. The children leaned close, expectant. As her fingers touched the outermost of the cucumber's thousand tiny hairs, it sprang free from its stalk with a sudden pop and jumped into the air, squirting her finger and face with liquid white seed. The Woman laughed, the children laughed. A small boy ran round screeching with laughter, found another cucumber, and reached cautiously out to touch it. But it was not ripe and did not explode.

The Woman leaned over a rock where rainwater lay in a flat shallow pool. She saw her face there and moved her head, and the face moved. She touched the water with her finger, and the face broke up, crushed, but slowly came back again. It was her, and it was not her. She scratched herself, and soon they all started back for their own cave, looking for nuts as they went.

It was good also in the cave, the low fire red and hot. The Old Woman had scraped the last of the rotting flesh off the ibex skin the men had killed many days ago. Bent Brother was striking a flint with a stone. Big Woman began to skin the lynx with a sharp flint burin. Soon she had worked one thigh bone free, and thrust it into the fire. Now Small Woman came to the Woman and they squatted face to face near the cave mouth, searching for fleas and lice in each other's hair. When they found one they squashed it between their nails, and licked off the remnants.

Later the Old Woman in the cave mouth muttered, "The men. They have nothing."

The Father came in first, the two young men behind. Their hands were empty and clean and they had nothing on their backs. The Father threw down his spear and seized a lynx bone from Big Woman. She growled and for a moment held to it, and he jerked it free and sent her flying across the sand with a blow of his arm. He cracked the bone, sucked out the marrow, then threw it down. One of the young men picked it up.

It was almost dark, and the Old Woman lay down in the mouth of the cave. She wore a long tooth on a thong round her neck. The tooth came from a great magic animal killed long ago and far away, and it belonged to them all, but the oldest woman wore it. Big Woman came back to the fire and warmed her feet. She told the Father of the deer tracks they had seen. The Father grunted and told how the men had seen a female bear and wounded it, but before they could kill it, Others had come and frightened it away.

A shiver crept across the Woman's skin at the mention of Others. She had never seen one but she knew they were not animals, yet they were not us. They were Other. Her baby was sucking, half asleep, at her nipple. She put her arm around it, and a low purring growl throbbed in her chest.

One of the young men held his spearpoint in the fire and began to sharpen it with a flint blade. The Father's spearpoint was a sharp flint tied on with sinew, and he took Bent Brother's round stone and struck the flint to make a better edge to the point. Snow flurries whirled past the cave mouth, a cold wind blew sparks from the fire. The Woman went toward a far corner, past the pile of chips where Bent Brother worked. He was there, squatting, and grabbed her and put his hand between her legs. She knelt, waiting. He felt her and in a moment mounted her and thrust into her. Her loins throbbed, her knees weakened. She moaned aloud and jerked, so that her baby rolled free in the sand under her breasts. When Bent Brother had ended, he pushed her over so that she lay on her side and he behind her, huddled together. She took her baby to her breast again. Big Woman curled up with the Father. The children huddled together in groups and the two young men with Small Woman. The Old Woman crept in from the cave mouth, snow on her shriveled breasts, and put more wood on the fire.

In the first dawn the Woman awoke, stretched, and went out onto fresh snow. The young men were at the place, and as she squatted beside them she watched them pick up snow, and one suddenly threw it at the other, then they both laughed and threw snow at each other. When the sun rose out of the sea, far away, the Father went to the cave mouth, stretched and scratched, and said, "Come." They all went with him except the Old Woman, who kept the fire. The Father led down the slope to the beach. The sky was a pale blue, and the wind had sunk, but the snow and the wind of the night had destroyed the marks of the stag, nor could the Woman smell any trace of it.

They worked north along the beach. At a big pool they surrounded it, then all ran in together and caught six little fishes, which the men ate. Later the Woman found a few limpets and ate them quickly. Later, after the sun had passed its height, one of the young men in front crouched, his spear raised. Everyone stopped. The Woman put her hand over her baby's mouth, listening, but heard only the splash of the waves. The men ran forward and crouched behind a point of rocks.

Three upright animals came round the corner of rock, and Big Woman muttered, "Others!" There were two males and a female cub. They were all tall and stood upright. The bigger male carried a spear and the other a heavy flint set sideways on a short stick.

The Other cub, picking up an empty shell, saw them first. It screamed, and at once the Father, Bent Brother, and the two young men rushed out at them. The Others turned and ran, but Bent Brother threw a big stone which hit the cub on the head, so that she fell. The young men leaped onto her, and she snarled and bit one's hand, but the other pushed his spearpoint into her throat, then quickly held her up and drank the blood while it was still running.

The Woman looked along the beach at the male Others. They ran fast; none could catch them. The children were pulling the Other cub about, turning her over and sniffing at her. The Woman saw that she looked like a woman of their own, but she was not, she was Other—thin, the teeth far back in her mouth, and smelling dangerous. The Father threw her over his shoulder and started back toward the cave, shouting, "Food, food, food!" and everyone shouted regularly with him.

In the cave Bent Brother hacked with the flint edge, and the men broke her bones and twisted them apart. Some ate her flesh raw and some put chunks onto the red-hot wood, and the little children pulled out the entrails and searched in the carcass for pieces the rest had overlooked. The Woman sank her teeth into a roasted piece of flesh. The juice ran down her chin, and her baby sucked contentedly at her nipple.

The Man and his young companion, Feetborn's Son, saw their fire from a long way off through the trees and moved a little faster, for the wind blew colder as the sun sank, and the winter time was coming. The woman Feetborn was tending the fire, and the Man went directly to her and said, "We met Others by the sea. They killed Red Girl."

Feetborn was Red Girl's mother, too, and she raised her face to the sky and began to howl. Tears ran down her cheek. When the Man stroked her arm, she turned and hid her head in his shoulder. He touched her back and stroked her long hair and then left her. Feetborn's Son was telling the other women, Cryer and Snowborn, and the children about their meeting with the Others. He told how the Others had been lying in wait behind rocks on the shore, how they rushed out screaming; many, many Others, one with a twisted hip. He imitated the way the Others stood, his head sunk into his shoulders and stuck forward, his mouth pushed forward and all his teeth showing and sticking out forward and his hand over his eyes where the Others had a big bone and the eyes deep-sunk under it. Then he walked like the Others did, shambling, his knees always a little bent. The women and children listened eagerly, with low cries. They were all huddled together around the fire, against the cold. Snowborn had sharpened a small deer bone and was putting it into her hair and twisting her hair around it, her arms raised above her head and her breasts raised and rounded. The Man's loins thickened as he looked at her. But Cryer's baby was very silent and blue in her arms. And he kept thinking of the Others. When he first saw one, years ago, he had called, "Friend," mistaking it for a man. For a moment he thought it had understood, but then it snarled and ran away. So they were not men. But they were not animals.

He shook his head, unsure, and growled at the children to get more wood for the fire. Lefthand, the tall young man whose mother was dead two snows past, sat beside him.

They talked about the bear the Others had frightened away the day before but decided not to hunt her again. Lefthand told the Man about a stag that had passed, and they decided to hunt that the next day.

The children came back with wood and set it by the fire. Feetborn laid a long bough on a long bough, and the flames blew higher. Even close to the fire it was cold, though, and sleet began to fall, slanting down, so that for a time the Man could not see the trees across the river. Cryer began to whimper over her baby.

Snowborn came to the Man and sat by him. Gently she bit his ear. He held her breasts, and she lay back, singing, and pulled him down into her arms.

When he rolled away, he saw Lefthand by the fire, curled up in a ball, no one by him. The Man lay down in the thin shelter of a tree, women and children around him, and slept.

In the first light he went carefully to the running water, watched the forest on the other side, felt the wind—it was less now, but touched with cold rain—drank, and rubbed water on his face and body. Cryer was moaning quietly, her head bent. Feetborn and Lefthand were by her, but she cried, "No. No. No." The Man went close and thought that Cryer's baby was dead. He touched it and found it was cold and stiff. Cryer bent her head and took his wrist in her teeth, but gently. He stroked her shoulder with the other hand, kneeling beside her, and slowly she opened her mouth and let go of his wrist. He took the baby from her, and Cryer let it go. Red Boy took its foot and pulled, as though to play, but the baby did not move, and the little leg stuck out stiff.