Incarnate
Essence
Thomas Harper
Copyright © 2019 Thomas Harper
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-10: ---
ISBN-13: 9781090874047
Acknowledgments
Thank you to those who know they should be thanked. You know who you are, because you’re likely the only people reading this book.
“Since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
- Thucydides
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“I'm from where people pray to the gods of their conquerors.”
-Immortal Technique
Prologue
A History of Change
About 15,000 B.C.E.
Cerulean blue stretched in a near endless dome over the windswept grass as the sun grew brighter. Early summer wind fluttered through my elk hide covering, mercifully warm for Beringia. Crackling birch wood staved off the lingering cold. Morning arrived, though the sun never fully went away.
I had been born in places like this before, where the summer brought relentless daylight. Endless light made sleep difficult, the sun only lowering in the southern sky without dipping past the horizon. But waking up with the sun rising further into the sky, I still felt fortunate have made it through another punishing winter, where a menacing darkness swallowed the world for weeks at a time before the sun rose again.
“Tamnit,” a soft voice said as my eyes adjusted to the light outside my elk skin, “take these.”
Looking up from where I lay, the shape of my younger sister Taknit came into focus. She smiled warmly through her own shivering. The ends of her long, black hair clung wetly to the snug elk skin. Light brown eyes regarded me with youthful excitement. Her own elk skin was hiked up, wet mud stuck to the light brown skin of her legs. A small mound of seeds lay in the palm of her outstretched hand, drips of water falling from her knuckles to the grassy turf below.
“Are we moving today?” I asked, grunting with effort as I sat up from the hard ground.
“The men are still scouting,” she said, pouring the seeds into my hands and sitting down beside me.
I started taking the seeds one at a time and putting them between my teeth, crunching the hard-outer layer off and sucking the nutritious innards. The germ inside had a mildly bitter taste, but my empty stomach welcomed the sustenance.
Taknit reached over, the sun glinting off the damp skin of her hand, and gently placed her splayed fingers on my pregnant stomach. She was turning twelve years of age this summer, and had only recently had her first blood, which made her old enough to become a wife and have a child of her own. Growing excitement at the prospect of conceiving her own child led her to dote on me all the more.
“Do you think it will be a son?” she asked, lightly rubbing my belly, exposed outside my open elk hide, “Kintep says if they come back from a successful hunt, you will give his brother a son.”
I smiled, putting my hand over my sister’s, holding it close to my bulging abdomen, “I hope that’s the case.” But that had been Kintep’s prediction the past two moon cycles.
It had been quite some time since they came back with anything larger than a hare. Our tribe, down to fifty-three people after nine had died since our last great bounty, was being pushed east by a larger tribe moving into our hunting grounds. Since then, it became a constant eastward movement until we ran into the glacier. Crags of light blue ice stood five hundred paces from our camp, stretching to the north and south as far as my eyes could see. Any further eastward migration was blocked.
Fortunately, the melting glacier supplied many clean, freshwater rivers flowing off of the steeply sloping ice. Taknit sat with me, her head leaning on my shoulder, watching the river to our north about two hundred paces. Crashing water sprayed into the air near the glacier where the river started another five hundred paces northeast, generating a faint rainbow in front of the blue-white crags. Sunlight cast down on my exposed frontside, warming my pregnant belly, as I finished eating the seeds.
“Come,” Taknit said, lifting her head from my shoulder, “Sitmit was able to find a lot of those seeds near the river. We should gather some for the mothers.”
The unspoken truth to that statement was in case the men are unsuccessful. My sister slowly climbed to her feet. Her leg was still sore from where it had been broken during the winter after falling through some ice. The tibia had not healed properly, giving her a limp. But it was still her who helped me up, given that I was ready to give birth very soon.
Four of our tribeswomen were still lying down near the fire, looking like lumps of elk or woolly rhinoceros hide. All four of them had small children that were still breastfeeding. One of the infants was whimpering, latched on to his thin mother, drawing little nutrition from her breast.
The two of us walked away from the comfort of the smoldering fire. I made sure the elk skin was wrapped tightly around my aching body. Patches of snow still speckled the tundra, preserved through most of the summer by the permafrost cooling the ground. Rocks and boulders lay scattered around the flat expanse, snow clinging most strongly to their shadows where they couldn’t be reached by the sun. The steady wind made a faint howling sound as it whirled over the earth, fluttering through my elk hide.
After we got far enough away from our camp, I reached a hand out, Taknit grabbing it. I supported myself with her hand as I crouched down, lifted the flap of the elk skin, and urinated. The feeling of relief caused my body to shudder, but I knew the feeling would be back very soon. That was always the case during pregnancy.
Taknit helped me stand up straight again, the two of us making our way down the shallow hill toward the river. I could already hear the chatter of the other girls over the sloshing of the river flow as we approached.
“I keep thinking about last summer,” Taknit said dreamily, “we had more meat than we knew what to do with. Remember? Litrep let us keep those three wolf puppies because we had plenty to feed them.”
“I remember,” I said.
Taknit spent the entire winter daydreaming about the summer before. It had been a very bountiful summer, and she hoped to have another just like it for when she was made a wife by one of the chief’s sons. My husband Tikrep and his younger brother Kinrep, sons of our chief Litrep, had said of the previous summer that the ancestors smiled upon us. It was the first time Tikrep had looked pleased after we had lost our first son Silrep to illness the summer before. Silrep had been sickly from the moment of birth, as the children I birthed throughout all my lives were. Tikrep didn’t believe me about this, so during our bountiful summer last year, he insisted that I give him another son.
“That will happen again starting today,” Taknit said, “I just know they will come back with a lot to eat.”
“I hope you are right,” I said.
The clear water of the river came into view, twelve of our tribeswomen already there bathing, drinking, and collecting seeds. One of them spotted us coming and let out a squeal of excitement. All of them gathered as I approached, cooing and rubbing my belly,
beseeching the ancestors for a healthy son.
“How are you feeling, Tamnit,” Pirlet, the gray-haired wife of chief Litrep, asked after the other women, including Taknit, went back to their activities. The matronly woman bared the scars of her long life, missing three fingers on the left hand from frostbite, right eye blinded from an infection, many teeth rotted, a slight limp from a fall off a river bank many years ago, and healed cuts over her back and abdomen.
“Sore,” I said, strolling slowly toward the river with the elder woman.
She smiled, baring her brown, crooked teeth, “that is to be expected.”
“I know.”
“Come,” she said, “I’ll help you get some water to drink.”
The two of us arrived at the muddy shore of the river on the inside of a bend. It was only about ten paces across, but the far bank was about as high as I was tall. The river bed was stony, water clear enough to see the bottom even in the deep near the far bank.
Pirlet bent down, scooping water in both of her hands, and then stood back up. I leaned over, holding my enlarged stomach, and drank the water from her cupped hands. She smiled, repeating this process four more times for me until I had my fill.
“The men have been hunting for almost three days,” I said as the two of us began walking by the edge of the river, our feet squishing into the mud.
Pirlet bent down, turning a rock over and quickly grabbing at the worms beneath it with her good hand before they could get away, putting them into a seal bladder she carried at her side.
“Yes, it has been quite a while,” Pirlet said, trying not to sound too worried, “I think they were going to explore in a valley they discovered during their last hunt.”
“Thankfully it has stayed quite warm,” I said, “we haven’t needed any mammoth bones to burn.”
“The ancestors show us a kindness,” Pirlet said.
As we walked, I watched the water tumble over the rocky riverbed. Silver ripples reflected the sunlight in every direction, the trickling sound making me already feel like having to urinate again. As Pirlet bent down to turn over another rock, something in the river caught my eye. I stopped, squinting into the water, the sun shining off the ripples over the rocks obscuring my view.
“What is it, Tamnit?” Pirlet asked, grabbing the worms beneath the rock.
I pointed, “I think I see fish.”
She stood up next to me, looking to where I was pointing. We both stood there for some time, watching. She sighed, about to say something when she gasped.
“I think you’re right!” she whispered excitedly, “I’ll get the others and we’ll see if we can catch them. Stay here!”
I stayed where I was, Pirlet moving back upstream as swiftly as she could. As I kept watching, I became convinced that there were fish there. The dark shapes moving beneath the roiling current moved around the rocks, scavenging the riverbed for food. They weren’t very large, but they would work better than bugs and seeds to feed the hungry mothers and weary hunters. I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that our luck was starting to look-
I turned my gaze upward, seeing three men standing on top of the bank on the other side of the river. Five more men approached slowly, joining their tribesmen. Dark soot covered their faces, contrasting with the light sclera of their eyes, looking menacingly down at me. All eight of them stood watching for a moment, their spears and atlatls resting by their dies, as if they didn’t know what to make of this. I was frozen with fear, only snapped out of it when I heard my tribeswomen approaching, talking excitedly.
“Run!” I shouted, turning toward them.
The men started hollering. My tribeswomen screamed, seeing me loping toward them, holding my stomach. Water splashed behind me. I knew the men were jumping off the bank into the river to give pursuit. My tribeswomen had turned, running away. Taknit and Pirlet ran back for me, getting by my sides, trying to help me along. I was too slow, the foreign tribesmen too quick. They easily caught up to us, hands grasping.
Taknit screamed, Pirlet trying to swat the men away as strong fingers closed around my arms. I put up no resistance, only managing a defeated moan, wrapping my arms around my belly as if to protect the child within from harm. My captor’s face came into view as he turned me around, hot breath steaming out into my face from beneath his thick, matted beard. Droplets of sweat, blackened by the soot rubbed on his face, dripped down from the black dreadlocks tumbling off his head. He spoke, using a language similar to ours.
“Where men?” he demanded.
“They are coming,” Pirlet bluffed, still putting up a weak struggle against one of the other foreign tribesmen, “many more of them than you!”
“Where?” her captor, a short, particularly hairy man, insisted as he looked around in mock fright.
“What are you going to do to us?” Taknit asked, tears streaming from her eyes as she was held tightly against the body of a young captor. It was already clear by his engorged genitals what he had in mind.
“Make wife,” Taknit’s abductor said.
Pirlet spit in her captor’s face. The other men started laughing. He wiped the spit from his eye and then reached up, grabbing Pirlet’s throat and squeezed.
“Too old,” he said, lifting her bodily off the muddy riverbank.
The elder woman choked and gasped as the foreign tribesmen continued laughing, Taknit screaming. Pirlet’s eyes rolled back into her head and she went quiet. The man dropped her, the woman’s limp body collapsing, landing partially in the river, face down.
“No men,” Taknit’s captor said, “make wife.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
“Already wife,” my captor said, laying a hand on my stomach.
My eyes shot open as I swatted his hand away. This caused the foreign tribesmen to laugh once again. The one holding Taknit threw her down into the mud. She scrambled to her hands and knees, trying to crawl away, but the man swept his foot at her legs, sending her sprawling into the mud on her stomach.
“Please…don’t,” I said.
It was no use. The man was already lifting his bison skin, revealing his hungry erection, kneeling down behind Taknit. She wailed as he put himself into her. I closed my eyes, listening to the men laugh and taunt as my sister cried in agony.
And then I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, doubling me over. I opened my eyes, seeing the man holding me pulling back for another swing of his fist into my pregnant stomach. I braced for it, squeezing my eyes shut, but the blow never came. The men started shouting. I opened my eyes, seeing my captor fall to his knees, eyes wide. When he fell forward, I saw the spear stuck in his back.
Running toward us from our camp were our men. The foreign tribesmen panicked, splashing into the river for the other bank. Taknit jumped at her rapist, grabbing his legs as he ran into the water. He tripped, yelping as he fell forward, his face smashing into a rock, blood spreading into the clear current. Another spear sailed over me, sticking into the buttocks of one of the foreigners as he tried climbing the far bank, sending him falling backwards into the river.
“Tikrep!” I shouted, tears of joy running down my cheeks as my husband caught up.
He wrapped his arms around me, our other tribesmen pursuing the foreigners into the river. Tikrep took a step back, bending down to examine my stomach, putting his large hand over it. I whimpered when he rubbed over the area that had been struck.
“Our son…” Tikrep said.
I broke down and started crying. Tikrep held me, supporting most of my weight as he started back toward our camp. I took one last glance back at the river, seeing our tribesman finishing off the foreigners, two of them supporting Taknit a few paces behind us.
“Thank you,” I said to my husband, “thank the ancestors you’re here.”
The sun sat low in the southern sky before we stopped walking, but it wouldn’t get much lower than that before it began rising again. The valley was still a half day walk from where we setup camp, but we felt se
cure that the rival tribe would not follow us anymore. Or, at least, that they wouldn’t catch up to us before we started moving again.
The men had been unsuccessful in their long hunt. At least as far as bringing any meat back with them. They were exhausted by the time we stopped, having been on the move for several days. It was for them that we stopped to rest, although they said it was for the mothers.
Tikrep lay by the fire next to me and his other two wives. He wanted to make sure that nothing happened to our child. He sat with his head lying gently on my belly, eyes closed, listening. After the sun had arrived at the lowest point in the sky, he proclaimed that he could still feel movement. The rest of the tribe rejoiced, knowing that it meant the child was unharmed.
“On the other side of the valley,” Kinrep explained excitedly, his arm over my sister’s back as she lay with her head in his lap, “is a large hill. We found fresh tracks up there. Elk and mammoth and rhinoceros.”
“That is not all,” Tikrep said, “we found a large gap in the glacier that continues going east. There are many animals in the path.” He looked to Taknit, “we can have the bounteous summer that you love to dream about.”
My younger sister was still shaken up by the experience at the river, her eyes moist with tears, but she smiled at this news. Although hungry, Tikrep handed me his portion of the meager meat we had available. On our march they had been able to catch a dozen small rodents and cooked them over our fire. I gladly ate the meat, feeling its juices squeeze out the corners of my mouth as I bit into it. Tikrep crouched down by me and rubbed a hand gingerly over my stomach before standing back up and walking over to sit by one of his other wives.
None of us knew at the time that we were heading into Alaska and would become some of the first North Americans.
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