A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  “We have to eat,” Dixie said. “I’m starved.”

  Hannah didn’t want to stop, not even for that, but she knew they couldn’t work all day without food. “Okay. One cast of the net, a quick fish fry, then back to work. We can skip a second meal today if we need to. It won’t kill us. But the hell pigs could, if we don’t have protection from them.”

  “Or the snakes,” said Claire, her voice improving but still raspy. Whenever she spoke, her face betrayed the pain she still felt.

  Hannah’s door design had no way to keep out the constrictors, but she thought it best not to point that out. Even if they had a solid wooden door with a lock, a determined snake could still make its way through the boughs that would be their roof.

  They spent five more minutes listing what had to be done, the kids volunteered for tasks, and they went on their way. If they got ahead of the work later on, she’d let Claire fish for a couple hours so they could have a light supper.

  She was helping to weave thin green sapling branches into the upper walls with Nari. They hadn’t been at work twenty minutes when it began to rain. She hadn’t been outside of the trees, so she hadn’t noticed clouds gathering. The rain was audible before she felt it. But soon after she began to hear the patter of rain on the canopy, the clouds drifted over the sun, and the woods turned gloomy.

  The patter of rain became a drumming, and ten minutes later the first drops made their way through the leaves overhead.

  Bob, inside the cabin, working on more cordage, said, “We’re building a roof one day too late.”

  The temperature was dropping too. “Are you doing okay?” she asked Bob.

  “Sure, fine. My chest doesn’t even hurt today.”

  “Great. I was thinking about hypothermia. We don’t have another change of clothes. I don’t want us going to bed with wet clothes.” It had been dry and warm enough yesterday that her clothes had dried before nightfall. Her boots were still damp, so she had left them off and was working barefoot.

  “Surely the rain won’t keep up all day,” Bob said.

  “No way of knowing,” she said.

  “I wonder if we’re entering a rainy season.”

  “What do you mean?” Nari asked.

  Bob explained, “Sometimes a region has a certain time of year that’s wet, and it’ll get most of its precipitation in just a month or two. The rest of the year, it’s dry.”

  “But how do things live if it doesn’t rain every few weeks?”

  “They adapt. Only plants that can cope with that survive. Like the grasses here. They probably go dormant during the dry season and green up quickly during the wet season. Some plants will appear out of nowhere, and flower, and die back down.”

  Hannah said, “I lived a summer in Arizona, working at a park. They have a wet season—the monsoon, they call it—and I think there was a thunderstorm a day for a solid month. Real downpours too. Lightning, wind, and dangerous flash floods.”

  “Did it get colder?” Nari said. “It feels colder right now.”

  “Yeah, the sun was hidden, so it was cooler, but in Arizona you don’t complain about that part.” She was worried about it cooling here, though. “I don’t know what to do about it right now, but if we can get a roof built today, we have protection from the rain tomorrow. If we stay dry, we’ll stay warmer too.”

  “But we can’t stay inside all the time, hiding from the rain,” Nari said. “For one thing, it’s too small. We’d be in each others’ faces.”

  “I’m running low on raw materials,” Bob said. “I can go out and—”

  “No,” Hannah said. “I know it’s hard to sit there, Bob, but I really don’t want you risking another...incident.” She wasn’t calling it a heart attack, because she didn’t know that it had been one and had no way of knowing. That term would worry the kids more, but maybe she should be using it to worry Bob more.

  “I feel fine.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way. Give your recovery a few more days, and if you’re still feeling good, you can do light duty.” She had no intention of keeping that promise. She planned on putting him off, again and again, a few days at a time, until two or three days before the timegate’s reappearance, when she’d have them take a leisurely walk back to it. She hoped he’d be recovered by then.

  He’d have to be.

  Nari said, “I can go get more stuff for you, Mr. O’Brien. I just don’t know exactly what plants.”

  Hannah said, “My fault. I haven’t been keeping people up. We all need to know everything we’ve learned individually. Everyone should cast the net from time to time. Claire should give fishing lessons. We all need to know how to make bricks and clay bowls. We all need to practice making spears.”

  Just then, Ted came sprinting into the clearing. “Hey, everyone. Hannah, could we borrow the Mylar blankets?”

  “Sure. For what?”

  “We can’t cook the fish in the rain. So we’re going to hold them over the fire.”

  “Nari,” Hannah said, “grab them out of my pack, please. It’s right over there. And go help. I assume four people are needed for holding on to two blankets.”

  “Okay,” Nari said.

  Nari and Ted had just hurried off when Claire and Rex returned with an arm full of evergreen boughs for roofing material.

  “If it keeps raining like this,” Rex said, “we aren’t going to be able to mud the walls.”

  True. That was the plan, to weave flexible branches between the support posts, and then to plaster grass to them with mud. If they kept working at it, in a couple of days they should have all the holes filled in with mud. For the roof, they were going to lash evergreen boughs to the structural members, starting at the bottom and working their way up, overlapping them like shingles. In the spaces in the roof, they planned to bring over packs full of fallen leaves from the debris huts and fill in. They had thought it would be waterproof enough.

  But with the way the rain was falling now, she wondered if it would be. Maybe this was just an isolated storm. If they were entering a rainy reason, they’d have to think harder about waterproofing the roof somehow, or they’d spend many a miserable night.

  Claire brushed herself off. Then she put up a finger and beckoned Hannah with it. When Hannah came to her side, she said, “Need to talk.” And she pointed away from the clearing.

  Maybe some issue about menstruation. Hannah and the girls had worked out ways to cope with that, but what she’d give for an airdrop of tampons from the future. “Be right back, guys,” Hannah said, and followed Claire out into the woods.

  Claire walked some distance, and finally Hannah stopped her. “If you’re worried about them hearing, I think we’re far enough away.”

  Claire gave a nod. “Dixie is talking.”

  “Okay.” Hannah raised her eyebrows, asking for more.

  “About you hitting her.”

  “I’m sorry I did that. As I told her.”

  Claire gave a frustrated shake of her head. “Not then. Here.”

  Hannah was confused, and then she understood. “She told you I hit her again? Recently?”

  Claire nodded. “And she had bruises.” She put her hand around her own upper arm to show where.

  “That....” Hannah didn’t finish the sentence aloud. But in her head, she had several choice words to describe Dixie. Again, she couldn’t stop the thought that if Garreth had just climbed down the damned cliff, and left Dixie to fend for herself, the result would have been better. Dixie dead and Garreth still alive? That was a result she could embrace. But here was Dixie, no longer tormenting Garreth.

  No, I’m her new victim, apparently.

  She focused on Claire. “You understand I didn’t, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  The implication was not lost on Hannah. “Who believes her?”

  Claire just shrugged.

  “It hasn’t gotten back to Bob, obviously, or he’d have talked to me.”

  She shook her hea
d.

  “Hurts you to talk, still?”

  “Sorry, yeah,” Claire said.

  “No, don’t worry about it. Save your voice. And I appreciate your telling me, but it’s not your problem to worry about. Let me work it out on my own, okay?”

  Claire looked doubtful.

  To tell the truth, Hannah was doubtful too. She wasn’t sure how to approach this. Have a group meeting? They were overdue for a memorial service for Garreth anyway. Talk to Dixie? She couldn’t imagine that would accomplish anything. If humbling herself after the snake incident hadn’t eased the girl’s anger or vindictive urge, she doubted a second talk—and this one far less apologetic—would do the trick.

  I could just strangle her.

  Pleasant as that thought was right now, of course she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Okay, maybe could, but she wouldn’t. She was the grownup here, and she had to find some way to deal with what was just adolescent crap.

  When they got back to the clearing, Bob was alone, eating fish from one of the small bowls. “Soup’s on. I got a waiter, but you two will have to go get your own.”

  Hannah went to the fire and looked around at all the faces. Dixie was talking to Ted, who had glanced up at Hannah and smiled. Rex gave her a smile too. She tried to work out if anyone had seemed angry with her, or afraid to be with her, or had been refusing to meet her gaze. Nothing came to mind. Zach and Jodi and Ted had been willing to come rescue her yesterday. Nari and Dixie still seemed not to have healed their friendship.

  So whatever damage the girl had hoped to do to group relations hadn’t happened.... Yet.

  “Forgot something,” Hannah said. “Save a fish for me.” She trotted back to the clearing, over a path beaten down now by so many trips back and forth.

  She stepped inside the door and sat next to Bob.

  “Finished already?” he said.

  “Something more important has come up.” Quickly, she repeated what Claire had told her.

  Bob took a minute to think. He said, “Well, I hate to say it and risk angering you, but you shouldn’t have hit her in the first place.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I regret it. Not as much as I regret Garreth dying. And I dislike the girl, to be sure. But I apologized to her.”

  “You did? When?”

  She wished he didn’t sound so surprised. He must think she was as childish as the kids. “Yes, I did. The night Claire was attacked by the snake, and the three of us were alone. Claire may even have overheard. That, I don’t know. You can ask her that yourself.”

  “I don’t need a witness corroborating it,” he said. “I believe you.”

  “Oh good, so you think I’m out of control and violent, but you don’t think I’m a liar. That’s something.”

  “But you were out of control and violent,” he said, his tone reasonable.

  “Shit.” She hated to remember it. “I know. What should I do now?”

  “What should we do? This is something we need to address together, I think.”

  “I don’t believe anyone is afraid of me. They are all acting normally enough. Or the same as they have since we arrived here.”

  “I need to think about it,” he said. “There’s someone coming.”

  Ted appeared a moment later, carrying the Mylar blankets. “They’re still wet.”

  The rain had let up a little, but it was still dripping through the trees. And it would be for an hour or so after the actual rain stopped.

  “I’ll stick them back in my pack anyway,” Hannah said. “There’s nothing that dampness can hurt in there, not any more. Don’t let me forget to dry them off later though, okay, Ted?”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “They’re banking the fire. What am I supposed to do next?”

  “I need to eat,” she said, taking the empty bowl from Bob. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Why don’t you get the afternoon’s work organized, Ted?”

  For the rest of the day, she fretted over Dixie and her lies. It could tear apart the group. Garreth’s death might have, but they seemed to have recovered well enough to function. She didn’t doubt everyone still thought of him, that everyone still grieved him. But they had moved forward, of necessity, and pulled together to get the work done.

  One person, trying to undermine authority, trying to spread malicious gossip: that could do damage. And once the cabin was built, and roofed, there would be more free time. What was that old saying about idle hands? Something about the devil, so it must be biblical, but she couldn’t bring it to mind.

  She could keep them busy learning new skills, making basket backpacks for everyone, making hand axes and scraping tools, hunting grazing animals, maybe even building an addition on to the cabin. But she couldn’t muzzle Dixie.

  She could keep Dixie by her side at all times, so she wouldn’t have the chance to gossip.

  Hannah recoiled inwardly at the thought. Why should I be punished?

  She sighed and wished that she could go back to the beginning and manage to dislike the girl a little less. Or maybe that wouldn’t matter. Maybe Dixie would have caused some sort of trouble no matter what Hannah thought about her. So while wishing for things that couldn’t come true, Hannah may as well wish her way back to the museum, to when M.J. allowed the girl to go on the hike dressed inappropriately. She could have spoken up and said, “No. It’s too dangerous. She stays here.”

  M.J. may have had GS status over her—and in the hierarchy-crazy world of the National Park Service, that mattered—but rangers had some law enforcement status. She might have been able to force her will onto him.

  But she hadn’t done that. And now she was stuck with the consequences of her actions. Of all her actions.

  So don’t blame Dixie, blame yourself. You’re responsible for your part in all of this.

  Chapter 20

  The rain picked up again, and the rest of the afternoon was miserable. The wind picked up too, and though it didn’t blow on them directly, it rustled the leaves overhead. Occasionally, a strong gust would shake the trees enough to dump more water on their heads.

  Ted, Rex, and Claire took turns standing on the wall and tying pine boughs onto the roof. It was obvious by mid-afternoon that they weren’t going to finish today, and when Rex slipped and fell off the rain-slicked wall, she called a halt to the work.

  Rex swore he was okay, and he seemed to be no worse for the fall. But it could have resulted in a broken bone, and she did not want to try treating one of those with no equipment. Or with equipment, for that matter. She was no medic, and among the many lessons she’d learned here was that she had no desire to become one, should she ever return home.

  “We’ll be wet tonight without a roof,” Ted said.

  “We’ll be wet tonight no matter what,” Hannah said. “Let’s build a pair of fires just outside the openings. And get the wall built up in front of the main door, so it’ll reflect heat back into the cabin. That’s our best chance of keeping warm. And of drying off once the rain stops.”

  She sent a team off to gather the driest wood they could find. If it was going to rain often, they also needed to build a shelter for firewood, to keep it dry. She took Ted with her to gather some coals from the cook fire. Nari and Zach brought over another load of bricks to bake, including some curved ones built to Rex’s direction for the chimney.

  Ted had formed tongs again from wood here, and he was the deftest with using them. She had him move some coals into the big soup bowl and she carried it back to the cabin. Or partway. The bowl got too hot, and she had to put it down about half of the way there. Ted took off his shirt and used it as a hot pad, carrying the bowl the rest of the way.

  They built one fire, in the chimney opening, and then they built up the reflecting wall, using Rex’s water-bottle leveling method.

  Claire said, “Fish should be biting well, with the rain.” Her voice sounded a little better.

  Hannah said, “Sure, go on. Just not alone.”

  Ted said, “I think all the pr
edators are hiding from the rain.”

  Dixie said, “They’re smarter than us, then.”

  Bob said, “There’s nowhere for us to hide, I’m afraid. And now I need someone to smash more stems for me for fiber.” Among their many experiments with materials for cordage, they had found a plant with woody stalks that, when you smashed them, had interior fibers that worked well for cordage. They weren’t very long, but everyone in the group had grown adept at splicing shorter pieces into longer ropes, staggering the splices so that the cords were less likely to break. She wasn’t allowing Bob to pound the stems. Even that much activity would be dangerous, if he had indeed had a heart attack.

  She had avoided thinking about it often, not because she wasn’t worried, but because there was nothing she could do to help Bob. If she could find a stand of willow trees, she suspected that willow bark tea every day might work as a blood thinner. But either willows hadn’t evolved yet, or there just weren’t any in this woods. They’d explored half of it, and though they could see across the lake to the other side, she didn’t see any over there, either.

  With so many hands at it, they made short work of building the reflecting wall up to hip-high. Soon they had two lively fires going.

  When Hannah took the big soup pot to wash it, Claire had caught eight fish. She filled it with lake water and tossed in some of the non-porous stones they used to heat the water. Soup would be good and warming if the night grew any colder.

  When she got back, they were all huddled in the cabin. Water still dripped on them from overhead. The rain was still falling, though less heavily than it had been.

  After a miserable hour and a half had passed, Claire came to get them to eat.

  Bob insisted on going along, and while Hannah would have preferred him to continue resting, he was adamant, and she gave in. She wasn’t his mother, and she had no way of controlling his behavior. She walked with him, keeping the pace slow.

  The soup was ready, and a few more gutted fish cooked through on hot rocks.

  Hannah felt the soup warming her from the inside. “We should keep the pot by the fire at the cabin all night, so we can have something warm to drink.”