A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  “Just water? Or fish broth?” Claire said.

  Ted said, “Will the smell of fish draw predators, do you think?”

  “It hasn’t yet,” Hannah said. “Let’s go ahead and toss our fish bones into fresh water, and we’ll leave that by the fire.”

  Nari said, “The soup can have my fish head too.” She was still squeamish about eating meat, and possibly would be forever. Organs and eyeballs and brains and tongues were not her favorite foods.

  “Mine too,” said Claire. “I’d rather have broth than plain hot water.” She was losing her voice again.

  “I was thinking,” said Hannah a few minutes later, “that it’s time we had a memorial service for Garreth.”

  That stopped everyone.

  She glanced at Bob, who was frowning in thought. He might have a plan for how to deal with Dixie, but Hannah had one of her own. She’d apologize again, in public, so everyone witnessed it. And what better time to do that than when they were all vividly remembering that horrible day?

  “I know we’re all still raw about it,” she said. “Even if we don’t discuss it. It’s only been a week, but I think it’s time we honored him.”

  Rex said, “Feels like longer than a week.”

  She nodded. For the first few days, it had felt like five seconds ago. But when they had gotten busy with work, the memory had begun to fade, lost the horrible edge of vividness. The grief was still there for her, just under the surface, as was the guilt. And she was sure she’d cry all the way through the service. But they needed to do it. They needed to honor him. They needed to acknowledge that they were moving on.

  And she needed to counter Dixie’s back-channel nastiness...if she could.

  Chapter 21

  The night was made less miserable by the two fires. The extra wall, though only half-finished, did a great job of reflecting heat back into the cabin through the main door. The rain lasted until midnight, and until then, there was a lot of tossing and turning. When the trees stopped dripping, Hannah fed both fires again, and soon thereafter people started settling down into sleep. Her own clothes got a head start on drying from the moments standing directly over the fire.

  She was awake at dawn, the changing animal sounds in the woods waking her as efficiently as an alarm clock. She had taken the centermost position in the cabin, on the side where the boys were lined up, so she was closest to the door. As quietly as she could, she snuck out, grabbing her boots and socks on the way out. Both were still damp, so she remained barefoot. Edging around the fire, feeling the warmth of it, she went outside and relieved herself. She circled back to the other fire, and began to move it. They had built it close to the chimney opening, making it impossible to get in—or out. There were still coals, and she spent a moment with a stout stick shifting them away from the door. She didn’t want some sleepy teen stumbling into the fire.

  Hannah wanted to get going on work, but she also wanted to let everyone get a solid six hours of sleep. Seven would be better. It was going to be a hard day, first physically, with finishing the cabin, and then with the memorial service.

  The forest was still damp from the rain, and it smelled different. Before, there was a dry and dusty odor. Now it smelled more fecund, more alive. It was easy to imagine fruit trees bearing ripe fruit, juicy and sweet. They might even be here long enough to see that happen, to have their choice of fruits and berries.

  She wouldn’t mind some red meat too, for a change from the fish. The herring, everyone had tasted their fill of. The taste of the oil stayed with a person, and she often woke up the morning after a herring dinner with the taste still in her mouth. Claire’s whitefish catches were great, but Hannah longed to tear at some red meat and chew for a while. The fish was so tender, you could swallow without engaging your teeth in the process.

  Cashews were also on her list. The hell pigs had stolen their collection of the nuts, but there had to be a way to process the next batch they collected. There had to be a simple way too. Maybe in the year 2000, factories had used steam or chemicals or something high-tech, but in the year 1500, people would have been processing them with some low-tech manner. The only two possibilities that came to mind were soaking them for a long while in water, hoping whatever was in there that humans shouldn’t eat would leach out, and roasting them over a high heat. The nuts they had collected were dark gray. The cashews you bought in the store were a sable color. So they could collect more, and try both methods on a small batch. Soak some in a bowl overnight and see if the dark coating peeled off, and roast some over coals and see if it scraped off. Maybe you could put the roasted nuts into a pile of leaves and rub the coating off. Maybe you’d have to roast them black first. She’d have to experiment.

  She walked around the clearing to find a dry seat for herself. She found a fallen log, lifted it onto one end, and saw the underside was damp too. So no sitting and resting. What could she do before the others awoke? Go get the baked bricks? Haul water to the clay site? Chop some fresh evergreen boughs? Lots of choices.

  Probably best to avoid the water, though, until the animals had drunk their fill that morning. So she put on her damp socks and boots and circled around to the front of the cabin and hunted for one of the hand axes. They hadn’t brought them into the cabin like the steel tools, as they’d not be harmed by rain. She caught sight of one and grabbed, and she wove through the trees to the nearest patch of pines.

  They’d still hear the thumps of the axe from the cabin. It might wake someone up, but that was okay. She wouldn’t look for something farther off. If they could hear the axe, that also meant if something went wrong, they’d hear her screams.

  She circled the first pine and then a second, looking for something she could reach. They’d cleared the ground already of fallen boughs and chopped off the lowest limbs. She was circling the third tree when she noticed the patch of darkness at the recent cut. She reached her hand out and touched it. Sticky.

  Pitch. Pine sap.

  That was good. Pine sap could be used for a lot of things. Glue, for one thing. Starting a fire with wet wood, for another, as it burned hot. If it worked as glue, then it could probably be used for closing wounds, like Superglue was in combat situations.

  She tried to wipe it on her pants, and briefly glued her finger to her leg. Grabbing up a handful of wet leaves, she tried to wipe it off, but water wasn’t cutting it. She needed a petroleum product. Or pure acetone, which she didn’t have either.

  Okay, lesson learned. Don’t gather it with your fingers. And don’t gather it with her knife either, because that would be something else she couldn’t get clean. Not that she had her knife with her right now, she realized, or the belt of fossil-collecting gear, which was under the pile of packs inside the cabin. So she rooted around on the forest floor until she found a thumb-wide stick, broke it over her knee, and used one end to wedge into the other, splitting the other piece in two. That left her a crude wooden putty knife. She scraped up as much of the sap as she could, and then circled the tree.

  She found eight more sites over three trees where the cut had begun to ooze sap. She had both sticks loaded with the sap. She couldn’t handle any more. In fact, she thought, glancing down at the hand axe, even these three things were going to be a challenge to carry.

  It took some careful testing to find a way of carrying the two sticks in one hand without allowing them to touch each other. She picked up the axe in her other hand and hiked back to the cabin. Jodi was up and standing there, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

  “Morning,” Hannah whispered.

  Jodi yawned and nodded.

  “Do me a favor. Grab up a piece of cordage. Any length over two feet is okay, and bring it over here, please.”

  Jodi nodded and began looking around on the ground where they’d been working on making cords, continuing to yawn hugely.

  It was making Hannah want to yawn too. Her eyes felt suddenly tired and gritty, and the urge to crawl back into her spot on the cabin floor and g
rab some more sleep was strong. Of course, she ignored it.

  Jodi came up with an arm-length piece of inner bark that had been made into thin strips to tie the pine boughs onto the roof. “Okay?” she whispered.

  “Great. Tie it to the very end of these two sticks. And don’t touch the dark stuff on them. It’s sticky and impossible to wipe off.”

  The girl made quick work of tying on the bark. Hannah was able to transfer her hold to the cord. Taking care to keep the sappy sticks from touching each other, she went to a hardwood tree with a low-hanging branch and hung them over it. She reminded herself to warn people not to walk into them. She’d hate to have to try and clean that stuff out of someone’s hair.

  It’d be easier just to cut the hair off. Not that haircuts would be a bad idea all around. After ten weeks, the boys were all looking pretty shaggy, except Rex, whose hair was longer but still tightly curled. It wouldn’t be in his way for months, maybe years.

  She prayed they wouldn’t be lost in time for years, though she knew it was possible they would be. They could even be lost forever. She pushed the thought aside. Today’s challenges were enough to worry about. She didn’t need to worry about forever.

  “Ready to work?” she asked Jodi.

  “Sure. Doing what?”

  She motioned for the girl to follow her another several feet from the cabin. “Let’s get the baked bricks out of the ground and back here. Rex can build his chimney. Then we can make up some mortar, so we can get the heat-reflecting wall finished today.”

  “The roof is most important, right?”

  “Yeah. But we can’t start on that until everyone is up. I don’t want to drop a pine bough on someone’s head.”

  “That’d be rude,” Jodi agreed. “Okay. I need to pee on the way.”

  “Sure.” They followed their worn path toward the lake, and Jodi turned off partway along it to relieve herself behind a thick tree trunk. Then they got to the lakeshore fire and dug up the bricks, which were still warm. After they had them piled on the beach, they built the fire back up for cooking brunch. The wet wood steamed and smoldered, but eventually it would dry out and catch.

  Around the lake, several different animals were still drinking. But not as many as other mornings. Some of them were probably able to get enough moisture from the rain-soaked grass yesterday and didn’t need a drink. The sky was dotted with small white clouds, and it was hard to tell if they’d build into rain clouds again or not.

  “You know,” Jodi said, “it’s not a really important task, but I’d like to look for some flowers for Garreth’s service.”

  “That’s nice,” Hannah said. “I’ll send a couple of you out to the grassland. There might be something blooming from the rain.”

  “Can Zach go with me?”

  Hannah gave her a long look. Jodi met her gaze, and without looking embarrassed or coy or duplicitous. “You remember what I told you, right?”

  “I remember. And I swear, we won’t do more than kiss. And not for long, even. I’d feel guilty for doing it a long time. There’s always too much to do.”

  “There won’t be, after tomorrow. Not as much, at least.”

  Jodi said, “I know you’ve been trying to keep us apart.”

  Hannah couldn’t deny it. She smiled at being caught.

  “You can trust us. We won’t be stupid.”

  “I do trust you,” Hannah said, realizing it was true as the words came out of her mouth. “And Zach too.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah, he is.” And he had seemed lonely to her, at first. She wondered if it was the first serious relationship for them both. What a strange situation to be in when you had your first romance. But it was sort of sweet, in a way. As long as the result of it wasn’t babies, or jealousy among the group. “Just come up for air every so often between kisses to check for danger, would you?”

  Jodi blushed at that. “Okay.”

  “All right. Last time I’ll talk about it.”

  “We’ll watch out for each other. Really.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Hannah tested the bricks. “Cool enough to pick up now. Let me load up your arms first.”

  When they both had as many bricks as they could carry, they made their way back to the cabin. Almost everyone was up. Bob and Rex were coming back from, Hannah assumed, relieving themselves. Others were in various stages of wakefulness.

  Ted started doing some stretches. He jumped up and grabbed a tree limb and just hung there.

  It reminded her to warn them about the pine sap sticks. Then she had to answer questions about why pine sap might be useful for five minutes.

  Ted said, when their curiosity was satisfied, “I’ve been thinking about the hell pigs.”

  Nari said, “I’d rather not think of them.”

  “They’re good scavengers, right? They hunt, but they also seem to like fruit and nuts just fine. They found our store of cashew fruits and nuts.”

  “Right,” said Rex. “What are you thinking?”

  “That we could follow them one day. I mean, when the cabin is finished. A couple of us could track them.”

  “Too dangerous,” Hannah said.

  “From a long ways off,” Ted said. “They probably have regular places they eat. And regular things. So if you want our diet to expand, that might be a way to do it.”

  Nari said, “Steal their food?”

  “Steal their ideas about food,” Ted said.

  “And what if they caught sight of you?” Hannah said. “Or smelled you? Or heard you?”

  “Well,” he said. “I’d be quiet. And it’s easy enough to stay downwind. The grass hides you if you’re careful.”

  “I’d go with you,” Zach said.

  “Let me think about it,” Hannah said. “It’s a good idea, for sure. But we are eating. The lake is keeping us fed, and without taking any risk. And we can find more fruits and vegetables through trial and error. It just hasn’t been the priority. We haven’t even been entirely around the lake yet. I’d like to do that.”

  “After we do that,” Ted said, “once we’ve explored the woods, which should only take a day or two, then we can go out into the grassland. Hunt, or follow the hell pigs, or whatever.”

  Her inclination was to say “No” to tracking hell pigs, but if she could sleep on it for a couple of nights, she might figure a way to do it safely. Maybe the animals could show them a new source of food. Tubers or berries would certainly be a welcome addition to their diet.

  Rex said, “If they took down some huge animal, and ate their fill, we could go in as scavengers too. I mean, once they were safely away.”

  Bob agreed, surprising Hannah. “Bob, isn’t it time for you to sit down again?”

  “Okay,” he said, but with an irritated look at her. He was probably obeying her more to set a good example than because he wanted to, but she’d accept whatever the motivation was, as long as it had him resting for another day. She didn’t want to lose him.

  She set everyone to tasks, including sending Jodi and Zach out to gather more grass and see what the rain had changed in the grasslands, if anything. Rex and Ted, being the tallest, were the sensible people to work on the roof, but they were also part of the experienced cast net team.

  “Dixie, would you take the other girls out and teach them to fish with the net?” Hannah said.

  “Why?”

  “I’d like everybody to have some experience with everything we do, for one thing. And you know how to do it, so you can teach them. And Claire probably knows something too.”

  “Just what I’ve picked up by watching,” Claire said.

  “Ted and Rex would be faster,” Dixie said.

  “True, but I want them finishing the roof. If it rains again today, we’ll be under cover by nightfall.” Her socks and boots were still damp, and she planned to take them off after the morning’s work was done and let them dry out.

  “Someone should stay,” said Nari, “and hand them up whatever
they need.”

  “Either you or Hannah,” said Rex. “That’d be great.”

  Hannah said she’d do it. The other girls left. Before the boys got to work, she got the rags—that had once been Garreth’s shirt front—out of her backpack and made them wipe off the top of the wall of any accumulated moisture. “No reason to risk a serious fall,” she said.

  “Yes, Mom,” Ted said with a grin.

  “I know, I know. I worry about you all.”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “I try to control my mouth, really I do,” she said. “But I keep telling you to be careful. It must be irritating to hear a dozen times a day.”

  “No,” said Rex. “It’s not. It’s sort of nice, really. Reminds me of home—in a good way.”

  “Okay, then I’ll say it again. Go carefully. You’re getting pretty high up on the roof, and if you lean over, it’d be easy to crash right through.”

  “I have an idea,” Rex said. “For setting the last row of pine boughs.”

  “What’s that?” Ted asked.

  “We should tie a cord to them, and toss it over the beam of the roof. Then the guy on the other side could pull it down. That would raise the bough up. Instead of lashing it up top, you’d lash it halfway down on the other side.” He frowned. “It’d take quite a length, but until we can build a ladder and get right up to the top, it’s a way to make sure they’re secure and won’t blow off too.”

  “Can we build a ladder so it’s safe?” Hannah said.

  “Don’t worry,” Rex said, “I have some ideas about that.”

  She was sure he did. She left them to set themselves up to work and went to collect mortar. She was going to rebuild the top of the second wall, the one at the entrance that would—hopefully—keep predators out and reflect the heat of a fire back in. And she wanted to dig a pit for the fire too, and line the front edge with rocks so it was easier to step past it at night.

  The beginning of her work was dismantling the wall. Ted looked down from his spot on the cabin wall and said, “You need help?”