Quentin and the Cave Boy

by Susan Gabriel

  My mom sits thinking for a long time like she’s trying to figure everything out. She assures me that we’ll figure out what to do next as a family. I like thinking that we are a family again, even if we are short one crucial member.

  “I need to see this boy,” she says after awhile.

  We walk up to my room where Moss has fallen asleep in the sleeping bag. He snores like his nose has the engines of a 747 inside. My mom’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open as she stares at Moss. Then she slowly backs up so we won’t wake him. She massages her temples like all this excitement has given her a throbbing headache. It’s hard to argue with what happened when the proof is in my sleeping bag.

  She reaches over to tame my hair. I let her. She says she’s afraid of what might happen to Moss if the world finds out about him. This has been my fear all along, that Moss will become a modern-day circus freak and me along with him. I agree to meet with her in the morning to talk about how we can protect Moss. I like that she’s treating Moss like one of her kids.

  “Good night, Quentin,” she says in the voice that used to read me bedtime stories.

  “Good night, Mom,” I say.

  I get ready for bed. After looking at Moss’ teeth all day, for the first time in my life I want to floss. But I dread what will happen tomorrow. Life has totally changed already. After tomorrow it could change even more. Moss will be exposed to the rest of the world. We could always say he left town. But how do we protect him in two weeks or a year from now? It doesn’t seem fair to Moss. It’s my fault that he’s here.

  I don’t understand dreams. Who creates them? Where do they come from? If a dream can transport a cave boy to your room, can you dream them back? I look at the cave art again and notice a new figure standing outside the cave.

  “Who’s that?” I ask Moss.

  He startles awake and his nasal 747s do a crash landing. “Huh?” Moss grunts.

  I stand and point to the figure of a cave man.

  Moss grunts and nods like he’s glad I noticed. He pauses like he’s searching his mind for a word. “Sha – man,” he says.

  “You have a shaman in your tribe?” I ask. I’ve read about shamans. There were the keepers of the magic in a tribe.

  Moss grunts and nods.

  “He looks a lot like you,” I say.

  “Fa – ther,” he says.

  “The shaman is also your dad?” I ask.

  Moss grunts again in the affirmative.

  “Cool,” I say. I like knowing that Moss has a father, but even better than that, I like the idea that his father can do magic. We need all the magic right now we can get. Maybe his dad can help him get back. Since mine hasn’t even bothered to return Katie’s call, I doubt he’ll be showing up to save the day.

  “We need to go to sleep,” I tell Moss. “I need to dream and we need your dad’s help from the other side. Otherwise, you’ll be meeting the mayor of Atlanta tomorrow.”

  “Mayor?” Moss asks.

  “The mayor’s nice and everything. But I don’t know what will happen after that. Sooner or later someone will want to know where you came from.”

  “Not good,” he says softly.

  “No, not good,” I agree.

  Moss lies back on his sleeping bag.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, trying to sound confident. “Now let’s go to sleep. I’ve got some dreaming to do.”

  I turn out the light and about two minutes later the 747s in Moss’ nose take off again. I can understand why he’s exhausted. I’m tired, too, but the harder I try to sleep, the more I’m wide awake. I count sheep. I count Velociraptors. I count my teeth again and anything that might help me drift off to sleep. I ask whoever makes dreams to help. I ask Moss’ dad, the shaman, to throw in a little magic.

  I need my dad to say, “You can do this, Quentin.” He always believed I could do anything I set my mind to. But I need to believe it, too.

  Moonlight illuminates the drawings on the wall. I drift off into the dream world.

  Moss stands outside his cave with his mom and a dirty cave sister with horrible hair. His dad, the shaman, looks up at the sky like he’s thanking the sun god or something for getting his son home. His mom is so happy to see him she spits on her fingers and wipes the spaghetti sauce off his face. He looks irritated by the attention, but happy to be home.

  I’m in the dream, too. I keep looking at my watch like I have somewhere to go. It’s like I know I’m dreaming and I don’t want to get trapped in Moss’ life like he did in mine. I wouldn’t last a day in this place.

  “I have to go,” I say to Moss in the dream. “Mom will wake me up soon.”

  Moss looks sad that I have to go.

  “Quentin, friend,” he says. Moss gives me his necklace made out of animal teeth as a sign of friendship. I’m trying to think of what I can give him, and hand him my Atlanta Braves baseball cap.

  “I’ll never forget you,” I say to Moss.

  “Never, you,” he says back. He thumps his fist on his chest like we’re blood brothers or something. I thump my fist on my chest, too.

  Moss’ dad makes me lie down on Moss’ bearskin bed like we’re running out of time. He gives me something bitter to drink and shakes my hand. My eyelids are so heavy I can’t stay awake. I fall asleep. In my dream, Moss and his family wave at me from the front entrance of their cave. . . .

  “Quentin, are you up yet?” The Voice yells up the stairs.

  “I’m up, Mom,” I yell back.

  I sit up fast and wipe my eyes, looking around my bedroom. Moss is nowhere in sight. Where did he go? Did my dream work?

  I cover every inch of my room to make sure Moss is gone. I lean over and look under my bed, but to get Moss under there would be impossible. I dig through a few piles of clothes on my floor and look in my closet. Boxes and clothes topple on me as I open the door. Then I look out the window to make sure Moss didn’t just climb out into the backyard again. But Mom’s azalea bushes are dry.

  A familiar shuffle announces Dex in the doorway.

  “I think it worked,” I say to Dex. “Either I dreamed him back or his dad, the shaman, worked some magic.”

  “His dad’s a shaman?” Dex asks. “How do you know?”

  I show Dex the drawing of the man near the cave and tell him what I dreamed while I was there.

  “Cool,” Dex says. “Speaking of dads, your mom said your dad called this morning and he’s flying home tomorrow for a visit.”

  “Dad’s coming home?”

  “According to your mom,” Dex says.

  I pause, remembering all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours and I’m grateful that Moss helped get my dad back, at least for a visit. “He was real, wasn’t he, Dex?”

  “As real as me standing here.” Dex takes a closer look at the paintings on my wall.

  “Hey, these drawings are awesome,” Dex says.

  If I need further proof that Moss was here all I have to do is look at my wall.

  While Dex waits, I get dressed in my usual jeans and a T-shirt. I reach for my Atlanta Braves baseball cap, but it isn’t on the bedpost where I always keep it. Then I remember giving it to Moss. I thump my chest in our brotherly greeting.

  “You know, I feel a little sad about Moss being gone,” I admit to Dex.

  “Me, too,” Dex says. “But knowing you, you’ll dream up someone else.”

  “Don’t even think it!” I say.

  “Maybe you’ll dream up some Italian kid named Leonardo who paints, too!” Dex cracks himself up.

  “Not funny.”

  We stand looking at Moss’ drawings on my wall like we’re standing looking at a great work of art in a museum. I imagine Moss in his cave wearing my baseball cap. He’s working on a new cave drawing that has pictures of cars, zippers, and shower nozzles in it. When archeologists find his cave it’s going to be the biggest mystery of the millennium.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Dex asks. He picks up a necklace of animal teeth next to m
y pillow.

  “Moss gave it to me,” I say to Dex.

  “Awesome!” Dex says, as though envious.

  We each try on the necklace and grunt and belch as we’re wearing it. I look again at Moss’ amazing artwork and for the first time in history I actually want to clean up my room to show off the drawings.

  “Hey, you want to help me clean up my room?” I ask.

  “In your dreams,” Dex says.

  SNEAK PEEK OF SUSAN GABRIEL’S NOVEL: CIRCLE OF THE ANCESTORS

  Chapter One

  Morning light filters through the valley. Vast mountain ranges surround Sam like ancestors who circle to watch his every move. At times he isn’t sure if they are here to help or hinder. He places a careful foot on the rocky path, letting each step settle before taking the next one, as his grandmother taught him. A misstep on his climb could mean a disastrous fall, or even death.

  With slow and steady progress, Sam and his dog, Little Bear, ascend the mountain. Mountains are sacred to the Cherokee people and Sam’s climb is meant to honor them. He reaches an out-cropping of rocks fifty feet before the grassy summit and stops to rest. Water from the last rain gathers in the cleft of a boulder and Little Bear drinks it. As a puppy he looked like a black bear cub, which is where he got his name.

  “We’re almost there,” Sam tells Little Bear, but maybe he is reassuring himself. The climb is not easy.

  As Sam pulls his way to the top, he thinks of how his grandmother would be proud. He wants to be a warrior someday. A real one. Not a fake one like his dad who poses in tribal costume in front of a souvenir shop near the casino whenever he needs gambling money. Tourists take photographs and leave tips, never knowing the truth.

  Grandmother says becoming a true warrior will involve a test sent by the ancestors. Sam doesn’t like tests, especially the ones he takes in school. But Grandmother reassures him this trial is different. It will call on all his strength and change him from the inside out. Sam likes this thought. He needs things to change.

  At the summit—an altitude of 4500 feet—the vista stretches in every direction. Crisp air fills Sam’s lungs and the early morning mist feels cool on his face. Fog nestles in the valley below, like a long, white snake zigzagging its body around the hills. Above the fog rises an orange and yellow sun cresting a distant peak.

  “Hey look, we’ve got a visitor,” Sam says to Little Bear, pointing to the sky. He blocks the sun with his hand to make out what looks like a red-tailed hawk. It is rare to see one.

  For several seconds the raptor darts upward, as if racing with the sun to see which of them can go higher. The great bird holds steady against the wind, rising and falling on the currents. Its wide wings stretch like fingers reaching for greater heights. Rust-colored feathers ring its white chest. Sam stretches out his arms to imitate the hawk.

  What’s it like to soar? he wonders.

  At the top he bows in the four directions as his grandmother taught him, thanking the mountain and his ancestors for letting him pass. He wonders why the mountain has called him here. It is simply to pay respect? Sitting on a rock, he eats the biscuit and honey he brought from home and feeds Little Bear the crumbs. Up here, life makes sense. People are small and unimportant and the landscape is what is great. The land doesn’t have to pretend it is something it isn’t to survive.

  After completing his brief ceremony, Sam joins a narrow trail that descends the mountain in a different direction. He has never taken this path before, although his grandmother has told him about it. According to her, it was once used by Europeans who traded beads and blankets with the Cherokee. Through the openings in the trees, Sam sees the red hawk soar high above, as if intent on not losing him. The Cherokee are members of the bird clan, one of seven clans of the Eastern Band. Is the hawk a part of his clan, too?

  A stream glimmers in the distance below like a tiny ribbon of light. Sam looks at his watch. For nearly an hour he has descended along the narrow trail that will end up a mile from his grandmother’s house at a marked trailhead. Near a small waterfall the ground becomes slippery with moisture and moss. Cautious, Sam walks on the other side away from the ledge. He ambles through thick forest and the path darkens. Mountain laurel reaches up around him in all directions, a wall of deep green. The tightly closed buds are beginning to open and smell sweet and sour at the same time. It is easy to get lost in the maze of mountain laurels.

  Two summers before, a four-year-old boy was lost in the forest. His parents camped on the north slope of Jacob’s Ridge and the boy wandered off. The search continued for weeks. Forest rangers and volunteers, many of them from Sam’s tribe, combed the entire mountain looking for him. They found one sneaker about a mile from the camp and then all traces disappeared. The boy was never found.

  Seconds later, Little Bear growls and then barks, his eyes trained on the trail behind them. Little Bear doesn’t bark often, except to announce an intruder so Sam turns to look. A loud flutter of wings announces a swooping red hawk, its sharp talons extended. Wind from the bird’s wings rush against Sam’s cheeks. In the next instant, the hawk lets out a keening cry, like an ancient battle call. It swoops again. Before Sam can right himself he falls backward and loses his balance on the path. He stumbles toward the steep edge of the embankment. Meanwhile Little Bear barks wildly, grabbing Sam’s pants with his teeth. For several long, slow seconds Sam clutches mid-air for something to hold onto, but he is too far off center.

  Sam goes over the edge and lands with a loud thud on his back, the breath knocked out of him. His body quickly becomes a sled. He careens, feet first, down the mountain like an avalanche. The forest blurs past him. A voice—he can’t decide if it is outside or inside him—tells him to dig in his heels. Sam obeys. He thrusts his hiking boots into the earth and slows his descent. A cloud of dirt and pebbles travels with him.

  Trees blur past, then several large boulders. Sam hears a long, desperate scream and realizes it is his own. The stream, no longer in the distance, churns white water below him. Seconds before colliding with a large oak on the bank of the stream, Sam grabs onto the branch of a mountain laurel bush. He clings to safety and finally comes to a halt.

  Waiting for the spinning to stop, Sam holds his head and sputters grit from his mouth. Little Bear barks from the trail high above him, sounding a continuous alarm. Sam is alive, but far from okay. His heart pounds like a drum delivering a warning. He can’t remember a time when he felt more terrified.

  Little Bear makes his way down the steep edge of the mountain creating cutbacks as he goes. For the first time Sam notices that he has fallen along the path of an old rockslide. Boulders lay nearby that would have killed him instantly if he had hit his head.

  Small pebbles are embedded in his palms, as well as the moss and dirt grabbed on his descent. He brushes them away. Little Bear arrives panting and licks Sam’s face. Blood trickles from a cut on Sam’s cheek. He dabs the blood with his sleeve and grimaces. His head pounds as if running a race with his heart. He holds onto Little Bear like a life preserver. His watch is broken, stopped at 8:44 a.m.

  On the ground next to him lies his red Atlanta Braves baseball cap. It was a gift from his mother before she left. He must have hung onto it as he fell. In a rare moment, he allows himself to wish she was here. He could use a mom right now. But life doesn’t always give him what he needs. Sam brushes the dirt from his hair and puts on his cap, now dirty and torn. His breathing returns to normal, although his hands haven’t stopped shaking.

  “I thought that was the end of me,” Sam says to Little Bear. Somehow hearing his own voice makes him not feel so alone. Little Bear licks Sam’s face again, as if he also thinks the fall could have been the end of Sam.

  Like a puppeteer with a fragile puppet, Sam moves his arms and legs. Nothing appears broken, but everything hurts. That crazy hawk seemed to want to make him fall. He leans back to look for the bird, but it has disappeared. He will ask Grandmother if she’s ever known a hawk to attack people. It followed him
most of the morning, which is unusual in itself. To the Cherokee, birds are thought to be the messengers between the living and the dead. If this is true, what are the ancestors trying to teach him? How to die at a young age? Yet now that he thinks about it, didn’t the last two days foretell that something big was about to happen?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Gabriel is an acclaimed writer who lives in the mountains of North Carolina.

  Her novel, The Secret Sense of Wildflower, earned a starred review ("for books of remarkable merit") from Kirkus Reviews: "A quietly powerful story, at times harrowing but ultimately a joy to read." It was also voted one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2012.

  She is also the author of the novel Seeking Sara Summers which has garnered international attention since its publication in 2008.

  Her nonfiction book, Fearless Writing for Women: Extreme Encouragement and Writing Inspiration, gives writers inspiration, writing tips and encouragement to get going again and keep going on the book they hope to write.

  Readers will also enjoy Circle of the Ancestors, a novel for readers of all ages about a 13 year old boy named Sam who discovers a perfect star ruby. As he figures out what to do with the ruby, Sam must deal with bullies and thieves and get on the path to becoming a true warrior.

  Discover more about Susan at susangabriel.com