ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3)

by JOAN DAHR LAMBERT

  “After that, he behaved exactly as I knew he would. It was not as hard as I had thought to fool the Leader.”

  Runor looked surprised and gratified, and Zena was glad to hear her sounding more like herself again.

  “Well, you know the rest,” Runor went on. “The Leader tried to throttle me and the poisoned dart in my hand did not penetrate his skin as I had intended. Instead, the rotten mead made him ill and then the water took him. That seemed to me just and right. I feel no remorse, except for the damage I have done to the people I love. For that, I beg forgiveness, from Zena most of all.

  “And that is the truth the Goddess insisted that I tell you,” she finished, trying to inject humility into her voice but sounding slightly irritable instead.

  Zena almost laughed. That too was very like the Runor she knew. Runor did not like being asked to do what she did not want to do, even by the Goddess.

  “I forgive you absolutely,” she said immediately. “I do not think any of what happened was your fault. Korg and the Leader and even Gurd would have been what they were, done what they did, even if you had not thrown the boiling food that day. Already, they were tormented men who could never be normal again, never know what kindness really meant.”

  “Zena is right,” Larak said forcefully. “You did not cause any of this to happen, Runor. No, these tragedies were perpetrated because terrible cruelties had been meted out to three defenseless boys that changed them forever.”

  Pila spoke next, surprising them. “I suppose it is never right to throw boiling liquid at someone, but I might have done it too, if it was nearby and I had not been so weak. And was it so wrong for you to be so angry? A woman should be angry if she is treated that way.”

  “You are right,” Sorlin said with spirit. “No woman should be treated like that!”

  “That is certainly so,” Mara agreed. “Although I am not sure I would have dared to throw a pot of food at the Great Spirit, as I thought he was then. It would not have gone through that horrible bear mask anyway.

  “I think you were very brave to do what you did,” she told her mother, and Zena saw gratitude in Runor’s eyes.

  Niva spoke next. “What you did just now took even more courage,” she said. “I know this because I have had to do it too.” The two women smiled at each other as if sharing a joke. Then Runor turned back to her listeners.

  “Thank you for your kind words. I am grateful for them. I will think about what you have said, and it will give me comfort.”

  “It will,” Pila said. “But now you must rest. The story you have told us was hard for us to hear and even more devastating to tell, and you are worn out.” So saying, she helped Runor to rise so Mara could lead her mother to her hut.

  Pila had acted and sounded exactly like Teran, always ready to defuse tension with practicality, Zena thought to herself. In fact, she was Teran, except that she was still known as Pila. Perhaps it was time for a change.

  Zena wondered if she should say that to Pila or if it was too forceful. She decided to take a chance. “You sounded exactly like Teran when you spoke to Runor, and you did just what Teran would have done,” she remarked. “I am afraid that I will call you Teran, you are so like her.”

  Pila smiled, the big, encompassing smile Zena remembered so well. “Then you must call me Teran,” she decreed. “I am sure I am, and perhaps if everyone called me by the name I once had, it would help me to remember. That would be fine indeed.”

  Zena returned the smile; then she did what she had longed to do since she had first seen Teran. Taking her sister into her arms, she hugged her, a long, joyous hug of gratitude, love and relief. Teran was back.

  *********************

  Later that day, Durak took Zena’s hand and led her into a grove of trees where tiny white flowers flourished in the dappled light. “I came here many times after Rofina died,” he explained. “This was the only place I found peace.”

  Drawing her down on the ground beside him, he placed a finger across his lips, indicating that she should not speak. For a long time they sat in complete silence. Durak’s mouth was curved up in a smile, and for no reason she could understand, Zena found her lips did the same. He was right. Something in this place seemed to give comfort, and pleasure. It was like the feeling she had often had with Lief when they sat together, not needing to speak because they knew each other so well. Here, she could do that again. And suddenly she understood what Durak was trying to tell her: Lief was here; he was here for her, just as Durak had found Rofina here. Lief would never leave her completely; how could she have believed such a thing for so long? His spirit remained with her, and that would sustain her as she learned how to live again. And now, blessedly, Teran was there to help.

  “Oh, Lief, I am sorry,” she said, though she did not speak aloud. “I am so sorry. I did not understand.” The words seemed to float away from her, and Zena found herself waiting, listening, for a response. Slowly, it came. A radiant joy filtered into her, and she was certain that Lief understood and felt the joy too because finally she had let him return to her, had ceased to allow her grief and guilt to keep him away.

  The joy slowly faded, pushed aside by the longing for Lief that seemed never to leave her, but its memory did not. Zena knew she had felt it and would feel it again, knew that one day she would be able to embrace it and hold it within her. She knew, too, that one day she would be able to stop blaming herself for Lief’s death. She had not quite reached that place yet, but at last she knew it could happen.

  One day I will live again, she thought to herself. Not just yet, but one day it will happen. She had not known that before.

  The light was fading before Durak drew her to her feet. They had almost reached the hut when he spoke. “Now you must give purpose to his death,” he told Zena, his face stern, “by honoring the Mother, by speaking of Her, representing her wherever you go, as is your mission.

  “Yours and Teran’s,” he added. “She may not remember but she is still Teran. Together, you can do it and do it well.”

  Tears sprang up in Zena’s eyes, because so much time had passed, and all she had thought of was her own pain. How could she have allowed herself to be so blind, so unthinking, for all these months?

  Zena must live, Lief had said, and he had believed it so fervently that he had given his life so she could continue the mission entrusted to her by the Goddess. She had failed to honor that sacrifice.

  It will not be so any longer, she vowed to herself. From this moment on, she would do everything in her power to make sure Lief had not died in vain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  The sun was warm on Zena’s face as she climbed once more to the place where Lief had died and settled on a bare rock. The outline of the ridges where they had huddled during the storm was visible now, though to dig into the frozen solidity between them was still impossible. Even Lief’s pack, his precious axe and the other possessions she had left near him, were still buried in ice and might never be found.

  For hours, Zena sat there, alone with Lief and the Goddess, remembering, accepting. The agony that had once afflicted her was muted now, though sadness was still there, a part of her life. But so was joy, the joy she had felt when she had first understood that Lief was still with her in his way, and the joy she felt at knowing she carried his child within her. For a long time she had not dared to believe, had thought her bleeding had not come because she was so ill. But now she was sure. There was no other way to explain a rapidly expanding belly! The tiny life must have sprung up inside her during her last trip with Lief, she realized, and was glad. He had died on that trip, but he had left her a precious legacy.

  She felt Lief now, all around her, and she drew in her pleasure that he was here along with the sadness that he was not. There was sadness, too, because she knew she might never find him, might never be able to bring him back to the village and bury him where he belonged.

  “But I am where I belong now,” Lief objected, and Zena was certain
she could hear his voice. “I am buried where I wish to be, high in the peaks we loved.”

  Zena smiled, almost laughed. The words had sounded so much like Lief! “You are right,” she told him, still smiling. “Yes. You are right. This is where you belong, high in the mountains where we found such joy.”

  “An ice burial,” she said then, nodding. “Yes, that is right for you, Lief. We will give you an ice burial right here, in the high and beautiful place you have chosen.”

  And so it was that on another warm day she led Teran and Larak and the other villagers up the mountain to the place where Lief lay. One at a time, the people placed wildflowers reverently on the mound of ice under which he lay buried, and remembered him with their words, spoke of how fine and brave he was, so the Mother would know of their great love and admiration for him. When each had spoken, they listened intently as Zena and Larak conducted the familiar rituals and commended Lief to the Goddess.

  “Though his body lies buried in ice,” Zena said to the Goddess, “I know his spirit lives on in the stars he loved. Keep him there always so that one day I may find him again, and we can fly together for all time.”

  Zena lingered for a moment after the others had left. In a few months, they would journey to the standing stones, where she would take her place as wise one for all the Mother People, and before she left she wanted Lief to know that she was no longer afraid of the responsibility. Partly that was because Teran had returned and would help her, but she also knew that even if she was not yet as strong or as wise as Larak or Runor, she felt confident now of her ability to speak for the Goddess.

  Lief seemed to hear her thoughts; all the way down the mountain, all during the months that followed, Zena felt him sending her his support and his love. She drew it into her, felt it strengthen her and give her courage.

  That year, the numbers of Mother People who gathered at the standing stones was greater than ever before. Everyone in villages newly restored to the Goddess wanted to come; all the others went as well, to reaffirm the faith that had sustained them for so many years. From the mountains, the valleys and the coasts, they came, traveling slowly south in a line so long no one could count the numbers. All along the way, they helped each other, carrying the old ones and the children when they were tired, sharing food, telling stories of all that had happened to them in recent years. And when all of them had finally gathered in the sacred place, the stones themselves rang with the sound of their voices, as they greeted the Goddess and told Her of their love and gratitude for all She did for them. It was a ceremony that was remembered and savored, spoken of over and over again, for all the years of the Mother People.

  The gathering that year was remembered for other reasons. One was the joyous fact that Teran had been found and was slowly but surely recovering her memory. The other was equally momentous. On the last night of the ceremonies, Zena gave birth to twin daughters, her daughters and Lief’s, in the sacred circle of stones itself. As before, the first born was called Zena, the second Teran. The Mother People were overjoyed, and so was Zena, especially since both children were healthy and strong. In later years, each of them gave birth to twins as well, as did their daughters, and so the tradition continued.

  They were good years, peaceful years. Many children were born, and flourished, and the Mother People slowly spread across the earth. Everywhere they settled, they created circles of stone. As the years passed, they became expert at raising huge chunks of stone, at placing them in circles and in long columns to mark the way for the processions. They always set the stones in high, open places, where they would be visible for many miles so that even Mother People from far away could see them, and come to worship. Hundreds and thousands of them came, to thank the Goddess, to ask for Her help and guidance, to remember those who had come before them. Generation after generation, they told the story of the Mother People to their children, so it would never be forgotten. They spoke of the ancestors who had made the long and painful trek from the place where the Mother People were first born, a place of strange animals and deserts of unendurable heat, of magnificent mountains and turbulent rivers, and great stretches of savannah broken only by an occasional tree and the huge herds that moved across them, of the ancestors who had painted on the cave walls more than thirty thousand years before in the mountains where some of their people still lived, of the people closer in time who had discovered the first standing stones on an island now buried by the great sea.

  They spoke as well of the wise ones called Zena - the first one who had brought the Mother to them even before they knew fully how to speak, the next Zena who had led her people from their ancient home to a verdant land near a great body of water that led to the sea, of those who came after her, how each undertook the challenge entrusted to her by the Goddess so that the Mother People might live on. They told the story of the ice burial high in the mountains, too, performed by another Zena for her beloved Lief, the man who had given his life so that she would live.

  He lies buried in ice still, the story-tellers said, for they had no way of knowing that more than five thousand years later, Lief’s body would be wrenched from the ravine that had enclosed him for so long, or that after all those years, his story, and the story of the Mother People, would once again be told.

  EPILOGUE

  The Mother People are gone now, destroyed by invaders with different beliefs, not of love and compassion but of the rightness of violence and exploitation. With the Mother People went their stories, the knowledge they had sought for so long to preserve. All that is left of them now are their ancient circles of stone, that grew larger and more commanding with every passing year. Even when later they were persecuted and driven from their homes, the Mother People continued to build their magnificent monuments. Sometimes they were forced to build them by conquerors as memorials to themselves, but these tyrants never knew, never even guessed that the laborers they disdained were master builders who instead left their own knowledge, their beliefs, their story, buried deep in the stones. The knowledge is still there, if only we could interpret it. It lies in the setting, the placement of the stones, in the memories, the hopes and dreams that the Mother People sank into the earth beneath the stones, in the spirit of sanctity that still pervades the great monuments.

  One day, perhaps, we will come to understand what these long-forgotten people wished to tell us; perhaps, too, we will finally come to appreciate the precious legacy of peace and compassion they bequeathed us. It is even possible that we will learn to live as they did once again. Signs of violence are everywhere today, but there are other, more hopeful signs as well - a renewed concern for the earth, that we have plundered it beyond its capacity to renew itself, an insistence that women in all parts of the world must be able to control their own lives and their fertility, that women as well as men should be our spiritual leaders, our politicians, if wise decisions are to be made. Perhaps we even see signs in the persistence of our reverence for Mary, Mother of us all, in the many sightings of her calm face, in the reports of her voice, telling us of the need for peace and love and compassion.

  Most hopeful of all may be the yearning in so many hearts for fulfillment deeper than the financial gain, the accumulation of possessions that drives us, for relief from the relentless competition, the frantic pace that marks our lives. We long for a better way, though what that way should be we do not know. We know only that we yearn for it, that despite all protestations telling us such a time never existed, we cannot rid ourselves of a belief that there exists a long-forgotten past, a garden of Eden, when we lived our lives in harmony with the earth and with each other.

  Will such a time ever come again? We cannot tell. All we have to remind us of that time are the ancient circles of stone, the magnificent and still-compelling standing stones. They are our only legacy of the Mother People, who are the ancestors of us all.

  History of the Iceman

  On September 19, 1991, a German couple hiking in the Alps between Austria and Italy s
aw a human head and shoulders protruding from the ice. They reported their find to the police. Not recognizing the antiquity of the find, a number of people attempted to hack the body roughly from the ice, disturbing the evidence. Eventually the body and the artifacts found near it were taken to the forensic department of the University of Innsbruck. An archaeologist was finally called in and immediately dated the find to more than four thousand years old. This date was later revised to 5,300 years old. It was a sensational discovery. Never before had a body from that period been found intact. The Iceman, the world’s oldest and best-preserved mummy, is now in the Archaeological Museum in Bolonzo, Italy, where scientists continue to study him intensively. He was nick-named Otzi, after the adjoining Otz valley.

  The Iceman was found lying face down at 10,500 feet in the Italian Alps, in a depression between two transverse ridges of rock. Glacial ice covered the depression. He was naked from the waist up. The most recent findings show that he had been hit in the left shoulder with an arrow and that the arrowhead was still embedded his shoulder, indicating that he had been shot from behind. The Iceman also had a deep jagged wound in his right hand and had suffered a hard blow to the back of his head, as evidenced by hematoma and skull fracture.

  The artifacts found on or around the Iceman were:

  Clothing: though naked from the waist up, many articles of clothing appropriate for a journey in the mountains were found lying near the body.

  A tunic made from pieces of domestic goat hide, which had been cross-stitched together with animal sinew.