by Watson, Tom
As the man swam about and the women talked and splashed water at him, Ember became enthusiastic that she might be able to stay with these people for a time. All she had was a good obsidian blade, a small bag of flint pieces, Blossom's Goddess pendent, a worn skirt, and doe skin shirt to trade, and she hoped that would be all they asked for, if anything. Suddenly her attention was returned to the scene as one of the women was pulled beneath the river, issuing a short squeaky noise as she plunged beneath the surface! A moment later she popped out of the water bonking the man on the head as hard as she could while he stood there in the water, accepting the bonks while laughing quite hard. The gathered women burst into intense laughter at the sight. Even the dripping wet woman started laughing after a few moments. Wearing only a reed skirt, and presumably a breechcloth, she wasn't actually inconvenienced much by being dunked under water, but the incident appeared to have startled her.
After a short while, the man came out of the water and replaced his leather apron. At the same time, two more men approached the bank. These two were of around the same age as the first man and wore leather leggings and breechcloths with leather shirts. They were not as dirty as the first man and had the look of hunters, about them. One of the men made a short announcement. As he spoke he was sober faced, but turned quickly into a wide grin as he finished. What he had said seemed humorous to the women, many of whom laughed; a joke Ember guessed. With a last few laughs, the women left the water and donned their shirts or tunics.
Such amusing people, she thought. Several of the women spoke to him using what sounded like a name, “Ssv'ee'n”, or something like that, Ember decided.
Within a short time, the group had packed up their fishing spears and gathered the fish to venture back, presumably, towards their camp. The group carefully packed their gear and moved towards the bushes leaving two women carrying the fish in a wrap made of reeds. Ember sat on the bank behind a bush, watching. She realized that she had been casually eating berries from the bush while she watched. Ember carefully gathered some of the dark-red colored berries which grew on the bush. They had stained her fingers red, which is why they were often used for dye. She would need to remove the mud and apply a more fitting color.
Ember gathered a few handfuls of the berries and placed them on a flat stone, which were always easy to find by a river bank. She carefully ground the berries with a smooth rock until they became a reddish smear, ready to apply. Ember took a look at the shore and the lack of people. The group was probably eating and would not return to the river for a while if at all, given that the day was becoming late. Carefully, she sneaked away from the bushes towards the shallow waters at the river's edge. Removing her skirt and doe skin shirt, Ember slid into the water for a quick dip. The cool mud and sand felt good as she dug her toes into the riverbed. She would miss these fresh baths when the cold weather came, which was the way of the seasons. Ember swam as much as she could for the only season, the warm season, when she could. Some of the crazier people of her tribe had tried to swim in the cold waters, but the results were always bad. Even when the weather was warmer, the river was often still too cold.
After cool mud had been applied and removed from her now smooth skin, Ember remained in the cool waters just letting the water soak in. Over the last few days, Ember had worked hard to restore her body and mind to the way they were before. The wound on her foot from the wolves had scabbed and was healing as were most of her larger cuts. If she continued to soak in the water and allow a fire to warm her at night, she could expect to be fully restored in a few more days. Ember had always healed fast.
While in the muddy water, Ember carefully removed her breechcloth for cleaning. With deep breaths she dove to the bottom of the river, only the height of a woman in the shallows where she now waded. Ember grabbed gritty sediment from the riverbed and ground it across the breechcloth to scour it clean. After cleaning it, Ember tossed her most important garment onto the shore to dry and continued to swim until she was completely clean.
Ember remained in the water until the sun was close to going down. She only came out then, because the remaining sun would be needed for drying her body and hair. After a short while, her hair, which always dried quickly, had halfway dried, and her skin had fully dried. She had sat on a rock while the drying occurred letting the winds blow across her naked skin. She really hoped the other people wouldn't return while this occurred.
“Sitting nude on a rock is a welcoming custom of my people,” she imagined herself saying if caught. She doubted they would believe such a dumb story, but what else would she say. Though slightly nervous, the thought nearly made her burst laughing.
As the sun came close to the horizon, Ember applied the dark reddish purple liquid to her skin with a little bit of water. She carefully applied it to her face, arms, legs and then her upper and lower body in order. Using thicker concentrations, she added decorative zigzagging lines up and down her arms and legs in vertical patterns. Across her face, she supposed that she added those same zigzags, though she had only her mind’s eye and tactile sensations to determine the truth of her work. Ember had always worn more coloring than most of her tribe. She loved the way she looked with a good coat of pigment. She liked blues and blacks the most, but deep purple-red would do tonight. The coloring was actually more of a light stain than a deep color, but in the dark, red would make her more difficult to see and would probably keep the bugs away as most plant dyes did.
“Unless it attracts them like it did that one time!” she joked to herself, remembering how she ran through the village with insects chasing her after applying the wrong herbs, a few harvests before. She had red bumps for a ten-day!
After painting herself, Ember carefully tied to her hair the owl feather she had saved from a few days before. The feather was quite beautiful, having black stripes and a complex design. The feather hung on the right side of Ember's head from eye level down to just past her chin. Ember wished she had more feathers to add to her hair, but for now the owl feather she had stolen from the hungry owl would have to do.
With the sun setting and the cover of night upon her, the time had come to see the people in their temporary camp. Ember replaced her worn reed skirt, which was missing several reeds, and her soft doe skin shirt. The shirt was tough and still in generally good shape, but she had started to notice wear from the brambles and the ground. If the shirt became too damaged, sections would be removed and doe skin patches replaced or simply patched. Leather simply wore out after a time.
With her body clean and painted and her spirits lifted, Ember carefully moved through the bushes and small trees towards the direction the people had gone. It was not long before she came upon their encampment. The light from a large fire lit the otherwise dark forest around a set of six small makeshift huts. In between each hut were stores of food, water, and goods. Around the camp were leather thongs handing between huts with plants hanging to dry. Ember crept closer to get a better look.
Being seen stalking around a camp was not a good idea, but the sun had just gone down, and Ember was confident she could keep herself hidden. As Ember moved in for a closer look, she stepped behind a large tree and bushes much as she had when she had first watched these people. The growing darkness and her new purple-red coloring allowed her a closer look at the group without being seen. Before her stood a ring of six little huts, each made of long wooden poles and reed mats. They were constructed like her simple camp hut, but much larger. The ends of each of the poles had been fire-hardened, and the mats looked like they were in pretty bad shape, as though they had been poorly made and not designed for long use. The main telltale sign that this was a temporary camp was the lack of color. People always colored and decorated their possessions and huts, but these little huts were quite bland.
In the center of the camp, twenty one men and women sat around a fire talking and laughing while they ate meat and tubers from small baskets. The oldest of the group was a man who looked nearly too old to be away from a p
roper village. He was wrinkled, and most of his teeth and hair were gone. Ember supposed he was very old, perhaps 45 harvests or more, but his eyes held a sparkle of youth. He sat beside the fire telling some sort of elaborate story while the rest of the people laughed and ate. As he talked, he would use a stick in his hand to draw little pictures in the dirt before him. This sort of storytelling was commonplace in any village, and Ember had grown up spending portions of each evening listening to Elders tell tales.
Ember carefully moved around the camp perimeter watching from various angles. Seeing that the people were thoroughly engrossed in the story, Ember went for a walk around the camp, carefully, inspecting what she could see from the cover of the trees. After a short walk she had made her way around to the other side of the camp. Ember came across a set of leather sacks hanging from a pole frame. Carefully, she removed one of the small sacks and examined its contents. The Sack contained a small handful of tiny heavy yellow rocks. Her suspicions had been correct: these people had been gathering the strange yellow rocks. Near the bags, Ember found a stack of deer hides and smaller furry pelts of high quality. She carefully made her way to the pelts leaving the worthless yellow stones behind. Actually, a trader from the south would probably trade a good flint nodule for a bag that big, but they were nowhere near as much use as the pelts.
Ember placed her head longingly against the pile of what looked like fox furs, feeling the soft fur against her cheek. How she longed for a warm comfortable place to sleep without fear. Ember leaned against the furs, which were laid upon two sets of reed mats with sand, and let their softness comfort her as she watched the people. After what must have been a decent stretch of time the people seemed ready for sleep. One by one and two by two they drifted away to the huts. Ember lay in the furs and watched as the last couple walked away from the dying fire. They were the last to leave, and they were heading for the hut near where Ember lay. She was sure they wouldn't see her from the furs, and she carefully kept low as she watched.
The man was the same one who had come to the river earlier that day, swam, and then announced what must have been “dinner”, Ember supposed. He was no more than twenty harvests old with light brown hair. He wore a leather apron tied with a thick leather strap and a reed cloak with leather boots. Ember had decided that he had taken off his leggings to make eating dinner more enjoyable. Leather leggings were not always comfortable while sitting by a fire. He walked hand in hand with a woman of a slightly younger age, though perhaps a little older than Ember, with that same blonde, if not nearly white, hair color, many of these people seemed to have and a tanned skin tone, naturally a little darker than Ember.
As she came closer, Ember recognized her as the woman the man had pulled under the water. She wore a soft leather shirt, looser than Embers and with more seams. The shirt ended just below her waist. Just above her waist, so they would overlap, a leather skirt started. The skirt was knee length and slit up both sides, though the woman had a reed apron down her front to keep the leather intact as she worked. She wore leather boots much like the man. While they walked, the man spoke of something while the woman gave him catty side glances. Before they could reach the door to the hut, the woman spun around and moved to block the man. She tugged at his arm in a playful stance, and with a wild smile spoke words Ember didn't need to understand to appreciate.
“Zhek... pente appa-orre, daen... Zhek,” the woman said. She was too catty in her tone and with too many extra-feminine movements for there to be any doubt of her meaning. Though her body language needed no translation, her words were still foreign. Ember supposed the first word, “Zhek”, was the name of this man, by the way she had said it. The last word “daen” reminded Ember of an old word she heard some of the Elders use for distant rivers, “Da'ani”. The woman hauled the ever smiling man off into the woods. Ember followed from a distance, but she had already guessed their destination as they approached the river bank.
The moon was still waning, and the river was dark, but what light remained reflected off of the water keeping the bank visible enough even in the dark. Within a few more nights, the dark would be too deep for anything to be seen. The moon came and went in cycles, which aided hunters in determining the best times to hunt at night, as well as to fish. Just as they stepped onto the sand, the woman halted and turned upon the man. Ember could see her face clearly from the bushes. The woman whispered something to the man and giggled. She slowly removed his reed cloak and then his apron, letting them drop to the sand. As she finished, he moved forward and kissed her with fierce passion. A moment later, the man removed the loose shirt from the woman pulling it over her head and carefully placing it upon his own clothing. She stood before him, chest moving faster with the quickness of her breath as the two came closer to what they had both awaited all of the long day.
As the kissing continued, Ember started to feel warm all over and slightly embarrassed. She looked down, worrying that she shouldn't be watching so intimate of an encounter. She had seen people this way before, not so uncommon in a longhouse without too much privacy, but those times were not intentional and something about just staring felt wrong. Ember looked back up just in time to watch the woman's leather skirt fall free leaving both lovers naked, aside from their boots. Both the man and woman wore matching necklaces, made from a leather thong with a large shiny pendant at the end. The pendants were made of the same yellow rock the people had been gathering. Ember slowly stood and walked back towards the camp. She gave one last look back seeing the man and woman on the ground in a deep sandy embrace. Blushing, she walked through the woods, still able to hear the two lovers half way to the camp. Ember hoped she might one day find out just how wonderful a lover's embrace was. She sighed at the thought as she approached the now quiet camp.
Ember found the pile of furs and decided to lie back upon them for a short time and relax, before finding a tree in which to spend the night. The softness of the fox furs was simply too much to resist, and Ember had plenty to think about. Ember fell upon the furs and began to consider what type of man she might one day find. Would she look for a strong hunter? Perhaps a talented artisan? Ember spent a good while thinking the fluttery thoughts of first love and romance which live in the minds of young women. One day, Ember hoped for such love, but first she would have to complete this foolish task.
If I make it all of the way to the west, the end of the world, and find nothing... I'm going to be very angry, she thought. She sat back on the soft furs and pondered many thoughts. Unfortunately, the fox furs were very relaxing.
Chapter 9: Compassion and Foreign Tongues
Nomadic people and strictly hunter gatherer societies in Europe were nearly a thing of the past by the Neolithic period. The advent of farming and the domestication of animals required less land and provided a greater and more controlled food supply. Early slash and burn farming might require only short movements every few seasons. If crops failed, traditional hunting could be relied upon temporarily. With more structured food supplies from farming, the Neolithic period also saw a dramatic increase in the amount of trade throughout Eurasia. Traders, using skills adapted from earlier hunter gathering, traveled the lands in small groups bringing wares from south to north, west to east, and vice versa. The group Ember now encounters is the result of this new trade.
People from larger villages, able to afford the temporary loss of workers, could journey for long distances for trade and the harvesting of valuable resources for trade. Gold, featured throughout the book, was not actually a major resource at the time, but its malleability and chemical purity has always afforded gold an intrinsic value. Primitive necklace pendants, as an example, could be fashioned with mere stone tools and the heat of an open fire. Still, other resources were much more important for trade. Hides and painted pottery from the north were traded for spices, imprinted pottery, and pigments from the south, as well as a multitude of other exchanges. Thus, we find a band of young hunters and a few older traders.
Unlike m
odern Europeans, these new people have naturally darker skin complexions, yet light colored hair and eyes, and otherwise European facial features. Coming from a more northern climate, they had only recently begun the change from Mesolithic hunter gatherer to a Neolithic society. As Neolithic farming cultures switched more of their food supplies from meat to grains, those of lighter skin coloring were more easily able to obtain their vitamin D from the sun and not from their food. As a result of this and other changes in diet and lifestyle, Neolithic peoples may have tended to have lighter colored skin than Mesolithic people.
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That night, Ember dreamed she was a mink. She ran along the river bank faster than she could have as a human. Grass and small debris flew past her as she ran. Slowly she came to a stop and curled up in her bushy soft tail for a warm nap in the sun. The dream was quite pleasant until a poke to the stomach brought her around. Ember laid against the fur pile by the hut as the morning sun hit her face. How could it be morning? She had just laid her head against the furs by the hut for a moment, then she would return to the woods and find a hiding place, but the sun was somehow out? She was considering the light and the source of the poke when her sleepiness left her, and she fully realized that she had fallen asleep against the pile of soft furs by one of the little huts!
She turned to see her surroundings and instead saw that there were twenty-one people standing around her, several with spears and bows! An older man holding a fishing spear, seemingly the one who poked her before, looked as though he would speak, but Ember didn't give him a chance. Like the mink in her dream she suddenly stood, turned, and threw herself back at the pile of furs bouncing over them, less gracefully than she hoped, and on to the other side where the people were not. Ember stared at the people for a split second with a blink, and then ran! This was her preferred method for getting out of bad situations.