by Jean M. Auel
Brun didn’t like it—something about the girl bothered him—but deferring to Mog-ur’s greater knowledge of the spirit world, he acquiesced.
Creb sat in contemplative silence after the meal, waiting for everyone to finish eating so he could begin the nightly ceremony, while Iza arranged his sleeping place and made preparations for the morning. Mog-ur had put a ban on men and women sleeping together until a new cave was found so the men could concentrate their energies on the rituals and so everyone would feel they were making an effort that would bring them closer to a new home.
It didn’t matter to Iza; her mate had been one of those killed in the cave-in. She had mourned him with proper grief at his burial—it would have been unlucky to do otherwise—but she was not unhappy he was gone. It was no secret he had been cruel and demanding. There had never been any warmth between them. She didn’t know what Brun would decide to do with her now that she was alone. Someone would have to provide for her and the child she carried; she only hoped she could still cook for Creb.
He had shared their fire from the beginning. Iza sensed he hadn’t liked her mate any more than she had, though he never interfered with the internal problems of her relationship. She had always felt it was an honor to cook for Mog-ur, but more, she had developed a bond of affection for her sibling like many women grew to feel for their mates.
Iza felt sorry for Creb sometimes; he could have had a mate of his own had he wanted one. But she knew for all his great magic and exalted position, no woman ever looked at his deformed body and scarred face without revulsion, and she was sure he knew it. He never took a mate, maintained a reserve. It added to his stature. Everyone, men included, with the possible exception of Brun, feared Mog-ur or regarded him with awe. Everyone but Iza, who had known his gentleness and sensitivity since her birth. It was a side of his nature he seldom showed openly.
And it was that side of his nature that was occupying the mind of the great Mog-ur just then. Rather than meditating on that evening’s ceremony, he was thinking about the little girl. He had often been curious about her kind, but people of the Clan avoided the Others as much as possible, and he had never seen one of their young before. He suspected the earthquake had something to do with her being alone, though it surprised him that any of her people were so close. They usually stayed much farther north.
He noticed a few men start to leave the campsite and hauled himself up with his staff so he could supervise the preparations. The ritual was a masculine prerogative and duty. Only rarely were women allowed to participate in the religious life of the clan, and they were banned from this ceremony entirely. No disaster could be so great as that of a woman seeing the men’s secret rites. It would not just bring bad luck, it would drive the protective spirits away. The whole clan would die.
But there was little danger of that. It would never occur to a woman to venture anywhere near such an important ritual. They looked forward to it as a time to relax, relieved of the constant demands of the men and the need to behave with proper decorum and respect. It was hard on the women having the men around all the time, especially when the men were so nervous and took it out on their mates. Usually they would be gone for periods of time hunting. The women were just as anxious to find a new home, but there was little they could do. Brun chose the direction they traveled and no advice was solicited from them, nor could they have given it.
The women relied on their men to lead, to assume responsibility, to make important decisions. The Clan had changed so little in nearly a hundred thousand years, they were now incapable of change, and ways that had once been adaptations for convenience had become genetically set. Both men and women accepted their roles without struggle; they were inflexibly unable to assume any other. They would no more try to change their relationship than they would try to grow an extra arm or change the shape of their brain.
After the men left, the women gathered around Ebra and hoped Iza would join them so they could satisfy their curiosity, but Iza was exhausted and didn’t want to leave the girl. She lay down beside her as soon as Creb left and wrapped her fur around both of them. She watched the sleeping girl for a while by the dim light of the cooled fire.
Peculiar-looking little thing, she thought. Rather ugly in a way. Her face is so flat with that high bulging forehead and little stub of a nose, and what a strange boney knob beneath her mouth. I wonder how old she is? Younger than I thought at first; she’s so tall it’s misleading. And so thin, I can feel her bones. Poor baby, I wonder how long it’s been since she had anything to eat, wandering all alone. Iza put her arm around the girl protectively. The woman who had even helped young animals on occasion could not do less for the wretched skinny little girl. The warm heart of the medicine woman went out to the vulnerable child.
Mog-ur stood back as each man arrived and found his place behind one of the stones that had been arranged in a small circle within a larger circle of torches. They were on the open steppes away from the camp. The magician waited until all the men were seated, and a little longer, then stepped into the middle of the circle carrying a burning brand of aromatic wood. He set the small torch into the ground in front of the vacant place that had his staff behind it.
He stood up straight on his good leg in the middle of the circle and stared over the heads of the seated men into the dark distance with a dreamy unfocused look, as though he were seeing with his one eye a world to which the others were blind. Wrapped in his heavy cave bearskin cloak that covered the lopsided bulges of his unsymmetrical frame, he was an imposing yet strangely unreal presence. A man, yet with his distorted shape, not quite a man; not more or less, but other than. His very deformities imbued him with a supernatural quality that was never more awesome than when Mog-ur conducted a ceremony.
Suddenly, with a magician’s flourish, he produced a skull. He held it high over his head with his strong left arm and turned slowly around in a complete circle so each man could see the large, distinctive, high-domed shape. The men stared at the cave bear’s skull glowing whitely in the flickering light of the torches. He placed it in front of the small torch in the ground and lowered himself down behind it, completing the circle.
A young man sitting beside him got up and picked up a wooden bowl. He was past his eleventh year and his manhood ceremony had been held shortly before the earthquake. Goov had been chosen as acolyte when he was a small boy and he had often assisted Mog-ur in preparations, but acolytes were not allowed at an actual ceremony until they were men. The first time Goov functioned in his new role was after they had begun their search, and he was still nervous.
For Goov, finding a new cave had a special meaning. It was his chance to learn the details of the seldom-performed and difficult-to-describe ceremony that made a cave acceptable for residence, from the great Mog-ur himself. As a child he had feared the magician, though he understood the honor of being chosen. The young man had since learned the cripple was not only the most skilled mog-ur of all the clans, but that he had a kind and gentle heart beneath his austere visage. Goov respected his mentor and loved him.
The acolyte had begun preparing the drink that was in the bowl as soon as Brun had called the halt. He started by pounding whole datura plants between two stones. The difficult part was estimating the quantity and proportion of leaves, stems, and flowers to use. Boiling water was poured over the crushed plants, and the mixture left to steep until the ceremony.
Goov had poured the strong datura tea into the special ceremonial bowl, straining it between his fingers, just before Mog-ur stepped into the circle, and hoped anxiously to get the holy man’s nod of acceptance. While Goov held it, Mog-ur took a sip, nodded his approval, then drank, and Goov breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Then he took the bowl to each of the men according to rank, beginning with Brun. He held it while they drank, controlling the portion each one consumed, and took his drink last.
Mog-ur waited for him to sit down, then gave a signal. The men began pounding the butt ends of their spears rhythmic
ally on the ground. The dull thudding of the spears seemed to get louder until no other sound was heard. They got caught up in the steady beat, then stood up and began moving in time to the rhythm. The holy man stared at the skull, and his intense gaze drew the men’s attention to the sacred relic as though he willed it. Timing was important, and he was a master of timing. He waited just long enough for the anticipation to build to a peak—any longer and the keen edge would have been gone—then looked up at his sibling, the man who led the clan. Brun squatted down in front of the skull.
“Spirit of Bison, Totem of Brun,” Mog-ur began. He actually spoke only one word, “Brun.” The rest was said with his one-handed gestures, and he vocalized no other words. Formalized movements, the ancient unspoken language used to communicate with spirits and with other clans whose few guttural words and common hand signals were different, were all that followed. With silent symbols, Mog-ur implored the Spirit of the Bison to forgive them for any wrongs they might have done that offended him and begged for his help.
“This man has always honored the Spirits, Great Bison, always kept the traditions of the Clan. This man is a strong leader, a wise leader, a fair leader, a good hunter, a good provider, a self-controlled man, worthy of the Mighty Bison. Do not desert this man; guide this leader to a new home, a place where the Spirit of the Bison will be content. This clan begs for the help of the totem of this man,” the holy man concluded. Then he looked at the second-in-command. As Brun moved back, Grod squatted in front of the cave bear skull.
No woman could be allowed to see the ceremony, to know that their men, who led with such stoic strength, begged and pleaded with unseen spirits just as the women begged and pleaded with the men.
“Spirit of Brown Bear, Totem of Grod,” Mog-ur began once more and went through a similar formal pleading with Grod’s totem; then all the rest of the men in turn. He continued to stare at the skull when he was through, while the men pounded their spears, letting the anticipation build again.
They all knew what came next, the ceremony never changed; it was the same night after night, but still they anticipated. They were waiting for Mog-ur to call upon the Spirit of Ursus, the Great Cave Bear, his own personal totem and most revered of all the spirits.
Ursus was more than Mog-ur’s totem; he was everyone’s totem, and more than totem. It was Ursus that made them Clan. He was the supreme spirit, supreme protector. Reverence for the Cave Bear was the common factor that united them, the force that welded all the separate autonomous clans into one people, the Clan of the Cave Bear.
When the one-eyed magician judged the time was right, he signaled. The men stopped pounding and sat behind their stones, but the heavy thudding rhythm coursed through their bloodstreams and still pounded inside their heads.
Mog-ur reached into a small pouch and withdrew a pinch of dried club-moss spores. Holding his hand over the small torch, he leaned forward and blew, at the same time he let them drop over the flame. The spores caught fire and cascaded dramatically around the skull in a magnesium brilliance of light, in stark contrast to the dark night.
The skull glowed, seemed to come alive, did, to the men whose perceptions were heightened by the effects of datura. An owl in a nearby tree hooted, seemingly on command, adding his haunting sound to the eerie splendor.
“Great Ursus, Protector of the Clan,” the magician said with formal signs, “show this clan to a new home as once the Cave Bear showed the Clan to live in caves and wear fur. Protect your Clan from Ice Mountain, and the Spirit of Granular Snow who begot him, and the Spirit of Blizzards, her mate. This clan would beg the Great Cave Bear to let no evil come while they are homeless. Most honored of all Spirits, your Clan, your people, ask the Spirit of Mighty Ursus to join with them as they make the journey to the beginning.”
And then, Mog-ur used the power of his great brain.
All those primitive people, with almost no frontal lobes, and speech limited by undeveloped vocal organs, but with huge brains—larger than any race of man then living or future generations yet unborn—were unique. They were the culmination of a branch of mankind whose brain was developed in the back of their heads, in the occipital and the parietal regions that control vision and bodily sensation and store memory.
And their memory made them extraordinary. In them, the unconscious knowledge of ancestral behavior called instinct had evolved. Stored in the back of their large brains were not just their own memories, but the memories of their forebears. They could recall knowledge learned by their ancestors and, under special circumstances, they could go a step beyond. They could recall their racial memory, their own evolution. And when they reached back far enough, they could merge that memory that was identical for all and join their minds, telepathically.
But only in the tremendous brain of the scarred, malformed cripple was the gift fully developed. Creb, gentle shy Creb, whose massive brain caused his deformity, had, as Mog-ur, learned to use the power of that brain to fuse the separate entities seated around him into one mind, and direct it. He could take them to any part of their racial heritage, to become in their minds any of their progenitors. He was The Mog-ur. His was a true power, not limited to tricks of lighting or drug-induced euphoria. That only set the stage and enabled them to accept his direction.
In that still, dark night, lit by ancient stars, a few men experienced visions impossible to describe. They did not see them, they were them. They felt the sensations, saw with the eyes, and remembered the unfathomable beginnings. From the depths of their minds they found the undeveloped brains of creatures of the sea floating in their warm, saline environment. They survived the pain of their first breath of air and became amphibians sharing both elements.
Because they venerated the cave bear, Mog-ur evoked a primordial mammal—the ancestor who spawned both species and a host of others—and merged the unity of their minds with the bear’s beginning. Then down through the ages they became in succession each of their progenitors, and sensed those that diverged to other forms. It made them aware of their relationship with all life on the earth, and the reverence it fostered even for the animals they killed and consumed formed the basis of the spiritual kinship with their totems.
All their minds moved as one, and only as they neared the present did they separate into their immediate forebears and finally themselves. It seemed to take forever. In a sense it did, but little actual time elapsed. As each man reached himself again, he quietly got up and left to find his sleeping place and a deep dreamless sleep, his dreams already spent.
Mog-ur was the last. In solitude he meditated on the experience and after a time felt a familiar uneasiness. They could know the past with the depth and grandeur that exalted the soul, but Creb sensed a limitation that never occurred to the others. They could not see ahead. They could not even think ahead. He alone had a bare inkling of the possibility.
The Clan could not conceive a future any different from the past, could not devise innovative alternatives for tomorrow. All their knowledge, everything they did, was a repetition of something that had been done before. Even storing food for seasonal changes was the result of past experience.
There had been a time, long before, when innovation came easier, when a broken sharp-edged stone gave someone the idea to break a stone on purpose to make a sharp edge, when the warm end of a twirled stick made someone twirl it harder and longer just to see how warm it could get. But as more memories built up, crowding and enlarging the storage capacity of their brain, changes came harder. There was no more room for new ideas that would be added to their memory bank, their heads were already too large. Women had difficulty giving birth; they couldn’t afford new knowledge that would enlarge their heads even more.
The Clan lived by unchanging tradition. Every facet of their lives from the time they were born until they were called to the world of the spirits was circumscribed by the past. It was an attempt at survival, unconscious and unplanned except by nature in a last-ditch effort to save the race from extinctio
n, and doomed to failure. They could not stop change, and resistance to it was self-defeating, antisurvival.
They were slow to adapt. Inventions were accidental and often not utilized. If something new happened to them, it could be added to their backlog of information; but change was accomplished only with great effort, and once it was forced on them, they were adamant in following the new course. It came too hard to alter it again. But a race with no room for learning, no room for growth, was no longer equipped for an inherently changing environment, and they had passed beyond the point of developing in a different way. That would be left for a newer form, a different experiment of nature.
As Mog-ur sat alone on the open plain watching the last of the torches sputter and die, he thought of the strange girl Iza had found, and his uneasiness grew until it became a physical discomfort. Her kind had been met before, but only recently in his concept of reckoning, and not many of the chance meetings had been pleasant. Where they had come from was a mystery—her people were newcomers to their land—but since they arrived things had been changing. They seemed to bring change with them.
Creb shrugged off his uneasiness, carefully wrapped the cave bear’s skull in his cloak, reached for his staff, and hobbled to bed.
3
The child turned over and began to thrash.
“Mother,” she moaned. Flailing her arms wildly, she called out again, louder, “Mother!”
Iza held her, murmuring a soft rumbling undertone. The warm closeness of the woman’s body and her soothing sounds penetrated the girl’s feverish brain and quieted her. She had slept fitfully through the night, awakening the woman often with her tossing and moaning and delirious mutterings. The sounds were strange, different from the words spoken by Clan people. They flowed easily, fluently, one sound blending into another. Iza could not begin to reproduce many of them; her ear was not even conditioned to hearing the finer variations. But that particular set of sounds was repeated so often, Iza guessed it was a name for someone close to the child, and when she saw that her presence comforted the girl, she sensed who the someone was.