Minagle and Domur were fascinated. They had never heard of people reserving a wife or husband for that matter. Neither had they heard of adoption. They found Liho interesting with her gold hair and gray eyes. Her eyes were so pale that sometimes they wondered whether she was really alive. She was very thin, like all the Minguats. Even if she ate a lot, she wouldn’t gain the stockiness of the People, they surmised. They were really happy to have her and the Others for friends. There was much to learn for both sides. Domur really wanted to take a comb to Liho’s hair. For all its interesting color, it was ratted terribly. The People did comb their hair and if the young People didn’t keep their hair rat free, their mothers would do it and not too pain free. The boys who were not yet joined had hair trimmed to shoulder length, parted down the middle, and they wore strips of leather tied around the head to keep hair from the face, and that was a lot easier to take care of. Joined men let their hair grow long. Domur knew that Ekuktu had been carving a comb. She wondered about that. They all had combs but not like he was carving. Domur wondered why the Others didn’t take better care of their hair.
People began arriving at the cave. Manak brought a message from some of the superior hunters that they begged those in the cave to go ahead and eat without them. They would be a little late with the meat preparation and would eat when they got to the cave later. It became clear fast that there would be a time before all would eat together again while the meat preparation was in progress. There would be a huge number to feed while the season of cold days rested on the land, so they had much to do, hopefully not too much. Women began to serve the -na hunters who were present and then moved on to the hunters. Wamumur was served and then the women and children. There was excitement in the cave because not only had Oho-na and Grypchon-na found a small straight-tusked elephant, similar to but a different species from the larger straight-tusked elephant, but also Ermi and Guy-na had found two aurochs to the south of the first find and Oho-na and Grypchon-na had found an elk and a bison on their second excursion. At present, food might not be the freshest but it certainly was plentiful. There was even some variety.
While she ate, Blanagah began to search around for the available men. The People had no more choices unless she wanted an old man like Chamul-na who was supposed to be almost forty-eight or Nanichak-na who was a lot older. In those cases, it would be their choice, not hers. It seemed that the available men were Vanya and and Ghanya. She just could not find men who were emaciated appealing, just as the old men did not really appeal to her either. She had also heard some talk about Vanya and Liho, but Liho was just a child. So she realized there were one or two choices and that was it, unless they met other groups of People and in the ashfall, that was unlikely. Then, she shocked herself that she was considering Reemast dead. A horrible cold and empty feeling washed through her belly. Was he really dead? He had seemed so vital.
Lamul finished eating and Ekuktu told him that Totamu had wanted to see him. He went begrudgingly to her. He wanted to flee to gather meat.
“You asked to see me?” Lamul asked with his head lowered.
“Yes. It will take only a short time. Come sit before me.” Totamu kneeled behind Lamul. She pulled out her comb and began to comb his hair. Lamul felt foolish, but he dared not move. Totamu combed, pulling hair from time to time. She would take the comb and push out lice and eggs into the fire and he could hear them pop occasionally. Totamu kept on. When she finished a little later, she said, “Now that should feel better. You certainly look a lot better. It may take a little while for you to feel the difference.
“You are telling me something?”
“Yes,” she answered tersely. In her belly she was smiling.
“You are telling me I have treated my brother badly?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He lowered his head. “Thank you. You are a good woman. I will make things straight with my brother.”
“That is good.” Totamu walked over to where Shmyukuk was nursing Tita.
Tita was still being slow to nurse, but had just latched on and Shmyukuk wondered if Tita needed to be fed more often until she got better. She asked Totamu and Totamu thought she should try. Totamu began to make her rounds of all the People seeking to know whether there were any unmet needs. Totamu had thought that there would be no difficulty for the People since the Others had to learn their language. What she discovered is that teaching was as difficult, if not more difficult, than learning.
When she passed Nanichak-na, she asked, “Don’t you think that once the Others have learned our language, we should learn theirs? It might be to our advantage later.”
He smiled. “Wamumur and I talked of this same thing early today. We have to keep our language clean for the stories but we would know which words were strange ones. I think we should learn their language so that we understand them and those like them. Knowing two languages would give us advantages that they will have and we won’t, if they stay or leave. We will talk about this more when they have about mastered our language. Right now, they have to merge with us, not the other way around.”
“I see,” Totamu said and smiled inwardly. And she did. If the tables had been turned, they would have been ruled by a chief. These Others were like them and different. They did not work in a unified manner for the good of the group. They were having to learn the concept. Had the tables been turned, they might have been taken in as slaves instead of equals. They might have been the last to eat instead of cared for to regain their strength. It was good that things went as they had. Suddenly, she felt old and tired.
Wamumur approached Ki’ti quietly. He stood there looking into her pleading eyes. “You may keep your dog as your friend. We will see how that goes. The dog must stay out of the way of People. That is all I have to say.” He knew her work for the past few days had been perfect. How could he deny her? She was giving the People exactly what they needed.
Ki’ti lowered her head while her hand touched her new friend. “Wise One, do you want to know his name?”
Of course he was curious but he didn’t want it to show, “What is it, Little Girl?”
There was the term again but she smiled and said, “This is Ahriku, the Great Wolf,” almost as introduction. Her face shone with a light that he had seen nowhere since before Baambas started coughing out plumes. It was the light of joy. He asked himself what he was doing allowing her to have a dog in the cave but then shrugged and walked away.
Ki’ti didn’t ask Wamumur why he called her Little Girl although her curiosity burned to know. The People were supposed to observe in silence and think to find answers. She knew it had something to do with survival and the need for each individual to be able to think for the good of the group, but somehow it was hard for her to put all the pieces together. How much easier to remember the stories.
Totamu was performing her morning walk through the home cave. Finally, she settled down and called to Ki’ti. The girl went quickly to her, accompanied by Ahriku. Totamu motioned for her to sit in front of her. She did and the dog sat beside her. “Is Wamumur permitting you to keep the dog with you?”
“Yes, Izumo.”
Her great grandmother lifted an eyebrow almost imperceptibly.
Ki’ti noticed that Totamu had a stone in her hand. Made of chert, it held a sharp edge when hit by a hammer stone. “Turn and face the fire,” Totamu told her. Ki’ti obeyed immediately. She felt the comb in her hair and Totamu began to delouse her hair. Ki’ti bore with it in silence. She had some tangles. Totamu put the combed out material on top of an old piece of leather. Later, she would toss the material into the fire. She combed and combed. At one point, Ki’ti thought the lice might be better than the pulling.
“Now,” Totamu said when she reached the end of the combing, “I am going to cut your hair.”
“No, please, Izumo, I will look like a boy.” Ki’ti was holding her hair down against her skull.
“Nonsense. I am going to cut it shorter than boy’s hair anyway. We are no
t living in our normal homes and the lice are bad. We will have short hair while we are here.” And she began to cut away over Ki’ti’s protestations. She left no hair longer than her thumb. Totamu carefully placed the clippings on the piece of leather. Some in the cave were fascinated with what Totamu was doing. The men who were eager to get back to their work saw this as a great time to evacuate the cave.
Minagle, who had been gathering water with Domur, Aryna, Meeka, and Liho, noticed what was happening when they brought the gourds up. She held her arms over her head and said to the girls, “I will be next. I have always tried to keep my hair neat. I like it long like this.”
“You can be sure that it will grow again,” Aryna offered.
“Yes,” Minagle said, resigned but not pleased.
She saw Totamu rise and shake the leather into the fire. She also noticed that Totamu had picked up the largest gourd and was following them to the lower level with Ki’ti and the dog. Ki’ti’s hair looked like the hair of a year-old child. At least it didn’t look like boy’s hair. Totamu went further into the cave than the girls who were filling the gourds. The water was about two feet deep where the girls gathered water for drinking. It was deeper and swifter where Totamu went. She told Ki’ti to remove her tunic and she did. She pointed to a place nearer the wall and had Ki’ti stand there while she poured water over her head. The water was cold. Ki’ti ran her fingers through what was left of her hair. She reveled in the water. Totamu continued to pour gourds of water over the girl until the child had used her hands to wipe the dirt and ash off her skin from head to foot. Then she shook out Ki’ti’s tunic and slipped it over her head. She combed the girl’s hair and smiled. “You look almost like People,” Totamu smiled.
“I feel wonderful!” Ki’ti had to admit. She and the dog scampered back up to the living level of the cave.
Totamu walked up the ramp-like path. She searched for Minagle and found her. She did the same thing with Minagle that she had done with Ki’ti. Then she cut the hair of Likichi and Enut and Pechki. Enut asked her to cut Domur’s hair, so even Domur was not spared. The girls looked at each other and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They felt wonderful after having bathed, but the way they looked with short hair was something to get used to. Minagle’s hair was thick. She had felt her hair instead of lying down on her head as it did on the People—hers stood straight up. She kept trying to press it down but she had to give up. Way down deep inside she realized again how different she was. It hurt.
Totamu looked up. It was Emaea. “Yes, Emaea?” she said expectantly.
“You have done well, Totamu. I ask you to cut my hair and the hair of the girls and women in my group.”
Totamu was overwhelmed. Praise from Emaea was treasured and never expected. “Please,” Totamu gestured for her to sit down. She cut Emaea’s hair and then poured water over her at what she now considered the bath. Emaea pulled her own tunic over her head and once clothed, she hugged Totamu.
“Tell the women and girls I will cut their hair tomorrow. Tell them after we eat in the morning to come to me. That is all I have to say.”
Emaea smiled. She would inform them, but they’d probably know as soon as they saw her with her short hair. How good it felt to be clean and have all that hair gone for the present.
Totamu went to Pechki and held out the comb and sharp cutting tool. Without a word, Pechki began to comb Totamu’s hair and delouse it. She worked diligently, not wanting to leave a single louse in her mother’s hair. She used the same piece of hard thick leather that Totamu had used to put the hair and lice on. She was gentler than Totamu, but she was just as thorough. When Pechki finished, she dumped the contents of the leather into the fire and went with Totamu to the bathing area and poured water over her head until Totamu was satisfied. The two short-haired women looked at each other and laughed heartily. After all the trekking and working to set up life in a cave, they felt clean and that life was good. It was good to be clean.
The cave inhabitants were beginning to settle down for the night. Some of the hunters were still at Cave Sumbrel working on meat preparation. The light was beginning to fade, so they had begun to pack up to return to the home cave.
Nanichak-na touched Chamul-na’s shoulder. “We will have to have our hair and beards cut off when we return home,” he jested. The women could not have overridden Totamu, but the men could.
“That and our manly hair probably,” Grypchon-na entered the conversation and there was coarse laughter in the cave. His point was that he saw Totamu as having a willingness to control people, sometimes to a fault.
Nanichak-na said, “I have no lice there. Have you?”
Grypchon-na and the others men agreed that the lice were only on their heads. They wondered why the lice seemed confined to that one location when there was hair in other places.
The men filed out from Cave Sumbrel ready for food. They were tired and had already discussed the unlikely need of posting guards. All washed their hands and arms in the water in the cave before they left Cave Sumbrel. They all left the cave as it was without gating it. The day had been a long one. When they arrived back at the home cave, they were surprised at the number of women who had shortened hair. Oddly, some felt it was appealing and, certainly, the clean bodies were appealing. As tired as they were, the men ate and then went to their sleeping mats. Wisdom would restore color to the land early, and they wanted to use as much time as possible while it was light to gather the meat and prepare it for stocking the cave.
While the men ate, Wamumur found Totamu. “Would you?” he asked her. “I want all the hair cut off my head and face. Right down to the skin.” He handed her his prize cutting tool that was the sharpest he had ever made. It was of black flint that he’d had since he was a child.
Totamu nodded and Wamumur sat. He was not a person that she would have told to wait until the morning. She did not even begin to delouse him. To remove all his hair gave lice no place to be. They would fall off with the hair she cut. She realized that he had gone one step further than she. But cutting hair so close to the skin also gave her a challenge. How to do that without cutting him? She worked slowly, getting a feel for how she would do this. The tool at first felt odd to her. It was large. Little by little, however, she began to get a feel for the tool. It had one very sharp edge and soon she learned to shave instead of cut the hair. She was successful in shaving the hair and not the skin. When she finished, she and Wamumur went to the area she had set aside for bathing. He pulled off his tunic and slipped to a kneeling position, since he was too tall for her to reach above his head otherwise. The cold water pouring over him was like a balm to his fatigue. He reveled in the feeling of getting clean, though he felt a bit strange to be hairless on head and face. Totamu helped by scrubbing part of his back that he couldn’t reach. After he stood, she poured water over his legs and feet. Then he shook out his tunic and replaced it. They walked up the ramp together. The Winds of Change were touching so many parts of their lives.
When the two re-entered the living part of the cave, some of the women gasped. The men controlled themselves barely. Wamumur’s new look would take some getting used to. What Wamumur suspected is that his days of scratching head lice were over. Thanks to Totamu, he would sleep well.
Ki’ti curled up with Ahriku and was asleep long before many in the cave. The buzz of the last minute clean ups and unrolling sleep mats was short-lived and the cave settled for the night.
As Wisdom returned color to the land, the hunters were up early. They ate quickly and got outside to begin the day. They had used up all the posts and narrow runners and cross poles that they had taken to construct drying racks and meat holders and skin stretchers. They had used all poles available from the two groups of the People and the Others. Mootmu-na announced that he would be going out to look for new supplies to construct more meat racks. Without a word from any of the men, Hahami-na, Kai, Ermol-na, Gummo, and Guy-na went to him and began to put on their booted garments. Wamumur s
miled. The mixed group was working as one, at least for the present.
Cave Sumbrel was a large cave with a wide entrance that curved like Cave Kwa, only with a more significant curve. The cave had a ceiling opening midway into the cave in the shape of a circle with a diameter bigger than the men were tall. Through the hole, one could see the sky. To avoid a breeze, it would be necessary to go to the very back of the cave. The men had built a fire under the ceiling hole and that created a draft that circulated the air even more effectively. It was a great shelter for drying meat. Abiedelai-na had brought their huge chunk of salt. Pieces of it were stirred in a large bowl of water for a dip for the meat strips. The men kept meat from the ashfall for themselves where after-death blood had not pooled, saving the meat where it had pooled for the dogs. The two types of meat were stored separately.
The operation was as efficient, if not fragrant, as the men could make it. Having the new drying racks would help with the enormous amount of meat they were putting up. The men were surprised to see Flayk, Amey, Olintak, Aneal, Mulop, Seacah, Dolk, Tap, and Rayla arriving at the cave so early. They were there to begin to work the skins. They had brought their tools and gathered toward the back of the cave to work. They completely separated flesh from skin. To remove the hair, they soaked the skins in urine. To soften the skins, they soaked the skins with brains and salt. To keep the odor down, they burned the flesh in the fires. Little scraps of hides were kept in water-filled skin bags to deteriorate into a form of glue once the water was boiled off. Beyond that were drying frames where skins were tied to finalize the process and dry. They were talking among themselves with much stuttering and looking for words, but making a huge effort at language learning. Gummo noticed that Tap, his wife, still had long hair. He smiled, considering that the long hair wouldn’t last long.
Ki'ti's Story, 75,000 BC Page 8