Ki'ti's Story, 75,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  “None. Wise One, the pull was so strong. I think when I went to the cave, I’d have done it no matter what happened.”

  “That is what I want you to resist. I am not sure what the knowledge is that you gain—it may come from the dead or from evil spirits that attach themselves to the dead or to a thing. All I can tell you is that the temptation they set in front of you is NEVER for your good. Sometimes, it causes People to do things that get them killed.”

  “Do you know what it is to fall into these mind webs?”

  “Yes, Little Girl, I do. I walked in the one you experienced to verify what you were saying. What you said was accurate. But look what it had you doing. Going to a cave in the mountains unprotected while Wisdom sucked the color from the land. Not safe. Stupid! You cannot ever again permit anything outside yourself to take over your mind web like that. You could have run into a rhino or a cobra. You’re no hunter! Understand?”

  Ki’ti shuddered wondering what she’d have done if she’d seen a cobra in the cave where she took the green bag.

  “Yes, I understand I cannot do that, but, Wise One, how do you resist?” she asked.

  “You resist by telling the other mind web to leave you alone. You call on Wisdom to protect you. If there are People around you, call on them for help, but they may not understand what your problem is.”

  “Wise One. We are fortunate. You now have Emaea and I have both of you. Was it hard to be Wise One when there were no others but you?” Ki’ti was sitting right at the edge of the rock walk swinging her feet from side to side. Her hands were by her legs with her fingers cupping the edge of the rock walk. She stared down to the ground below, but she wasn’t focusing on the ground.

  “Ah, the questions you ask! Yes. You mentioned feeling alone. For years and years, now that was alone! I had to learn about mind web traps by myself. Once, I almost lost my life. There was no one to teach me. I was older than you when I was recognized, but the Wise One before me didn’t live long after I began to learn. It took a long time for me to learn that calling on Wisdom could provide protection.”

  “How do you call Wisdom?” Ki’ti asked. Ahriku was cuddled up to her side and as she moved her legs, the dog would become unsettled. Ahriku got up, walked in a circle, and settled down again.

  “You can call out loud to Wisdom as you would to someone outside whose attention you wanted to get. You can also call out in your mind so others do not hear. You see, I think Wisdom is a spirit who is like a person. I think Wisdom knows what we do and what we think. I don’t really understand, but I get glimpses of Wisdom. And I know that when I call on Wisdom, a peace comes on me and suddenly, if I cannot figure out what to do, what I should do becomes clear. Is this making sense?”

  Ki’ti nodded.

  “Wisdom is always there with you. You only need to reach out. Once, I called on Wisdom when a lion stalked me. For some strange reason, the lion lost interest and left me alone.”

  “So if I got tempted into another mind web, I can call Wisdom?”

  “Yes. Now, promise me that if you find yourself in that situation, you’ll call on Wisdom.”

  “Wise One, I promise you, if I find myself tempted by another mind web, I will call on Wisdom.”

  “Good Girl,” he said. “You may have need to do that frequently today when we go to take the body of the man to be with his family.”

  “Should I be afraid?”

  “No. You have me and Emaea and the hunters and Wisdom. You also have some understanding you didn’t have earlier.”

  “Wise One, was it fair for you and the others to punish me when I didn’t even know about mind web traps?”

  Wamumur was unprepared for the question. He looked down at her and her eyes were looking right into his. “Little Girl,” he said looking down to her, “You weren’t punished for giving in to the temptation of the mind web trap. You were punished because you disobeyed. I had told you we would not take the bag to the cave. You disobeyed. You went to the cave despite what I had said. To be punished for disobedience is appropriate. It is fair. But I will tell you, life is not fair. Get used to it.”

  Ki’ti sat on the ledge even after Wamumur got up and went to find Emaea. He learned that the People Mootmu-na had chosen for the trip were in fact willing to participate. All were going about the normal business of life while Emaea prepared food for the eight People who would be heading to the cave.

  They began the hike as soon as the body was secured to the stretcher. The men knew a way to reach the hills without taking the virtually perpendicular steep route that had been Ki’ti’s starting point at the end of the walk. They went just a bit further to the south and used a gentler slope. They reached the hills and the ups and downs and then the mountains began.

  “This really is beautiful country,” Emaea remarked. “I love the rise and fall of the land but I’ll admit that these mountains are getting to the backs of my legs.”

  “Mine, too,” Wamumur said quietly.

  Ki’ti was enjoying the walk, seeing it from eyes different from when she went there to take the green bag. She could see butterflies and birds and little mammals that scurried when they saw people. Mootmu-na pointed out a cobra absorbing warmth from a large rock. As the walk progressed through the open field, they heard a bark. Ahriku’s head turned toward the woods. They all expected wolf pups. Everyone stopped and was very quiet and still. There at the edge of the forest was a very small deer. It barked again as if to draw attention to itself. It had antlers that went straight back and curved inward and it also had little fangs. The deer was about as tall as the distance from a man’s elbow to his hand. They continued walking and the deer continued browsing.

  “Wise One, do deer normally bark?” Ki’ti asked.

  “No,” he laughed. “That’s something new for me. Have you ever heard deer bark, Emaea?” he asked.

  “That was the first,” she replied with a smile. She was thoroughly enjoying the walk. Her thoughts, however, were not on the present. She could not believe that Wamumur had agreed to her request. Even she thought her request was strange.

  They walked through the pass and shortly arrived at the flat land below the cave. Lamul and Ghanya put the stretcher down.

  Ghanya walked around looking up. “How are we going to get the stretcher up there?” he asked no one in particular.

  Ki’ti grabbed tight to Wamumur’s hand. “It’s starting,” she whispered.

  “Good,” he said, “now ignore it.”

  “It’s so hard!” she complained.

  “What did I tell you to do?” he asked.

  “You said to ignore it.”

  “I mean what did I tell you earlier.”

  “You said to tell it NO.”

  “Do it!” he said.

  Emaea stared up to the cave and suddenly she began to sense something strange. Was that a woman up there staring out? No, her mind was playing tricks on her. She thought that she was just picking up on Ki’ti’s concerns. Then she felt as if she slipped in time. She was feeling and seeing what the woman above was feeling and seeing. She was curious. She looked toward Wamumur.

  He noticed her expression and was prepared. “Tell it to quit, Emaea. If that doesn’t work, call on Wisdom.”

  Ki’ti smiled. “Wise One, it works. When you call on Wisdom, it works!”

  “Good, don’t let it come back,” he said to her, “Emaea, don’t let your curiosity carry you away. Break the connection!”

  Emaea, with her years of self discipline, found it difficult to stop her own curiosity. This was definitely a new thing but from the way Wamumur was acting and what had happened to Ki’ti, she realized that this was dangerous territory and she broke the connection.

  The hunters were looking at the Wise Ones as if they’d lost their way in their mind webs. They were not experiencing any of this. It made the hair on the backs of their necks stand on end.

  Mootmu-na and Ermol-na were trying to help Ghanya answer his question. “Do you think you could s
trap the body on your back and make it up there?” Mootmu-na asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should climb up there first and then answer that question,” Ghanya said.

  “He is happy,” Ki’ti whispered to Wamumur.

  “I know he is, and I told you to break the connection,” he said sternly.

  “Well, that’s how the connection arrived. I broke it. It hasn’t returned.”

  “Are you telling me you couldn’t block it before it began?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then call on Wisdom now and ask that any connection like that gets blocked.”

  “I will obey, Wise One.”

  The men kept wondering about the climb and, finally, Lamul said, “We might have enough rope to tie to the skins to haul him up hand over hand from there. His body doesn’t weigh much, it’s just awkward.”

  The men untied the rope from the stretcher and from their cover that they’d put on top of the body. Fortunately they had used rope liberally to tie the cover over the body and around and around the stretcher. They untied every piece of rope they had. They tied all the rope pieces together. Ghanya took the rope looped over his arm and climbed to the cave. He slowly lowered the rope and it just came to the ground.

  At that point, Emaea went to the body and took the covering and put it on the ground. Two of the men laid the body of the man on the covering. Emaea then took the corners of the cover and tied two ends together and then the next two ends together. She slipped the rope through the openings made by the tied ends. She took the rope and made a knot that would not slip apart while the men pulled the body up.

  Ghanya had begun to pull the body up alone. Lamul climbed up quickly to help. The man’s body was laid beside the body of his wife. Lamul tossed the piece of leather that had been used as a covering down from the cave.

  “Wise One, may I go up there?”

  “No, Little Girl, this is as close as you will be permitted. That is true for now and forever. Never again will you go up there. Promise,” he insisted.

  “I promise,” she said sincerely.

  Emaea did not ask. She simply climbed up the tortuous path to the cave. She looked about her for a few minutes. She realized the cave was much deeper than it appeared. She went inside. The bodies were in the vestibule, not the main cave. The main cave was furnished, but it had no water. To live there would have required transporting water. She wondered at what she saw but was disconcerted at the pulling of the different time. She called Wisdom to break the connection. Then she descended. She could feel the very strong pull of the dead or spirits or whatever it was, even when she was on the lower ground.

  She really had to fight it, but she could understand Wamumur’s words of caution. It would not do to become caught in the mind web of other people at another time. They had their own world to be concerned about. She had hers. And she’d experienced enough to know she didn’t want to pursue it. At least, she had satisfied her curiosity as to what Wamumur and Ki’ti meant about slipping in time. She had looked out from the cave and had seen a huge expanse and realized how much danger Ki’ti had put herself in by taking the green bag to the cave. It astounded her that Ki’ti had gone straight to the cave. There must be more she didn’t understand about different ways of knowing things, but her curiosity had been quelled by her experience. As an adult, she was acutely aware of the danger posed by this time capture and she understood why Wamumur was so adamant about Ki’ti and her leaving it alone.

  “Wamumur,” Emaea asked when she returned to the ground level, “Do you think that Totamu would be interested in the green bag?”

  “My Dear, I don’t want anything in our lives from that place or the man. They belong here in their time. We belong at home in our time.” He did a strong palm strike.

  “I understand,” she replied, and she did.

  Going back, Lamul would carry the poles for a while and Ghanya ties and leathers, and then they’d switch off. The hunters took a good look at the environment in the mountains and concluded that there was not really a good supply of meat to harvest from this area of mountains. Even the deer were tiny and they didn’t gather in herds. As Wamumur and Emaea watched Lamul and Ghanya, it took them back to their earlier days and they enjoyed that. Each felt that the day had been good. They and Ki’ti had all learned a good deal.

  Blanagah had returned to the busy home cave. She and Hahami-na had decided to remain a few more days in the separate cave at night, which had always been an option to newly joined couples. She was glowing. When she found Olintak that morning, she was smiling from ear to ear. She could not stop talking about how wonderful she found Hahami-na. Unlike Reemast who had pursued his own needs, Hahami-na had been considerate of hers. That was indeed a new concept to Blanagah. The men teased Hahami-na that he had a certain spring to his step. Domur also was radiant. Her love for Manak seemed to double from the time she saw him arrive back with the meat from Cave Kwa to the present. And his for her. They participated in the chores and then would wander off to be alone.

  Those who had been to the cave of the man with the green bag returned and quietly fit right back into daily life. No one questioned Wamumur or the others about their trip, though it wasn’t a secret at all what they had done. Most thought they had gotten rid of the body to keep the new Wise One safe and let it go at that. A few were just happy to get rid of the strange looking person who must have been very tall.

  Lamk and Liho walked along the stream until Lamk stopped and picked up a tool that obviously hadn’t been one of theirs. The tip was broken but it was a blade in the shape of a long leaf the length of his hand. He thought it was beautiful. He took it to his father, Mootmu-na.

  “I found this,” he said beaming.

  Mootmu-na looked at the tool. It had been crafted by a master, he thought. The stone was a yellowish brown with dark flecks in it. It had a shine. Too bad it was broken.

  “Where did you find it, my son?” he asked.

  “By the stream. Liho and I were walking down there.” Liho accompanied Lamk to see what Mootmu-na thought of the tool.

  “Ermol-na,” Mootmu-na called, “come take a look at this.”

  Ermol-na’s curiosity was aroused. “What have you found?”

  “Lamk found it, or was it you, Liho?” Mootmu-na asked.

  “It was Lamk,” she said. “He has good eyes for finding things,” she said matter of factly, not intending flattery.

  Lamk smiled at Ermol-na.

  “Good work, Lamk,” Ermol-na complimented him.

  “We can learn a lot from this tool. In fact, I could fix it so we could use it.” As he viewed it from all angles, Ermol-na was already mentally reworking the broken tool. He was impressed with the style of knapping which differed from his own. It almost seemed to his eye that more than one person had worked the tool. Maybe one was right handed and one left handed, he thought, or maybe there was no preference for either hand but each hand knapped a little differently? He was curious.

  “Take it, Ermol-na. Let us see what you do with it. Now, my son, and you too, Liho, would you like to show me where you found it?” Mootmu-na asked, trying to pry a piece of meat from between two teeth. Those two teeth were always trapping something, he thought, as he followed the children from the cave.

  “We were right around here,” Lamk said, drawing an arc over the land about waist high with his open hand.

  “Here’s the place where you took it from the ground, Lamk,” Liho said squatting down by the damp earth. Sure enough, the stone tool had left its shape in the damp earth.

  Lamk’s brown hair had begun to come back and was about fingernail length all over his head. Liho’s very light blond hair was about finger length and was wavy. The light made it shine like a halo in the daylight. As she looked at the stream bed wondering whether there were more tools, Mootmu-na looked down at the two of them considering their youth. What things they would see, he mused. He was glad that there were two of them, male and female that age. It wasn’t always th
e easiest thing to find someone near one’s age with whom to join. As he was aware, when two of widely spaced ages joined, often one remained alone in old age. But then he smiled at his own thoughts realizing that his daughters, Blanagah and Olintak had lost to hunter’s death their first choice of husbands, and Blanagah had lost her second. He wondered whether he should revise his initial opinion of age-mates. Looking at Lamul and Liho, he wondered whether these two would eventually join as friends like Manak and Domur.

  Nanichak-na walked by with Arkan-na on the rock walk above. Mootmu-na could hear Nanichak-na ask, “Have you ever seen short deer with antlers and tusks? Deer that bark?”

  Arkan-na got a big laugh out of that. As they passed, Nanichak-na was explaining what they saw on the mountain. Mootmu-na smiled.

  “Look here! Is this another?” Liho called to them.

  Lamk and Mootmu-na went to the place where Liho stood across the creek from cave side. There was another stone tool, broken, like the last. The tools were different from what they made, but Mootmu-na could see uses for the tools and thought that Ermol-na might find things he could use in the tools he made from what they might find.

  Ki’ti heard the call from Liho and walked over to the place where they were examining the newest tool. Immediately, she knew that the tool had been made by the man in the cave. She knew those blades had been attached to long sticks. She ran to Wamumur.

  “Wise One, you must help me!” she said breathlessly, failing to wait to be recognized before speaking.

  His face registered the shock of her intrusion into his conversation with Chamul-na.

  “Wait. You are being rude,” he admonished pushing her aside. He finished the conversation with Chamul-na, and then turned to Ki’ti.

  “What is the matter with you?” he asked gruffly.

  “I heard Liho call about another tool, so I went to see what the noise was all about. I was not even close when I saw the tool in Mootmu-na’s hand—and I knew it had belonged to the mountain cave man. I didn’t seek the knowledge, Wise One. I promise. It was just there. Help me.”