by Joan Lennon
Adom shoved Jay with his shoulder. ‘Your turn,’ he whispered.
All right – all right!’ She stuck out her tongue at him and then stepped forward, as if about to make a speech. ‘Eo. When you were, you know, dead, back there in the other place, the weasel told us some stories about you.’
‘What?!’ Eo screwed up his face. It was obvious he wasn’t too sure he liked the idea.
‘Yeah. It was a bit like a wake, you know?’Jay started to sound defensive. ‘What did you want us to do – put you on hold for an entire Tide? Just ignore you? There’s Eo – he’s dead. Oh, really? Shame. What’s for tea?’
Eo wriggled his shoulders. ‘No, I guess not. Not when you put it like that… So what did the Professor tell you about me, then?’
‘He told us plenty of daft stuff, and stuff that was downright cute. And I took notes on some of the stunts you pulled to get out of doing homework! But there’s one thing I think you really need to know, that Professor Weasel said about you.’ She took a breath. ‘He said you were probably the most G person he’d ever met. And when he said that, he stopped, as if there was nothing more that anybody needed to say.’
There was a moment of stunned silence. Eo stared at her. ‘Really?’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘He really did?’ He turned to Hurple. ‘You really did!?’
‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ the ferret humphed. He looked embarrassed, a look that deepened when Eo picked him up and kissed him.
Adom leaned closer to Jay. ‘ The most G person – what does that actually mean?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back, ‘and you don’t know, but what matters is that it means something to him.’
‘Yes… I think you’re right,’ Adom nodded solemnly. Then he gave her a big smile. ‘I think we’re getting him back from the dead at last.’
When TakK returned, he was accompanied by a number of old men who, in spite of being obviously ancient, still travelled over the rough ground like athletic mountain goats.
‘Tribal elders,’ murmured Hurple. ‘They’ll be coming to honour me, of course.’
There was indeed a lot of bowing going on once they got closer. Then the god’s party was led on up the valley and into the trees. Not much further on, however, the Neanderthals turned off into a side-gully After a short, steep scramble they came to a level forecourt, and there, leading into the heart of the hillside, was the entrance to a cave.
They had come out of the wind, which helped a little, and into a solid wall of stink, which didn’t.
‘Peughh – what is that?!’ gasped Jay.
‘Don’t you start being rude now,’ Hurple scolded out of the corner of his mouth. Just be grateful it’s not summertime!’
Jay turned to him angrily. ‘We’re standing here freezing to death and you say be grateful?! Surely even in an Ice Age it must get a bit warmer in summer?’
‘True. Quite a bit warmer… and quite a lot smellier. Use your imagination!’
They stepped closer and looked inside. Cave-proud would not be the first word you’d use to describe the tribe. There were piles of rubbish scattered about – discarded shells, cracked bones, other things that you wouldn’t want to peer at too closely. In a time without weekly rubbish collections, a quick flick over your shoulder was the accepted technique.
And then there was the tribe itself – the cave was a large high space, full of Neanderthal men, women, babies and children.
Ferrets are not known as odourless beings, but TakK and his people could certainly give them a run for their money. It was partly the lack of personal hygiene routines and partly the animal skins they were wearing.
Still, none of their visitors said no when offered cloaks of some sort of deerskin. Even Jay wrapped herself up tight and just took shallow breaths. In fact, in a surprisingly short length of time she found she wasn’t really noticing the smell any more and she was starting to warm up. The skin was an excellent insulator.
There was another of the pauses that marked their interactions with TakK’s people. The Neanderthal men muttered together, and the women and children carefully didn’t stare at the strange beings standing around awkwardly in their doorway.
‘It looks like we have a minute here,’ said Hurple briskly. ‘Eo, get my things out of your bag. So much has happened, I really must make some notes, and there just haven’t been a lot of peaceful moments…’
Eo got the bundle of papers out of his bag, where it had lain forgotten for so many hours, and put it down on a conveniently flat rock. The Professor immediately started pushing the pages about with his nose and chittering at them.
Adom’s eyes practically popped out. He drew Eo aside. ‘What in heaven’s name is he doing?’ he exclaimed.
‘What – oh, that’s his manuscript,’ said Eo. ‘It goes everywhere with him. I’d been carrying it around for him for weeks before all this started, in case he suddenly got an inspiration in the middle of a lesson.’ He noticed the blank expression. ‘He’s writing a book.’
Adom frowned. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t have hands!’
Ah, but who says you need hands to write a book?’ Eo wandered back to Hurple, looking irritatingly smug.
Adom scowled after him.
‘What’s up?’ said Jay, who had missed their exchange. ‘I thought we’d brought him back to the Land of Cheerful?’
‘Oh, he’s cheerful all right, the lying Know-All,’ grunted Adom. ‘Telling me the beast can write.’ Brother Drostlin’s voice suddenly forced its way into his head. A beast could write better than that! The words tasted as bitter as the first time he’d heard them said.
Animals can’t write,’ saidjay confidently. ‘No opposable thumb – therefore can’t hold a pen – therefore can’t write. Don’t worry about it – he’s having you on.’
‘Of course he is. The rotten little…’
FAQ 1,499: Is the author of these pages really a ferret? If so, how can an animal who has no opposable thumb manage to hold a pen?
HURPLE’S REPLY: I could answer your question with something gnomic like, ‘Ah, but I am no ordinary ferret’ or ‘There’s more than one way to skin a rabbit.’ But I’ll restrain myself. The straight answer to the question is an ingenious invention of the G – who frequently find themselves similarly embarrassed in the opposable-thumbs department. And that is… voice-activated paper. Pure and simple. Because, as they say, ‘There’s more than one way…’
‘Right,’ said Jay with half a smile. ‘Look, I know I was whingeing to have a roof over my head again, but now I think the price is too high, and so are these Neanderthals. I’m heading outside for a bit of fresh air. Want to come?’
‘Yes.’ Adom nodded his head vigorously. ‘Yes, please!’
It wasn’t long before Hurple had finished his note-taking and turned his eye to the meeting of elders. He gave a fake yawn and muttered to Eo out of the corner of his mouth, ‘I’m going to pretend to go to sleep now – if I go to that rock over there, I’m pretty sure I can listen in on the old boys – see if they’re talking about anything that might be of help to us.’
‘Do divine beings eavesdrop?’ Eo whispered back.
‘What would you know – you’re just a slave,’ muttered Hurple. ‘And I’m ordering you to go and make some friends. Remember, so far what we’ve been given has been pretty unexpected. No reason to think it’ll be different this time!’
A ferret can move fast when he wants to. In under a blink, the Professor was across the floor and curled up on a stone at convenient eavesdropping distance from the meeting of men.
Eo grinned to himself, and then looked about for somebody to talk to. He noticed a boy sitting by himself in the entrance and decided to go over and say hello.
The boy had his back to the cave, presumably to get the best light for the thing he was bent over. It looked like a leg bone of some sort of animal.
‘What’s that you’re making?’ asked Eo politely.
The boy jumped and t
hrust the bone behind his back. He was a good bit younger than Eo, though it wasn’t that easy to tell.
These faces are impossible to read, thought Eo to himself, and then the boy smiled, and he changed his mind.
‘It’s a flute,’ the boy said. ‘Don’t tell.’
Eo hunkered down beside him. ‘I won’t tell.’ He poked a finger at the bone. ‘Aren’t you supposed to, um, make flutes?’
The boy shook his head, and glanced over his shoulder. ‘This is bear,’ he said, as if that explained it.
It didn’t.
‘Bear bone is not a good thing for flutes?’ Eo said tentatively.
‘No – bear is wonderful for flutes. The notes are beautiful, pure… wonderful! Just not wonderful for us to make flutes out of He looked at Eo, as if waiting for understanding to dawn. He was out of luck. ‘My name is MakK. So it’s not going to be bear bones my tribe makes flutes out of, is it?’
‘My name’s Eo. And I’m really not getting this,’ Eo admitted.
It was MakK’s turn to look puzzled.
‘Your name is EoO?’ he said. ‘What tribe is “O”?’ He made it sound like a grunt, rather than a letter.
‘I’m not an “O” – I’m a G, though that’s not a tribe, really…’
‘ “G”? What animal…?’
‘No, the G aren’t animals – I mean, they can be, but… Anyway, I’m still too young to, um, be an animal…’
Mutual confusions were piling up on each other by the minute. Eo tried again.
‘What tribe did you say you belong to, MakK?’ he asked.
‘You just said it! kK! We are the Tribe of Deer.’
‘Um…’
Exasperated, MakK looked about and then grabbed two broken bits of antler from the rubble on the ground. He clanged them together.
‘Deer!’ Clack. ‘Listen!’ Clack.
And then Eo heard it. It was the sound of the stags clashing their antlers together during the rut, up in the high hills with the does milling round.
‘I get it! You’re Ma –’ he took the antlers and knocked them together – ‘kK! MakK!’ Eo shook his head. ‘You must think I’m really stupid.’
MakK put a hand on Eo’s sleeve. ‘No, EoG,’ he said quietly. ‘I think you’re different.’
‘Oh well, that’s all right, then!’ Eo laughed and stood up. Hurple had ‘woken up’ and was calling to him from inside the cave. He turned away, not hearing what the other boy said next.
‘No, it’s not,’ MakK murmured sadly. ‘It’s not all right.’
Whatever the elders had been discussing, it seemed they’d made up their minds. A delegation was standing in front of Hurple’s rock.
‘Come on, boy’ the Professor called. ‘I need my ears-and-mouth man!’
Again it was TakK who acted as spokesman for the Neanderthals, but this time he dragged another, extremely nervous-looking man forward with him. He bowed in Hurple’s general direction, and then said to Eo, ‘Tell the god that this is NorekK, our carver. Tell the god he is going to make a likeness of him to take to the place of gods. This is so that we can speak to him, ask for his wisdom and thank him for his aid. Does this find favour with the god?’
It was obvious to Hurple what Eo was thinking… He’s nght in front of you – why don’t you just speak to him now!? The judicious application of a claw to a bit of bare arm kept his slave’s mouth shut, however. Instead, the god nodded his assent in as haughty a fashion a small weasel-shaped animal can manage. TakK, NorekK and the elders bowed again and then walked away, each being careful not to look the ferret in the eyes. The carver left the cave and the others settled down to another session of talk.
‘That’s so weird,’ muttered Eo. ‘Well, what did you find out? Did you find any secret knowledge they can give us, any special demon weapons?’
‘I found out they’re agitated,’ said Hurple softly.
‘Well, wouldn’t you be, if somebody dumped a god on you out of nowhere?’
The ferret shook his head. ‘It’s not me,’ he said. ‘They have a mechanism for me – I’ll fit with the other gods without too much of a stretch, once they get the rituals done. It’s you they’re worked up about.’
‘Me?!’
‘Yes. They think you don’t smell right.’
Eo was irate. ‘I don’t smell right – have they smelled themselves lately?!’
Hurple rubbed a paw over his snout impatiently. ‘You are in no position to whinge – you’re not getting the half of it with that sad little set of nostrils. But that’s not the point. They aren’t saying you smell wrong because you smell bad –’
‘It’s not me anyway – it’s these manky skins,’ Eo muttered under his breath.
‘– they’re saying you smell different. And that’s bad.’
Eo looked up, startled. ‘That’s what MakK said – he said I was different too.’
‘MakK?’
‘Yeah – that boy over there – see, by the opening. We talked. We’re friends, I think. Sort of.’
Hurple shut his eyes for a moment. ‘That’s not good,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘I heard the men – when they were speaking of your… not-rightness – they said you were more wrong even than MakK.’
And suddenly, Eo found there was a shift in what he was seeing – as if someone had just sharpened the focus. Groups that had seemed random before began to take on new meaning. Round the main fire it was all boys and men, now that he looked more carefully. The other, smaller ones were the girls and women, some by the cooking fire, some working at other jobs about the place, but all in twos or threes at the least. Only MakK was alone – and he wasn’t by the cave opening to catch the best of the light. He was by the cave opening because he didn’t belong anywhere else.
Eo felt a flicker of dread run up his back.
‘Is it… dangerous? If they don’t think you fit in, do they do something, uh, violent?’
‘No. I think that’s what they do,’ said Hurple, indicating the isolated boy with his paw. ‘I think they just gradually, relentlessly push you out.’ He noticed the stricken look on Eo’s face. ‘That’s just the way they are, lad. You’re not going to change it. Where’re you going?’
Eo didn’t answer.
Hurple watched, shaking his head ruefully, as Eo walked back to the entrance of the cave, back to the boy who didn’t fit, and sat down beside him.
NorekK the carver was a fast worker – before any of them looked for him to be done, he came back to the cave with a bundle carefully wrapped up in animal skins.
It was time to leave for the place of the gods.
The whole tribe emptied out of the living cave, minus a few of the oldest women, who stayed behind on fire duty. TakK, carrying the bundle, took the lead. He was moving very carefully, but even so, he powered on up the steep incline of the valley as if it were on the flat. Everyone, even the smallest child, seemed fitter than their visitors.
‘This better not be far,’Jay panted.
It wasn’t. As they came out from among a stand of trees, they stumbled to a ragged halt and stared. Instead of continuing upwards between the hills, the valley stopped. Abruptly. In a wall of white.
A glacier rose sheer before them, a fluted surface of painfully bright light. Its lower leading edge was pocked and dirtied with the rocks and trees and soil it had engulfed, scraping everything in its path forward with it. The river slid out from underneath and ran away towards the sea like a thing escaping. They could feel a whole new level of cold coming off it.
Between them and the glacier was a narrow area of broken trees, a rubbled battlefield littered with branches and rocks and ploughed-up soil. It was a battlefield where one side was clearly losing.
The Professor shuddered along the whole length of his body. ‘That thing eats landscapes,’ he murmured.
‘Where are they going?’ whispered Jay, clutching Adom’s sleeve for comfort. ‘It looks like they’re going… inside!’
She was right.
In single file, the tribe picked its way across the broken ground to an insignificant-looking crack in the wall of ice. One by one, they disappeared inside the opening…
‘Come on, then,’ urged Hurple. ‘Let’s see what’s in there!’
Wide-eyed, the slaves of the god did as they were told.
The entrance was narrow, and the passageway leading off it was low, even for the short Neanderthals. Bent almost in half, the children stumbled forward in the strange blue half-light, unable to see clearly where they were going and stricken to the bone by the intense cold coming off the ice that surrounded them. The passage seemed to go on for a very long time until, suddenly, they emerged, blinking, into the place of the gods.
A great cavern had been dug out of the heart of the glacier, low-ceilinged but vast. The pitch torches the tribes people held smoked and spat, leaving black smudges on the roof, but their light made the ice walls and floor sparkle. In the centre of the space an enormous ice stag had been carved. It seemed to grow out of the floor like a tree. A proud span of antlers, shed by a flesh-and-blood stag, had somehow been planted on to its head. The frost inside the temple had silvered the antlers so that they glinted weirdly in the torchlight. For a moment, the sight of the great tribal god of the kK blinded them to anything else in the temple, but then they saw the others. In niches carved out of the ice walls, other, more minor gods had their places. Statues of owl and boar, wild sheep and rabbit, half-sized bear and cat – and there, in a space newly carved from the body of the glacier, TakK carefully placed the statue of the most recent incumbent, and unwrapped it. The ferret god.
‘Oh!’ said Hurple. ‘It’s beautiful!’
The others agreed.
It was a little more than life-size, in a standing pose, with its front paws tucked under its chin and its tail curled to the side. Hurple turned in Eo’s hands and looked up at him, his eyes shining.
But before he could speak, the music started. It was an old man, one of the elders, playing a flute – a flute made of a deer bone. The music made Eo feel as if his skin were crawling. Each note was sounded, and left to bend as the player’s breath failed. It was like hopeless wailing that would never end, unbearably mournful to Eo’s ears. It filled his mind with thoughts of how these people were going to die, and not just these people, but all the people like them. Dying away. Utterly gone.