Ki’ti continued, “Get your things and bring them here. You will sleep right here.” That meant she was to sleep next to the Wise One, not Manak-na. She dutifully did as she was told. On her return she unrolled her sleeping skins and sat. Ki’ti motioned for her to come to her.
“Sit before me,” she said. She had a comb in her hand. Anxiety rose in Ahna’s belly, but she was silent. Ki’ti untied the braid and began to separate the pieces. She ran her fingers through the hair. Fortunately there were not many tangles.
“Has Manak-na been fixing your hair?” she asked.
“Yes. At first I had many tangles. He got them out.”
“I’m sure he did, and not too gently either.”
“True,” Ahna said, allowing herself to smile a little.
Ki’ti laughed out loud. “His wife did the hair of his children. He has had little experience.” Ki’ti began to comb the girl’s hair. Ki’ti did not like the look of the braid down the girl’s back. She loved the color of Ahna’s spiraled hair. She was trying to decide what would be a good way to fix the hair when Elemaea arrived.
“Mother, let me fix her hair,” she asked.
Ki’ti handed her the comb.
“I’ll fix it better than Manak-na did it,” Elemaea said leaning over Ahna’s shoulder and looking into Ahna’s face.
Ahna laughed. It was good to see someone near her age. She was the Wise One’s daughter. Ahna stored the information. She remained still.
Elemaea began to work on Ahna’s hair. “My hair spirals too, but not as tight as yours,” Elemaea said. She continued to work with it. “You have a lot of hair and the color is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Ahna replied.
“I’m glad you got to come here. This is a good place for you. People here are kind and helpful. I’m Elemaea.”
“I am glad to be here, Elemaea.”
Ki’ti was watching Elemaea. She was pleased to see how her daughter was treating this new person. She had definitely matured.
Elemaea took some hair from the front and sides of Ahna’s head and pulled it back together at the top. She took the little leather piece that had tied the braid and tied the hair at the back of Ahna’s head with it. It rested gently on her combed out curly hair that fell to her waist. She leaned around Ahna and looked into her face. “What do you think, Mother?”
Ki’ti looked into Ahna’s lovely face. She thought Elemaea’s work was an improvement and said so. “She needs someone to teach her how to fix her own hair. Will you do it?” Ki’ti asked.
“I’d be glad to, Mother. Ahna, you get to sleep next to me. That’s great! It’s like having a sister. I’ve never had a sister. Yomuk is my brother.”
“He is a good young man,” Ahna said. “He worked hard on the boat and he hunts well. I am eight years old. How old are you?”
“I am the same age as you,” Elemaea said.
“Girls, you must stop talking now and go to sleep.”
“I love you Mother and Father,” Elemaea said.
“I love you, too, my daughter, and Ahna I have a soft spot in my belly for you.”
Untuk-na said, “I, too.”
“Thank you,” Ahna said. She covered up with her soft sleeping skin and went to sleep.
When Wisdom brought color back to the land, the People waked up from their slumber and began their chores. The morning meal was served quickly, the sky was clear, and there was a bit of a chill in the air, as if to push the People to get on with their preparations for the season of cold days. White rain had fallen overnight.
Ki’ti and Untuk-na met Manak-na at the entryway. Manak-na had his coconut with him in a grass bag. Ki’ti and Untuk-na were eager to know more about it. They dressed in warm clothing and left to climb to the rock structure up the hill.
Once inside, Untuk-na and Manak-na began a small hearth fire for warmth. Manak-na began to pull the coconut from the bag and said, “The Mol boatbuilder who directed the boat taught me things we do not know. He used this coconut to show our travel. The coconut is like the earth we live on. We do not live on something flat but rather something like this coconut that has depth and is all the way around. When you look at the night sky, some of the points of light up there twinkle; others do not. We live on a point of light that does not twinkle. Twinkling means the stars are of fire. That’s why we get warm from the sun. The heat travels a long way to warm us. Our earth is not of fire or we’d be consumed.” Untuk-na and Ki’ti were seated to either side of Manak-na looking at the coconut.
Manak-na put his left index finger on the place where the boatbuilders were. “We started here with the building of a boat. It was huge compared to our boats. It was made of bamboo. The interesting part is that they soaked the bamboo in salt water to kill any bugs or worms in the wood. It would appear that it takes a full day to do that. We didn’t build the boat. We hunted so the boatbuilders and we could eat.”
Manak-na moved his finger up the coconut from the boatbuilders’ place. “We traveled through islands here to this large piece of land. Then we turned eastward to follow these islands that form an arc up north. The place was colder than where boats were built, but not so cold that we had to put on season-of-cold-days clothing by the time we got there. It’s also windy. We followed the land around this turn so we headed south. It took us so long to take this trip. I thought we’d never arrive! And we didn’t go even half way down the coconut. There is land that goes far down south from there. Once you pass the middle of the coconut going south you cannot see the star that never moves. There are different stars there. As we moved southward, it got warmer and warmer. Where Ahna lived it was horribly hot. Hotter than where we lived before Baambas and the need to flee the volcano. The sand near the middle of the earth would burn feet. We moved our feet quickly to avoid the sting of the heat of the sand.”
Manak-na moved his finger across the coconut trying to show the sea but not to mess up the islands. “All across here is sea. It takes about four moons or more to cross it. In the middle there is a line of islands. You can get water there. There is nothing for us to hunt there, unless we wanted to eat lizards or birds. We had two storms. The first one shoved us toward these islands when we’d had little wind to make the sails work to pull the boat along. After all these islands we had the huge storm which pushed us toward this big island. We lost a man in the storm. We hunted on this island successfully. Shortly after we left that island, we were back to the boatbuilders’ place.”
“I learned that the earth rotates around the sun like the moon rotates around us here on earth. Let me look at these walls. Yes, here is one. See this dot where there are circles around it? The sun is in the center. It twinkles. Around the sun there are sources of light like us that don’t twinkle. Of the non-twinklers we are not the closest to the sun. There is one and may be two between the sun and us. There may be some farther out than we are. So when you look at the night sky you can see twinklers. Some of them are circled by non-twinklers that also show as light in the night sky.” Manak-na used his right first finger to trace a circle around the point. “Those circles around the point are the paths the non-twinklers take around the twinkler. I think that is fascinating. And, I think, that is what that drawing or painting means when you see it.”
Manak-na found a flat surface on the rock. He picked up a stone and another stone that had a pointed end. He began to tap on the stone with the pointed end using the first stone he’d picked up. Little by little he tried to incise the boat with sail on the stone of the structure using the pointed part of the tool he’d chosen. He described what he was doing as he went along. “This is the hull on the right side, if you’re looking forward. This is the left side of the hull,” he said chipping out the part that could be seen if standing on land or in the water. “See how the fronts here are narrower than the middle part and how they are pulled upward? The same is true for the back of the boat.” He chipped out a single mast. Out from the single mast was a bamboo crosspiece to which the sail was att
ached at the bottom. He chipped out the sail unfurled. “I only made one mast,” he ran his index finger up the mast, “and one sail,” he said pointing to the sail, tracing the triangle with his finger. “There are two masts and two sails. One behind the other. You can see how they’d look like bird wings.”
Ki’ti and Untuk-na understood. It was massive information for them, but they understood. They needed time to think on it, but they did not doubt that Manak-na had gotten the information correct and was sharing it accurately. They had experienced what he had, a huge mind web expanding lesson. It didn’t have any immediate effect on the People, but it did give them a different perspective.
Ki’ti said, “Manak-na, these people must have mind webs that are way beyond ours in knowledge.”
Manak-na replied, “I really don’t think so. You wouldn’t be able to tell whether one of these boatmen or boatbuilders was an inland Mol who never saw a boat or a sea Mol. And there are those who are People and those who seem a little different. They both seem to have learned to make boats together and use the boats to travel widely, but they claim to have been doing this since time began. Their knowledge is limited to building and sailing boats. If they heard you tell your stories, Ki’ti, they would be as amazed at the power of your mind web as you are of theirs. So, no, I just think that somewhere in the long past, they learned to make boats for the sea and used them. Some of their people long, long ago wanted to live on the other side of the water where it is warm all the time, and they found a way to do that and to continue to connect to the people on this side. They are interesting people but no different from people we already know.”
Ki’ti listened carefully to the words of Manak-na. She realized he had already been using his mind web to come to the conclusions he expressed. She considered his words wise. She lowered her head to him. Manak-na was surprised at the gesture, and he returned it. Untuk-na was fascinated with the information and the way it was presented. He, too, thought Manak-na wise.
Back at the home cave, Ahna was feeling the cold severely, even inside the cave. She shivered occasionally and lingered by the hearths, sometimes wrapped in a skin. Likichi noticed. Even though Manak-na had been seeing that Ahna ate a lot more than she was accustomed to, she still was terribly thin. With extremely little body fat, she chilled quickly. Likichi called her over. She measured her feet, legs, and her upper body. Then she let her go. Later that day she brought Ahna some in-the-cave boots that went over her knees and a jacket to wear in the cave. She explained that the boots were not ones to wear outside. She had brought boots for outside wear when she arrived. The jacket had fur left on the skin. Ahna was overcome. People were so kind to her. She threw her arms around Likichi and hugged her.
“Thank you for your kindness,” Ahna told her.
Likichi was startled but hugged Ahna back. “You’re welcome, Ahna.” As she turned to her chores, Likichi felt warmth grow for this little child, who had been taken on such a long trip after having a tough childhood.
The days wore on. Without going outside, Ahna stood near the entryway and watched as more white rain fell. She had never seen anything like it, and it was beautiful to her. Her boots and her jacket kept her warm, so that she no longer shivered. She was excited because she heard that this night the stories would begin. She was eager to hear the People’s stories.
Chapter 6
Story time was a special time for the People. After the evening meal they gathered in the largest part of the cave and awaited the first story of the year. They had to wait for the cleanup following their meal. All chores had to be finished before they began so there would be no interruption. There was no men’s council that evening. Finally, quiet began to settle among the People. Ahna was sitting in the back next to Yomuk and Elemaea. She was eager to hear the story. Yomuk was trying to avoid showing boredom. Suddenly, he remembered that it would be to his benefit to listen carefully to the stories, because, according to Manak-na, they taught him what he needed to learn to have Wisdom’s advantage in life critical situations. He looked up and noticed Manak-na was looking at him with a very stern look on his face. All his thoughts of Ahna dissolved as he set himself to listen.
Ki’ti began, “This is a new story. It is one that I chose for the People from the travel of Manak-na and Yomuk. It tells of something they learned in Aikot, the land where Ahna came from, far, far away, where the sun rises first from the land to the sea.”
“There was an old man called Tikarumusa who was severely disabled with the stiffness disease. He was an old man who lived on a hill up from the sea. One day his people became very excited. They saw the tide going out. The tide is a change in the level where the water touches the shore. They lived where they have very little change in tides. This tide went out fast enough that it stranded fish on the wet sand. Fish were flopping all over the sand.”
“His people got very excited and all of them, regardless of age, ran down to the sand to gather the gifts from their god of the underwater. Fish were everywhere and the people expected to feast. From his place on the hill, Tikarumusa stood to look out. He saw the people gathering fish. Far out to sea he could see a huge wave forming. He called and called to his people to warn them. He could not run to them, and they could not hear him. Tikarumusa hurt in his belly as he watched the huge wave come to cover all his people and to take them off to sea, not sparing a single one. He was left alone.”
“Tikarumusa lay on his sleeping skins. He wept for his people and himself. He thought he would die there. Instead, Wisdom brought the boat that Manak-na and Yomuk had traveled on for their adventure. Men from the boat found the old man. They took the old man to the boat where he was later exchanged for Ahna, so he could remain with his son’s people who lived inland. There he would be cared for.”
“What is important to put in your mind web for this story is that if you ever are at the sea shore and observe the sea rushing out, no matter what you see on the sand, run the opposite way so that a monster wave will not take you to drown in the sea.”
There was a hush in the cave. This was one of those lessons to remember for life, Yomuk realized. How many stories were there, that told life critical lessons? Yomuk wondered. Sitting next to him, Ahna wondered at hearing a story from her land in this cave with the People. She had listened carefully to Ki’ti’s story and marked it word by word.
Ki’ti continued, “We have another story from Manak-na and Yomuk’s adventure. This one tells us how Wisdom arranged the earth in the sky. We think of earth in terms of the dirt on the ground. This story requires that you expand that word. Earth means the entire place where we live. Our earth floats in the blackness that surrounds us.”
The People looked at each other. There was a realization that this was meaningful information, but already they had trouble trying to understand “living in blackness,” so they paid very close attention.
“This is a coconut from the adventure. Manak-na told that the Mol got coconuts from sea people on this side of the sea to take on their travel. A man named Rokuk taught Manak-na that the earth we live on is like the coconut. It is not flat but instead it is all round like this coconut. It swims in darkness, just as the points of light in the sky we see at night swim in darkness. When Wisdom brings sun is when darkness is dispelled to light.”
“In the sky there are many points of light. Each looks like a flat circle, but instead it is round like this coconut. Some twinkle and some don’t. The ones that twinkle are like our sun. They are of fire. That’s why the sun brings warmth and light. The ones that don’t twinkle are like our earth. If the earth twinkled, it would be of fire and we’d be consumed. So we can live, because we’re on a non-twinkler.”
“Suns warm their non-twinklers. The non-twinklers like our earth rotate around their sun. The sun warms the earth, like the hearth fire warms the meat that turns over it on the spit. We are not the only non-twinkler that rotates around our sun. There is at least one more, and there may be two between the sun and our earth. And we hav
e a moon that rotates around us. When you go into the stone building above us and you see on the wall a point with circles around it, you are seeing the sun as the center point. The circles show the paths of the earths that rotate around the sun. Those who made that stone building knew about that. That’s why they put the point and the circles there.”
“Rokuk drew on the coconut the place where they left for their voyage. He showed lands and islands. Islands have water surrounding all sides. He showed the great sea and the land where Ahna lived far, far, far away. There is very much about the earth that we do not know. A few other things we do know. At the middle of the earth, it is very hot. At the middle of the earth, sand will burn your feet. Light and dark are about equal there. Tides change very little. The closer you get to the top and bottom of the earth, the colder it gets. If you go south past the middle of the earth you can no longer see the star that never moves.”
“Imagine how fantastic Wisdom is to have created all this. What a way to expand your mind web—to look at the sky and to see so much created by Wisdom! How can it be that Wisdom has warmth in the belly for us? So vast is the creation that it is a wonder that Wisdom knows where we are. But Wisdom does. And that’s the joy and the mystery of it.”
Ki’ti had stopped. She had completely transported the People through the story to night skies and stars and what now were called earths. She tied it to Wisdom’s creation. Knowledge swirled in their thoughts. Those thoughts were busy settling into the mind webs of the People. Ahna was overwhelmed. She’d had a lesson on land and islands from Manak-na on the boat. This story helped her to put it all together and she marked it word for word. She wondered about Wisdom. Was it Wisdom who told the bird man she’d need to be brought here? She wondered.
In the silence that followed People quietly went to their sleeping skins and prepared for sleep. The cave was incredibly quiet. It was as if each were still tied up in the stories and didn’t want to break the silence. Yomuk was moved. He’d heard his mother’s stories all his life, but they’d never had the profound effect they had this night. He berated himself, thinking that, perhaps, in the past he just hadn’t truly listened. He realized that one story had a definite, immediate, life critical message. The other taught of Wisdom’s otherness and how the sky works. Both were burned into his mind web. It occurred to him that never had he considered categories of the stories or their purposes. He had not put them in memory in any orderly way.
Manak-na's Story, 75,000 BC Page 24