by Barbara Wood
When he was younger, Lion had come upon the fresh carcass of an old lioness and had been able to skin it before the vultures descended. He had draped the bloody pelt over his shoulders and back, allowing it to mold to his body as it stank and became maggot-ridden and eventually dried, and because he hadn’t removed it in years, the stiff skin was now part of him, his long hair had grown into it, and it creaked when he moved.
Lion had not been chosen as the Family leader, there had been no vote or consensus. He had simply decided one day that he would lead and the others had followed. Lion’s occasional mate, Honey-Finder, was dominant among the females because she was large and strong and possessed a greedy, assertive personality. At feedings she would push weaker females out of the way to get food for her own young, stealing from others and gobbling down more than her share. Lion and Honey-Finder used both hands now to scoop the pale fat grubs out of the rotting wood and stuff them into their mouths, and when they had satisfied themselves, and Honey-Finder had seen to it that her five offspring had eaten, they moved away so that the weaker members of the family could scoop what was left of the sluggish larvae into their mouths.
Tall One chewed a mouthful of grubs and then spit the pap into her palm. When she held her hand out to Old Mother, who was toothless, the elder gratefully lapped up the masticated pulp.
The grubs devoured, the humans rested beneath the noon sun. The stronger males sat watch for predators while the rest busied themselves with the daily activities of nursing babies, grooming, napping, and engaging in sexual release. Sexual joinings were usually brief and quickly forgotten, even among couples who shared a temporary affection. Long term pair bonding did not exist, and the satisfying of the sexual urge was taken randomly at chance opportunities. Scorpion sniffed around the females, unaware that he was searching for the midcycle scent that would indicate a female was in her fertile phase. Sometimes it was the female who did the seeking, as Baby did now, instinctively hungry for a hurried joining with a male. Since Scorpion was already busy with Mouse, Baby chose Hungry and, although he was not initially interested, brought him to arousal and happily straddled him.
As the Family went thusly about their needs, and in the distance the mountain continued to spew fire and gas up to the sky, Tall One kept a sharp lookout, hoping to glimpse the ears or the shadow of the new danger that stalked them. But there was nothing there.
They trudged through the afternoon, thirst burning their mouths, the children crying for water and mothers trying to soothe them as the males made quick forays away from the group, shielding their eyes to scan the plain for signs of a stream or pond. They tracked eland and wildebeest, hoping the herds would lead them to water. They noted the direction of birds in flight, particularly wading birds: herons, storks, and egrets. They searched also for elephants because these were beasts that spent most of their time at water holes, rolling in the mud to cool their sun-dried skin or submerging themselves almost completely, leaving only the end of their trunks above the water’s surface to allow breathing. But the humans saw no eland or storks or elephants that could lead them to water.
When they came upon the bones of a zebra they were briefly overjoyed. But when they saw that the long bones were already cracked open, the marrow sucked clean, their disappointment was acute. The humans did not have to examine the tracks around the carcass to know that hyenas had robbed them of a feast.
They pressed on. Near a grassy hillock Lion brought the group to an abrupt halt, silencing them with a gesture. They listened, and on the breeze heard nearby a “yeow-yeow…yeow”—the distinctive chirping noises cheetahs made when communicating with their young. Cautiously, the humans turned away, keeping themselves downwind so the cats did not catch their scent.
While the females and children scavenged for what vegetable and insect food they could find, the males with their wooden-tipped spears were on the alert for possible game. Although organized hunting skills were beyond them, they knew that a giraffe was at its most vulnerable when it was drinking at a water hole—it had to spread its legs wide so it could reach the water, and in that position was an easy target for humans acting swiftly with sharpened sticks.
Nostril suddenly cried out with glee as he dropped to one knee and pointed to a scattering of jackal spoor on the ground. Jackals were known to bury their dead prey and return to eat it later. But frantic digging in the immediate area produced no buried kill.
They pressed on—hot, hungry, thirsty, until finally Lion let out a whoop that the others understood to mean he had found water, and they began to run, Tall One keeping an arm around Old Mother to help her along.
Lion had not always been the Family’s leader. Before him, a male named River had been the dominant member, taking the best food portions for himself, monopolizing females, deciding where the Family would sleep for the night. River had been named after a perilous encounter with a flashflood. The Family had managed to reach high ground in time, but River had gotten caught. It was only the chance passing of an uprooted tree that had saved him, depositing him on a sandbar days later, bruised and exhausted but still alive. The Family had named him for the new river that flowed through their territory and for a while he had enjoyed supremacy in the group, until Lion had challenged him over a female.
The fight had been to the death, with the two beating each other with clubs while the Family looked on, screaming and shouting. When a bloodied River had finally run away, Lion had shaken his fists in the air and then had promptly mounted an excited Honey-Finder with great vigor. River was never seen or heard from again.
After that, the Family had followed Lion compliantly and without question. Their crude society wasn’t egalitarian for the simple reason that the family members were not capable of thinking for themselves. Like the herds grazing the savanna around them, or their ape cousins living in the distant rain forests, the group needed a leader for survival. One always rose above the rest, either through physical strength or mental superiority. It wasn’t always a male. Before the leader named River there had been a strong female named Hyena, so called because she laughed like one, who had led the Family on their eternal and unchanging cycle of scavenging-gathering. Hyena remembered the borders of the territory, knew where the good water was, where berries could be found, and which seasons produced nuts and seeds. And when one night she had been caught separated from the others and, by great irony, had been torn limb from limb by a pack of hyenas, the Family had wandered aimlessly until a flashflood singled out River as their new leader.
Now Lion led them to the fresh water supply he remembered from four seasons ago—an artesian well protected beneath a rocky overhang. They fell upon the pool and greedily drank their fill. But when, thirst slaked, they looked around for food, they found none. No sandy bank in which to dig for turtle eggs or freshwater shellfish, no flowers with tender roots or vegetation harboring tasty seeds. Lion surveyed the scene with displeasure—surely there had been grasses here before—and finally indicated with a grunt that they had to move on.
Tall One paused to look down at the pool from which they had all just drunk. She considered the clear surface and then looked up at the smoky sky. She looked down at the water again and this time took the rocky overhang into account. She frowned. The water they had woken to at dawn had been undrinkable. This water was clear and sweet. Her mind struggled to make the leap. The sooty sky, the rocky overhang, the clear water.
And then the thought was formed: This water was protected.
She watched the Family as they trudged away—Lion leading with his hairy, hide-bound back, Honey-Finder at his side with a baby in her arms, a small child riding her shoulders, and an older child clutching her free hand—shambling, loping, their thirst forgotten now that their bellies ached with hunger. Tall One wanted to call them back. She wanted to warn them about something, but she didn’t know what. It had to do with the new, nameless danger she had been sensing lately. And now she knew that, somehow, the nameless danger was connected to water
—the soot-covered water of dawn, this clear pool, and the pond that Lion was leading them to farther along the ancient path.
She felt a tug at her arm. Old Mother, her small withered face turned up to Tall One with an expression of worry. They mustn’t fall behind.
When the Family came upon a baobab tree laden with fruit everyone who could wield a stick swung at the branches, bringing down the pulpy seedpods. The Family feasted on the spot, sitting or squatting, or even eating standing up so they could keep a watchful eye out for predators. Then they dozed beneath the wide-spreading tree, feeling the heat of the afternoon settle into their flesh and bones. Mothers nursed babies while siblings rolled playfully in the dirt. One Eye was in the mood for a female. He watched Baby as she picked through the pod shells hoping to find one overlooked, and when he tickled her and stroked her, she giggled and fell to her hands and knees, allowing him to enter her. Honey-Finder picked lice out of Lion’s shaggy hair, Old Mother smeared spittle on the little boy’s burn wound, and Tall One, leaning somberly against a tree, kept her eyes on the distant angry mountain.
After their nap they roused themselves and, once again impelled by hunger, pressed westward. Toward sunset the Family arrived at a wide stream where elephants waded and sprayed water with their trunks. The humans approached the bank of the stream cautiously, searching for something resembling floating logs. These would be crocodiles, with only their eyes and nostrils and small hump of back above the surface of the water. Although crocodiles mainly hunted at night, they were known to strike during the day if they sensed an easy kill. More than once the humans had seen one of their own snatched from a river bank and carried under in the blink of an eye. Although they were dismayed to find the surface of the sluggish stream covered with soot and ash, they saw nonetheless an abundance of bird life along the banks—plovers and ibis, geese and sandpipers—which promised nests filled with eggs. And because the sun was dipping to the horizon and shadows were growing long, they decided to stay here for the night.
While some of the females and the children began gathering tall grasses and pliant leaves for nest-beds, Old Mother and Tall One and other females dug into the pond’s sandy margins for shellfish. Frog and his brothers searched for bullfrogs. During the dry season bullfrogs laid dormant in burrows beneath the ground, coming out as the first raindrops of the rainy season softened the earth. As it hadn’t rained here in weeks, the boys expected the catch to be good. Fire-Maker sent her children out to gather the droppings of whichever herd had grazed here recently and then she got to work with her sparking stones, using dried twigs to start a slow smolder. When wildebeest and zebra dung were added, a fire was soon burning, and the males set up torches made of tree limbs and sap around the perimeter of the camp to keep predators at bay. An hour of foraging also produced wild chicory leaves, nut-grass tubers, and the carcass of a fat mongoose not yet gone maggoty. The humans ate greedily, devouring everything, saving not a seed or an egg against tomorrow’s hunger.
Finally they sat huddled against the night within the protection of a fence made of thorn bush and acacia branches, the males congregating on one side of the fire while the females and children gathered on the other. Now was the time for grooming, a nightly ritual that was impelled by the primal need for companionship and touch, and which in subtle ways established whatever crude social order existed among them.
Using a sharp hand ax that Hungry had fashioned for her from quartz, Baby chopped off her children’s hair. If left untended, the hair would grow down to their waists and become a hazard. Baby was proof of it, having run from her mother when she was little because she hated to have her hair groomed, so it had grown down to her waist and stood out with grease until one day it became entangled in a thorn bush, trapping her. When the Family had finally disengaged a hysterical Baby from the sharp trap, patches of her scalp had been torn away and bled profusely. That was when she got her name, because she couldn’t stop crying for days. Now Baby had scarred bald patches on her head and the rest of her hair grew out in frightful tufts.
Other females picked through their children’s hair, cracking lice between their teeth, and plastered the little ones and other females with mud carried from the pond. Their laughter rose to the sky like the sparks from the fires, along with the occasional sharp word or warning. Although the females were thus busily engaged, they all kept their eyes on Barren, so called for having no babies, who was following pregnant Weasel around. Everyone remembered when Baby had given birth to her fifth offspring and Barren had snatched it away, placenta and all, and run off with it. They had all chased after her until they caught her, the newborn dying in the fracas when the women had nearly beaten Barren to death. After that, Barren always trailed after the Family when they went scavenging and slept far from the fire, like a shadow at the edge of the camp. But Barren was becoming bold of late, and hovering around Weasel. And Weasel was frightened. She had lost her three previous children to a snakebite, a fall from a rocky precipice, and to a leopard that had boldly sneaked into the camp one night and carried the infant off.
On the other side of the main fire, the males were gathered. Once a young male became too old to stay with the females and babies, he went to sit with the older males, to watch and to imitate scarred and calloused hands as they chipped flint tools and sharpened long sticks into rudimentary spears. Here the young males, no longer under their mothers’ dominance, learned the ways of males: how to fashion wood into weapons and rock into tools; how to identify animal spoor; how to smell the wind and scent a prey. They learned the few words and sounds and gestures the males used for communication. And, like the females, they groomed one another, plucking live things from tangled hair and plastering mud on one another’s bodies. The mud, as a protection against the heat, insect bites, and poisonous plants, had to be reapplied every day and was an important part of the nightly ritual. Young males jockeyed for the honor of grooming Lion and the older males.
Snail, so named because he was slow, was bellowing his protest at having to sit guard. After an exchange of shouts and angry fists, Lion settled the dispute by cracking a spear over Snail’s head. The defeated man shuffled off to his post, wiping blood from his eyes. Old Scorpion rubbed his left arm and leg, which were growing strangely numb, while Lump tried to scratch an itch he could not reach, resorting to the nearest tree where he rubbed himself up and down the rough trunk until his skin broke and bled. Occasionally they glanced across the fire at the industrious females, creatures the males subconsciously held in awe because only females created babies, the males being unaware of their own part in the process. Females were unpredictable. A female who wasn’t interested in sexual copulation could be vicious when forced. Poor Lip, who used to be called Bird Nose, had gotten a new name after an encounter with Tall One. When he had tried to penetrate her against her will, she had fought back, biting off part of his lower lip. It had bled for days and then oozed pus, and when it finally healed it had left a puckered gap so that his lower teeth always showed. After that, Lip left Tall One alone, as did most of the other males. The few who did try to mount her decided after an exhausting fight that it wasn’t worth it, there were plenty of compliant females around.
Frog was sulking by himself. For the past year he and a young female, named Anteater because of her passion for honey ants, had enjoyed a special togetherness, like Baby and One Eye, who were currently cuddling and fondling and enjoying sexual pleasure. But now because Anteater’s belly was swollen with child and she wanted nothing to do with him, Frog’s advances were met with slaps and hisses. He had seen this happen before. Once a female gave birth, she preferred the company of the other females who had children. Together they would laugh and chatter as they nursed their babies and kept an eye on the toddlers, while the scorned males were left to their solitary pursuits of tool- and weapon-making.
The mother-child bond was the only real bond the Family knew. If a male and female paired, it was rarely for long, the course of their relationship runn
ing hot with passion and then dying out. Frog’s friend Scorpion squatted next to him and cuffed his shoulder in sympathy. He, too, had experienced closeness with a female until she produced a baby and then wanted nothing more to do with him. Of course, there were those, like Honey-Finder, who remained affectionate to one male, especially when he tolerated her babies, as Lion did. But Scorpion and Frog had no patience with the females’ babies and preferred females who were thus unencumbered.
Frog felt the heat rise within him. He looked in envy at One Eye and Baby, fondling and grooming each other. One Eye enjoyed sexual release whenever he wanted, Baby being so constantly willing to allow him. They were currently the only pair-bond, sleeping together, sharing affection. One Eye even tolerated Baby’s children, something few males did.
Eyeing the females, Frog decided to try to interest a few by showing them his erection and giving them a hopeful look. But they either ignored him or pushed him away. So he went back to the fire and raked through the coals. To his delight he found an overlooked onion, charred but edible. He took it to Fire-Maker who immediately grabbed the morsel and got down on her hands and knees, supporting herself on one arm while with her free hand she chomped away. It didn’t take Frog long. He was soon finished and shambling to his nest-bed for sleep.
When Lion finished eating, his eye fell upon Old Mother who was sucking on a root. Lion and Old Mother had been birthed by the same female, they had suckled the same breasts and tumbled together as youngsters. When she had produced twelve offspring, Lion had been in awe of her. But now she was growing feeble and the dim notion formed in his mind that food was wasted on her. Before she could even react, he strode past her, snatched the root from her fingers and popped it between his teeth.