The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  Suddenly overcome with grief, Laliari rested her forehead on her knees and began silently to cry.

  Down at the water’s edge, another soul was racked with grief. Alawa, looking out over the expanse of water, had come to a painful decision: this was how the boys must die—by drowning, as the hunters had died.

  She turned at the sound of footsteps and saw Bellek’s familiar silhouette emerge through the tall reeds. He stood beside her for a long moment, his bony chest rising and falling in labored breathing. He had known for some time that Alawa was coming to an important decision. She is getting ready to choose her successor, he thought.

  He would have liked to have a say in the choice, but only the Keeper of the Gazelle Antlers knew who the next Keeper should be. It had nothing to do with opinions and votes but with what the spirit world wanted, what the gazelle spirit wanted. And only Alawa knew what was in her dreams and what her magic stones were telling her.

  “Is it to be Keeka?” he asked softly, hoping it was not. Keeka possessed a streak of gluttony that he feared might be detrimental to the clan. If the choice were his, he would pick Laliari because the keeper of the clan’s stories had to be free of selfishness.

  Alawa shook her head slowly because of the weight of the gazelle antlers. When she was younger the horns had been almost weightless. But with age, they had grown heavy so that her neck bent beneath them. “Tomorrow the boys must die,” she said in a croaking voice.

  He looked at her as if he had not heard correctly. “What did you say?”

  “The little boys must die. The ghosts of the hunters are jealous of them and that is why they haunt us and why the moon stays away. If the boys do not die, then the clan will die. Forever.”

  He drew in a sharp breath and traced a protective gesture in the air.

  “We will do it in the lake,” Alawa said resolutely. “The hunters drowned and so the boys must drown.” She turned sharp eyes to him. “Bellek, you too must die.”

  “Me?” He blanched. “But the clan needs me!”

  “The clan will still have me. And if the moon wishes us to have men, it will give us new ones.”

  “But what threat am I? The boys, yes, because they will grow up to be hunters. But I am an old man.”

  Her voice rose. “And you have made the hunters jealous by staying alive. Selfish man! Would you threaten the extinction of our people by not sacrificing yourself?”

  He began to tremble. “Can there be a mistake?”

  “You dare!” she cried. “You question my dreams! You question what the spirits have told me. You bring bad luck upon all of us with your doubt!” She waved her hands in front of her eyes as if to chase away an evil spirit. “Deny what you just said or we shall all suffer the consequences!”

  “I am sorry,” he said in a thin voice. “I did not mean to doubt. The spirits have spoken. The—” He could hardly bring himself to say it. “The boys will die.”

  While Alawa slept beneath soft animal skins, Laliari sat with her back to the hide wall. She had been surprised when the old woman had asked her to keep her company in the hut, and Laliari had not missed the looks of admiration and envy among the others. Keeka especially, as everyone knew what this must mean: that Alawa was considering choosing Laliari as her successor.

  But the old woman had gone right to sleep, and now it was warm and close in the hut. Laliari drew her knees to her chest and, folding her arms on her knees, rested her head on her forearms. She had not meant to fall asleep. But when she woke, the light from the misty dawn was creeping beneath the tent. And she knew without looking that Alawa was dead.

  The young woman flew out of the shelter, her hair standing out in terror. She had never been in close proximity to a person at the moment of death before. Where had Alawa’s spirit gone? Laliari remembered back at home on the river, a man and woman had been sleeping together and the man had awakened to find the woman dead. Bellek had done readings and proclaimed that the man was now possessed with the spirit of the dead woman. So the clan had driven him out of the settlement and wouldn’t allow him to come back. They never saw him again.

  In a panic, Laliari pinched her nostrils, belatedly trying to keep the old woman’s ghost from entering her. Her wails woke the others. At once they tore down Alawa’s hut and made preparations for the silent-sitting. Bellek examined Laliari with great scrutiny, looking into her ears, eyes, mouth, and vagina until he was satisfied. “No spirit there,” he said firmly, putting her at ease. Maybe Alawa had been too old for her spirit to leave her body quickly, as it did with younger people. That old ghost might even now still be struggling to escape its casing of flesh. Bellek informed the distressed women that they must do a good silent-sitting, to ensure that when they moved on, old Alawa would not follow and haunt them.

  It was a ritual as old as time, handed down through the generations from the first people to mourn the dead. Bellek traced a circle in the dirt around Alawa’s corpse and chanted magic words. While he did this, the women ate and drank their fill, for they would be fasting during the next cycle of the sun. Even the children must sit silently with their mothers, leaving the circle only to relieve themselves when their bladders were full. The silence was to be absolute and no one was to eat or drink, for if they did it would upset the spirit of the deceased and make it jealous. Everyone knew that ghosts were unhappy—after all, no one wanted to die. And so being unhappy, ghosts would want to make the living unhappy, too, and therefore haunt them. The purpose of silent-sitting was to convince the ghost that this place was boring, no food or drink or laughter here, hoping it would move on to seek better places.

  Bellek had covered the corpse with a gazelle-skin blanket, telling the others that it was to keep Alawa’s spirit from trying to possess one of them. But he had done it for another reason. No one but he had noticed the marks upon the old woman’s throat, and the look of fear that had frozen on her face at death—proof that Alawa had misinterpreted her dreams and had made a mistake about the hunters wanting the little boys to be sacrificed. Because how else could she have died of fright and strangulation if it hadn’t been the ghosts of the hunters creeping into her tent and killing her?

  Luckily, Alawa had not confided her plans to anyone else, and so Bellek kept the secret to himself. For as long as he was alive, the little boys—and himself—would be safe.

  After the grieving women had sat in a silent circle for one day and one night, their stomachs growling from hunger, their mouths dry with thirst, their joints aching from not moving, the children restless and irritable, they divided up Alawa’s possessions according to individual need, with the gazelle antlers going to Bellek, and, leaving her body where it lay, broke camp and resumed their trek north.

  The nights grew colder, the fog rolled in again and again, and the women of the Gazelle Clan, unfamiliar with autumn and its mists and not knowing that it would eventually give way to winter rain, believed they would be trapped in fog forever. They shivered in their flimsy shelters, got little sleep and found little warmth until finally one night they were awakened by a fierce storm that was unlike anything they had ever experienced—a tempest that roared from the west, shrieked down the nearby mountains and blasted the frail encampment with an icy breath and rain that fell like spears. The women fought the wind to keep their shelters, but the malevolent gale, howling like a beast in pain, snatched away the protective gazelle hides and carried them out over the turbulent lake. Trees and shrubs were uprooted, sodden branches flew by while the terrified women clutched one another and tried to protect the children.

  When it was over and daybreak exposed a devastated landscape, the women beheld a sight that struck them dumb: the mountains, once green, were now white.

  “What is it?” Keeka said, holding her little ones close as other women cried and wailed in fear. Laliari stared at the distant peaks and felt a cold lump form in her throat. What did the white mountains mean? Were the mountains now ghosts? Did it mean the world was coming to an end?

 
; Old Bellek, shivering with damp, his lips and fingers raw from the cold, looked mournfully out over the lake where the gazelle hides floated on the water. He wasn’t afraid of the white mountains—long ago, in his boyhood, he had heard tales of something called snow. The world wasn’t coming to an end, but the weather was changing. He decided that, for survival, the group must find sturdier shelter.

  He turned toward the west and contemplated the cliffs that rose like sheer walls from the undulating plane. The cliffs were gouged with caves. Bellek suspected that they might be warm and dry inside, but the old man was wary of caves. His people had never lived in them and certainly had never explored inside them. Caves were where bats and jackals lived. Worse, caves were where the spirits of the unhappy dead dwelled. Still, he thought as he rubbed his freezing arms, without the elephant tusks, and now the gazelle hides, how were the women to make adequate shelters?

  When he announced his decision to investigate the caves, a chorus of protests rose up. But Laliari, seeing the wisdom of the decision, offered to accompany him. However, she had been in the moon-hut during the storm, and her monthly flow had not yet ceased, so they had to wait.

  By the third day it was safe for her to travel, and so they collected food and water and spent a day in spiritual preparation. They departed heavily armed with powerful amulets and with mystical symbols painted on their bodies as protection against ghosts and supernatural beings. With the women and children sobbing an unhappy farewell, the brave pair struck westward from the lake.

  They reached the cliffs at noon, where they paused to eat dates and plover eggs, and to chant incantations to appease hostile spirits. Laliari started up first, finding the easiest route among the boulders, then stopping to help Bellek. They found a crude trail leading to the caves and their rocky ledges, a trail littered with animal bones and flint tools, indicating that people had once lived here.

  Laliari chanted aloud as she went, more as a warning to possible humans than to appease spirits. If there were indeed people living here, she didn’t want to startle them or catch them unawares. Best to let her presence be known, she decided, a noisy approach meant they had nothing to hide and came in friendship.

  But they found no people.

  The limestone caves were deep and dark, and inhabited only by formidable stalagmites. In each, Laliari and Bellek found stone tools littering the floor—hand axes, scrapers, and cleavers—as well as animal remains—horse, rhinoceros, and deer—which indicated that people had once lived here, and had eaten well, too. But where they had gone, the humans who had left charred hearths, broken tools and, in some instances, perplexing symbols painted on the limestone walls, the two explorers could only guess.

  After a day and a night of investigating the caves, Laliari and Bellek grew discouraged. Although these were clearly excellent shelters—after all, other people had found them habitable—it was precisely because other people had lived in them that Bellek could not bring his clan here. The cave they selected would have to be untouched by humans or spirits or they might be inviting the worst luck upon their heads.

  By the second sunset a light drizzle began to fall, making the rocks slippery. As they crept along the precipice to the next cave, Bellek lost his footing and fell. Laliari caught him, but not before the sharp edge of rock gouged into his shin. Laliari helped the old man up the rest of the way where they quickly delivered themselves out of the rain and into a warm dry cave.

  Here they saw not only evidence of human habitation but the remains of a recent campfire. When they smelled the lingering traces of cooked food in the air, their ravenous hunger overrode their fear of strangers. Hastily looking around for inhabitants—the cave appeared to be deserted—they then searched for food. When Laliari saw what was obviously freshly turned dirt in the cave floor, she recalled how sometimes her people stored or “seasoned” meat in the earth. She fell to her knees and began digging. When her fingers encountered something both soft and firm that felt like an animal, she smiled up at Bellek. With luck they were going to eat. But when she scooped away the rest of the dirt and saw what was buried there, she screamed and jumped away.

  Bellek limped forward and peered into the pit.

  A small boy lay on his side with his knees drawn to his chest. Arranged around him were flint tools and goat horns, and scattered over the corpse were hyacinth and hollyhock petals and boughs of pine. Bellek quickly made a protective sign and staggered back. They were in the presence of a recently deceased child!

  Laliari turned huge, frightened eyes to the old man, and before she could ask him what they must do to save themselves, a black shape suddenly came flying into the cave, enormous and hairy. It flung itself upon Laliari, sending her to the floor.

  With fists and teeth she fought the beast, rolling over and over with it in a violent struggle. When she managed to scramble to her feet, the beast caught her by the ankle and dragged her back. Taking her by the waist, it lifted her into the air and with inhuman strength and a brutal roar flung her across the cave where she fell against the wall, hitting her head. Ignoring Bellek, who stood frozen in shock, the beast—which turned out to be a man wearing furs—ran back to the burial pit and began hastily covering up the dead child.

  Moments later Laliari came to, and when her head cleared and her eyes focused, she found herself sitting with her back to the cave wall, Bellek crouched at her side, a hand over his bleeding leg. Then she looked toward the center of the cave where an astonishing scene was taking place.

  The brute that had attacked her was crouched over the pit with the dead child in it and making eerie sounds, his arms flailing like those of a man possessed by a spirit. Laliari was instantly filled with terror. She wanted to run from the cave and get as far away from the corpse as she could, but Bellek’s leg was bleeding badly and the old man had gone pale. She moved closer to him, put an arm around his shoulders, and tried in her confused mind to figure out what they must do to protect themselves.

  In the meantime, as he continued to ignore the two intruders, the man in furs finished his chanting and sprinkled the last of a handful of petals over the grave. Then he went back to his smoldering fire and got it going again, the smoke curling up to disappear through an unseen vent in the ceiling. He glanced once at the strangers, to see the girl’s large eyes watching him.

  He had been out hunting and so now he peeled the skin off a pair of rabbits and threw the carcasses onto the flames. When one was charred, he picked the cinders off it and proceeded to wolf it down. The man’s name was Zant and he was the last of his people in this valley.

  As he ate, Zant looked sulkily at the two cowering against the wall. The old man was moaning in pain while blood ribboned from a wound and the girl kept her arms around him, fear in her eyes. He should have killed them for breaking such a powerful taboo as desecrating a grave. Maybe he still would, he thought as he continued to eat.

  Hours passed. The stranger remained squatting by the warm fire, his face cast in its glow. Laliari had thought at first he was an animal because she had never seen a human wearing furs. He was ugly, too, she thought, his prominent brow ridge and huge nose making him look more like a beast than a man. Most unsettling was the color of his eyes, which she could see even from this distance: they were blue, like the sky. Laliari had never seen blue eyes before and she wondered if they were the eyes of a ghost. Was that why he wasn’t afraid of being in the presence of a corpse?

  When Bellek’s moans grew louder, the stranger got up and came toward them. Laliari jumped up and placed herself between Bellek and the stranger. He pushed her aside and squatted down. Laliari watched warily as he inspected the injury. At the slightest threatening gesture, she would defend Bellek with her life. But all the stranger did was to take something from a pouch on his belt and apply it to the wound. When Bellek flinched at the man’s touch, Laliari readied herself to spring. But then Bellek’s discomfort seemed to ease after a moment, and the stranger went back to his fire. Laliari was instantly at Bellek’
s side, closely scrutinizing the jagged tear on his shin, sniffing the wound to determine what the stranger had applied to it. She gave Bellek a questioning look, and he seemed unconcerned. A moment later, the stranger returned with a skin of water and a roasted rabbit, holding out both to Laliari.

  Ravenous though she was, she hesitated. Food distribution in the clan was governed by complex rules, and the eating of meat depended upon many conditions: which hunter had caught the animal and under what circumstances, who the hunter’s mother and mother’s mother were, which elders had the right to eat first, the phase the moon was currently in. How could Laliari be certain this stranger had spoken the correct spells when he had killed the rabbit? She certainly hadn’t heard him chant the proper invocations as he had skinned the thing and thrown it on the fire.

  The thought of consuming taboo flesh filled her with an uneasy and vague sense of sacrilege, but the meat was charred and pink and dripping with fat and juices, its aroma sublime. And poor Bellek was licking his lips. Hunger won out. Laliari accepted the offering.

  Her instinct was to gobble it right down, but clan law dictated that Bellek eat first. So she bit off chunks, chewed, then spit the pap into her palm for him to lap up. The process was slow and laborious, and the whole time the stranger remained squatted on his haunches, watching them.