by Kevin Ashman
‘Do your kind live here now?’
‘No, when the killing stopped we returned to the plains and the forests, but many Mwrllwch were gone. Only a few families survived.’
‘What was this killing you speak of?’ she asked.
Morlak remained silent.
‘What was so terrible that your people had to hide up here?’
‘No more talk,’ said Morlak abruptly, ‘we have to go.’ He turned to sort out his pack, conversation over.
----
As was her normal morning routine, Seren went behind a nearby bush to see to her toilet, much to Morlak’s continuing bemusement. Mwrllwch held no such perception of modesty, male or female. When she was finished, she picked up the last of the squirrel from the fire, chewing intensely on the tough meat while at the same time collecting her belongings and stuffing them quickly into her bag.
‘We will need light,’ said Morlak, so kneeling by the fire and using her knife as a scoop, Seren shovelled glowing embers from the dying fire into the empty clay fire gourd she had retrieved from her bag.
‘I hope it is not too far up,’ said Seren as she retied the neck of the skin bag,’ my legs are still stiff with pain from yesterday and my hand throbs where your knife bit.’ She finished her task and standing up, she turned to face him.
‘Right, I am ready,’ she said.
Morlak was nowhere to be seen.
She took a double-take around the rocky clearing and looked up the path. She could see for a long way up and he was not there, nor was he climbing the sheer cliff face at the back of the ledge. She looked back down the path and again the route was clear. This was strange. She had spoken to him seconds earlier, he couldn’t have disappeared. Seren quickly checked around the ledge again looking for a cave entrance but found nothing.
She was flummoxed, how could he disappear? There was no other way off this ledge unless he had fallen off.
Seren stopped in her tracks. Surely, he hadn’t fallen off the edge; he was too sure footed for that. She lowered her pack and dropped to her belly, crawling to the edge of the ledge and tried peered over into the void below.
Hundreds of feet below were the tops of the forest trees. If he had fallen, she would not see his body through the dense undergrowth. She crawled backwards and considered the situation. There was no way he had taken any of the paths; she would be able to see him. He had not climbed and there was no cleft or cave. There was no other answer; he must have fallen. Again, she crawled to the edge and peered downward.
‘Morlak!’ she shouted at the top of her voice in the forlorn hope that he may have miraculously survived the fall.
‘I am here,’ came a calm reply less than two feet away.
She jumped back in fright not expecting the response.
‘Where?’
‘Below you.’
Once again, she lay down and peered over the edge of the precipice. Just below her searching gaze, the weatherworn features of the Neanderthal appeared as if out of the very rock face.
‘Give me your pack,’ he said holding up one hand.
‘How did you get there?’
‘Give me your pack and lower yourself over,’ he said. ‘There is room for only one on this ledge so I will pull you in.’
‘In where?’ she asked exasperatedly
‘The cave,’ he said, ‘it is here.’
‘Oh no’, she whispered to herself laying her face onto her hands, ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘What concerns you?’ he asked from below.
‘What concerns me,’ she laughed nervously, ‘is first we walk hundreds of miles, and then we climb freezing rocky mountains. On the way, you mutilate my hand and now you want me to leap off a cliff into thin air. That’s what concerns me, you stupid man,’ she shouted.
‘I am not a man,’ corrected Morlak.
Seren was speechless at his pedantry.
‘You will not fall,’ said the calm voice again.
‘You do not know that,’ said Seren.
‘I will not let you fall,’ he said.
‘I cannot, Morlak,’ she said ‘I am afraid.’
‘You cannot be afraid,’ replied Morlak.
‘And why is that exactly?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘now you are part Mwrllwch and Mwrllwch women do not fear!’
Seren laughed ironically up at the lightening sky.
‘Oh wonderful,’ she said sarcastically realizing he actually meant and believed every word. With a sigh, she rolled over onto her stomach again.
‘Ok, fellow Mwrllwch,’ she said eventually, ‘but if you drop me my spirit will haunt you for the rest of your days.’ She lowered her pack over the edge closely followed by the fire gourd, both of which were taken out of sight by Morlak. Immediately he was back.
‘Lower yourself over,’ he said, ‘I will not let you fall.’
She took a few last deep breaths and crawled backwards to the ledge muttering incoherent nonsense under her breath, pausing as her Reindeer-skin boots reached thin air.
‘Here goes,’ she said and her fingers searched for any grip she could as she lowered the bottom half of her body into the void. Suddenly, she felt the huge grip of Morlak’s hands circle her waist.
‘Let go,’ he said.
‘I can’t,’ she gasped clinging desperately to a small stony outcrop.
‘Seren, you must let go,’ he said quietly, ‘I will not let you fall.’
She screwed her eyes tightly shut, took a deep breath...and let go! For a split second, she felt her body become weightless as it started its plunge into the void, only to have her descent dramatically terminated as she was dragged into a tiny cleft in the rock face and fell face down onto a soil covered floor.
‘What is this place?’ she asked eventually, dusting the dirt from her clothes. ‘Is it the place of the ancestors?’
‘It is the entrance,’ he replied.
‘No wonder you managed to hide safely for so long,’ she said, ‘it would be impossible to find.’
‘We will need light,’ he said and passed her the fire gourd containing the embers.
Seren took the fire gourd and gently blew the embers to flame, casting a welcoming orange glow in the immediate area. She bent down and gathered a handful of dry moss and twigs from the cave floor, kept dry by the sheltered location, and added them to the hungry flames.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked and she nodded her confirmation.
He tied the fire gourd around the end of his spear, and holding it forward as a lantern, walked a dozen spaces along the natural corridor before ducking under a low natural stone lintel and into the space beyond.
----
The cavern was enormous, larger than any she had ever seen. The light from the gourd failed to reach the furthest places though Morlak held it up high for both their benefits.
Throughout the cavern and rising dramatically in the centre, was an enormous hill glittering and shining in the light from the gourd. Centuries of Bat droppings were piled up in a huge dome of guano, higher than the light would reach, and forming a massive subterranean hill within a mountain.
Seren gazed in wonder at the hill glistening in the fire light. Suddenly, she made a shocking realization. The shiny surface seemed to be glistening because it was moving!
‘Morlak!’ she cried suddenly. ‘The floor, it moves.’
He lowered the gourd down to cast its light closer to floor level. The massive hill of guano was covered with crawling insects. Millions upon millions of cockroaches, beetles, millipedes and crawling spiders with enormous outsized legs scurried, crawled or slithered over the stinking mound, every inch of it surface taken up with subterranean life, gorging on the never ending supply of droppings from the flying mammals roosting above. The white Land-crabs that dominated the food chain in this strange subterranean eco system quickly dismantled the odd bat carcass that had fallen from above, whether from old age, illness or even young bats that had tried to fly too s
oon.
The very sight made her skin crawl and she stepped back to avoid the inquisitive attention of the nearest insects, drawn by the vibrations of their footsteps. Morlak held up the lamp once again and they both gazed in awe at the size of the cavern high above their heads, the sheer scale dwarfing them to nothing more than minute insects themselves. Finally, Morlak broke the silence.
‘Follow me,’ he said and led the way around the edge of the cavern avoiding the worst of the filthy hill. In places its overspill had reached the walls of the cavern and the pair were forced to wade through slopes of insect covered guano, their hands constantly brushing off the over interested crawlers.
Eventually they followed a rocky path up the side of the dome, and climbed high into the caverns dark gloomy reaches. Not a minute too soon for Seren they crouched down to enter a side chamber and they left the cathedral of Bats and insects far behind as they continued deep into the cave system of Morlak’s ancestors.
Morlak and Seren continued their subterranean journey along paths chiselled out of the rock by unknown tools and worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet over countless millennia. Within the hour the tunnel suddenly stopped, a blank rock wall blocking their route.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Seren peering forward. ‘Are we lost?’
‘No,’ replied Morlak.
‘But there is no way forward’
Morlak looked at her and then upwards without saying a word. Seren looked up and just above their head was a hole in the roof just big enough to get through though.
‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked
‘It is the cave of my ancestors;’ he said quietly. ‘the way forward lies at the other side of the cave.’
She stared at him, silently sensing the solemnity of what they were about to do.
‘This is a sacred place to me and my people,’ he said, ‘I ask that you are respectful.’
‘I understand,’ she said quietly. They placed their packs on the floor and he beckoned her closer so he could help to reach the hole above their head.
‘Wait until I too have entered,’ he said and offered his hands as a foothold.
She placed her foot in his cupped hands and after bouncing a few times thrust her body weight upward, grasping for a handhold on the entrance above. Morlak pushed her upward and she pulled herself over the edge to wait for him. He threw the two packs up behind her and leapt upward to grab the same ledge, easily pulling his body weight up with his immensely strong arms.
‘Stay here,’ he said as he passed Seren’s sitting body and she waited in silence, listening to Morlak making himself busy in the darkness.
Seren felt alone and insignificant. She heard the sound of bundles of firewood being placed in the darkness as Morlak obviously prepared a fire. Staring into the unseen surroundings, her eyes caught imagined movement in the darkness or strained to hear non-existent whispers in this strange and sacred place.
Trained in the ways of the Shaman, Seren was convinced in the reality of the afterlife as indeed did all her clan, and she had witnessed things in the Shaman hut that had no natural explanation. Therefore, she could understand the strength of Morlak’s feelings regarding his ancestors, and indeed had convinced herself that she could feel the spirits occupying this place. Her thoughts were interrupted by Morlak who had come close in the dark.
‘Give me the fire,’ he said and she handed him the gourd containing the embers.
Suddenly Seren was in total darkness and only the fact that she could see the glow close by in the darkness stopped her from crying out in fear.
She concentrated on the silhouette of the Neanderthal blowing the gourd and applying the flames to the pile of bone dry brush wood he had accumulated in the centre of the cave. The hungry flames leapt upwards, instantly devouring the tinder dry firewood, and the strategically placed fire burst into glorious flames, lighting up the surrounding cave in its entirety.
Despite her knowledge of such things, Seren let out an involuntary cry of fear at the tableau set out before her frightened eyes.
The cavern was surprisingly small, almost perfectly round in shape and sitting in congress around the walls of the cave were the staring corpses of twelve dead Neanderthal all in various stages of decomposition. The movement of the light from the now roaring fire at the centre seemed to bring them to life as shadows played across empty accusatory eye sockets and gaping jaws that hung open as if screaming warnings about their sacrilegious intrusion. Seren stared at the skeletal fingers that still clutched at carefully placed weapons, though some had now fallen, as tendons had finally rotted away and given up their final task.
Some of the more recent additions to this otherworldly council still had some flesh on their bones tightly covered with yellow parchment thin skin, their cheeks sunken in and lips drawn back over ancient teeth and red hair falling about empty eye sockets, as they too screamed their silent protests.
Remnants of rotting clothing, hung from some skeletons, the dry air in the cavern delaying the decomposition process far longer than would have otherwise occurred.
Eventually, Seren’s horror eased as she took in the scene and accepted it for what it was. Her own people prepared their own dead in a similar fashion though they were usually buried deep within the soil. The only difference was that these were kept together in this cave within the heart of a mountain. Her brow furrowed as she looked around the cave. Twelve corpses were sitting on the floor and each leaned back against the fleshless skull of a young Mammoth.
‘Morlak,’ she said quietly, ‘why so few? Is this all there are?’
‘This is the council of the elders,’ he said. ‘Since the time of Gotha the Wrong-doer, Huan has sent great colds to cover the land that each lasted for many grandfathers, punishing us for hunting the Mammoth, This council sits in wait until we receive his forgiveness.’
‘Why is there a gap?’ she asked indicating an empty skull in the council circle.
‘The council waits for the final member before they can lead our people to the great sleep,’ he said.
‘Who will that be?’ she asked.
‘The one who appeases Huan.’
‘And how will that be done?’
‘I know not, but our kind will not enter the great sleep until the seat is filled and the circle is closed.’
Seren examined each corpse closely from her position sitting on the floor. The levels of decomposition seemed to increase in order around the circle of death indicating they had been placed there sequentially over countless millennia.
She stared at the oldest watcher. The skeleton was fleshless and lay in a dusty jumble of bones in a disorganized pile around the seat. Sometime in the past the vertebrae had fallen apart as the last of sinew and tendon rotted, causing the skull to fall and roll some way from its host.
‘Do you know them all? She asked quietly.
‘Their names are taught to us on our first visit,’ he said.
‘And when is that?’
‘When the Mwrllwch young cut their Swaden, they are brought here to learn the ancestor’s names. They stay here until the tribe comes back to collect them’.
‘Your young are left in this place on their own?’ she asked incredulously. ‘For how long?’
‘The sun will set three times before the adults return,’ he said.
‘But who teaches them the names?’ she asked, already guessing the horrific answer.
‘They do,’ he said and indicated the council of the elders.
Seren held her breath and stared around the circle aghast. During all her training, she had been made aware of magic and the supernatural, but mostly it had been the understanding and application of the very world about her. Contact with the dead had been limited to listening to the ramblings of hunters or Shaman during herb induced trances and she had never actually seen any evidence that it was possible to communicate with the dead.
‘Surely that can’t be true,’ she said, ‘they are long dead.’
>
‘I learnt the name of my Swaden in this very cave,’ he said, ‘I also learnt the names of the ancestors. I was seven cycles old and I was on my own.’
Despite Seren being hungry for more information, Morlak refused to divulge any more and got ready to leave as the fire burnt down.
‘Morlak,’ she said, ‘if you know these people, who is the ancient one who sits there?’ she indicated the oldest decomposing skeleton that had caught her interest moments before.
‘He is the one who has waited the longest,’ he said, ‘it is Gotha the wrong-doer!’ With that, he shouldered his pack, and after lighting a fresh torch, he led Seren out of the fascinating cave leaving the ancestors to their never-ending vigil in the darkness as the fire died down.
----
They left the small cave through a tiny tunnel at the base of the rear wall, crawling on hands and knees for many minutes, finally standing as they entered another cavern this time much bigger. Morlak helped Seren to her feet.
‘Here lay my people,’ he said simply and held up the torch high to cast its light around the cave.
Seren thought the ancestors cave was astonishing, but this was just as, if not more incredible. Stretching back as far as the light reached was row after row of clean skeleton bones and skulls, neatly laid out in regimented ranks.
Seren gasped in disbelief at the number of skeletons in the cave. Thousands upon thousands lay in every corner and on every natural shelf. The white of the bones gleamed as they reflected the flickering light of Morlak’s torch and the shadows of countless eye sockets peered up from their chilling final resting place as if in hope that at last the time had come.
Gradually, she realized there was something fundamentally different with these corpses when compared the ancients in the previous cave. Not one of these bodies had a scrap of rotting cloth, flesh or skin hanging from their ghoulish frames to interrupt the clean macabre spectacle of their laid bare bones.
‘Morlak,’ she asked, ‘why is there no flesh on any of their bones?’
‘When our dead are brought here they are first laid in the cave of the Yslum,’ he said, ‘the insects strip their bones clean and we bring them here.’