The SealEaters, 20,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  Wen sat by the hearth. He kept his hearing focused on his father. He watched the fire’s glow and the occasional flames. He wasn’t sure that he would go black that night. Dark fell on the forest. Stars came out in amazing brilliance. The whippoorwill began its odd song. For the first time in his life, Wen felt alone and helpless. He wanted to cry, but he knew that at this time, his father would need him to be strong.

  In the cave Mongwire arose. He no longer felt the horrible pain, just slightly disoriented. Oddly, there was a great light in the cave. He could hear far in the distance where the light was brightest his parents calling him. It was strangely compelling. He hurried to them. Suddenly he stopped. Wen, he remembered. Wen is only thirteen. He’s alone. From the distance he heard his mother and father calling. They kept telling him all would be well. Mongwire realized that he no longer breathed air. He could see his body on the sleeping place below him. He was surprised to notice he lacked feelings of emotion he thought he should have had, but the thought passed like a vapor. He went to his parents irresistibly drawn, his thoughts of Wen evaporating the closer he came to his parents. They reached out to him and he was pleased to see them. He felt at home. The new place he’d been seeking across the sea was right before his eyes. He’d found his new home.

  Wen listened and waited. At one point during the night he nearly fell over, having momentarily gone black. He jerked himself awake and listened. He heard nothing from his father. He wanted desperately to know how his father was doing, but he didn’t want to take the chance of wakening him, if he had gone black. He crept to the cave entrance and listened. All was quiet, so he returned to his place and resumed watching the fire. Morning came as it does slowly in the mountains. Wen waited, giving his father plenty of time to awaken. Finally he could stand it no longer. He went to the cave entrance and looked inside. He was utterly and completely shocked. His father lay on his back, mouth hanging weirdly and eyes askew. Wen knew instantly what had happened. He did not understand why.

  He went immediately to close his father’s eyes, for the visual effect was something he couldn’t bear to see. Then the reality fully hit him. His father had died. He loved him so much. He collapsed to the ground in tears. As the initial grief began to subside, the one thing he had not thought to consider came like a hit to a boat from a hidden, underwater log. He was utterly alone in a strange land where he was not due to meet other SealEaters for two years. In some ways Wen was mature way beyond his years; in others, he was what he was, a thirteen-year-old boy. He sat at his eating place, put his elbows on his knees, put his hands on his head and wept again. A bird landed on a tree branch where the deer was tied. The bird scolded him very loudly. Wen didn’t hear it.

  Finally, when Wen’s tears were emptied, he stood up woodenly and looked for a place in the land where he could dig a suitable grave. Morning had turned to evening. He was hollow inside, flat emotionally. He had something to do. It was distasteful. He would have a thousand times preferred not to do it. He had no choice. Wen decided to use the place under the hanging deer. Somehow, though he didn’t understand why, it seemed appropriate.

  Wen dug with the scapula of the deer for hours. There were rocks in the soil. Wen was in no hurry. He simply dug. By night he had a suitable hole in the ground. He took his father’s body and laid it carefully in the grave on his side with his knees bent and raised to his chest. He had no ochre and there were no nearby flowers. He sat at the edge of the grave staring at his father’s body. More tears fell. Wen wondered where they came from. He had shed so many tears that day. He stood and slowly began to fill the grave back. When he finished, he placed rocks atop the mounded earth.

  Having eaten nothing that day, he entered the cave and went black. He had already decided to leave the place the following morning after eating some of the deer meat. He’d travel south hoping to find other humans. He was desperately lonely and frightened. He was not the hunter his father was. He would find his way to the path down the mountain and over the hill to the boat. He would head to the confluence of the two rivers. That was a typical place for people to live. He hoped to find people there.

  Wen dreamed that night of a great monster chasing him. He ran and ran as fast as he could run, but the monster kept gaining on him. He remembered the dream when he waked up. He looked all around, but the area was as calm and quiet as it had ever been.

  Wen sat up on his sleeping place. He looked at the things he had to decide to take from the cave. He wanted all the spears. His father was an expert point maker. He was far from good. His father’s backpack was larger. Maybe, he thought, he could take both backpacks. His father’s furred skin was bigger and of greater warmth. He wanted that one. He decided to try to carry both furred and hairless skins. He’d take all the jerky. Unlike his father, what he ate was not of great significance. He did not tire of eating the same thing meal after meal.

  Wen forgot about eating. He gathered all the things together that he chose to take and left. Carrying the smaller backpack filled entirely with jerky was something he could manage. His backpack had the unfurred skins, his and his father’s bowls, a few stones his father carried, the fire starter, cordage, and his musk oxen discarded shed. Carrying all the spears was hard, so he tied most of them upright to his father’s backpack. It also carried the two furred skins, rolled tight and tied on top of the backpack. The backpack fully loaded and with additions was extremely heavy. He was glad he didn’t have terribly far to go to the canoe.

  Going down the mountain and across the hill took the whole day. Spears kept coming loose from the tied cordage, and he feared breaking a point. He battled to make it to the water, not eating at all but pushing onward. Night was coming on when he reached the boat. The boat was tied. He carefully placed his treasures in the boat and tied them to the edges. He climbed into the boat, laying a furred skin in the bottom of the boat since there was no water inside. He opened his backpack and took out a few strips of jerky. He chewed it while his thinking place remained silent.

  The vague sense of his dream washed over him. It was disturbing. He looked all around and listened carefully to the noises. Nothing was the least unusual. A great groaning noise split through the area, but Wen knew well what made that sound. The ice sheet was moving. That’s all. No monstrous thing of the dream time. He wondered whether the dream he had was from hearing a noise from the ice sheet while he had gone black. He didn’t think that was it. Something gnawed at him. Each time he felt he was coming close to understanding, it slipped away.

  After watching the stars for a while, Wen pulled the furred skin over him and went black in the boat.

  As the sun rose over the hilltop to the east, two men in a dugout rowed upriver. They noticed the boat in which Wen slept. It looked like the boat they sought. They’d never seen a boat quite like it. It was different from and larger than theirs. It was made of a frame covered with a skin unlike any skin they’d seen. They saw the boy in the boat and wondered whether he was alive. They pulled their boat to shore and quietly approached the boat with the boy. Wen woke up and was frightened when he saw the two men. He tried to separate himself from the furred skin, but the exit was in the direction of the two men. It was awkward. Being frightened made him reflect back to the dream. In it the more he feared the closer the monster came. Wen stood up in the boat and yelled at the men.

  The men were surprised and halted. Wen continued his bombastic rhetoric, ordering them to leave. He said just about anything he could imagine to appear strong.

  The men were seasoned warriors. They realized the boy was young. They credited him with bravery, but they caught him and held him by his arms.

  They calmed him down and the three of them walked to a flat place where they could sit.

  The older of the two men began to ask questions. Wen didn’t understand their language, but he seemed to know they wanted to know who he was and how he came to be there.

  He said, “I am Wen.” He pointed to his chest and said, “Wen.” Then he pointed bac
k once at each of the men.

  The older one said, “Akti,” while pointing to his chest.

  The other man said, “Doho.”

  Wen repeated their names carefully. He felt a sense of relief, because the men had not shown any violence towards him. Wen listened to every word the men spoke. He knew that he could only communicate by learning their language.

  Akti said, “How old are you?” He pointed to the sun and then stood by a tree, pointing. He pulled off leaves. Then he acted out cold by shivering and appearing to pull a skin over his shoulders. Then he stopped pretending to shiver and pointed to the tree again.

  Wen understood. He took a stick and made thirteen marks in the sand.

  Doho counted the marks and said, “Thirteen. Wen, thirteen years,”

  Wen repeated nodding to show he understood, “Wen, thirteen years.” He added, “Akti? Doho?”

  Akti drew twenty-eight lines in the sand, and said “twenty-eight.” Doho used the same process to tell that he was twenty-seven.

  Wen was struggling to keep track of all the words.

  Through the use of sign language and acting, Akti asked Wen where his father was. Wen burst into tears. It took him a while to control his emotion. Even with the two strangers, Wen felt terribly alone. He tried to explain what happened to Mongwire. He acted out pain in his chest and rubbing his left arm. He really didn’t understand what other pain Mongwire might have had. He acted out digging while tears flowed.

  The two men could understand enough to know that Wen was grieving and also frightened at being alone. They asked carefully where he came from, because the boy did not look like any of the people they knew in the area. Clearly he spoke in a way with which they were unfamiliar.

  Akti made it clear that he was to come with them. They tied his boat to theirs and told him to step into their boat in the center. Wen did as told. He knew he was out of options. The men seemed good to him.

  As they rowed Wen practiced the words until he felt certain he wouldn’t forget what he learned. Then he put his hand in the water and in his own language said, “What’s this?”

  Doho told him, “River.” Doho turned to face Wen. He picked up a handful of water. Pointing to it he said, “Water.” He pointed sweepingly to the river and said, “River.”

  Wen practiced the words first in his thinking place and then aloud, so he could hear himself say them, to see whether they sounded right.

  While practicing “river” Doho turned around and smiled.

  When Wen began to practice “water,” Doho turned around and said, “Water,” emphasizing the t. Wen had reduced the t sound to a d sound, the SealEater word for water was wudah, close but not the same.

  Wen was careful to make the t sound and Doho nodded with a smile.

  The men and Wen traveled for four days. Wen wondered why the men were there, because once they found him, they seemed to have no other reason to be on the river. They told him they were returning to their home. The answer didn’t tell him anything.

  Wen was doing well enough with the language that by the time they reached the men’s home, he was able to converse in very basic language. What he had discovered is that the languages had differences, they were not that different from his own. He had been able to adjust easily. The thinking pattern behind the language was the same.

  They arrived at evening in time for their evening meal. All three of them were very hungry. The people were surprised to see a boy in the boat. The two men had gone upriver because there had been two children who said they’d seen two men row upriver in a strange boat. The two children came forth and identified the boat the men towed home as the one they’d seen going upriver. On the front of the boat was a carving of a strange animal’s head, one they’d never seen, so they could not tell anyone what it was. It was a carving of a seal’s head. None of them had ever seen a seal. Just before entering the water, but above enough that dragging the boat to shore wouldn’t remove them, there were either the two front legs of the seal or fins like fish have. The people could not determine what the projections were. In the back of the boat there were two very odd looking carved things that were not feet. They looked like double fish fins. The people who observed the boat wondered at the animal that appeared to be a land animal with fish fins. Sinehaught walked down to the river’s edge where they’d pulled up the strange boat and looked at it carefully. Never in his sixty-five years had he seen anything like it.

  The people gathered to eat, but they were eager to hear about this new boy who had come to their home. The gentle hum of normal eating conversation was silent as all ate as fast as possible.

  Wen looked up and noticed a girl who appeared about his age staring at him. She was bold, he thought, for the girl didn’t look away when he noticed her. Instead without expression she looked right into his eyes. He blushed.

  Tapti was confused when she saw Wen blush. She was curious. She didn’t mean to cause him discomfort. He was just different and those differences inflamed her desire to know more. She looked away.

  People gathered around a small hearth fire. The Chief asked Akti to tell what happened.

  Akti spoke slowly, “We found the boat five days upriver from here. It was well concealed in the watergrass. The reason we found it is that Wen—that’s the boy’s name—had fallen asleep in the boat and was covered with a fur. We saw the fur above the watergrass. We have asked Wen many questions. He learns our language fast; his use of signs is commendable. His people are spread out in this land looking for a place where they can come. They live across the salt sea where the sun rises. They used boats to cross the sea, eating seals, like the animal carved on the boat, along the way. The ice has caused seals to come to the beach where they live by the sea. The number of seals is decreasing so they need to find a new land. There are wars beyond the mountains that surround them on land. There’s nowhere for them to go.”

  Akti continued. “Doho and I asked him how he was there with no father. He broke down in grief and wept. His father died from chest and arm pain. He buried him. He was frightened, for he’d seen no people, and he was alone in this big land. He’d never been alone. At solstice in two years, all his people plan to gather at the place where our river enters the sea. From there they’ll decide whether to bring their people here. This is something to consider for us. Do we wish to see others move to our land? I hope I’ve understood correctly.”

  Doho broke in, “There is room in this land for all, Akti. Would you try to stop them?”

  The conversation was moving a little fast for Wen. He had the feeling that some of these people might not welcome his people to this land, though he could not understand why.

  “I’m just mentioning it because we have great hunting. With more people, the hunting will be affected.

  “Akti,” Kalu spoke up, “The next people to us are a five-day boat trip or a seven-day hike over the mountain trails to the west. There is food for all here.”

  Akti continued, “I like Wen. His people may be very good people. Just think how it would be if many, many people decided to come here. It could be a bad thing for us. I just feel something pressing me to say these words. Their arrival could mean war someday for us.”

  Doho replied, “Akti, our Creator, the Great Spirit who guides us, has made it clear for us to be especially kind to those who travel, to those in need, to those who struggle. You would go against the few stories we have remaining from the old times?”

  Akti was feeling pressed into a place where he was not comfortable at all. It was as though some spirit had put the ideas he spoke into his thoughts and he just said the words. He genuinely liked Wen, and personally he had no problem with his people moving to this place. He was wrapped in confusion.

  “Sinehaught, will you help me?” Doho asked quietly.

  Sinehaught looked down. He took a stick he’d been poking hearth surround rocks with and began to make parallel wavy lines in the sand. All eyes were on their medicine man.

  Finally, looking
up with sad eyes, the old man began to speak. “Akti, you speak a truth out of time.”

  Everyone looked at Sinehaught as if he misspoke.

  Sinehaught continued staring at the sand, as if he could see the future in it, “At some time far from now, boats will come with white wings, as birds on the water. When they come the ice will be gone from the sea. No great pieces of ice will flow past the shore. The ice that rests on the land north from here will have melted. Those who come in the bird boats will come here pretending peace. We will go to war against them as they flow over the land as clouds flow over the sky, and we will lose the war. The people of the bird boats will do unspeakable things, thinking they do what’s right. They will not understand that the land on which they walk is sacred to the Creator. They will waste and ruin. They will not, however, kill all of us. We will preserve the truth. We are given the truth and we are told to preserve it. That is so far into the future. By the time it occurs, Wen and all his people who come here will be part of us. You speak the truth but not of this time. You speak the truth for us and Wen’s people, if they choose to come. Do not try to apply what you’ve seen to our time. Welcome Wen’s people. Their boats have no white wings. No bird boats. Sinehaught laid down the stick.

  “Thank you, Sinehaught,” Doho said.

  “That’s quite alright,” Sinehaught replied. “When the spirits push you to speak,” he looked into Doho’s and then Akti’s eyes, “it’s important that you do. Just remember to do what you did. Ask for someone who understands to make sense of what you said.”

  “I will do as you say, Sinehaught,” Doho replied. Akti still struggled with his having spoken a truth out of time, a truth that chilled him to the bone after Sinehaught made sense of it.

  “Wen’s people made a dangerous voyage,” Ohmut said, looking at Wen. He assessed Wen as having done something that took enormous courage.

  People murmured assent all around. A few of them had actually seen the sea. None had been on its waters.