The SealEaters, 20,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  The old man looked at him. He looked at the four men who brought him. “Untie him,” he ordered. They complied immediately.

  “He speaks the truth,” the old man said.

  The woman translated.

  Torq sat cross-legged. He was quiet and tried to be acquiescent without being subservient.

  The old man said, “Tomorrow, we will help this man leave. Prepare travel food for him,” he told the women. “No one will follow him when he leaves. He is free to continue his trek.”

  The old man motioned Torq to his hut. He showed Torq where to put his sleeping skins. They returned outside and women brought the evening meal. After eating, they retired to their huts and to sleep.

  Torq fed his squirrel by putting a little of the food in his pocket while they ate. He did it so it was not a noticeable thing. The squirrel did not come out. Torq pulled his sleeping cover over him and went black.

  The old man slipped out of the hut and met the man who had put the spear against Torq’s side. He returned to his hut with a smile on his face.

  In the morning the people shared their morning meal with Torq and then they brought food to add to his backpack. He was grateful and thanked them and their chief. He turned and walked to the path.

  Once away from the village, Torq lifted the squirrel from his pocket. He talked to the squirrel briefly and then put the animal back in the pocket.

  Torq tried to remember to keep his alertness heightened. He had been completely unprepared for the people who found him and carried him like an animal to their chief.

  The day was warm and it became warmer as he went on. Most all the leaves were gone and they crunched on the path under his feet. The path went on into small mountains, and he traveled up and down with ease, his body having become accustomed to the trek again.

  Torq had a sense of accomplishment. He finally recognized the area into which he had trekked. The cache was not far from him.

  Suddenly from what seemed like nowhere, Torq heard strangled yells coming from several directions. Swift spears struck him from arms he could not see well. He fell to the ground, knowing that two of the wounds would likely prove fatal. What, he wondered, caused this attack? Then, he saw the face of one of the attackers. It was the man who had put his spear against his side. The men came from their concealed places and pulled their spears from Torq’s body. They grabbed his hands and feet and threw his body off the path. They turned and left in silence.

  Torq lay there in agony. He was bleeding profusely. The squirrel climbed out of his pocket. It sat on his chest looking at Torq’s face. The animal went to the place on Torq’s side where the blood was pumping out. He returned to look at Torq’s face. It chittered and then jumped off the man and climbed rapidly up a tree where he would watch the man below.

  “What treachery!” Torq shouted. “What evil treachery!”

  Torq became dizzy, he felt nauseated. He envisioned the cache. He thought of the people at the Cove. He’d not make it to the cache. In a short time, Torq no longer breathed air.

  Chapter 7

  Akla’s Story

  Akla had decided to explore the area. He climbed the hill to the east and surveyed the land. Suddenly someone gagged Akla and carried him off to the east, far from the place where moments before he’d stood to survey the lowland on either side of the rise. As he dangled from his own spear pole held over the shoulders of two of the four men, Akla could hear Murke’s plaintive calls far away. He was desperate to answer, but could make no noise. He did not understand why these stealthy people wanted him. He did not realize that the men were stepping carefully from rock to rock at the top of the ridge blocked from view by great trees, so they left no tracks. Akla noticed all of the men had hair shorter than shoulder length, and they had white headbands to keep the hair from their faces.

  After a half day’s walk on the ridge, slipping in and out of forests, the people began their descent to the river on the south side of the ridge. They dumped him into the boat and quickly climbed in and began to row. His spear lay in the boat, but not where he could make use of it. They went with the current, but rowed rapidly, as if chased. Akla was surely out of hearing distance, but the men did not remove the gag. They eventually reached the sea, and they turned to the north. Akla was surprised to see great chunks of ice drifting down the coast. He knew the ice chunks came this far to the south, but the number of them surprised him. They rowed hard, moving north. Eventually they came to a river that Akla remembered. They rowed up that river. Akla recognized the placement of the cache left for the SealEaters’ return to the Cove on the second summer. It was either not evident to the rowers or they did not consider it something to examine, for it appeared untouched. The rowers moved quietly up the river further and further to the north.

  The natives removed his gag when it was time for him to eat. He tried to converse, but they ignored him. As soon as he finished eating, they’d replace his gag. They would not let him sit in the boat. He remained tied up and lying down. Akla’s attempts to converse were rebuffed. He wondered what could possibly cause them to act the way they did. He had concluded that the four men who captured him did not have authority to kill him. Apparently there was a reason for his capture, but he could not conceive of anything that made sense with respect to the treatment he was given.

  Day after day the river they followed narrowed and became shallow. They reached a place where travel was no longer possible by their boat. The four men and Akla stepped out of the boat. The tall one made it clear that Akla would continue to wear the gag, but he would walk between two of the men. They left his hands tied behind him. Akla had tried his best to learn words or make some sense of their speech, but he had been unable to learn it. It was unlike the words of the natives whose languages he’d tried to speak. He was frustrated. Akla also worried about Murke. He knew Murke would be concerned about him and would do everything he could to find him. Akla was fairly certain there would be no way Murke could find him.

  The men walked over some hills and when they reached the top, the huge ice sheet lay before them. The vastness of it startled Akla. From above, the whiteness of it in the sun virtually blinded him. Akla had seen the ice on the sea up close. This was different—endless as far as he could see. One of the men pushed him. They were moving. Akla responded, finding it hard to keep from staring at the ice, despite the pain it caused his eyes. As they walked they could hear the ice make cracking noises and groans from time to time. Akla concluded that the ice had a spirit that spoke. It did not sound happy. Not happy at all.

  Akla hoped that the walk would be a brief one, so that he could find out finally what the abduction was all about. That was not to be. The men did remove the gag finally. Akla looked at it, wondering what evil it nurtured after having been in his mouth for so long. He hadn’t even been able to pick his teeth. His mouth felt unclean.

  He had anxiety where the huge ice sheet was concerned. He wondered, if it became wet below from melting, and the ice slid forward, would they be able to move out of the way fast enough? The huge ice frightened him as it had on the water. He knew what ice floating on water could do. What this might do, he did not know. As they walked, seemingly in response to his concerns, a large chunk of ice split with a thunderous crack. It fell off to the land below, shattering into splinters. Akla jumped at the ear shattering cracking sound. The other men, he noticed, were not the least bit alarmed. He found that puzzling, unless, he reasoned, they were accustomed to the event.

  They entered yet another forest and continued their trek. This time the path was almost invisible. He had counted the days since they left the river. There had been seventeen days of trekking. He was tired of the walk and the uncertainty. Disgusted with the silence, Akla wanted to be able to talk to another person. He noted that these four men talked less than any men he’d ever known. He was beyond caring why.

  One day he looked ahead and there was a human-made place at the top of a small hill. He’d seen villages, but this was no villa
ge. It was huge. There were stones on stones making a wall. Inside the wall there were stone structures. There were many people there. Akla was dumbfounded. The hill top at the north end was very close to the ice. It was like nothing he had ever imagined or could imagine. His interest grew. These four men had abducted him to bring him to this place? He could not make sense of any of it. Still they continued on in silence. It took the largest part of the day to reach the place.

  They had to pass through a narrow opening to enter the walled area. One of the four men spoke to the person who seemed responsible for who might enter. They were waved through quickly. Akla tried to absorb in his thinking place as much of the place as he possibly could as the men moved quickly into the center of the area. There was a structure that was taller and much bigger than anything in the walled area. They went to that structure. There were three steps that were larger than most men could easily climb. Akla wondered at that. They climbed with difficulty to the place where the lowest terrace leveled off. The structure had three terraces.

  A man walked up to the leader of their group and told the tall man to go up one additional level. They climbed three more too large steps. At the second level they were led to a room inside the center. All five men stood, waiting. The wait was a long one. A man entered and told them to follow. They went through corridors and entered a large room where a man occupied a seating place carved of wood. The arms of the seating place looked like mastodons, each mastodon in a different pose. The seated man rested his arms on the backs of the mastodons. The carving was the best representation of an animal Akla had ever seen, looking so life-like he could almost imagined it moved. The carving was of brown wood, not the light wood he’d seen in the villages he’d visited. The four men lowered themselves to their knees on the floor. Akla continued standing until a man pushed him roughly, pointing to the other men. Akla adopted the kneeling pose they took. He was not comfortable.

  The man who led them into this large room spoke to the man in the mastodon seating place. The seated man said, “Dom?”

  Akla assumed the man on the mastodon seating place was the chief, and the tall man, the apparent leader of the four men who captured him, appeared to be named Dom. Akla could follow none of the rest of what was said, as Dom spoke many words fast.

  Akla noticed that the man he thought of as chief seemed sometimes pleased; sometimes not pleased. The chief asked a few more questions. The man called Dom answered. To Akla it all seemed unreal. He wondered whether he’d gone black and dreamed. Surely, that was not the case, his knees reported.

  The man on the mastodon seating place called for Huthang. The man told Huthang to take Akla. He wanted Huthang to teach him the language and to learn why the man was there, from where he had come, what he wanted there, how many people came with him. Once he found out those things and could speak their language, Tai Oh, the seated man, wanted to speak to him.

  Huthang signed for Akla to follow him, and he understood and followed. Akla noticed that his spear lay on the floor by Dom. Akla stopped following Huthang and reached for his spear. All four of his captors began to rise to prevent him from taking his spear. Huthang turned and signed to Akla to follow. Reluctantly, Akla left his spear in the custody of his captors.

  Huthang led Akla below the building accessed by steps of ordinary size. Akla estimated that the rooms he saw were underground, though they were lined with stones. Huthang showed him a seating place and signed for him to sit there. Huthang sat on a seating place exactly like his across from Akla. Akla was surprised that the seating place was comfortable.

  Huthang began the lessons in their language. He started as most people do with names. He introduced himself and asked Akla’s name. Akla learned quickly, which pleased Huthang very much. Akla felt a great sense of relief just to be able to begin communicating. He had been starved for it.

  As the lessons progressed day by day, Akla learned that the walled city was a place for learning. It was the place where the Niktonkata power lay. The Niktonkata were an ancient people in the land. They had much knowledge of the stars; the land on which Akla had travelled; and the ice that lay on the land. They made it their goal to know what happened all across the land east of the great north-south river. They had some knowledge of the land west of the great river, but it was not the same as east of the river.

  Akla learned that Tai Oh sent men he called spies out over the land to report on what they saw. His supply of spies was vast. Spies were identified by their white headbands. All the natives in the land knew about Tai Oh. They stood in great fear of the man and his spies. Most of the time the spies did not contact the natives but rather stealthily observed them from a distance, reporting their finds on the development of the villages. The spies in some cases had learned the languages of the natives. Sometimes they abducted a person from a village to learn from them at the walled place, which Akla learned was called Uhurkamakono, or land beside the great ice. Uhurkamakono had another name, Niktonkata North, which made no sense to Akla.

  When Akla shared that he found the presence of the ice frightening as if it held a menace, Huthang laughed. He explained that every cycle of seasons for many, many numbers of years, the ice had been advancing. It moved south at the rate of one to ten arm lengths a cycle of seasons. To Akla that seemed very slow. Huthang explained that at that rate in the lifetime of one born at the present, the ice would reach their wall. He said in that case, the place would be evacuated. A new place would be prepared. He also explained that someday, the ice would melt and go away.

  Akla wondered how the man knew so much. How could he know the ice would go away? He asked. Huthang told him that the men had been living there forever. The Niktonkata had kept information forever. That let them know what to expect and how to live to survive. They measured many things, Huthang told him. Measuring ice movement was only one.

  Huthang had gathered the information Tai Oh wanted from the man. He also had found Akla to be among the brightest of people they’d captured, and he wanted the man as an assistant. For that he would have to convince Tai Oh. Huthang asked for an opportunity to speak with Tai Oh. He had to wait several days, but finally, his chance arose.

  Tai Oh motioned for Huthang to approach.

  “I have learned what you wish to know and have also come to ask a favor,” Huthang said obsequiously.

  “Tell me what I wish to know,” Tai Oh said, running his finger over the carved mastodon’s head.

  “Akla is from the land beyond the eastern sea. His people are called SealEaters. They live by the sea where seals haul out on land near their village called the Cove. Opportunistically, they began to eat seals and have a marine diet. He and twelve men traveled by boat, eating seals along the way and melting ice for water, to this land. Remarkably, the explorers managed to stay together and all arrived safely here. They seek a new land for their people, because they are losing their land to the advance of ice and to mountain barriers which wall them in from warring people.”

  “Do you see them as a threat?”

  “No. Even if their people come, they number less than a hundred. Some would be lost at sea. Some may refuse to migrate. They are not a warring people.”

  “Our people have examined the spear point he brought. There is a real desire to learn this new method of making such points. Talk to Uti. You said you wish to ask a favor. What is it you would have?”

  “I would like to make Akla an assistant.”

  “You already have many assistants, Huthang,” Tai Oh said flatly.

  “Akla has a special gift when it comes to reasoning. He solves problems and could be a valuable addition to our pursuit of knowledge, perhaps even our wisdom.”

  “You jest!”

  “No, I do not,” Huthang said, holding his viewpoint as strongly as was politically wise.

  Tai Oh stared at him for some time. Huthang remained calm, waiting.

  “Then take him. You know well what we need to know. Just be certain, Huthang, that he doesn’t best you.”<
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  “I shall keep him under my knee,” Huthang promised.

  “See that you do!” Tai Oh said.

  “Do you wish to see him?” Huthang asked.

  “No. Just keep him available in case I have a future desire to meet with him. That’s all Huthang.”

  Huthang bowed and left the room quietly. He was delighted to be able to keep Akla. Otherwise he’d have been sent to manual labor maintaining the walled place or, perhaps, destroyed. They never freed abductees.

  Outside Tai Oh’s meeting room, Huthang headed for Uti. He found him sitting on a smooth rock under trees by the common well.

  “I understand you wish to see Akla, my new assistant,” Huthang said without greeting.

  “I do,” Uti replied.

  “How about high sun tomorrow, here at the common well?” Huthang asked.

  “That would be good. So, you were permitted to keep the man?” Uti asked.

  “Yes, he is worth keeping. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t doubt your assessment, Huthang.”

  “Have a good day, my brother,” Huthang said, turning.

  “You, also,” Uti replied.

  Huthang went to his meeting room and had Akla brought to him. He told Akla to sit on the seating place. Akla complied.

  “You must listen well, for your safety,” Huthang said seriously.

  Akla nodded.

  “I met with Tai Oh and gave him the information you shared with me. It was information he told me to gather, and he was pleased with what he heard. This place lives for information. What I want you to understand is this. Tai Oh and those who came before him have an interest in what occurs on all the land east of the great north-south river, and Tai Oh sends spies out to gather information. Tai Oh knows more about what goes on than any other on this land. He is like a god to us, his knowledge is so vast.”