The Great Flood

by Terry Deary

  Suddenly the herd seemed to spring onto the tips of their hooves like one animal. A moment later they began to leap forward. As the stag passed the boulder Mor threw his spear and it found the animal’s heart. The stag fell as the rest of the herd raced away.

  Jay rose to her feet. She saw what had scared the deer. A group of twenty hunters were running down the path from the sunset side of the mountain. They gave a cry of anger when they saw their targets speed away from them. Then they saw Mor standing over the dead stag and walked over to it with their spears raised.

  Mor pulled his spear from the beast but the stone tip snapped off and he was left holding a stick. When he shook that at the hunters they laughed. Four of the strangers began to pull the stag back the way they had come.

  Mor pulled out his dagger but two hunters grabbed his arms, tore the knife from his hand and threw him to the ground. They began to prod at Mor with the sharp tips of their hunting spears and he roared with pain. The hunters laughed.

  A voice cried, ‘Stop. Leave him.’ Jay had run over the grass as swift as a deer, and stood between the men and her father.

  They spoke with a strange tongue but Jay understood enough of their words. ‘We shall kill you, child, and then we shall kill your father. Then we shall feed you to our hunting dogs.’

  ‘Mor killed the stag. It’s ours,’ Jay said, furious, ignoring the spears pointed her way.

  ‘These spears say it is ours,’ the leader said, and he drew back his arm to throw his. Sorrel had walked silently across the grass and stood beside Jay. ‘Kill us both. Without Mor to hunt we will have a miserable life.’

  ‘We shall go to the Great Spirit together,’ Jay agreed.

  One of the hunters stepped up to the leader and said, ‘Kill the man. Keep the women to work as slaves in our camp.’

  ‘That is good,’ the leader agreed, nodding.

  ‘We shall run away,’ Jay said.

  ‘We shall hunt you down and bring you back,’ the leader roared.

  ‘We won’t work. We won’t slave for the Evil Spirit’s people.’

  The leader’s eyes grew hot and that made Jay think of her Grandfather’s cooking fire. Poor Grandfather. She never thought she’d reach the Great Spirit’s world before him.

  The hunter said, ‘They are weak and too much trouble. Kill them.’

  The leader nodded. ‘You are right.’ He gave a toothless grin and pulled a stone knife from his belt.

  At that moment, a smooth sea-pebble struck him between the eyes, and he fell to the ground before the evil grin had time to slide off his face.

  The other hunters looked over the heads of Jay and Sorrel and their faces froze in terror as more stones rained down on them.

  6

  Ruined House

  Jay turned her head to see where the saving stones were coming from. An old man had a leather sling and a leather pouch full of stones. The girl gave a laugh, hardly believing what she saw.

  ‘Grandfather?’

  The tribe from the west were running for home, dragging their senseless leader with them. It wasn’t Grandfather’s stones that frightened them but a group of twenty warriors from the east side of the mountain.

  ‘Follow them,’ came an order from the back of the eastern war band.

  Their leader was a small man, not much taller than Jay. His dark eyes were close together and his voice cheeped like an angry wren. He walked towards the family with the stiff-legged strut of a cockerel. Two large warriors were his bodyguards and they stood at each skinny shoulder.

  The chief reached them at the same time as Grandfather who wrapped an arm around Jay. ‘You saved us, Grandfather,’ the girl said.

  The leader of the east mountain tribe chirped. ‘No. I saved you with my fearless fighters.’

  ‘Thank you, chief,’ Mor said as he struggled to his feet.

  ‘What are you doing here on my land? On my hunting ground?’ the little man asked, with a fierce stare.

  ‘Our home by the lake near the sea was starting to flood,’ Sorrel explained, and pointed down the mountain. ‘We needed to move to higher ground.’

  ‘Then you can join my tribe. You can slave for me. I saved your lives so you owe me your lives.’

  Jay groaned but Grandfather said quietly, ‘We have always been free people, chief.’

  ‘We have nearly finished building a new home over there,’ Mor added. ‘We will live there and not trouble you.’

  The little man’s thin lips went tight and his face sour as he looked over to the house. He spoke slowly. ‘I do not think so. This is my land. I will not permit you to build a house there. It is more than my life is worth.’

  ‘It’s one small house,’ Grandfather said.

  ‘It may be one small house to you,’ the little man sneered. ’But if I let you go ahead it could be the first of many houses. There could be a whole village. My tribe would have new rivals. No, no. I cannot allow it.’

  The chief’s warriors were dragging the stag down the trail along with prisoners from the western tribe who had stolen it from Mor. ‘I’ll let you keep my stag,’ Mor offered.

  The little man breathed in so his chest stuck out and he jabbed a finger at the family. ‘I think you will find we are going to keep the dead animal anyway. In return I will let you live.’

  ‘In our new house?’ Jay asked.

  ‘No. You must take that down and find somewhere else away from my tribe’s land,’ the man said. He pointed at his bodyguards and then at the family’s new house. ‘That thing stands in the middle of the feeding grounds for the deer. It will wreck our hunting. Tear it down.’

  Jay gasped, Sorrel moaned and Mor reached for the knife he had dropped on the ground. But Grandfather stepped forward and put his foot on the knife. ‘No Mor. This is a battle we can’t win.’

  The little chief strutted away with his cockerel walk to watch his guards obey him.

  ‘He can’t destroy two days of our work,’ he raged.

  ‘He can. Let him.’

  ‘Where will we live?’ Sorrel asked, tears filling her eyes as she watched the guards shaking the house poles until the damp mud began to fall off and the woven branches spring apart.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Jay said, hugging the old man’s arm. ‘You saved my father’s life. You saved us all.’

  ‘I climbed this mountain to tell you something,’ Grandfather said.

  ‘He couldn’t save our home,’ Mor grumbled.

  ‘Oh, yes I can,’ was the reply. ‘Let’s walk back down the mountain and I’ll show you how. Pass me the shaft of your broken spear,’ Grandfather said. ‘I need something to lean on as we walk.’

  The family gathered what they could from the ruined house. They turned their backs on the crackling sound of their home being pulled apart and walked back down towards the sea. The little chief was telling his guards, ‘I told them. More than my life’s worth to let them stay.’

  ‘So why did you come up the mountain, Grandfather?’ Jay asked.

  ‘I shall tell you,’ the old man said with a soft smile.

  7

  The Dream Trees

  It was easier going down the mountain than climbing it, but still the old man had to stop and rest from time to time. ‘I told you I would slow you down,’ he sighed.

  ‘You told us you were going to sleep in the woods and talk to the Great Spirit,’ Jay told him.

  ‘Yes, why did you change your mind?’ Sorrel asked.

  ‘I tried it. But the Great Spirit was so boring,’ he said.

  ‘She didn’t speak to you?’ Jay said, nodding.

  ‘Not even a whisper. Now I am very old – maybe twice as many summers as I have fingers and toes – but even the old can still learn something.’

  ‘And what did you learn, Grandfather?’

  ‘I learned that there is something greater than the Great Spirit. I learned that people are greater than the Great Spirit. We can live without the Great Spirit but we can’t live without people. Or we c
an’t live happily.’

  Sorrel looked over her shoulder. ‘Those tribes on the mountain are people. I can live without them,’ she said sourly. ‘They stole our stag and pulled down our house. And the other tribe said they’d make us slaves or kill us.’

  ‘Even they are better than living alone, like I did, in our woods,’ he said simply.

  ‘You were lonely, Grandfather?’

  ‘I missed you all,’ he said.

  The sun was setting behind the mountain when they reached their old house. The floor inside was damp and smelled of the salt sea and fish. ‘We can’t live there,’ Mor said.

  ‘Yes, we can,’ Grandfather said. ‘That was why I climbed the mountain to tell you.’

  ‘I thought you climbed the mountain because you were lonely,’ Jay said.

  ‘Yes, and because I had a strange dream as I slept in the woods. I dreamed that this house rose up out of the water on wooden legs.’

  ‘Houses don’t rise out of the water,’ Mor snapped.

  ‘Not by themselves, they don’t,’ Grandfather agreed. ‘But if we all work together we can cut the stoutest tree trunks and plant them in the ground. Then we take the old house apart and build it up again on top of the trunks.’

  ‘If the waters rise the lake will flow under the house and leave us dry inside?’ Jay said.

  ‘We may as well build a boat... like Noh and Aye in the old story,’ Sorrel said.

  ‘It could be washed away when the winter storms come,’ Jay said. ‘Grandfather’s plan is the best.’

  And so, they built their old house above the ground. By the end of summer, they were living inside it.

  ‘Grandfather,’ Jay said one evening as they wandered through the woods looking for fresh nuts and berries to store for the winter.

  ‘Yes, child?’ the old man said as he hobbled through the fallen leaves.

  ‘You slept in the woods that night in summer – when we climbed the mountain.’ He nodded and Jay went on. ‘You said the Earth Mother didn’t speak to you the way she did to Noh and Aye?’

  ‘If she did I didn’t hear her,’ Grandfather said and shrugged.

  ‘But you had a dream. The dream showed you how to save our old house. And that dream sent you up the mountain and there you saved us all.’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘So maybe the Earth Mother did speak to you, in that dream.’

  The old man stopped at a hazel bush heavy with nuts and gathered them into a leather bag that Sorrel had made. ‘Perhaps she did, Jay. Perhaps she did. We have food and we have shelter. What more can any family need?’ He buried a few nuts under the crisp leaves as a gift for the Great Spirit.

  The two carried their treasure back to their house by the lake... a house that was dark but safe, dry and warm. A home.

  FACT FILE

  1. The Ice Age

  There have been many ice ages on Earth when the whole world turned cold. The last one was at its most icy about 21,000 years ago.

  Around 13,000 years ago, more than three quarters of the large Ice Age animals died out. Woolly mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers and giant bears vanished. Some suffered from the cold and some were killed off by human hunters.

  Ice covered large areas of the Earth during the last Ice Age, then it grew warmer about 11,500 years ago. The ice-sheets melted and the water ran into the rivers, lakes and seas. The water rose and flooded a lot of the low lands on the coast. It must have been a frightening time for the people of the Stone Age who lived in these lowland areas. They would have been forced to move their homes.

  2. The Great Flood

  One of the oldest stories in the world is about a great flood. A great god sent the flood to drown the wicked humans but the god let one family live. This story has been told in many countries. The one we remember today is the story of Noah and his Ark. That was written down and told in the Bible.

  Where did the story come from? Was there really a great flood that covered all the Earth? Or was it a huge tidal wave (tsunami)?

  There are mountains many miles from the sea where you can find seashells and skeletons of fish. How did they get there? Maybe the ancient people made up the story of the flood to explain how they got there.

  3. Stilt Houses

  Humans built houses beside rivers and lakes because they needed to get water every day. But there was always a danger that the waters could rise and their houses could get washed away. Some Stone Age people began to build their houses on stilts. It kept them dry and it also kept out the rats and mice.

  Houses built on the ground were flooded when the waters rose. There are signs that Stone Age houses were built at Star Carr in East Yorkshire. They were on the shores of a lake that has gone now. The people would have wandered a long way from the houses, hunting and collecting flints to make tools. Did the place become too damp when the lake flooded?

  Sharp antler points, used to make harpoons for hunting beaver, fish, deer and elk, have been found at Star Carr. Flints shaped for use as the tips of spears, arrows or javelins have been found there too.

  YOU TRY

  FLOOD MISERY

  Houses still flood all around the world. Sometimes storms bring heavy rain, rivers burst, lakes overflow or sea tides rush in. Imagine YOU have been told your house is going to flood and nothing can stop it. You have 30 minutes to gather your most important things. What FIVE things would you take? Explain why they are so important.

  PLAN A SHELTER

  An architect is someone who makes plans for a house. A builder then builds it. Imagine you are a Stone Age architect. Can you draw a plan for a house in three parts?

  i) Show a wooden frame – straight tree trunks leaning against each other to make a tee-pee

  (a tent that comes to a point at the top).

  ii) Add thinner branches that weave in and out of the trunks to fill in the spaces.

  iii) Cover the house with animal skins to keep out the rain – but leave a hole at the top to let out the smoke from your indoor cooking fire.

  HAVE A PARTY

  Stone Age people ate everything they could – bits of animals that would probably make you sick. Nothing was wasted.

  Imagine your grandfather has reached the amazing age of 50. Write out a menu (a list) of the food you are going to have at his party. Then draw and colour the party feast. (Don’t forget a candle on the top!).

  Terry Deary’s Stone Age Tales

  Look out for more exciting stories set in the Stone Age!

  Terry Deary’s Saxon Tales

  If you liked this book why not try Terry Deary’s Saxon Tales?

  BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  This electronic edition published in 2018

  Text copyright © Terry Deary, 2018

  Illustrations copyright © Tambe, 2018

  Terry Deary and Tambe have asserted their rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author and Illustrator of this work

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: PB: 978-1-4729-5040-6; ePub: 978 1 4729 5038 3; ePDF: 978 1 4729 5039 0

  To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters

  y, The Great Flood