The Tenth Chamber (29 page)

The cliffs were approaching and beyond them, the river.

He did not know why but he believed if only he could make it across the river, he would be safe. He had to make it over the river.

The lion man was on him. Its mouth was open, its jaw ready to clamp down.

He was at the cliffs.

There was the river, silver in the sun.

He felt a drop of hot saliva on his ankle.

And he was back in the cave.

He pondered the meaning of the experience. The ancestors were giving him a warning, no doubt. He would have to be on alert, but he was always so. It was the responsibility of the head of the Bison Clan. He had to protect his people. But who would protect him?

He reached over to try to touch Uboas but his fingers could only reach her bison skin. The honour of that bison’s death had been given to the son of Tal’s son, Mem. This exceptional young man, who bore the name Tala, in honour of his grandfather, was more like Tal than Mem ever was.

Tala took an interest in plants and healing, was a keen flint knapper, and had the same ability as Tal to capture the power and majesty of a galloping horse in a flowing outline of charcoal and graphite. Tal had always loved the boy as if he were his second son, because alas, his real second son, Kek, had gone out hunting one day, on his own, which was the way he liked to venture out, to keep proving his courage to his father. He was perpetually angry and frustrated, given to bursts of pique against his older brother and even his father, lacking the temperament to be a second son. He had never returned. They searched for him and found nothing. Again, a long time ago.

In the quiet of the cave and the deepness of the night, Tal wanted to sleep a dead, black sleep, a sleep without dreams. A pure escape to nothingness, to give himself respite from his fears and apprehensions would have been a gift, but he could not drift off. He would have to leave soon and spare Uboas the rage.

He tried to think about happy things, the pride he had in his son, Mem, his love for his grandson, the certainty that the Bison Clan would be in good hands based on the issuance of his loins. But then, the old thoughts invaded his mind, dark thoughts that began to blacken his mind, the harbinger of Tal’s Anger.

It had snuck up on him, the way a man sneaks up on a reindeer drinking from a pond.

One day, years earlier, he realised that Uboas was growing old, and he was not. The notion was easy to dismiss at first, but as time went on, her hair became streaked with white and her skin, once as smooth as a bird’s egg, wrinkled. Her breasts, once firm, began to sag. She started to walk with a limp and often-times favoured her knees and took to rubbing them with a poultice Tala prepared for her.

And his son, Mem, was ageing too. As the seasons changed and the years rolled on, Mem began to look more like his brother than his son, and now, he looked older still. In time, Tala and he would appear a similar age, he reckoned.

In fact, all his people grew old in front of his eyes. The old ones died, the young ones aged, new ones were born. The cycle of life continued for all but him.

It was almost as if the river of time had stopped for Tal but flowed on for everyone else.

The older men of the clan would talk about this mystery in small groups and the younger men would chatter about him when they were out on a hunt. The women would whisper when they were together sewing hides or butchering a carcass or scaling fish.

Tal was a head man like no other. For his strengths and abilities, for his protection of the clan, he was loved. For his power over time, he was feared.

Uboas became sad and withdrawn. She was the head man’s mate but her status had waned over the years as she first became barren and later became increasingly decrepit. Younger, unmated women looked at Tal’s muscular body hungrily, and she imagined that he might steal off and lie with them.

But no one was more troubled than Mem. It was his destiny to become head man and he desperately wanted that to happen. He had always loved and revered Tal but over time he had become more of a rival. Now, he seemed older than his own father and he imagined dying first and never ascending to head of the clan.

Father and son hardly spoke. A word here, a grunt there. Tal gravitated to his grandson for his want of filial affection and it was Tala who accompanied Tal to paint in the sacred cave. Mem resented this. In his youth,
he
had been the chosen one to paint side by side with his father, and it was he who had made the first of many handprints that had so delighted Tal. Now, it was Tala who was given the honour. He might have been proud, but instead he was jealous.

When the time came for initiation to manhood, the boys of the Bison Clan would still be taken to the cave, given the bowl of Soaring Water and when they could stand, Tal would lead them ever deeper to pay homage to the creatures who deserved their respect.

The bison, above all, their spirit kin in the animal world, their brothers.

The horse, who because of their swiftness and cunning could never be conquered.

The mammoth, who thundered the ground, could destroy any foe with a flick of its tusks and feared nothing, man included.

The bear and the lions, the rulers of the night, who were more likely to kill a man than be killed.

Tal never painted the reindeer. Though they were abundant, they were stupid and easy to kill. They did not deserve his respect. They were food. Nor did he give his respect to the lowly creatures of the land, the mouse, the vole, the bat, the fish, the beaver. They were to be eaten, not lauded.

Tal partook of the Soaring Water regularly, as often as five or six times every cycle of the moon. Soaring gave him wisdom. It gave him comfort. It brought pleasure. And, over time, he reached an inescapable conclusion. He came to suspect it kept him vigorous and young while others grew old. He even grew to like the way he felt during the Anger. When he bellowed in rage he reckoned the ancestors could hear him. He was powerful and he was feared.

He would not curtail his practice and he would not make it universal. He was above all others. He was Tal, head of the Bison Clan and keeper of the sacred cave. As long as the grasses grew, the vines crept and the berries plumped, he would make his hot red water in his mother’s bowl. And he would soar.

The clan had made a fresh summer campsite by a tight bend of the river where the fish were plentiful and the ground drained quickly after a downpour. It was a spot where the cliffs rose up behind them, protecting their rear from all but the most nimble bears. Their main worries were upstream and downstream, and at night the younger men kept watch. To reach good hunting grounds they had to walk two hours downstream to a point where the cliffs petered out, but all things considered, it was a good location, and not very far from Tal’s cave.

The first sign of trouble came when a hawk changed its pattern of back and forth sweeps from the cliff tops to the river, and began to do a compact circle downstream.

Tal noticed. He was hafting a flint point to a length of antler to make a new knife. He put down a strip of sinew to watch the bird. Then, in the not too far distance, a flock of nesting partridges took to wing in a sudden rush. He put down his work and stood up.

In the time he had been head man, the clan had grown modestly. There were close to fifty of them now. He called for the clan to come out of their lean-tos and listen to him. There might be trouble coming. Mem should take a scouting party of the best men and see what he could find.

Mem was almost surprised the task went to him rather than Tala, but he took it as a sign of favour and enthusiastically grabbed his spear. He chose six young men and then his own son, but Tal objected and demanded Tala stay behind. Mem was angered by this. It sent the message to the clan that he was expendable, but that precious Tala was not. Nevertheless he obeyed and left with his warriors.

Tala asked why he was not allowed to go. Tal turned away, refusing to answer. It was his vision, of course. Something was going to happen. He could feel it. He would not put both his son and grandson in danger. The clan would need a head man and to Tal’s mind he
must
come from his own lineage.

Everyone stopped their activities to watch and wait for the scouting party to return. The men made spears and axes ready. The women kept the children close. Tal paced the trodden-down grass of the camp, watching the hawk, listening to the bird calls, sniffing the wind.

After a long while, there was a cry. A man’s cry. Not one of fear or rage or anguish, but of proclamation. The men were returning. There was news!

Mem appeared first, coming fast with his long-legged run. He was breathing furiously but his spear was at his side, not up over his shoulder offensively.

He called out something that stunned the people and made Tal reel.

His brother. Tal’s younger son. He was back!

The other scouts followed. But their spears were raised and they were looking over their shoulders nervously.

Kek was back, Mem explained, but he was not alone.

He was with the Shadow People.

Tal asked if he was their prisoner, but according to Mem, he was not. Tal asked why had he come back. And what was he doing with the Others.

Mem replied: Kek would tell Tal himself. He had offered to come alone. The Shadow People would not enter the camp.

Tal agreed, and Mem plunged back into the tall grass disappearing from sight.

And a father spent what little time he had to prepare himself for a prodigal son.

When Mem returned, he was with a man whom Tal at once recognised but at the same time did not.

The man possessed the blue eyes, and round forehead, the unmistakable jutting nose which marked the kin of Tal.

But his hair was different, a mass of black, tangled rats’ tails, and his beard stuck out long and bushy in all directions, making his face look bigger than it was. And his clothes. The men of the Bison Clan favoured leggings and shirts made of soft red deer hide, stitched with sinew. Kek was wearing coarse reindeer hide, a one-piece garment tied at the waist with a braided belt. His spear was heavy and thick and shorter than the one he had left with so many years ago.

He had become one of them.

There was a story to tell and Kek proceeded to tell it with no acknowledgement of the extraordinary nature of his return. At first he stumbled over his words, a sign he had not used his native language for a very long time. As his tongue loosened, he blurted out the tale in rapid beats,
click, click, click
, like a man bashing flakes off a flint block.

That day, a long time ago.

He was hunting alone.

He was stalking a roe deer while a bear was stalking him.

The bear attacked and began to maul him.

It swatted away his spear.

His knife, the one made of white flint that Tal had made for him, saved his life. He slashed the bear’s eye, spilling its juice, and the animal ran off.

He lay wounded, bleeding from the mauling. He called out for help then slept.

Kek awoke in the camp of the Shadow People – he would learn they called themselves Forest People. Their name for the Bison Clan was the Tall Ones. He was very weak. Over many months a young woman stayed with him, feeding him, applying mud to his wounds.

He learned their language and came to understand that their head man and the others had debated whether or not to kill him. His nurse was the head man’s daughter and she protected him from harm.

When Kek was stronger, the head man told him he could stay and teach them some of the ways of the Tall Ones, or he could go. They would not kill him. The woman was squat and not as beautiful as those of the Bison Clan but he had grown to love her. And, he was tired of being the second son of Tal.

So he stayed.

They had no children. She was barren, but he remained with her and the forest people, strange as they were. They did not believe their ancestors were in the sky. They died and were no more. They did not respect the bison. They were food, just like any animal, but harder to kill. They did not sing and laugh like some in the Bison Clan. They did not carve little animals from bone and wood. They made fine axes but their knife blades were poor.

They exchanged some knowledge. He taught them how to haft a spear the Bison Clan way, they taught him how to surround and box in a reindeer and force it over the cliffs without throwing a single spear.

He was happy with them and they became his clan.

But now his head man had a crisis. He was getting old. He only bore daughters and feared he would die without a son. But when a boy was finally born, he was glad and the clan rejoiced. A week earlier, the boy became sick and would not get well. Kek told the head man about Tal and the way he could heal people with plants. He told him about the sacred cave. The forest people began their trek to the camp of the Tall Ones. Kek would ask Tal to heal the boy.

Tal listened, chewing hard on a piece of dried reindeer meat. It was not their way to let a tribe of Shadow People into their midst. It was dangerous. And the ancestors would surely object.

But Kek pleaded and called him wise father. He said he was sorry for going off to live with the Others. He said their men would lay down their spears when they entered the camp. He beseeched him to heal the head man’s baby.

The Neanderthals entered the camp, slowly and suspiciously, whispering to each other in a clipped, unknown tongue. Their darting eyes were veiled by heavy brows. They were shorter than the Bison Clan, with immensely powerful-looking arms, each like a club. Their hair was wild and untamed, their beards uncut by flint. The women were heavy-breasted with broad shoulders and they ogled their taller, leaner counterparts with plaited hair.

Tal had his men assembled in a gauntlet, spears at the ready and nodded when the Shadow People did, as promised, leave their spears in a pile.