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.
Kek was back!
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
