CIRCLES OF STONE (THE MOTHER PEOPLE SERIES) (26 page)

Good,
Ralak
thought. 
It wails, so it will live
.  Then she closed her eyes
and lapsed into a time of semi-consciousness.  The place where she
lingered hung somewhere between sleeping and waking, between living and
dying.  The present had no meaning for her; she was aware of nothing
except a tingling pull at her breasts when Toro placed the baby there to
suckle.  But her inner world was filled with sounds and sensations, and
memories. 

Long ago, Ralak
had lived in a damp, forested area.  She went to this place again in her
mind.  Tall trees closed in around her, filtering out the sun, so that her
world grew dim and shadowy.  She smelled ferns, and mosses, the moist
earthiness of decaying litter on the forest floor.  She saw the tribe into
which she had been born, watched it disintegrate until only she and her brother
were left.  One at a time, the others had died of a sickness that robbed
them of strength until they could no longer eat or even stand.

Her mother had
been the last to go.  Ralak saw her face again, heard her speak of the
earthforce that gave life and took it away again in endless, random cycles -
only her mother was not speaking, for there were few words to describe such
things.  Ralak listened in another way, hearing her mother as if their
minds were one.  In that manner, she came to understand that just as the earthforce
caused new grasses to grow, bushes and trees to bear fruit, gave life to
animals of every kind, so, too, it caused death and destruction, when mountains
exploded and the ground cracked into pieces.  At other times, the
earthforce grew restless and escaped to the skies.  It flew upward like a
great bird into the tumultuous clouds, then charged toward the ground again in
brilliant spears of lightning that burned everything in their path as it sought
re-entry to its home.

Ralak's eyes
rolled and twitched behind her closed lids as the memories coursed through her
brain.  No other part of her moved at all.  Her stillness, and the
blood that came from her, terrified Lotan.  The faces of the others
frightened him too.  They seemed astonished that Ralak still breathed,
that milk still flowed from her breasts, even when she lay there as if
dead.  But she
was
alive, and Lotan decided he must keep her that
way.  Over and over, he tipped cool water into her mouth, using a small
gourd so he could dribble it in slowly.  The first time, Ralak choked, but
after that, she seemed to sense his presence and was able to swallow.

On the fourth day,
her eyes opened.  She looked as if she were far away, in some other
place.  But when Lotan put some berries he was holding into her mouth, she
chewed them slowly.  The next day, she raised herself on her elbow and
called to Toro.

"Infant,"
she said weakly.  "See infant."  Toro brought the little
one to her.  Ralak's cracked lips, still caked with the blood that had
accumulated when she bit herself in pain, widened into a smile.  She
reached out and took the baby for a moment, then sank back in exhaustion. 
Lotan bent over her, afraid she would not move again.  She pressed his
hand briefly, in reassurance.  Heartened by the gesture, he soaked soft
grasses in the stream and gently wiped the blood from her face. 

When the light
came again, Ralak crawled toward the stream and immersed herself in a shallow
pool to cleanse her body.  The action seemed to revive her.  She
directed the others to remove all signs of the birth, so predators would not be
attracted.  Then she lay still again for many days, but now, Lotan saw,
her stillness had energy in it.  She was herself again even if she barely
moved.  She told all of them what to do, called for the infant, ate and
drank with enthusiasm.  Fear drained from his body for the first time
since the birth.

Now, three moons
had passed, and Ralak seemed to have recovered completely.  Until tonight,
when the two men had failed to return, her features had been free of
strain. 

The baby stirred
and began to root against Lotan's thin chest, seeking food.  He rose and
went to his mother. 

"She is
hungry," he told Ralak, handing her the infant.  "I find sticks
now.  I watch."

Ralak nodded and
went to sit by the fire while she nursed the baby.  She peered nervously
into the woods.  Though Lotan did not know it, another problem worried her
almost as much as the missing men.  For many days now, a strange male had
been lurking in the area.  Ralak did not like the look of him. 
Instead of approaching, to see if he might join the group, he had peered at
them from the trees with hard, angry eyes.  Whenever one of the men had
gone closer to challenge him, he had disappeared.

She hugged the
infant protectively.  Once, long ago, a male had attacked her tribe while
the men were half a day's journey away.  He had killed her tiny brother
and another infant before the men had returned to help her mother and the other
women drive him away.  Males like that had too much of the harsh
earthforce in them, her mother had told her, and could not control their
violence.  Ralak did not fully understand how this could be, or why they
should kill infants, but she was terribly afraid the stranger was one of
them.  She must find the men quickly, lest he attack while they were gone.

At daybreak, they
set out to look for them.  Lotan trudged beside his mother, scanning the
area with his eyes, listening, raising his head to sniff the air, as she had
taught him.  For a long time, no signals came to him.  Then he
spotted the vultures, heard their noisy fighting.  His heart thudded in
his chest, lest it be one of the men they were stabbing with their fearful
beaks, but it was only the zebra.  The lion that had killed it had
finished, the hyenas had gone, and only the vultures were left.  There was
no sign of the men.

Lotan went on,
following a vague track through the brush.  Something had passed this way
recently, something that was tall enough to part the tops of the grasses as
well as pressing them against the ground.  Perhaps the men had been here.

A strange scent
came to his nostrils.  It was like the smell of some badly rotted eggs he
had once found, when an ostrich had deserted its clutch, but much deeper and
stronger.  The smell became more and more pungent as he approached a small
pond.  The water in it had a sulfurous yellow cast.

The grass beneath
his feet felt suddenly hot and dry, and it crunched strangely.  Startled,
Lotan backed away, almost bumping into his mother who had come quietly up
behind him.  Together, they stared toward the pond.  Dozens of
carcasses, stripped of all flesh, littered the area.  They were covered
with pale yellow dust.  A thick substance, orange in the sunlight, oozed
up at the edges of the water.

Lotan frowned, aware
of another strangeness about this place.  There was no sound, no movement
at all.  No insects buzzed around the dead bodies, no vultures fought over
them.  The whole area seemed dead. 

He jumped
violently as a harsh croak broke the silence.  A large bird he had not
noticed before was lying half submerged in the shallows.  It opened its
beak and shrieked again, a cry of pure desperation.  For a moment, it
thrashed weakly, as if trying to escape some invisible force that held it
down.  The sound faded into a gurgle, and the bird lay still. 

Lotan took a step
toward it, to see better, but his mother pulled him back.  "It
burns," she said.  "This water burns."  There was a
terrible sadness in her voice, as well as a warning, and he turned quickly to
look at her.  She was staring at an object not far from the dying
bird.  Lotan gasped in horror.  It was one of the men, his arms
stretched out in front of him.  He was almost invisible, for his body was
camouflaged by the sickly yellow powder.  Beyond his outstretched arms,
Lotan could just discern the outline of another familiar shape.

Sickened, he
turned away.  He did not understand how water could burn, but he knew he
would never forget this ghastly place, the silence, the reek of death with no
purpose.  Death to satisfy hunger he understood.  Death without
benefit baffled him.

Ralak stood still,
unable to move under the weight of her grief.  She had recognized the
scent, though she had smelled it only once before.  There were places,
sometimes, where the yellowish stuff in the water grew so strong that it
burned, as if the earthforce had lingered there too long.  As soon as she
had smelled it, she had known her brother was dead.  Even before that, she
had known.  All during the long night, she had been haunted by a feeling
that something terrible had happened to him.  Her brother had been her
companion since birth, and each of them had always been able to feel the
other's pain.  Now he was gone.

She reached out a
hand, as if to touch him once again.  Only he had understood her, knew the
words she knew; only he had grasped her meaning when she spoke of the
earthforce.  The others, the ones she and her brother had joined when all
in their tribe had died, were different.  They had no knowledge of the earthforce,
did not seem capable of understanding.

Except for Lotan. 
He understood a little, though he was still young.  At least she still had
Lotan. 

Ralak turned
toward him, her face crumpled with grief.  He put his arms around her, to
comfort her.  His gesture released the tears she was trying not to shed,
and for a moment she sobbed without restraint.  Then, determinedly, she
pushed her sadness away.  She could not afford to grieve.  With only
women and children in the group, they were terribly vulnerable.  Predators
were one problem.  The deep voices and large frames of men were often
enough to frighten a lion or tiger away.  But it was the strange male who
frightened her most.  Now that the men were gone, he would not hesitate to
attack.  She must be constantly on her guard, never stop listening, never
miss a scent or a movement. 

Ralak straightened
her shoulders and gathered the others around her.  They would have to keep
moving all the time, so the big male could not find them.

She led them east,
away from the gathering place.  Lotan looked at her questioningly. 
He could not understand why they were going away from the place where they had
slept so often.

"Why?"
he asked her.

"Danger,"
she replied.  "There is danger now, with no men.  A bad male
might come and hurt the infants."

Her answer puzzled
Lotan.  The men he had known had always been kind.  But he trusted
his mother's judgment, and he could tell that she was frightened.  She
scanned the landscape constantly, and tested the air for scents.  She kept
a stout stick in one hand, putting it down only when she gathered food. 
Lotan found a stick for himself, and practiced swinging it as he trotted beside
her protectively.  He was the only male left now, and although he was
small for his eleven years, he would do his best against any danger that
threatened her.  

A week passed
without incident.  Ralak kept them moving; they gathered food as they
traveled, and slept in a different place each night.  Lotan began to relax
his guard.  Then, late one afternoon, he spotted a lone male staring at
them from a ridge.  He shouted a warning and ran to stand beside his
mother.  Toro followed, dragging Metep with her.  She clutched her
new infant tightly against her chest, instinctively aware that it could be in
danger.

The male ambled
toward them.  He was huge, almost twice as big as Ralak, for she was a
diminutive female.  She watched him carefully.  It was the same male
she had seen before, and already she was certain she was right.  He was
one of the violent ones.  Though he moved slowly, there was no hesitation
in his step, and he stared straight at her with challenging eyes.  A
normal male would lower his eyes, approach with caution.  She saw no hint
of kindness in his face. 

She handed the
infant to Lotan and moved in front of both of them.  Growling low in her
throat, she faced the intruder.  He paid no attention.  Still staring
at Ralak, as if he recognized her leadership, he lunged unexpectedly toward
Toro's infant.  Toro screamed and ran.  The big male followed. 
Turning her back, Toro bent protectively over the baby.  Metep pummeled
the big male with her fists as he approached her mother. 

Lotan gave the
infant back to his mother and swung his stick hard at the male's massive
back.  Startled, the intruder turned to face him.  Lotan held the
stick high, ready to swing it again.  But the male only shook his head in
confusion and pushed the stick away, then turned back toward Toro.  Lotan
hit him again.  This time, the male whirled and struck him a vicious blow
to the chest.  Lotan staggered backward, fighting for breath.

Toro took
advantage of the momentary distraction and ran for the trees.  The male
stared after her, then turned suddenly and charged toward Ralak. 
Crouching low, she presented her genitals, to distract him from the
infant.  He sniffed her, puzzled by her action, and tried to force her to
the ground.  Ralak hit him with her stick, but she had only one free arm,
and the blows had little force.  Lotan struggled to his feet and went to
help.  Toro and Metep came back and grabbed sticks as well. 
Together, they pummeled the male, screaming and shouting as they rained blows
against his back and shoulders.

Howling, he
retreated to the hillside.  But he did not go away.  He stayed nearby
all night, and he followed them as they traveled the next day.  Though he
did not come close, Lotan knew he was still in the area.  He had a
distinctive smell, stronger than that of other males he had known, that could
not be missed.

Suddenly, just as
the sun was lowering, the male charged toward them again.  This time he
moved with sure purpose.  Before Toro could take a step, he was upon
her.  He snatched her infant and ran into the woods.  The whole group
followed, screaming wildly.  Toro grabbed his arm, but she could not make
him stop.  He swung the infant by an arm and smashed its head against a
tree, killing it instantly.  Sobbing, Toro retrieved it and cradled it
against her chest.