Ember of a New World (16 page)

The evening drew to a close and night fell with a slight breeze. The weather was generally warm, and the nights were tolerable without the use of furs for warmth. Regardless, Ember couldn’t get past the thought of a warm fire. Soon she had built up the second fire from a simple charcoal manufacturing operation to a raging bonfire. Beside the fire, many large pre-
charred
logs sat ready to burn. Her fire would last all night with this much wood.

Ember sat beside her fire wearing only her breechcloth as the skirt was uncomfortable and the shirt couldn't afford
to
be
damaged
from
being slept in. Ember felt the fire's heat as it drifted across her skin as gently as the wind. She watched as the little hairs on her arm stood up when the cooler wind blew across her, but settled down when the heat of the fire returned. Ember was never one to sleep close to the hearth, but she was starting to change her mind about this issue. The flames were simply intoxicating against her skin. Only the occasional popping bit of hot material caused her concern. The warm wind blowing across her bare body was just too appealing. She couldn't do something like this if people were around. Perhaps being alone wasn't so bad, and the fire felt good as it radiated against her skin. She would use the charcoal to keep the fire burning long through the night. Nothing scared away the fears of the n
ight better than a raging fire.
Ember wat
ched the river flow slowly by while
she drifted off to s
leep.

Ember awoke the next morning to find that she had rolled around in the sand and was now lying in the gritty substance. Luckily she hadn't rolled near the fire! She would need to place rocks between her and the fire for the next night. After a moment of carefully stretching her body, she stood and took
in
a deep breath of air. With a frown
,
Ember stood and checked her fish. The large fire had long died, but the effect had kept animals from her fish and she was rewarded with a quick breakfast. Today she would have to create a small
hut
to
provide her
shelt
er
and perhaps obtain additional food. She couldn't eat fish forev
er.

She
turned
to the main fire and carefully touched the small stone with the now charred fish bones. The rock was hot but not so much that she couldn't lift it. Ember carefully ground the little bones into black pow
d
er with a small stick and mixed this with clay and fish oil. Within a few moments, she had a paste dark as night; a simple black pigment of oil and minerals. Ember stood and walked to the river for a bath. She ran her hair through the water and cleaned her skin with mud. Within a short time, her skin was clean and smooth, as always. Ember bound her hair tightly and flung her head backwards and forwards slinging the water from her hair. This time she let her hair fling more than her head
, as her mother had shown her.

Ember left her shirt at the camp as it was warm enough to go without it and there was no one around anyway, but she donned her skirt out of modesty. Ember took a short jog down the river shore and back letting her body awaken and dry off. The run was slightly painful for her sore foot, but she was careful to remain in the sand and away from the hard ground. She would need to keep
an
eye on her foot and ensure it healed.

Once she was mostly dry, Ember pulled her long red hair back and tied it with a thong into a ponytail.
She
inserted a long black feather she had found
into her hair
. The feather pointed down and to the right, held by the thong. She had only a few of these precious thongs and would need to kill a larger animal to obtain more. Ember returned to the camp and carefully painted her face and arms in the black pigment. The dark would keep her warm and free of bugs, she hoped. Using her fingers she traced little zigzagging lines down her arms and her face as decora
tion, more out of habit than the
thought of meeting anyone out here. The pigment immediately started working
, keeping her quite warm in the sun, but while it warded most insec
ts, it attracted a few others.

That's what I get for using fish oil
, she thought
.

The rest of the day was spent looking for a log large enough and long to make another boat and a few large poles to make a lean-to hut. Ember remembered having seen the men burn the center of a log with coals as they dug with stone axes. Her memory had been working as she slept. Perhaps, in a few days, she might create a simple version of such a boat? Otherwise, she was going to have to walk the entire way north west.

I guess I could sit on a log and ride it the whole way
, she mused. It was a possible method and some people occasionally used such means, but the entire trip with her legs in the water would be uncomfortable and possi
bl
y dangerous.

As the day moved towards the evening, Ember gathered the materials she had found.
She
removed the extra branches and bits from long solid branches she had gathered. Ember placed them in the ground
pointed up
in a half circle around a large tree trunk, much as she had constructed the smoking hut. She buried each “pole” a hand's length into the sand and gathered their tops together against the tree. Ember spent a long time that evening lashing the poles with reed and weaving reeds around the poles making a simple framework. As the night started to fall, Ember was only half way done creating the mats which would be affixed to the framework and run vertically. These would stop
wind and rain, but not tonight.

How long would Ember remain in this tiny lean-to barely big enough for her to curl up? She had to get to the west before the season changed, but wouldn't a boat help that goal? The longer she remained
,
the more likely she might find a log and make a boat, but the longer she remained the cooler the season
would
become. The cold season was death to the unprepared. Ember would need to kill a deer by some fashion and make cold season clothing
,
either way. Unfortunately, tanning took a long time and rawhide was a short-lived answer to her problem. Many
worries flooded Ember's mind.

That night was one of the clearest Ember had seen in many
seasons
. This was all well and good as far as Ember was concerned, given that her hut was still not complete, and totally dark nights could be frightening. The night brought with it a gentle, barely detectible breeze. The spirits of the wind often became tired after their most fierce outbursts and clear skies were often soon to follow a strong rain. The sky was filled with more tiny points of light than Ember could ever hope to count. The bigges
t of these lights was the moon.

The moon was a religious symbol of her people's main Gods, the Hunter and the Goddess. The moon was perhaps a place where these two Gods lived? Perhaps a round pool of water in the vast sea above?
s
he
wondered, though no one knew for sure. By contrast to the harvest Gods and the Sun God, the moon was more in league with Ember's current state, and she welcomed the massive light it cast upon her new, unfinished, hut. As the night rolled around, Ember slowly slipped into a deep sleep, comforted by the gentle crackling of
a warm fire and a soft breeze.

Ember awoke on her fifth day past the storm with a clear head and a new goal in mind. She had seen a large fallen tree high on a hill, a good distance from where her camp was situated. She could only barely see it, but the odd shape it cast amongst the trees around it
had
caught her keen eyes. The camp was on the bank of the river in the harder, more packed, sand close to where the grass started to grow. The tree had fallen on the crest of a hill just beside the river not too far from where she was now, but higher in elevation. Ember would journey up the hill and see what could be had of the tree. With some luck, she might eve
n make a boat out of the trunk.

After an early morning swim and a reapplication of the black body paint, Ember spent the early part of the morning eating some of her fish and foraging. She longed for the blue paint that stained her skin and remained for many days. This black paint was smelly and just not to her liking. Worse, it left her body mostly normal color but with gray shades. Ember was glad she had something, however, as it was considered strange
by her people
to not be colored. Regardless of the paint problems, Ember needed to diversify her food supply. Foraging would provide new sources of food and people who only ate one thing for too long tended to become ill.

The forest would often provide food if you knew where to look. Ember was hoping to find some berries for both their medicinal value and their ability to make beautiful body stains. Th
e two main berries were Bitter-B
erries, a black round berry which could be mixed with honey
and Red Berries, which were made of little clusters of tiny red orbs. Red Berries were sweet and a favorite treat for Ember. Both could be used to make body stains, but
right now Ember was more concerned
with food than looks.

Aside from berries, a lucky forager might find Tuber Flowers. These purple flowers sprouted from a tasty tuber root, buried beneath the ground. The root and the leaves were both edible and added a lovely side dish to any meal. When she was a little girl, Ember would find the
se
tuber flowers and pick them to place in her hair. Her mother would scold her for this. Once the flower was picked, finding the tuber root was nearly impossible unless you knew were the original
flower had been
.
Other available food
s included
Early
N
uts, a small nut which fell
in the late
warm season
, before the S
pike
n
uts fell in the harvest season, and a host of eatable green plants.

Ember walked around the nearest forested area and found some
e
arly
n
uts, a large
red
berry bush, and even a few tubers near a tree. Returning to the camp
,
she heated the tubers by the fire, constantly
rotating each to
keep
them moist. A typical technique involved wrapping the tubers in wet reeds to keep them moist, but sometimes placing a stick through the tuber and roasting was more desired. Either way, a tuber needed to be f
ully cooked before it was eaten as a raw
tuber was simply terrible to eat
. The nuts were roasted on the large flat rock sitting beside the fire she had used for the bones. Cooking with an open fire was complex and took significant work to ensure the food did not burn and was evenly heated. Ember placed some of the nuts and half of the cooked tuber in her pouch with the flint and Goddess pendant and clothed herself fully.
She might want a snack later.

Getting to the hill where the tree had fallen took Ember a good part of the morning. Cheerfully, Ember sang a tune as she walked towards her goal. Moving up a hill was always harder than coming down. She had to walk extra carefully as she still had no shoes. Her feet were tough from
a life
of walking around barefoot, but her people tended to wear boots and shoes except when in their longhouse, at the water, or dancing. She had some small cuts and hurts on her feet, which needed daily tending with water, and a drying by the fire to ensure they didn't become worse. Luckily, the deepest wounds from the bark were coming along well, though they bled a few times that morning.

Ember could not be too upset about a small wound with a little blood. She had seen men who had been wounded hunting or from an accident and had died in a very terrible way from simple injuries left untreated. Fire truly cleaned everything, and Ember had spent the last two days with her feet propped near the fire as she rested letting the heat me
lt away all that could make her wounds
red and sore. More importantly it prevented the red blotches. A wound, left untreated, would become red, then sore, and finally little red blotches would flow from the wound towards the center of the body. Next, cold sweats would come, and the person would die soon after. Such a death was horrible to witness an
d likely worse to experience.

Na Na had explained to Ember that evil spirits could enter the body through cuts and wounds. Merely washing the wound was not enough. The spirits could only be driven from the body by the constitution of the person
, medicinal plants, such as the use of White Flowers,
or from the purifying power of fire.
In fact, one of the last possible cures
,
when all seemed lost, was to place the person in between two large fires and allow the flame to heal them. The heat would be very intense and the person would need to drink water constantly. Sometimes this worked, but most of the time they died anyway.

The walking upset Ember’s injured foot slightly and she wished, not for the first time, that she had some White Flowers. The precious flowers grew in fields and open areas throughout the lands. Their leaves could be ground or chewed and then applied to the wounds to cause them to stop bleeding and to heal faster. As legen
d had it, the flowers prevented
the spirits from breathing, the reason they kept the wound open. Ember suspected that the water also prevented spirits from breathing, a good re
ason to always soak the wounds.