The Clan of the Cave Bear

2

The band of travelers crossed the river just beyond the waterfall where it widened and foamed around rocks jutting up through the shallow water. They were twenty in number, young and old. The clan had totaled twenty-six before the earthquake that destroyed their cave. Two men led the way, far in front of a knot of women and children flanked by a couple of older men. Younger men trailed behind.

They followed the broad stream as it began its braided, meandering course across the flat steppes, and watched the carrion birds circling. Flying scavengers usually meant that whatever had attracted their attention was still alive. The men in the lead hurried to investigate. A wounded animal was easy prey for hunters, providing no four-legged predators had similar ideas.

A woman, midway along in her first pregnancy, walked in front of the rest of the women. She saw the two men in the lead glance at the ground and move on. It must be a meat eater, she thought. The clan seldom ate carnivorous animals.

She was just over four and a half feet tall, large boned, stocky, and bow-legged, but walked upright on strong muscular legs and flat bare feet. Her arms, long in proportion to her body, were bowed like her legs. She had a large beaky nose, a prognathous jaw jutting out like a muzzle, and no chin. Her low forehead sloped back into a long, large head, resting on a short, thick neck. At the back of her head was a boney knob, an occipital bun, that emphasized its length.

A soft down of short brown hair, tending to curl, covered her legs and shoulders and ran along the upper spine of her back. It thickened into a head of heavy, long, rather bushy hair. She was already losing her winter pallor to a summer tan. Big, round, intelligent, dark brown eyes were deep set below overhanging brow ridges, and they were filled with curiosity as she quickened her pace to see what the men had passed by.

The woman was old for a first pregnancy, nearly twenty, and the clan thought she was barren until the life stirring within her started to show. The load she carried had not been lightened because she was pregnant, however. She had a large basket strapped to her back, with bundles tied behind, hanging below, and piled on top of it. Several drawstring bags dangled from a thong, which was wrapped around the pliable hide she wore in such a way as to produce folds and pouches for carrying things. One bag was particularly distinctive. It was made from an otter hide, obviously so because it had been cured with its waterproof fur, feet, tail, and head left intact.

Rather than a slit in the skin of the animal’s belly, only the throat had been cut to provide an opening to remove the innards, flesh, and bones, leaving a pouchlike bag. The head, attached by a strip of skin at the back, was the cover flap, and a red-dyed cord of sinew was threaded through holes punched around the neck opening, drawn tight, and tied to the thong at her waist.

When the woman first saw the creature the men had left behind, she was puzzled by what appeared to be an animal without fur. But when she drew closer, she gasped and stepped back a pace, clutching the small leather pouch around her neck in an unconscious gesture to ward off unknown spirits. She fingered the small objects inside her amulet through the leather, invoking protection, and leaned forward to look closer, hesitant to take a step, but not quite able to believe she saw what she thought she was seeing.

Her eyes had not deceived her. It was not an animal that had drawn the voracious birds. It was a child, a gaunt, strange-looking child!

The woman looked around, wondering what other fearful enigmas might be nearby, and started to skirt the unconscious child, but she heard a moan. The woman stopped and, forgetting her fears, knelt beside the child and shook her gently. The medicine woman reached to untie the cord that held the otter-skin bag closed as soon as she saw the festering claw marks and swollen leg when the girl rolled over.

The man in the lead glanced back and saw the woman kneeling beside the child. He walked back to them.

“Iza! Come!” he commanded. “Cave lion tracks and scat ahead.”

“It’s a child, Brun. Hurt but not dead,” she replied.

Brun looked at the thin young girl with the high forehead, small nose, and strangely flat face. “Not Clan,” the leader gestured abruptly and turned to walk away.

“Brun, she’s a child. She’s hurt. She’ll die if we leave her here.” Iza’s eyes pleaded as she made the hand signals.

The leader of the small clan stared down at the imploring woman. He was much bigger than she, over five feet tall, heavily muscled and powerful, with a deep barrel chest and thick bowed legs. The cast of his features was similar, though more pronounced – heavier supraorbital ridges, larger nose. His legs, stomach, chest, and upper back were covered with a coarse brown hair that was not enough to be called a pelt, but not far from it. A bushy beard hid his chinless jutting jaw. His wrap was similar, too, but not as full, cut shorter, and tied differently, with fewer folds and pouches for holding things.

He carried no burdens, only his outer fur wrap, suspended on his back by a wide band of leather wrapped around his sloping forehead, and his weapons. On his right thigh was a scar, blackened like a tattoo, shaped roughly like a U with the tops flaring outward, the mark of his totem, the bison. He needed no mark or ornament to identify his leadership. His bearing and the deference of the others made his position clear.

He shifted his club, the long foreleg of a horse, from his shoulder to the ground, supporting the handle with his thigh, and Iza knew he was giving her plea serious consideration. She waited quietly, hiding her agitation, to give him time to think. He set his heavy wooden spear down and leaned the shaft against his shoulder with the sharpened, fire-hardened point up, and adjusted the bola he wore around his neck along with his amulet so the three stone balls were more evenly balanced. Then he pulled a strip of pliable deerskin, tapered at the ends with a bulge in the middle to hold stones for slinging, out of his waist thong, and pulled the soft leather through his hand, thinking.

Brun didn’t like making quick decisions about anything unusual that might affect his clan, especially now when they were homeless, and he resisted the impulse to refuse at once. I should have known Iza would want to help her, he thought; she’s even used her healing magic on animals sometimes, especially young ones. She’ll be upset if I don’t let her help this child. Clan or Others, it makes no difference, all she can see is a child who is hurt. Well, maybe that’s what makes her a good medicine woman.

But medicine woman or not, she is just a woman. What difference will it make if she’s upset? Iza knows better than to show it, and we have enough problems without a wounded stranger. But her totem will know, all the spirits will. Would it make them more angry if she’s upset? If we find a cave…no, when we find a new cave, Iza will have to make her drink for the cave ceremony. What if she’s so upset she makes a mistake? Angry spirits could make it go wrong, and they’re angry enough already. Nothing must go wrong with the ceremony for the new cave.

Let her take the child, he thought She’ll soon get tired of carrying the extra load, and the girl is so far gone, not even my sibling’s magic may be strong enough to save her. Brun tucked his sling back in his waist thong, picked up his weapons, and shrugged noncommittally. It was up to her; Iza could take the girl with them or not as she pleased. He turned and strode off.

Iza reached into her basket and pulled out a leather cloak. She wrapped it around the girl, hoisted her up, and secured the unconscious child to her hip with the aid of the supple hide, surprised at how little she weighed for her height. The girl moaned as she was lifted and Iza patted her reassuringly, then fell into place behind the two men.

The other women had stopped, holding back from the encounter between Iza and Brun. When they saw the medicine woman pick something up and take it with her, their hands flew in rapid motions punctuated by a few guttural sounds, discussing it with excited curiosity. Except for the otter-skin pouch, they were dressed the same as Iza, and as heavily burdened. Among them they carried all the clan’s worldly possessions, those that had been salvaged from the rubble after the quake.

Two of the seven women carried babies in a fold of their wraps next to their skin, convenient for nursing. While they were waiting, one felt a drop of warm wetness, whipped her naked infant out of the fold, and held it in front of her until it was through wetting. When they weren’t traveling, babies were often wrapped in soft swaddling skins. To absorb moisture and soft milky stools, any of several materials were packed around them: fleece from wild sheep gathered from thorny shrubs when the mouflon were shedding, down from birds’ breasts, or fuzz from fibrous plants. But while they traveled, it was easier and simpler to carry babies naked and, without missing a step, let them mess on the ground.

When they started out again, a third woman picked up a young boy, supporting him on her hip with a leather carrying cloak. After a few moments, he squirmed to get down and run by himself. She let him go, knowing he would be back when he got tired again. An older girl, not yet a woman but carrying a woman’s load, walked behind the woman who followed Iza, glancing back now and then at a boy, very nearly a man, trailing the women. He tried to allow enough distance between himself and them so it would seem he was one of the three hunters bringing up the rear and not one of the children. He wished he had game to carry, too, and even envied the old man, one of the two flanking the women, who carried a large hare over his shoulder, felled by a stone from his sling.

The hunters were not the only source of food for the clan. The women often contributed the greater share, and their sources were more reliable. Despite their burdens, they foraged as they traveled, and so efficiently it hardly slowed them down. A patch of day lilies was quickly stripped of buds and flowers, and tender new roots exposed with a few strokes of the digging sticks. Cattail roots, pulled loose from beneath the surface of marshy backwaters, were even easier to gather.

If they hadn’t been on the move, the women would have made a point of remembering the location of the tall stalky plants, to return later in the season to pick the tender tails at the top for a vegetable. Later still, yellow pollen mixed with starch pounded from the fibers of old roots would make doughy unleavened biscuits. When the tops dried, fuzz would be collected; and several of the baskets were made from the tough leaves and stalks. Now they gathered only what they found, but little was overlooked.

New shoots and tender young leaves of clover, alfalfa, dandelion; thistles stripped of prickles before they were cut down; a few early berries and fruits. The pointed digging sticks were in constant use; nothing was safe from them in the women’s deft hands. They were used as a lever to overturn logs for newts and delectable fat grubs; freshwater molluscs were fished out of streams and pushed closer to shore for easy reach; and a variety of bulbs, tubers, and roots were dug out of the ground.

It all found its way to the convenient folds of the women’s wraps or an empty corner of their baskets. Large green leaves were wrappers, some of them, such as burdock, cooked as greens. Dry wood, twigs, and grass, and dung from grazing animals, were collected too. Though the selection would be more varied later in the summer, food was plentiful-if one knew where to look.

Iza looked up when an old man, past thirty, hobbled up to her after they were on their way again. He carried neither burden nor weapon, only a long staff to help him walk. His right leg was crippled and smaller than the left, yet he managed to move with surprising agility.

His right shoulder and upper arm were atrophied and the shriveled arm had been amputated below the elbow. The powerful shoulder and arm and muscular leg of his fully developed left side made him appear lopsided. His huge cranium was even larger than those of the rest of the clan, and the difficulty of his birth had caused the defect that crippled him for life.

He was also a sibling of Iza and Brun, first-born, and would have been leader but for his affliction. He wore a leather wrap cut in the masculine style and carried his warm outer fur, which was also used as a sleeping fur, on his back as the other men did. But he had several pouches hanging from his waist thong and a cloak similar to the kind the women used which held a large bulging object to his back.

The left side of his face was hideously scarred and his left eye was missing, but his good right eye sparkled with intelligence, and something more. For all his hobbling, he moved with a grace that came from great wisdom and a sureness of his place within the clan. He was Mog-ur, the most powerful magician, most awesome and revered holy man of all the clans. He was convinced that his wasted body was given to him so that he could take his place as intermediary with the spirit world rather than at the head of his clan. In many ways he had more power than any leader, and he knew it. Only close relatives remembered his birth name and called him by it.

“Creb,” Iza said in greeting and acknowledged his appearance with a motion that meant she was pleased he had joined her.

“Iza?” he questioned with a gesture toward the child she carried. The woman opened her cloak and Creb looked closely at the small flushed face. His eye traveled down to the swollen leg and suppurating wound, then back to the medicine woman and read meaning from her eyes. The girl moaned, and Creb’s expression softened. He nodded his approval.

“Good,” he said. The word was gruff, guttural. Then he made a sign that meant, “Enough have died.”

Creb stayed beside Iza. He didn’t have to conform to the understood rules that defined each person’s position and status; he could walk with anyone, including the leader if he chose. Mog-ur was above and aside from the strict hierarchy of the clan.

Brun led them well beyond the spoor of cave lions before he stopped and studied the landscape. Across the river, as Far as he could see, the prairie stretched out in low rolling hills into a flat green expanse in the distance. His view was unobstructed. The few stunted trees, distorted by the constant wind into caricatures of arrested motion, merely put the open country in perspective and emphasized the emptiness.

Near the horizon, a cloud of dust betrayed the presence of a large herd of hardhoofed animals, and Brun sorely wished he could signal his hunters and take out after them. Behind him, only the tops of tall conifers could be seen beyond the smaller deciduous trees of the forest already dwarfed by the vastness of the steppes.

On his side of the river, the prairie ended abruptly, cut off by the cliff now some distance away and angling ever farther from the stream ahead. The rock face of the steep wall merged into the foothills of majestic glacier-topped mountains, looming near; their icy peaks vibrant with vivid pinks, magentas, violets, and purples reflecting the setting sun, gigantic sparkling jewels crowning the sovereign summits. Even the practical leader was moved by the pageant.

He turned away from the river and led his clan toward the cliff, which held out the possibility of caves. They needed a shelter; but almost more important, their protective totem spirits needed a home, if they hadn’t already deserted the clan. They were angry, the earthquake proved that, angry enough to cause the death of six of the clan and destroy their home. If a permanent place for the totemic spirits was not found, they would leave the clan to the mercy of evil ones that caused illness and chased game away. No one knew why the spirits were angry, not even Mog-ur, though he conducted nightly rituals to appease their wrath and help relieve the clan’s anxiety. They were all worried, but none more than Brun.

The clan was his responsibility and he felt the strain. Spirits, those unseen forces with unfathomable desires, baffled him. He was more comfortable in the physical world of hunting and leading his clan. None of the caves he had examined so far were suitable – - they all lacked some condition that was essential-and he was getting desperate. Precious warm days when they should have been storing food for the next winter were being wasted in the search for a new home. Soon he might be forced to shelter his clan in a less than adequate cave and continue the search next year. That would be unsettling, physically and emotionally, and Brun fervently hoped it would not be necessary.

They walked along the base of the cliff as the shadows deepened. When they reached a narrow waterfall bouncing down the rock wall, its spray a shimmering rainbow in the long rays of the sun, Brun called a halt. Wearily, the women set down their burdens and fanned out along the pool at the bottom and its narrow outlet to find wood.

Iza spread out her fur wrap and put the child on it, then hurried to help the other women. She was worried about the girl. Her breathing was shallow and she hadn’t roused; even her moans came less frequently. Iza had been thinking about how to help the child, considering the dried herbs she carried in her otter-skin pouch and while she gathered wood, she looked over the plants growing in the vicinity. To her, whether it was familiar or not, everything had some value, medicinal or nutritional, but there was little she couldn’t identify.

When she saw long stalks of iris ready to bloom on the marshy bank of the little creek, it settled one question and she dug up its roots. The three-lobed hop leaves twining around one of the trees gave her another idea, but she decided to use the powdered dry hops she had with her, since the conelike fruit would not mature until later. She peeled smooth grayish bark from an alder shrub growing near the pool and sniffed it. It was strongly aromatic and she nodded to herself as she put it in a fold of her wrap. Before she hurried back, she picked several handfuls of young clover leaves.

When the wood was gathered and the fireplace set, Grod, the man who walked in front with Brun, uncovered a glowing coal wrapped in moss and stuffed into the hollow end of an aurochs horn. They could make fire, but while traveling through unknown territory, it was easier to take a coal from one campfire and keep it alive to start the next one, than to try to start a new fire each evening with possibly inadequate materials.

Grod had nurtured the burning ember anxiously while they traveled. The hot coal from the fire of the night before had been started by a hot coal from the previous evening’s fire and could be traced back to the fire they had rekindled on the remains of the fireplace at the mouth of the old cave. For the rites to make a new cave acceptable for residence, they needed to start the fire from a coal they could trace back to their old home.

Maintenance of the fire could only be entrusted to a male of high status. If the coal died out, it would be a sure sign that their protective spirits had deserted them, and Grod would be demoted from second-in-command to the lowest-ranked male position in the clan; a humiliation he did not care to suffer. His was a great honor and a heavy responsibility.

While Grod carefully placed the bit of burning charcoal on a bed of dry tinder and blew it into flame, the women turned to other tasks. With techniques passed down for generations, they quickly skinned the game. A few moments after the fire was blazing well, meat skewered with sharp green sticks set over forked branches was roasting. The high heat seared it to hold in juices, and when the fire died down to coals, little was lost to the licking flames.

With the same sharp stone knives they used to skin and cut the meat, the women scraped and sliced roots and tubers. Tightly woven waterproof baskets and wooden bowls were filled with water, and then hot stones were added. When cooled, the stones were put back in the fire and new ones were put in the water until it boiled and the vegetables cooked. Fat grubs were toasted crisp and small lizards roasted whole until their tough skins blackened and cracked, exposing tasty bits of well-cooked flesh.

Iza made her own preparations while helping with the meal. In a wooden bowl that she had chipped out of a section of log many years before, she started water boiling. She washed the iris roots, chewed them to a pulp, and spit them into the boiling water. In another bowl-the cup-shaped piece from the lower jaw of a large deer-she crushed clover leaves, measured out a quantity of powdered hops into her hand, tore the alder bark into shreds, and poured boiling water over it. Then she ground hard dry meat from their preserved emergency ration into a coarse meal between two stones and mixed the concentrated protein with water from cooked vegetables in a third bowl.

The woman who had walked behind Iza cast an occasional glance her way, hoping Iza would volunteer some comment. All the women, and the men, though they tried not to show it, were bursting with curiosity. They had seen Iza pick the girl up, and everyone had found a reason to walk near Iza’s fur after they made camp. Speculation ran high about how the child happened to be there, where the rest of her people were, and mostly, why Brun had allowed Iza to take a girl along who was obviously born to the Others.

Ebra knew better than anyone the strain Brun was feeling. She was the one who tried to massage the tension out of his neck and shoulders, and she was the one who bore the brunt of his nervous temper, so rare in the man who was her mate. Brun was known for his stoic self-control, and she knew he regretted his outbursts, though he would not compound his transgression by admitting it. But even Ebra wondered why he had allowed the child to come with them, especially when any deviation from normal behavior might increase the anger of the spirits.

As curious as she was, Ebra asked no questions of Iza, and none of the other women had enough status to consider it. No one disturbed a medicine woman when she was obviously working her magic, and Iza was in no mood for idle gossip. Her concentration was directed at the child who needed her help. Creb was interested in the girl, too, but Iza welcomed his presence.

She watched with silent gratitude while the magician shuffled over to the unconscious child, looked at her thoughtfully for a while, then leaned his staff against a large boulder and made flowing one-handed motions over her, a request to benevolent spirits to assist in her recovery. Illness and accidents were mysterious manifestations of the war of the spirits, fought on the battleground of the body. Iza’s magic came from protective spirits who acted through her, but no cure was complete without the holy man. A medicine woman was only an agent of the spirits; a magician interceded directly with them.

Iza didn’t know why she felt such concern for a child so different from the clan, but she wanted her to live. When Mog-ur was through, Iza lifted the girl in her arms and carried her to the small pool at the foot of the waterfall. She submerged all but her head and washed away dirt and caked mud from the thin little body. The cool water revived the youngster, but she was delirious. She tossed and writhed, calling out and mumbling sounds like none the woman had ever heard before. Iza held the girl close as she walked back with her, making soothing murmurs that sounded like soft growls.

Gently, but with experienced thoroughness, Iza washed the wounds with an absorbent piece of rabbit skin dipped in the hot liquid in which the iris root had boiled. Then she scooped out the root pulp, put it directly on the wounds, covered it with the rabbit skin, and wrapped the child’s leg in strips of soft deerskin to hold the poultice in place. She removed the mashed clover, the shredded alder bark, and stones from the bone bowl with a forked twig, and set it to cool beside the bowl of hot broth.

Creb gestured inquiringly toward the bowls. It was not a direct query-not even Mog-ur would question a medicine woman directly about her magic-it only indicated interest. Iza didn’t mind her sibling’s interest; he more than anyone appreciated her knowledge. He used some of the same herbs she did for different purposes. Except for Clan Gatherings where there were other medicine women, talking to Creb was the closest she could come to a discussion with a professional colleague.

“This destroys the evil spirits that make infection,” Iza motioned, pointing to the antiseptic iris-root solution. “A poultice of the root draws out poisons and helps the wound heal.” She picked up the bone bowl and dipped in a finger to check the temperature. “Clover makes the heart strong to fight evil spirits-stimulates it.” Iza used a few spoken words when she talked, but primarily for emphasis. The people of the Clan could not articulate well enough for a complete verbal language, they communicated more with gestures and motions, but their sign language was fully comprehensive and rich with nuance.

“Clover is food. We had it last night,” Creb signed.

“Yes,” Iza nodded, “and we will tonight. The magic is in the way it’s prepared. A large bunch boiled in little water extracts what is needed, the leaves are thrown out.” Creb nodded with understanding and she went on. “Alder bark cleans the blood, purifies it, drives out the spirits that poison it.”

“You used something from your medicine bag, too.”

“Powdered hops, the mature cones with the fine hairs, to calm her and make her sleep restfully. While the spirits battle, she needs rest.”

Creb nodded again; he was familiar with the soporific qualities of hops that induced a mild state of euphoria in a different use. Though he was always interested in Iza’s treatments, he seldom volunteered information about the ways he used herbal magic. Such esoteric knowledge was for mog-urs and their acolytes, not women, not even medicine women. Iza knew more about the properties of plants than he did, and he was afraid she would deduce too much. It would be most unpropitious if she guessed much about his magic.

“And the other bowl?” he asked.

“That’s just broth. The poor thing is half starved. What do you suppose happened to her? Where did she come from? Where are her people? She must have been wandering alone for days.”

“Only the spirits know,” Mog-ur replied. “Are you sure your healing magic will work on her? She’s not Clan.”

“It should; the Others are human, too. You remember mother telling about the man with the broken arm, the one her mother helped? Clan magic worked on him, although mother did say it took him longer to wake up from the sleeping medicine than expected.”

“It’s a shame you never knew her, our mother’s mother. She was such a good medicine woman, people came from other clans to see her. It’s too bad she left to walk the spirit world so soon after you were born, Iza. She told me about that man herself, so did Mog-ur-before-me. He stayed for a while after he recovered and hunted with the clan. He must have been a good hunter, he was allowed to join a hunting ceremony. It’s true, they are human, but different, too.” Mog-ur stopped. Iza was too astute, he couldn’t afford to say too much or she might begin to draw some conclusions about the men’s secret rituals.

Iza checked her bowls again, then cradling the child’s head on her lap, she fed her the contents of the bone bowl in small sips. It was easier to feed her the broth. The girl mumbled incoherently and tried to fight off the bitter-tasting medicine, but even in her delirium her starving body craved food. Iza held her until she lapsed into a quiet sleep, then checked her heartbeat and breathing. She had done what she could. If the girl wasn’t too far gone, she had a chance. It was up to the spirits now, and the inner strength of the child.

Iza saw Brun walking toward her, eyeing her with displeasure. She got up quickly and ran to help serve the meal. He had dismissed the strange child from his mind after his initial consideration, but now he was having second thoughts. Though it was customary to avert the eyes to avoid seeing other people in conversation, he couldn’t help noticing what his clan was saying. Their wondering at his allowing the girl to come with them made him begin to wonder, too. He began to fear the spirits’ anger might be aroused more by the stranger in their midst. He veered to intercept the medicine woman, but Creb saw him and headed him off.

“What’s wrong, Brun? You look worried.”

“Iza must leave that child here, Mog-ur. She is not Clan; the spirits won’t like it if she is with us while we’re looking for a new cave. I never should have let Iza take her.”

“No, Brun,” Mog-ur countered. “Protective spirits are not angered by kindness. You know Iza, she can’t bear to see anything hurting without trying to help. Don’t you think the spirits know her too? If they didn’t want Iza to help her, the child would not have been put in her path. There must be a reason for it. The girl may die anyway, Brun, but if Ursus wants to call her to the spirit world, let the decision be his. Don’t interfere now. She will surely die if she is left behind.”

Brun didn’t like it-something about the girl bothered him-but deferring to Mog-ur’s greater knowledge of the spirit world, he acquiesced.

Creb sat in contemplative silence after the meal, waiting for everyone to finish eating so he could begin the nightly ceremony, while Iza arranged his sleeping place and made preparations for the morning. Mog-ur had put a ban on men and women sleeping together until a new cave was found so the men could concentrate their energies on the rituals and so everyone would feel they were making an effort that would bring them closer to a new home.

It didn’t matter to Iza; her mate had been one of those killed in the cave-in. She had mourned him with proper grief at his burial-it would have been unlucky to do otherwise-but she was not unhappy he was gone. It was no secret he had been cruel and demanding. There had never been any warmth between them. She didn’t know what Brun would decide to do with her now that she was alone. Someone would have to provide for her and the child she carried; she only hoped she could still cook for Creb.

He had shared their fire from the beginning, Iza sensed he hadn’t liked her mate any more than she had, though he never interfered with the internal problems of her relationship. She had always felt it was an honor to cook for Mog-ur, but more, she had developed a bond of affection for her sibling like many women grew to feel for their mates.

Iza felt sorry for Creb sometimes; he could have had a mate of his own had he wanted one. But she knew for all his great magic and exalted position, no woman ever looked at his deformed body and scarred face without revulsion, and she was sure he knew it. He never took a mate, maintained a reserve. It added to his stature. Everyone, men included, with the possible exception of Brun, feared Mog-ur or regarded him with awe. Everyone but Iza, who had known his gentleness and sensitivity since her birth. It was a side of his nature he seldom showed openly.

And it was that side of his nature that was occupying the mind of the great Mogur just then. Rather than meditating on that evening’s ceremony, he was thinking about the little girl. He had often been curious about her kind, but people of the Clan avoided the Others as much as possible, and he had never seen one of their young before. He suspected the earthquake had something to do with her being alone, though it surprised him that any of her people were so close. They usually stayed much farther north.

He noticed a few men start to leave the campsite and hauled himself up with his staff so he could supervise the preparations. The ritual was a masculine prerogative and duty. Only rarely were women allowed to participate in the religious life of the clan, and they were banned from this ceremony entirely. No disaster could be so great as that of a woman seeing the men’s secret rites. It would not just bring bad luck, it would drive the protective spirits away. The whole clan would die.

But there was little danger of that. It would never occur to a woman to venture anywhere near such an important ritual. They looked forward to it as a time to relax, relieved of the constant demands of the men and the need to behave with proper decorum and respect. It was hard on the women having the men around all the time, especially when the men were so nervous and took it out on their mates. Usually they would be gone for periods of time hunting. The women were just as anxious to find a new home, but there was little they could do. Brun chose the direction they traveled and no advice was solicited from them, nor could they have given it.

The women relied on their men to lead, to assume responsibility, to make important decisions. The Clan had changed so little in nearly a hundred thousand years, they were now incapable of change, and ways that had once been adaptations for convenience had become genetically set. Both men and women accepted their roles without struggle; they were inflexibly unable to assume any other. They would no more try to change their relationship than they would try to grow an extra arm or change the shape of their brain.

After the men left, the women gathered around Ebra and hoped Iza would join them so they could satisfy their curiosity, but Iza was exhausted and didn’t want to leave the girl. She lay down beside her as soon as Creb left and wrapped her fur around both of them. She watched the sleeping girl for a while by the dim light of the cooled fire.

Peculiar-looking little thing, she thought. Rather ugly in a way. Her face is so flat with that high bulging forehead and little stub of a nose, and what a strange boney knob beneath her mouth. I wonder how old she is? Younger than I thought at first; she’s so tall it’s misleading. And so thin, I can feel her bones. Poor baby, I wonder how long it’s been since she had anything to eat, wandering all alone. Iza put her arm around the girl protectively. The woman who had even helped young animals on occasion could not do less for the wretched skinny little girl. The warm heart of the medicine woman went out to the vulnerable child.

Mog-ur stood back as each man arrived and found his place behind one of the stones that had been arranged in a small circle within a larger circle of torches. They were on the open steppes away from the camp. The magician waited until all the men were seated, and a little longer, then stepped into the middle of the circle carrying a burning brand of aromatic wood. He set the small torch into the ground in front of the vacant place that had his staff behind it.

He stood up straight on his good leg in the middle of the circle and stared over the heads of the seated men into the dark distance with a dreamy unfocused look, as though he were seeing with his one eye a world to which the others were blind. Wrapped in his heavy cave bear-skin cloak that covered the lopsided bulges of his unsymmetrical frame, he was an imposing yet strangely unreal presence. A man, yet with his distorted shape, not quite a man; not more or less, but other than. His very deformities imbued him with a supernatural quality that was never more awesome than when Mog-ur conducted a ceremony.

Suddenly, with a magician’s flourish, he produced a skull. He held it high over his head with his strong left arm and turned slowly around in a complete circle so each man could see the large, distinctive, high-domed shape. The men stared at the, cave bear’s skull glowing whitely in the flickering light of the torches. He placed it in front of the small torch in the ground and lowered himself down behind it, completing the circle.

A young man sitting beside him got up and picked up a wooden bowl. He was past his eleventh year and his manhood ceremony had been held shortly before the earthquake. Goov had been chosen as acolyte when he was a small boy and he had often assisted Mog-ur in preparations, but acolytes were not allowed at an actual ceremony until they were men. The first time Goov functioned in his new role was after they had begun their search, and he was still nervous.

For Goov, finding a new cave had a special meaning. It was his chance to learn the details of the seldom-performed and difficult-to-describe ceremony that made a cave acceptable for residence, from the great Mog-ur himself. As a child he had feared the magician, though he understood the honor of being chosen. The young man had since learned the cripple was not only the most skilled mog-ur of all the clans, but that he had a kind and gentle heart beneath his austere visage. Goov respected his mentor and loved him.

The acolyte had begun preparing the drink that was in the bowl as soon as Brun had called the halt. He started by pounding whole datura plants between two stones. The difficult part was estimating the quantity and proportion of leaves, stems, and flowers to use. Boiling water was poured over the crushed plants, and the mixture left to steep until the ceremony.

Goov had poured the strong datura tea into the special ceremonial bowl, straining it between his fingers, just before Mog-ur stepped into the circle, and hoped anxiously to get the holy man’s nod of acceptance. While Goov held it, Mog-ur took a sip, nodded his approval, then drank, and Goov breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Then he took the bowl to each of the men according to rank, beginning with Brun. He held it while they drank, controlling the portion each one consumed, and took his drink last.

Mog-ur waited for him to sit down, then gave a signal. The men began pounding the butt ends of their spears rhythmically on the ground. The dull thudding of the spears seemed to get louder until no other sound was heard. They got caught up in the steady beat, then stood up and began moving in time to the rhythm. The holy man stared at the skull, and his intense gaze drew the men’s attention to the sacred relic as though he willed it. Timing was important, and he was a master of timing. He waited just long enough for the anticipation to build to a peak-any longer and the keen edge would have been gone – then looked up at his sibling, the man who led the clan. Brun squatted down in front of the skull.

“Spirit of Bison, Totem of Brun,” Mog-ur began. He actually spoke only one word, “Brun.” The rest was said with his one-handed gestures, and he vocalized no other words. Formalized movements, the ancient unspoken language used to communicate with spirits and with other clans whose few guttural words and common hand signals were different, were all that followed. With silent symbols, Mog-ur implored the Spirit of the Bison to forgive them for any wrongs they might have done that offended him and begged for his help.

“This man has always honored the Spirits, Great Bison, always kept the traditions of the Clan. This man is a strong leader, a wise leader, a fair leader, a good hunter, a good provider, a self-controlled man, worthy of the Mighty Bison. Do not desert this man; guide this leader to a new home, a place where the Spirit of the Bison will be content.

This clan begs for the help of the totem of this man,” the holy man concluded. Then he looked at the second-in-command. As Brun moved back, Grod squatted in front of the cave bear skull.

No woman could be allowed to see the ceremony, to know that their men, who led with such stoic strength, begged and pleaded with unseen spirits just as the women begged and pleaded with the men.

“Spirit of Brown Bear, Totem of Grod,” Mog-ur began once more and went through a similar formal pleading with Grod’s totem; then all the rest of the men in turn. He continued to stare at the skull when he was through, while the men pounded their spears, letting the anticipation build again.

They all knew what came next, the ceremony never changed; it was the same night after night, but still they anticipated. They were waiting for Mog-ur to call upon the Spirit of Ursus, the Great Cave Bear, his own personal totem and most revered of all the spirits.

Ursus was more than Mog-ur’s totem; he was everyone’s totem, and more than totem. It was Ursus that made them Clan. He was the supreme spirit, supreme protector.

Reverence for the Cave Bear was the common factor that united them, the force that welded all the separate autonomous clans into one people, the Clan of the Cave Bear.

When the one-eyed magician judged the time was right, he signaled. The men stopped pounding and sat behind their stones, but the heavy thudding rhythm coursed through their bloodstreams and still pounded inside their heads.

Mog-ur reached into a small pouch and withdrew a pinch of dried club-moss spores. Holding his hand over the small torch, he leaned forward and blew, at the same time he let them drop over the flame. The spores caught fire and cascaded dramatically around the skull in a magnesium brilliance of light, in stark contrast to the dark night.

The skull glowed, seemed to come alive, did, to the men whose perceptions were heightened by the effects of datura. An owl in a nearby tree hooted, seemingly on command, adding his haunting sound to the eerie splendor.

“Great Ursus, Protector of the Clan,” the magician said with formal signs, “show this clan to a new home as once the Cave Bear showed the Clan to live in caves and wear fur. Protect your Clan from Ice Mountain, and the Spirit of Granular Snow who begot him, and the Spirit of Blizzards, her mate. This clan would beg the Great Cave Bear to let no evil come while they are homeless. Most honored of all Spirits, your Clan, your people, ask the Spirit of Mighty Ursus to join with them as they make the journey to the beginning.”

And then, Mog-ur used the power of his great brain.

All those primitive people, with almost no frontal lobes, and speech limited by undeveloped vocal organs, but with huge brains-larger than any race of man then living or future generations yet unborn-were unique. They were the culmination of a branch of mankind whose brain was developed in the back of their heads, in the occipital and the parietal regions that control vision and bodily sensation and store memory.

And their memory made them extraordinary. In them, the unconscious knowledge of ancestral behavior called instinct had evolved. Stored in the back of their large brains were not just their own memories, but the memories of their forebears. They could recall knowledge learned by their ancestors and, under special circumstances, they could go a step beyond. They could recall their racial memory, their own evolution. And when they reached back far enough, they could merge that memory that was identical for all and join their minds, telepathically.

But only in the tremendous brain of the scarred, malformed cripple was the gift fully developed. Creb, gentle shy Creb, whose massive brain caused his deformity, had, as Mog-ur, learned to use the power of that brain to fuse the separate entities seated around him into one mind, and direct it. He could take them to any part of their racial heritage, to become in their minds any of their progenitors. He was The Mog-ur. His was a true power, not limited to tricks of lighting or drug-induced euphoria. That only set the stage and enabled them to accept his direction.

In that still, dark night, lit by ancient stars, a few men experienced visions impossible to describe. They did not see them, they were them. They felt the sensations, saw with the eyes, and remembered the unfathomable beginnings. From the depths of their minds they found the undeveloped brains of creatures of the sea floating in their warm, saline environment. They survived the pain of their first breath of air and became amphibians sharing both elements.

Because they venerated the cave bear, Mog-ur evoked a primordial mammal-the ancestor who spawned both species and a host of others-and merged the unity of their minds with the bear’s beginning. Then down through the ages they became in succession each of their progenitors, and sensed those that diverged to other forms. It made them aware of their relationship with all life on the earth, and the reverence it fostered even for the animals they killed and consumed formed the basis of the spiritual kinship with their totems.

All their minds moved as one, and only as they neared the present did they separate into their immediate forebears and finally themselves. It seemed to take forever.

In a sense it did, but little actual time elapsed. As each man reached himself again, he quietly got up and left to find his sleeping place and a deep dreamless sleep, his dreams already spent.

Mog-ur was the last. In solitude he meditated on the experience and after a time felt a familiar uneasiness. They could know the past with the depth and grandeur that exalted the soul, but Creb sensed a limitation that never occurred to the others. They could not see ahead. They could not even think ahead. He alone had a bare inkling of the possibility.

The Clan could not conceive a future any different from the past, could not devise innovative alternatives for tomorrow. All their knowledge, everything they did, was a repetition of something that had been done before. Even storing food for seasonal changes was the result of past experience.

There had been a time, long before, when innovation came easier, when a broken sharp-edged stone gave someone the idea to break a stone on purpose to make a sharp edge, when the warm end of a twirled stick made someone twirl it harder and longer just to see how warm it could get. But as more memories built up, crowding and enlarging the storage capacity of their brain, changes came harder. There was no more room for new ideas that would be added to their memory bank, their heads were already too large.

Women had difficulty giving birth; they couldn’t afford new knowledge that would enlarge their heads even more.

The Clan lived by unchanging tradition. Every facet of their lives from the time they were born until they were called to the world of the spirits was circumscribed by the past. It was an attempt at survival, unconscious and unplanned except by nature in a lastditch effort to save the race from extinction, and doomed to failure. They could not stop change, and resistance to it was self-defeating, antisurvival.

They were slow to adapt. Inventions were accidental and often not utilized. If something new happened to them, it could be added to their backlog of information; but change was accomplished only with great effort, and once it was forced on them, they were adamant in following the new course. It came too hard to alter it again. But a race with no room for learning, no room for growth, was no longer equipped for an inherently changing environment, and they had passed beyond the point of developing in a different way. That would be left for a newer form, a different experiment of nature.

As Mog-ur sat alone on the open plain watching the last of the torches sputter and die, he thought of the strange girl Iza had found, and his uneasiness grew until it became a physical discomfort. Her kind had been met before, but only recently in his concept of reckoning, and not many of the chance meetings had been pleasant. Where they had come from was a mystery-her people were newcomers to their land-but since they arrived things had been changing. They seemed to bring change with them.

Creb shrugged off his uneasiness, carefully wrapped the cave bear’s skull in his cloak, reached for his staff, and hobbled to bed.