The Tenth Chamber

TWENTY-NINE

Ruac Cave, 30,000 BP

Tal awoke, covered from head to feet in sweat, the taste of Soaring Water still on his tongue. He tried to remember what had just happened but he was unable.

He felt between his legs and stroked his erect member. Uboas was a few feet away, lying on a beautifully lush bison skin, the last beast killed in their bi-annual hunt. She was asleep, wrapped in a reindeer skin blanket, and had not been well. He could have woken her and satisfied himself but he chose to let her sleep till the morning light entered the mouth of the cave.

He stroked himself until he was satisfied then rolled himself in skins to warm himself against the night chill. He ran his hand over his own bison skin which was starting to get thin and patchy. It was from a kill he had made as a young man. Not his first – that trophy had gone to his father, but his second. That was his to keep. He remembered the spear throw that had taken the animal. He could still see the shaft flying fast and straight, the flint tip, slipping perfectly between the ribs and sinking deeply. He remembered it vividly, even though it had occurred a very long time ago.

As he felt the animal’s fur bristling between his fingers, suddenly, in a flash of blinding light as if he had looked into the sun, the remembrance of the soaring came back to him. He began to shiver.

He was flying over a herd of bison, close enough to reach out and touch a powerful, muscular shoulder of one of the beasts. He felt, as he always did, the exultation of effortless flight, the honour of moving with the herd, of being one with them. In pleasure, he stretched his arms to their fullest and spread his fingers to the wind.

Then, he was aware of something strange, an alien presence closing in on him. He always soared alone but he sensed there was someone or something else intruding on his realm. He turned his head and saw it.

A long, sleek figure, swooping down on him, like a hawk after prey.

It had the head of a lion but the body of a man. Its arms were tucked against its body, allowing it to cut through the air like a spear. And it was aiming for him.

He flapped his arms to pick up speed but could go no faster. The herd of bison parted, half going right, half going left. He wanted to turn to follow along but he was unable to change directions. He was flying on his own, low, the tall grasses of the plain tickling his bare body. The lion man was getting closer and closer. He could see it open its mouth and snarl, and had a notion how its hot saliva would feel against his flesh the instant before its fangs clamped down on his leg.

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.

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 promised, leave their spears in a pile.

Their head man came forwards, clutching a silent infant. The man wore a splendid necklace of bear teeth.

Kek translated. I am Osa. This is my son. Make him well.

Tal took a few steps forwards and asked to see the boy. He peeled back the hide blanket and saw a limp, listless baby, several months old, its eyes shut, its smooth chest contracting with each breath. With the permission of his father, he touched the skin – it was hot and dry as an old bone. He saw its bowels were leaking.

He let the blanket fall back. Then the head man took off his necklace and handed it to Tal.

Tal accepted it and put it around his neck.

He would try to heal the infant.

Through Kek, Tal instructed the Neanderthals to congregate at the river bank and wait. He had Mem organise the best spear men to keep watch while he and Tala ran off to find the correct plants. When they returned, they had filled a pouch with two kinds of bark, a handful of succulent round leaves and the stringy roots of a tuber. When Tala filled a skin with river water, Tal said they were ready to begin.

Because the boy was very ill, Tal decided to take him into the deepest, most-sacred chamber for the healing. He would need all the powers at his disposal. Osa bore the infant in his thick arms and followed Tal into the cave accompanied by three of his clansmen, brutish fellows who seemed genuinely scared to venture into the darkness with only lamp light. Mem, Tala and one of Tal’s nephews represented the Bison Clan. Kek rounded out the party. It was his lot to straddle both worlds and bridge their languages.

The Neanderthals cried out when they saw the painted walls. They pointed and jabbered. Kek spoke in their guttural tongue and tried to soothe them by showing he could safely touch the images without fear of being trampled or maimed.

It took a great deal of coaxing to get the visitors to crawl through the tunnel into the Chamber of Plants. Fearing a trap, one of the brutes insisted on being the last one through. Crowded together in the hand-adorned vault, they murmured and blinked at the stencils and held up their own hands for inspection in the light of the burning fat and juniper.

There, most of the joint party waited, in tense comity, with as much physical separation as the vault would allow. Tal, Mem, Kek, the head man and one of his kin entered the tenth chamber with the boy.

Tal immediately began singing one of his mother’s old healing chants and proceeded to prepare the cure. Using one of his long flint blades he cut the succulent leaves and stringy roots into small pieces and when done, he laid the blade on end, propped against the wall. He scooped the vegetation into his mother’s stone bowl. Then he added some bark pieces, shredded between his rough palms. Finally some fresh water from the skin. He stirred and mashed the mixture with his hands until it was moss green and added more water to make it liquid enough to drink.

In the light of the flickering lamps, he kept the chant going, sat the boy up and had his father open his parched lips wide enough to pour in a small amount. The boy reflexively coughed and sputtered. Tal waited and gave him some more. Then more. Until the child had drunk a fair measure.

The boy was laid down on the ground, wrapped in his skin and the men stood over him, two species, sharing one earth, united in the common interest of saving one tiny being.

Tal chanted for hours.

Fresh lamps had to be brought.

Throughout the night, word was relayed to the two clans huddled on the ledge on either side of the cave mouth in wary peace. Tala would emerge and tell the Bison Clan that the child was moaning, or vomiting, or finally sleeping quietly. Uboas would press on her son strips of dried meat before he rushed back to be at his father’s side.

As the first light broke outside the cave, the infant seemed to rally. He lifted his head on his own to accept water. Tal let it be known they would leave the cave because the healing was working. The child’s father grunted his approval.

Then, a catastrophe.

In a wet intestinal gurgle, the chamber suddenly filled with a foul odour as the child suddenly evacuated much of its weight. There was a high-pitched sigh and the little body simply stopped breathing.

The men looked down on the lifeless body in stunned silence.

The boy’s father kneeled and shook him, trying to wake. He cried out something and Kek yelled back at him. By his tone, Tal could tell his son was trying to avert disaster.

Osa slowly rose to his feet. In the low light of the hissing lamps his sunken eyes were the brightest objects in the chamber. Then he let out a curdling scream which seemed from another realm, an amalgam of a man’s cry and a beast’s roar, so loud and reverberating that it froze all the other men into paralytic inaction.

For a lumbering man, he moved like a lion. In a blink he had Tal’s stone bowl in his massive hand. Tal, nor anyone else, had a moment to react. He saw a dark blur as the Neanderthal’s arm swung in an arc and bashed the bowl behind his ear.

The world became bright for a time as if the sun had moved from the sky and made its way through all the chambers of the cave into the last chamber.

He was on the ground, on all fours.

He was aware of shouts in the distance, the sounds of flint thrusting through flesh, great shouts of pain and war.

He heard the sound of men falling, the thud of death.

He lifted his head.

The bird man was towering over him, his beak proudly open.

I will soar, he thought. I will soar forever.

His head was too heavy to keep up. What was that on the ground? He struggled to see it through the pain and fog in his head and the poor light.

It was the small ivory bison, fallen from his belt pouch.

He reached for it as he fashioned his last thoughts.

Bison Clan.

Uboas.

Tala was the only one to make it out of the cave alive. It was he who killed Osa by bashing his head against the wall. Kek was smitten by his own brother and Mem fell to one of the Neanderthals. In close quarters men stabbed and stomped and gouged until there was nothing but a bloody mess of humanity.

Tala’s arm was broken, either from a blow that he had struck or one he received, he did not know. He ran into the sunlight crying out in alarm. Tal was dead. The Shadow People had attacked. There must be revenge.

Quickly and brutally, the men of the Bison Clan fell on the frightened Neanderthals. Since they had been obliged to leave their spears at the camp, it did not take long until every one of them, every man, woman and child was run through or thrown off the high ledge.

They had called themselves the Forest People. They were no more.

Tala was head man now. There would be time for ceremony. In the midst of the crisis, the clan simply fell into line and began to obey his commands. And Uboas stoically ignored her own sorrow and busied herself making a wooden and sinew splint for her son’s arm.

All the dead and broken men were dragged out. Except for Tal. Tala ordered that the dead infant, the son of Osa, have his hand cut off before he was carried out. One of the clan men used Tal’s good blade to separate the small finger bones into a bloody pile and then carefully put the blade back against the wall where Tal had left it. The finger bones would be used to make Tala a trophy necklace, but in his haste one of the tiny phalanges was dropped into the dirt, never to make it around Tala’s neck.

The Neanderthals, whether dead or alive, were pitched over the ledge onto the rocks below to join their brethren. The lions, the bears and the hawks would have a feast.

They carefully bore the bodies of their dead down the cliffs for burial in the soft earth beside the river. That was their custom. The clan waited to hear Tala’s decision about Kek. Was he of their clan or the Others?

He was my brother, he declared, and one of us. He would be treated in death as a member of the Bison Clan.

The young man’s decision was well received and there was a sense of confidence that he would also know how to honour their extraordinary leader’s bodily remains. He withdrew back into the cave. He would sit beside his dead father, drink the Soaring Water, and when he was done, he would know what to do.

It was nearly sunset when the clan finished restoring order to their world. They ascended the cliffs one more time and gathered around the cave mouth.

Tala emerged, spoke to them clearly and with resolve, waving his one good arm for emphasis. He had soared with the bison herd and in the distance, he saw the bird man flying into the cave and disappearing.

He had his answer.

Tal would be left in the Chamber of Plants, in the sacred place he had created. He would have his soaring bowl with him. He would have his ivory bison. His best flint blade. His bird man would be his company. No one would ever enter the chamber again.

Whereas the other ancestors dwelled around their camp fires in the sky, the great Tal would forever dwell inside his painted cave.