Turning the Grain

Doven touched his left thumb to his tongue, shrugged, and said, “There is little else for this gifted to do until the reed bogs sprout in the spring.” He held out a finger, let it droop until it pointed down, and then laughed.

As Ekav climbed into the sky, they shared the meat, Doven made the signs, and Gordon learned his alphabet, the gods, their sound signs, and tried not to think about the mountain at his back. Before he had left the ledge, Jatka was back carrying a message from the naticha. “It is time,” was all he said.

Tonton Annajaka’s dwelling was past the cliff at the northeastern edge of the village, deep among tall cedars and dug into the side of a rocky hill. A single window filled with stretched translucent skin, and a dark leather and branch door in the sod wall at the end of a path, marked the house’s location. A thin ribbon of smoke came from the rocks and brush above the dwelling. Tonton Annajaka was standing in the open doorway dressed in a simple deerskin long shirt and moccasins. Her thin white hair was wrapped with a wide black deerskin band. “Come, God’n,” she said. “Best to pull the thorn quickly.” Tonton stood back from the door and Gordon entered.

It was a dark cave-like room, all but the east-facing wall of sod and the packed earthen floor formed from the hill’s rock. The north wall was crowded with leather-and-branch shelves filled with herbs, rocks, and powders contained in ceramic bowls, some with lids. Tonton seated Gordon on a leather cushion atop a rocky shelf. She sat upon a bed of furs facing him, both of them warmed by the west wall and the small wood fire at its base. The fire and the light coming through the scraped skin in the window added to the light provided by the fish oil lamp tucked into a rocky niche near Tonton’s bed. The smoke from the fire went up through a crack in the overhanging rock above.

“Now, God’n, you tell Tonton Annajaka about coming storm.” She brought her fierce blue-eyed gaze up and fixed it to his face. “Tonton will see if you believe your words.”

And he told her all that he knew about the great thing that fell from the sky long ago, covered the surrounding land with glass, and built Black Mountain. He told her of the age of ice and of the great glaciers on Black Mountain and its flanks, more ice covering the highlands and the plateau to the mountain’s south. He told her of the meteor to come, that it would shatter the mountain, the blast immediately killing everything within a straight walk of at least twenty suns’ distance. He told her of the great heat that would melt the ice and snow on and around the mountain as well as the frozen ground beneath, and of the great flow of mud, rocks, and trees that would fill Avina’s Valley almost to the men’s ledge. All the peoples of the Black Mountain would die. More floods and ice, then drought and sandstorms would come, filling the valley almost to the top of the cliff, burying all evidence of Red Cliff’s people and all they ever were.

The naticha remained still for a long time, her face a mask as she studied upon the things Gordon had told her. She looked startled as she glanced away from the space to Gordon’s left. He turned and could see nothing there. Looking back, he saw her staring at him. “Then do I believe what I say?” he asked.

“What you say, you believe, God’n,” She said in a quiet voice. Her expression was eerie as she said, “Two ghosts, God’n. Two ghosts you have. They believe what you say. A third ghost, in you...”

He looked again then saw the distorted light patterns, one on either side of him. For a split second he caught a glimpse of a shimmer just above his own hands. Tonton leaned forward and pointed a finger at him. “Tell me why they believe this!” Her eyes narrowed. “And if you believe this, God’n, why you not run!”

Time travel, parallel dimensions, one hundred and thirty-nine thousands of summers of human evolution, accomplishment, destruction, and the dangers inherent in turning a single grain of sand. “Ibrahim Taleghani, one of the spirits who believe, told me before he died that turning that grain of sand—placing all the human history we know at risk—was unthinkable. If he were alive, he would not run. He would stand here and die with your people.”

He couldn’t read Tonton’s expression as she went to her shelves of herbs and bent to her potions and powders. Tonton took a blackish substance, placed it in a ceramic bowl, added a pale yellow liquid, mixed it with a wooden spoon, poured a bit of it into her left hand, rubbed it into her palm, and turned to Gordon. “I would talk with your ghosts.”

Gordon almost began a sarcastic comment that ended abruptly as the naticha’s left palm suddenly opened facing him. An orange mist filled his vision and the universe twisted on its end and went dark.

“God’n? God’n?” He felt a hand shaking his right shoulder. He opened his eyes and Tonton Annajaka’s rock ceiling wowed in and out, orange mists at the edge of his vision. He had a headache that could chase down, kill, and eat Running Mountain single-handed.

“Drink this, God’n.”

He turned his head to the right. He was on the earthen floor of the room. Jatka’s face was looking down at him. The young man was holding out a wooden cup. “Drink this. Chase head pain.”

Gordon pushed himself up until he was sitting, took the cup and sniffed at its contents. It smelled like mint. He drank down the warm brew. As he lowered the cup, his headache diminished. Gordon handed back the cup to Jatka. “Where is Tonton?”

“She cross river.”

Gordon frowned. “What did she say?”

“Tonton say for me to take you to Ghaf’s tent for Temptations. You take long time to open eyes. I get you tea for head pain. Almost dark now.”

“Nothing about why she crossed the river?”

“Ghosts talk to her.”

Gordon waited until the headache was almost gone, then floundered around for a bit trying to stand. With Jatka’s aid, he made it. Once the room became steady, Gordon looked at the boy and asked, “Temptations?”

That night Gordon, the gifted, relatives, and well-wishers assembled in what functioned as Ghaf’s town house, a large tent of oiled leathers lined inside by bearskins. The edges of the recently expanded floor space were crowded by cedar-bough beds covered with leathers and furs, also added recently in preparation for guests attending the Temptations who might be staying over. In the center of the space beneath the smoke hole was a fire pit at which Lolna and some of the other women prepared food.

After making his greetings, Ghaf led Gordon before the guest of honor, Mahu, Clan Father. He was a strong-looking fellow who looked to be in his early forties. His brown beard had twin gray streaks down from the corners of his mouth. Fierce dark brown eyes peered over an aquiline nose.

The Clan Father stood and gripped Gordon’s wrist and gestured toward a place next to his in the ring. They sat. Mahu was on Gordon’s left and Ghaf seated himself on Gordon’s right. Ghaf said to Gordon, “How many suns you know Pela?”

“Six,” Gordon answered.

“Not long,” said Mahu shaking his head.

“Is that time enough,” asked Ghaf, “to know another?”

“Not time enough,” answered Gordon. “That will take a lifetime.”

The hunter nodded approvingly at the answer. Mahu leaned more closely to Gordon and said, “Pela good woman.” Then Mahu shrugged and shook his head. “Pela no afutebbe.”

Gordon mentally searched though the vocabulary he had pieced together, his head still clouded from Tonton’s little hypno preparation. The “afu” sound was a fertility prefix. “Tebbe” was apartness, unjoining. Together they meant virginity. Pela was not a virgin.

“Then Pela is truthful,” he said.

Mahu touched his thumb to his tongue, and nodded to his left where sat a woman in furs. She had dark hair, a pleasant enough face, and a big smile. “This Shantonna.”

Gordon nodded at her. “Shantonna, I greet you.”

Shantonna turned to her left and pushed a young girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen around in front of Mahu facing Gordon. “Anista,” introduced Mahu. The child wore white furs and had an angelic face with a tiny nose and large brown eyes framed by black hair woven with yellow dried flowers. “Anista afutebbe!” declared the Clan Father.

Gordon looked at the girl, unsure what he was supposed to do next. Anista grinned shyly, turned, and hid her face behind her mother. Shantonna pulled the girl out from behind and grinned widely as she held her in Gordon’s view, turning her around like a prized pumpkin. “Anista,” said Gordon, “how many summers have you?”

The girl looked up at him with huge brown eyes and held up ten fingers, then three.

Gordon rubbed his chin and studied her. “My summers,” he said, then held out all ten of his fingers once, twice, then three times followed by all but two of his fingers. The girl’s eyebrows climbed for the sky.

“Your face is a boy’s,” she protested.

“I am old and can never have a beard unless I cut off your hair and use that,” he said. “I am honored to meet you and I wish you a long healthy life, a strong young handsome husband, and many children and grandchildren. I am thinking for Pela now and have no thoughts to spare for others.” He looked at the girl’s mother. “Save your daughter, Shantonna, for one more worthy.”

Relief showed on the girl’s face. Shantonna’s, as well.

Mahu scratched at his beard and faced Gordon. “Thirty and eight summers?”

“Yes.”

“No beard?”

“No.”

The clan leader studied Gordon, concentrating on his face. The inspection complete, Mahu held a hand against his own chest and said quietly, “Thirty and nine.” He then made a yoni sign with his right hand and a phallic sign with his left. Upon a rather graphic joining, the clan leader looked up at Gordon, a question on his face.

Gordon grinned. “Yes, I do.”

Mahu looked around, gesturing with his hands to include the known universe. “Who?”

The most recent who was the artist in Port Elizabeth, but that was two wars and several years ago. “No one,” Gordon admitted. “For long time. No one.”

Mahu’s eyebrows descended in an instant of disappointment, then he smiled sympathetically, nodded, and patted Gordon’s back. “Mahu, just so. Many summers. Just so.” He wiggled a finger at Gordon, ending the gesture with a droopy finger.

Gordon frowned. “That doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Mahu humored Gordon with a nod and another pat on the back.

A man seated behind Mahu leaned forward and said to Gordon, “Shagiv. I make tent.” Gordon nodded at him. “Once I saw Pela speak angrily to her first husband, Iveleh,” he confessed.

Another man behind Gordon said, “Pahit, thread maker. Twice I hear Pela curse Ekav.” He pointed up. “The first time she cursed the god was when Iveleh’s ashes were brought back from Yellow Claw country. The second time was when Iveleh’s brother, Jidah, died of the blacksore.”

A man behind Ghaf said, “Tayem, I run hunting dogs. Know that Pela has almost thirty summers. She can bear you no children.”

Gordon waited to see if there were any more remarks to be made against Pela. When there were none, he said, “Thank you for your guidance. From you I see that Pela is experienced, accomplished, loves and feels loss deeply, and is fearless in addressing the gods when they wrong her. From you all I see I have chosen well.”

Mahu grinned widely, nodded at Ghaf’s wife, and the Temptation ceremony continued with a feast of goat, tea, and something resembling hardtack which when softened in the tea was quite sweet. Mahu said, “Keila,” then he pointed across the circle. Gordon looked where the Clan Father indicated. There was a place across from Gordon that was empty. One of Mahu’s wives, a plump sandy-haired woman in her early thirties wearing the leather long shirt, placed a beaded leather cushion in the empty place, glanced at Gordon, covered her face in embarrassment, faced her left palm at Mahu, and went to the fire pit to join in the cooking. “Keila,” repeated Mahu. “My first wife. Keila first daughter of Kag Ati, Clan Father Cleft Mountain. Keila’s mother dead. Kag Ati took three new wives to replace her.” He looked around the circle at the company. “Kag Ati not here.” Mahu pointed out his two other wives, both dark-complexioned younger women with black hair and dark eyes. “Suna and Min. Twin daughters of Nol Pindaak, naticha of Yellow Claw Clan.” He gestured toward a man in a black leather hooded long shirt who wore a necklace of blue beads. Nol Pindaak nodded back at Mahu’s gesture and pushed back his hood, revealing a weathered dark face with large dark eyes. He sported a long black beard salted with gray. Nol Pindaak gestured to a quite slender woman in furs sitting to his left.

“That is Funa Son, Nol’s only wife, mother of Suna and Min. Mahu continued introducing the notable personages attending the ceremony. When he was concluded, he asked if he could look at Gordon’s leather knapsack. Gordon handed it over and Mahu nodded his thanks as he held the pack in his lap and studied the finish on the leather and especially the stitching. “I have never seen such work. Who made this?”

“L.L. Bean.”

“Where is this—”

“Mahu!” called a deep gravelly voice. The Black Mountain Clan Father looked up, grinned and waved. Gordon saw a man in heavy dark furs on the other side of the fire pit near the eastern entrance wave back. “Kag Ati,” said Mahu.

The Clan Father of the Cleft Mountain Clan was taller than usual, heavily muscled, and with a face burned dark by sun, wind, and snow glare. He had an ugly scar from the outside corner of his left eye straight down to his chin line, the result of a knife fight in which—according to Mahu—he slew the previous Clan Father. Kag Ati wore his dark brown furs about his shoulders over whitish leathers and was the only one in Ghaf’s tent who carried a weapon: one of the obsidian-toothed clubs. Kag Ati looked at Gordon, switched his weapon from his right to his left hand, kissed his own right palm, touched the palm to his forehead, and held the hand out in Gordon’s direction. Gordon nodded in return.

Wooden drums began beating, the instrumentation provided by two men near the door. Just as suddenly as it began, the drumming stopped. Pela’s ex-sister-in-law Bonsha came in the eastern entrance and stood to the left of the opening. Then Pela entered, being led by a tall man in his forties with thick black hair streaked with gray. Deep blue eyes were capped with arched black eyebrows.

“Lekiv is lawminder, my good right arm,” said Mahu. “He takes the place of his great friend Cualu, Pela’s father.”

Gordon wasn’t listening. His attention was filled with the sight of Pela in her white leathers sewn with turquoise, black, and golden beadwork up from her hem and cuffs. Her hair was done up in a gleaming auburn pile upon her head, the affair held in place by a half dozen long white bone combs, their ends capped with gold beads. At the sight of her, the women began singing.

The drums beat again and the men began singing.

Gordon’s eyes sought only Pela, and every time he looked at her, she was looking back at him, her face radiant, her eyes filled with love and wonder. In fact, he was so caught up in looking at her he realized that he had forgotten to reset the shockcomb. In a pause in the festivities, he picked up his bag, held it between his knees, reached in and triggered the reset. He glanced in and saw the readout. Thirty-one minutes to spare. It brought back to him the impending hammer of reality. He looked around at the gathering. One important face was missing. Gordon leaned toward Mahu and asked, “Clan Father, where is Tonton Annajaka?”

Mahu lowered his cup, licked his left thumb, and repeated Gordon’s visual search as though he expected to find the shaman of the Black Mountain Clan there. “She should be here.” The Clan Father frowned, looked again, then slowly shook his head. “When I saw her earlier she looked not right. Perhaps she is ill. Take no offense at Tonton’s absence, God’n.”

“Where was she going, Mahu?”

“Cross river.” He frowned at a memory. “She say she go to look at nightmare.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Mystical talk, the way natichas do.” Gordon nodded and looked down at his hands resting atop his leather knapsack. Mahu leaned over and whispered into his ear, “What you know about Tonton’s nightmare?” The Clan Father leaned back and pointed at his own ear.

Gordon whispered into Mahu’s ear, “I am the one who told her the nightmare. She wants to test it.” Gordon frowned as the words left his mouth.

“You have question,” stated the Clan Father.

Gordon nodded. “There are things about me no one here knows but me. For this reason no one can warn Pela of them in making her decision. Is it permitted for me to tell her these things now?”

“No.” Mahu thought for a moment. “But you may stand outside next to the large tree and take the air. It is smoky in here.” He leaned forward and said to Ghaf. “It is smoky in your tent.”

“Unhealthy and too warm,” said Ghaf. “I must see to making changes.”

Shantonna pushed her daughter toward Pela’s side of the ring. “See if the air is any better on that side of the tent, Anista,” said her mother.

Mahu nodded toward the tent’s entrance. “Perhaps you should get some air, God’n.”

“My thanks, Clan father. I will.” He stood, stepped through the guests, and went to the entrance of the tent. Once outside he walked to the large tree and stood there in the still air, the torch beside the entrance to Ghaf’s tent burning brightly. Automatically Gordon’s gaze searched the shadows. Yellow Eyes was there, monitoring how his plaything walked the trail he had chosen. In the shadows, as well, was someone else: Jatka.

He heard footsteps whispering in the snow behind him. “It is cooler out here,” said Pela. “I can breathe.”

Gordon turned and looked at her. Her back was toward him. He turned back and they stood with their backs to each other. “Omiva, goddess of the night sky,” Gordon said to the night, “there are things the one I am thinking for doesn’t know about me. No one here but me knows these things. I would have you tell Pela so then she can decide if she is still my gift.”

“I am listening, Omiva,” said Pela quietly. “What would you say to me?”

Gordon told the night sky of the thing that built Black Mountain and the coming thing that one day would take the mountain and the peoples near it. He told her of the coming flood that would bury the village, the valley, Shayvi’s Hill, and all she knew. Gordon told Omiva about the many men he had killed and about the capsule. He told her about moving through time, about why he and his two companions had come to her village, and how he knew what would come.

When he was finished, he folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head.

Pela said, “Great Listener, Mother of Stars, with all God’n knows, all he saw, all he did, and all he fears, is there room left in his heart for Pela?”

“Yes,” he said in answer to Night’s question. But Night had one more question.

“Omiva,” addressed Pela, “If people from beyond now come for God’n, will he go with them?”

“Only if Pela comes with me, goddess of night. Only then.”

“Then he is my gift, Omiva, and I am his.”

But there was still one shadow remaining. “Night Goddess,” said Gordon, “I would like to regard Jatka as our son and raise him to manhood.”

Pela laughed sweetly. “Some will say God’n has a woman’s heart, Omiva, to go with his boy’s face.”

Gordon laughed and shook his head. “If that is the worst ever said about Gordon Redcliff in this life, Goddess of the Night Sky, it will be a happy life.”

“If he agrees, then, Omiva, Jatka will be our son.” Pela turned until she stood beside Gordon, still not looking upon him.

“Jatka,” Gordon said to the shadows. “Come here.” There was nothing but silence. “I am brother to a great wolf, Jatka, and can see in the dark. I see you now.”

Jatka came from behind a large cedar on the far edge of the path. He walked until he was two paces from them and stopped. “I was only watching the people go in, listening to the songs and drums. I did nothing wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong, Jatka. Tomorrow morning at the clanhouse Pela and I will marry. We ask you now: will you stand with us and be our son?”

Stone-faced, Jatka stood there looking between Pela and Gordon. “What do you mean?”

“Will you stand with us?” asked Pela of the boy. “Will you become a part of our family? This is what we want. At the same time we will feast you to manhood.”

“What will I have to do?”

She pointed at Jatka’s ragged furs. “New coverings. You can’t stand with us looking like that.”

“Do you have something to present to the gifted upon the Men’s Ledge?” asked Gordon. “Can you slay your bear?”

Jatka nodded, his gaze downcast. He was silent for a moment, then elevated his gaze until he was looking into Gordon’s eyes. “Why?”

“I too grew up outside the embrace of my people,” said Gordon. “It gave me an angry heart and a lonely life. I see you where I was. I make you the offer I wanted then.”

“I killed my father,” he cried.

Gordon placed a hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “Jatka, I will never give you cause to kill me.”

Jatka looked up into the night sky, his eyes touched with tears. “Yes.” He looked at Pela and Gordon. “We will be a family.”

“Then I have had enough fresh air,” said Pela, taking Jatka by the arm and turning back to Ghaf’s tent. “I want to announce your coming-of-age ceremony.” They walked to the tent and entered, leaving Gordon alone beneath the stars.

He saw the reflection of a fire high in the sky, the light flickered in the distant treetops. It took him a moment but Gordon realized it came from the top of the cliff. Tonton Annajaka was back from her hunt. The conclusions she had reached had moved her up to her special place to consult with her gods. A rising breeze stirred up the snow on the ground into moving ribbons of haze that formed and vanished to be replaced by others as they crossed the path. Gordon turned his steps toward the cliff.

He climbed the trail in the dark, sensing his way by sound, touch, and the motion of the air as he had been trained in sniper school. On the last of the steep places above the men’s ledge, Gordon felt the hammer stone-carved steps to Tonton’s place. They were slick with ice and he climbed them soundlessly to a stand of cedars atop the sacred cliff. Pausing at the edge of the trees he looked up to where the naticha knelt before her fire, her back toward him. The wolf that had licked the fat from his fingers the night before sat motionless beside the trail. Gordon nodded once at the wolf and faced Tonton Annajaka’s back. “Naticha,” he said, “may I approach your fire?”

“You move silent as fog, God’n. Please come to my fire and sit.” Her voice was strangely calm.

Gordon came forward and sat to the naticha’s left. Her vantage point allowed her to look out over the village and toward Black Mountain. The wolf came and sat to Tonton’s right. The naticha smiled at the wolf. “My invitation, of course, extends to sister of God’n.”

Tonton returned her gaze to the mountain and looked up at the few stars bright enough not to be washed out by the moonlight. “I sit here many nights—no fire—and watch stars. In ancient belief, God’n, stars are hearts of dead ancestors who watch over their families and peoples here below. Now stars are prayers of men and women. Each time a star falls, Omiva answers a prayer.” She looked at Gordon. “What were you taught?”

Gordon thought back to Nascha, his mother. “I was taught stars are the shattered dreams of warriors.”

“Who taught you this?” asked Tonton.

“My mother. Her view of most things was different from the Dina—The People. Most believed my mother to be a witch.” He smiled. “There was a wise old man, Hosteen Ahiga, who told me my mother was sick.” He tapped the side of his head. “He also told me some of the ancient belief of the Dina.”

“I would hear it,” said the naticha.

“In the creation, the holy people—the gods—put out a great blanket that contained all the stars, the sun, the moon, and the rest. Then they proceeded to discuss at length where the sun should go. When they were done they placed the sun in the sky. They then discussed at even greater length where the moon should go. When they had at last agreed, they placed the moon in the sky. Then, one at a time, they began with the stars.” Gordon looked at the wolf. “Coyote, though, became tired of the endless debates, grew impatient, bit onto a corner of the blanket, and shook his head, flinging the rest of the stars into the sky.” He faced Tonton.

Tonton looked from the wolf to Gordon. “And what are the stars now?”

“More suns,” he answered. “Balls of burning air very far away, many like Ekav, many bigger, many smaller. Some of the points of light are huge gatherings of stars so far away they look like single stars.”

Tonton slowly faced the direction of the mountain. “I cross river today and climb to top of Shayvi’s Hill. I go to graves, look at damaged trees. On ground I find strange beds and green dust, bits, and pieces of time boat.” She was silent for a long time.

“In his home I also find man I sent to Shayvi’s Hill to become husband to Pela. Fisher, forty and one years, name of Baltok.” She tapped the side of her head. “He too is sick, God’n. Not sick when I sent him across river. Baltok stayed in woods, watched Pela for three days, making up mind. He say he prepared to present himself as Tana’s gift to Pela then heard a sound in the night air like fifty trees being broken at same time by hands of frost giant. Then a strange scream and the sky fill with blinding colors. At the center of the light was your time boat falling from sky. Baltok thought Zama was after him to pull him down to the darkness.”

“Perhaps he is not as sick as you think,” offered Gordon quietly.

“When I find Baltok he is at his house by river filling his pack. After he speak to me he fled for Yellow Claw country.”

“That’s even closer to the mountain than Red Cliff,” said Gordon.

“It is the difference between raindrops if we are all to die.”

Gordon studied the flakes of snow as they vaporized above the fire. “Back in your dwelling, Tonton, you asked me why I do not run.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you not run? Why do you not warn the people?”

She stared into the fire, gave a single laugh, then leaned forward, picked up a stick and threw it into the flames. A shower of sparks climbed into the night sky and died. “You have seen all my magic, God’n. I make you sleep, I talk to ghosts, I convince an old fisher to pretend to be gift of Tana. Eat too much meat, I make you something move your bowels.” She fixed her gaze on him. “Itahnika gave you eyes thousands of summers long. You move through time. You appear in flashes of light like crack of thunder. Wolf eat from your hand, you know our tongue in days. Much magic. Yet you stay here and die to protect future you have seen only a little of yourself.”

She sighed. “God’n, do the deaths of the Black Mountain clans protect nothing but good?” She waved her hand at the night sky. “Beyond now is there nothing bad that the lives of these peoples and the lives of their descendents might make better?”

Gordon took a long time to answer. “Those future summers are not all good. They are filled with ignorance, disease, want, cruelty, pain, and death. They are also filled with knowledge, discovery, kindness, courage, healing, beauty, and life. You are right: I have seen only a little of this future and know of only a little more. What I have seen and what I know others have seen have been this same mix of death and life. That I was a hunter of men speaks for the time in which I lived. That I learned to love others and to admire the work and creations of others also speaks for that time. I know much of what is to be. Would it be made better if the peoples of Black Mountain survive the great storm? Maybe it would be made worse or make no change at all. I don’t know. What you call my ghosts are just as ignorant. There are things they value above all else, though. They are things that might never be if we change things now.”

“What things, God’n?” asked the naticha.

“Gods, saviors, and prophets. Tribes, nations, monuments, talismans, and rituals.”

“Are their gods real or did the peoples of the future imagine them?”

Gordon grinned. “A very good question, naticha.”

“Does beyond now have an answer?”

“Thousands of thousands.”

“I think your ghosts tell me they can’t make you understand them. Something wrong with your head.”

He held his fingers on the scabbed over wound. “My injury.”

“Are they ghosts, God’n?”

“I don’t know.”

Between the clouds above the mountain Gordon saw a meteor streak into the atmosphere and burn itself out in a half-second display. “A prayer has been answered, Tonton,” he said. “I wonder whose.”

The distant sounds of wooden drums reached them from somewhere north of the cliff. It was joined by sounds resembling those of pan pipes. Singing joined the music. Gordon looked at Tonton. “What is that?”

“You are being called to the Love, God’n. The peoples of Black Mountain are there to guide you into your marriage with Pela.” The naticha stood and faced him. “See if there might be something in it worth saving for the times to come.”

The Love was held back in the north hills beneath the stars in a snowy clearing surrounded by giant cedars. There was a large fire for light and warmth and a group of seven men on the fire’s east side beating with sticks upon hollowed logs working up a rhythm that, as Gordon sat among the gifted upon a winter bearskin, was joined by the pan pipers and the voices of thirty or so young girls and boys. The girls were from as young as six or seven up to in their early twenties and they circled the fire in a deliberately suggestive yet humorous dance. These were the unmarried girls dancing for their older sister’s good fortune, and for that special pair of eyes in the surrounding audience of bachelors.

In a moment the young girls were replaced by another set of dancers. “Married,” informed a man to Gordon’s left who introduced himself as Aukis. He was a pointmaker and he pointed out his bride of eleven years, Tijin. The wife of Aukis was a formidable woman who danced as though she were killing mice with her moccasin-boots. Aukis held seven fingers up and grinned. “Four boys, three girls,” he said proudly. “We put youth to good use.”

Out of curiosity Gordon wiggled a finger at him and Aukis shrugged and nodded. Something caught the man’s attention. He looked up and pointed toward the dancers. Gordon looked and Pela was joining the dancers. The dance this group did, erotic as it was, described the cycle of life. As Pela and the married women swayed and turned they played out courtship, lovemaking, pregnancy, birth, growing, age, and a death surrounded by loving friends and many descendents.

He glanced down at the pack he was using for an armrest, remembering as he did so to reset the shockcomb. He held the bag between his legs, opened it, and checked the weapon. It was within three hours of puckering itself out of existence. Gordon reached in, reset the shockcomb. When Mahu asked for another look at the pack, Gordon handed it to him and decided to make a gift of the pack to the Clan Father as soon as he had a replacement. Then Gordon watched Pela dance until Ekav brushed the eastern sky with pale yellows and rose.

At a signal from the drums the ceremony became a moving affair as Mahu stood and led the way down from the hill toward the clanhouse. After all the feasting, talking, and dancing of the previous two ceremonies, the wedding itself was somewhat subdued. The clanhouse was filled with well-wishers. Mahu’s brother led Pela before a recently installed totem of Bel, which was a fearsome looking thing, a twisted oak log about thirty-five centimeters in diameter with branches for arms and a face formed from its bark with obsidian for eyes and milky quartz splinters for teeth. Gordon found himself next to Jatka, who was wearing a new set of leathers that were stylish indeed with diamond-shaped red beadwork on the shoulders and on his fur cap. He had a bundle beneath his left arm. He held it out to Gordon.

“You are to put these on,” said Jatka.

“Where?”

Jatka nodded at someone and soon Jatka and Gordon were inside an area walled with pelts held up by Gifted Ones. As he stripped to his waist, Gordon asked, “Who does the totem represent?”

“Bel, god of tiwineh.”

With a few probing questions, Gordon determined tiwineh meant agreements, and among the agreements under Bel’s jurisdiction was the institution of marriage. Tiwineh was also their word for honor, which to the peoples of the Black Mountain meant saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

Gordon looked at the deerskin shirt Pela had made for him. On its back in beadwork was the head of Coyote from the center of Gordon’s belt, just the way Hosteen Ahiga had worked it into the leather, wink and all. He put on the shirt and it fit perfectly. He faced his new son. “How do I look?”

“Like a man.”

Gordon picked up his pack and stuffed the furs that he had taken off into the bag. Facing Jatka, he said, “Let’s begin.”

Jatka muttered a word, the pelts came down, and Gordon and Pela stood before the god of contracts and a new arrival, Tonton Annajaka in full makeup. Pela took Gordon’s head in her hands and drew him toward her until their foreheads touched. Pela said to him, “I am your gift and you are my gift.” Gordon repeated the vow, then looked at Tonton as he reached out and placed his hand on Jatka’s shoulder. “This is our son, Jatka,” he said. Pela placed her hand on Jatka’s other shoulder, saying, “This is our son.”

Jatka placed a hand on Pela’s arm and said, “This is my mother.” He placed a hand on Gordon’s arm and said, “This is my father.”

“Let it be so,” said the guests.

From a tiny white leather pouch of grain, Tonton took a pinch of grain and placed it in Pela’s mouth, then another pinch of grain in Gordon’s. She reached between them and placed a pinch of grain in Jatka’s mouth. She pulled the drawstring on the pouch and handed it to Gordon. To the three of them she said, “Before all the clans and peoples of Black Mountain, may you be filled with love, respect, and honor the rest of your days together.” She paused as she closed her eyes and trembled slightly. Opening her eyes once more, she said, “In the name of Bel, I seek for your health, fertility, and prosperity.”

Gordon said to the naticha. “We would bring Jatka into manhood now.”

Tonton looked at Jatka, placed her right palm on his left cheek, and said, “I am happy for you, Jatka. Do not forget Tonton Annajaka.”

“I will stay and study with you, naticha,” he said, glancing at Gordon. He nodded back. Jatka looked at Tonton. “I want to keep studying the herbs and powders. I have no sight to become naticha, but when a back hurts, I maybe can ease a pain.”

The naticha smiled and removed her hand from Jatka’s cheek. “Climb the tiers to your childhood, sit, and select your gifts,” she said.

As Jatka climbed to the top tier, the Gifted Ones seated themselves along the bottom tier. Even Tonton Annajaka took her place among the women. It was a man-raising that granted all who attended for Jatka with wisdom from all the gifted, including the women. The gift he asked from each was the most important thing he or she knew. It was a question Gordon had once asked Iron Eyes. When his turn came, he passed on to his son Hosteen Ahiga’s answer. “To learn from your own mistakes is intelligence; to learn from the mistakes of others is wisdom.” Tonton Annajaka’s gift was, “Any moment may be your last; fill it with what you would remember for eternity.”

The gifted men took Gordon and Pela’s new son to the Men’s Ledge to spend the night beneath the sky getting Jatka acquainted with the society of men and to introduce him to Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and the hunt. Another feast, another dance, and more music. By the time Pela and Gordon reached Pela’s house, the afternoon had become evening and the serenading had begun.

Gordon awakened the next morning, memories of his wedding night warring with the abrupt end to everything he knew was coming. He stretched and wriggled into the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in. Bear robes on a thick bed of cedar boughs. The smell of the cedar was a perfume that permeated everything. He opened his eyes and looked up. The roof was made of poles covered with thatch. The circular wall was built of heavy sod reinforced by cedar poles. The floor was made of flat stones set in dirt. The fire was in a fireplace made from stones, sod, and dried mud.

He was full of food from the night before, he was well rested, and unashamedly satiated in almost every respect. His talk atop the cliff with Tonton Annajaka the night before nagged at him, though. Of the different peoples on earth at that moment, what gave the Black Mountain peoples any less of a right to a future? Chance? The hand of some indifferent god? The random path of a rogue meteor? Perhaps it was that same god who had sent Gordon back to correct an earlier mistake.

What, then, was at risk if these clans escaped the coming devastation? Television? Nasal decongestants? Pizza? Bach? Thousands of years of religious wars? He sighed and rubbed his eyes, pushing all of it from his head as he heard something. After a moment he glanced to his right, then his left, wondering where Pela was and what had awakened him. She wasn’t in the main room and she wasn’t in the attached smaller room in which she made her furs. It sounded like a man’s voice, though. It was Ghaf yodeling from the Men’s Ledge.

Throwing the fur covers aside, Gordon got to his feet, pulled on his new fur pants and boots, his Coyote shirt, bearskin poncho, and hat. Moving aside the heavy fur curtain that covered the opening to Pela’s house, he stepped beyond the thick sod walls, out into the cold morning air and listened to the hunter’s call to the village. The night in men’s company had been passed, Jatka had slain his bear with a magical potion of his invention that eases soreness in aching muscles, which really works, said the hunter in an aside. Prayers had been made, and Jatka was now a man.

Gordon looked around at the village houses. He seemed to be the only one listening to the hunter’s news. The men and women of Red Cliff were down by the river standing on the north shore silently watching a tree. Gordon squinted and saw that someone—his bride—was high in the branches, singing out her own news. He could just make it out: the wedding night described blow-by-blow. Gordon felt his face grow hot, took a few steps forward, listened, then laughed and moved a few steps more.

He reached a large house with walls of wattle and daub and saw Mahu standing in the doorway listening intently to Pela. “God’n my gift from Tana,” she yodeled and again she went on to describe, touch by poke, the consummation. “Thirty and eight!” she shouted like a crowing rooster. “Thirty and eight!” She made the signs with her hands and the yoni’s companion no longer drooped. As she went on, elaborating on her theme, Gordon glanced back and saw Mahu and the Clan Father’s first wife Keila looking back, wide-eyed, mouths open. Behind him he heard running and turned to see, fresh from his recent appearance atop the Men’s Ledge, Hunter Ghaf running toward him, a most intent expression on his face.

“Oh, hell,” said Gordon. “Now everyone’ll want to know how I did it.” He made tracks for Pela’s place.

“God’n? God’n?” called Pela from outside the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. Pulling the door curtain aside, he saw piled before Pela’s door what he expected: game, beads, dried fruit, jerked meat, yams, presents of leather and wood and shaped flint, each one carrying a mark. In a semi-circle beyond their gifts stood Gifted Ones, men and women, waiting for their miracles. Pela looked around at the wealth and said, “God’n, they want—”

“I know what they want,” he said. He held out his palms facing the gifts. “Take them back, I beg you. Take them back. There is nothing I can do.”

Mahu pushed through the supplicants, all his wives in his wake. “God’n,” he said, “you make me strong.” Mahu placed a brace of fine hunting spears in a prominent place among the gifts. Behind the Clan Father his three wives nodded eagerly.

Gordon held his hands out, “And if I can do nothing, Mahu?”

The father of the Black Mountain Clan faced Gordon. “Ask Wuja. Ask your Coyote. Try.”

After a deep breath and heartfelt sigh, Gordon nodded. “I will try,” he said to the Clan Father. “No promise, Mahu.” To Mahu’s wives and the others assembled in front of Pela’s door he said, “No promises.”

Gordon was inside Pela’s house shaking his head in despair when Jatka pushed the curtain aside and leaned through the door. “Father, did you hear Ghaf’s call? I am raised to manhood.”

Gordon went to the door, placed a hand on Jatka’s shoulder, and said, “I am proud of you, Jatka. Come.”

Jatka entered and gestured with his head toward the door. “Why all the gifts, Father? What do they want?”

“My son, the medicine man,” said Gordon, “what can be done to make the men strong again?” He wiggled a droopy finger at Jatka.

“Nothing,” he answered apologetically. “Nothing that I know. Tonton has no answer.” He pointed with his thumb toward the door. “Is that what they all want?”

“Yes.”

“Why ... did you and Pela—last night, did you?” and Jatka formed the familiar hand configuration representing successful copulation.

“Yes.”

Jatka’s eyebrows arched as he held his hands out to his sides. “How?”

“That is the question,” answered Gordon.

Over the next few days, as Gordon pondered the things that determine male potency, he learned the news of Pela’s wedding night had raced across the snows by foot, fire, and horse to all of the clanhouses in the lands surrounding Black Mountain. In a few days more, Gifted Ones from Big Tree and Cleft Mountain came into camp. Representatives of Many Horses and Yellow Claw clans made their bids for the return of youth, as well. Black Shoulders and Big Snake emissaries arrived days later, offering prayers to Wuja that Gordon had not run out of whatever magic potion it was.

Pela’s house became surrounded by desperate men and women in their thirties and forties demanding that Gordon reveal a secret that, apparently, was a secret even to him. Still, he could find nothing that explained why men so young became so thoroughly impotent. They ate the same and did the same as the younger men. Jatka wondered if it was the plan of Wuja. Once a man has fathered enough children, the plan has been fulfilled and there is no longer any need for virility. Everyone knew Wuja’s plan and had, up until now, accepted it. Gordon, however, appeared to have found a loophole.

Finally, when even younger men began showing up, their arms filled with gifts, hoping for some way to escape fate, Gordon put some nuts and jerked meat into his pack, declared to all a need to commune with Coyote, and then climbed the cliff trail to find a place where he could think. It was a huge cliff with many trails, many ledges, and many niches cut by ancient winds and waters. As he explored the high cliff, he took care not to be observed from the village or from anywhere else. The object was solitude.

The place he eventually found he almost missed. Its entrance was hidden from below by scrubby cedars and by brush and snow choking the narrow opening. Two places he could see where the brush had been tied into bundles. Two more places he saw where the snow had been pushed up into the opening by hands. The snow had been swept to remove such finger marks, but inexpertly. He could see light through the brush, so the space beyond was not a cave. Standing back against one of the thin cedars, he looked up at the cliff wall. In a moment he found sufficient handholds to scale the four-meter high wall to the next ledge, the cedars hiding him from below.

Once on the ledge, he noted an overhang that sheltered both the ledge and the space beyond the brush-filled opening. The surface of the ledge where he stood had also been swept, removing foot impressions, but also the snow. He studied the place. It was a good perch for a sniper, he thought. There was one escape route through a cleft in the side of the overhang and another deep in back of the overhang. It was a natural chimney. When he checked it out he found it led up through the rock to a spot on the south face just below Tonton’s special place on the cliff’s top. Back behind the cedars, he looked over the village and the southern hills. He had a clear field of fire covering both sides of the river. With the proper weapon he could wipe out a sizable portion of the village. He nodded to himself. What he couldn’t do was restore male virility.

He pulled a piece of jerky from his pack along with the locator, gnawing a bite off the former and noting the remaining 165 days on the latter. Could Harith convince the Temporal Span Authority to send another vehicle back? Doubtful. Even if they did come back they probably wouldn’t have half a ton of Viagra with them. He looked down into the space behind the filled entrance to see what was there. It was a roughly teardrop-shaped area the size of a small house with the filled entrance at its small end. The floor sloped gently toward the opening and was covered with human tracks.

Gordon lowered himself down the wall and studied the tracks. Different sizes, all smaller than an adult’s. Charred sticks from old fires and more recent fires. There was something else there, as well: the thoroughly chewed remains of a certain kind of white root. He took a piece of charcoal and wrote on the wall, “Ekav knows.” He then removed all other traces of his passing, climbed down the cliff trail, and returned to the village seeking his son the medicine man.

Jatka was at Tonton’s cleaning out her fireplace, the naticha away in the eastern forest collecting oak moss. “Have you found your answer?” Jatka asked as he offered Gordon a corner of his own bed tucked in among the shelves.

“I want you to help me find the answer,” said Gordon. “Explain to me the Gift of Many Summers.”

“White stingroot. It grows along Avina’s banks and its juices end most pain.” He pretended to lick his thumb. “The Gifted Ones hold root in fist and rub scraped end with thumb. Then lick thumb.”

“You ever try it, Jatka?”

He earnestly shook his head. “No. Ekav the Healer reserve stingroot for gifted in years.”

Gordon nodded slightly. “Is it remembered why the sun reserved the stingroot for only the gifted? The young also have pain.”

“It is forbidden,” was all the answer Jatka had.

“Do the young sometimes break the ban and use the root in secret?”

Jatka shrugged, glanced down, and nodded. “At times. If caught they would be punished, family disgraced, terrible things.”

“More than they know, my son.” Gordon nodded in satisfaction. “Thank you for your help, Jatka. I’m going to test an idea. If I am correct, you will have earned a third of the gifts the people have been piling outside Pela’s door.”

“If you are wrong, Father?” asked Jatka.

“We may have to move.”

The Clan Father was outside his door watching the new snowfall on the river, the ice white beneath the frozen crystals. The flakes were fine and dry, drifting before a slight breeze. Mahu nodded at Gordon, then faced the west as he touched his thumb to his tongue. “See that coming, God’n. Little flake storm. Snows come hard now, deep and cold. Sweep tomorrow if we want to walk, then winds fill in paths and we sweep again.” He held the edge of his hand level with his waist. “This much each time maybe. Sometime more. Bears come down from north to steal children and fatten up before they sleep.”

Seeing Gordon’s alarmed expression, Mahu grinned and slapped Gordon’s shoulder. “Happen once many winters ago in legend. Keeps little ones minding their mothers.” Mahu remained with a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. He raised his other hand and wiggled his finger, a question on his face.

Gordon held ten rigid fingers straight up in the air.

Mahu’s eyes widened as he raised his left hand, thumb extended, to give it a lick, but Gordon reached out and caught Mahu’s hand.

“In your hand, Mahu. What?”

The Clan Father frowned. “Stingroot,” he answered as though only a fool would not know what he was holding. “Gift of Many Summers. Good for aching bones. Chase away tired, make strong.” Mahu opened his palm, revealing what looked like an icicle radish. The skin on the wide end had been scraped off and was gray from repeated rubbings by Mahu’s thumb. He thrust his arm forward. “God’n try?”

Gordon took the root from Mahu’s hand and immediately his fingers began tingling, warmth moving up his arm, easing then eliminating the remaining pain in his head and shoulder. He sniffed it but the root was odorless. He tossed the root toward the river.

“No root,” said Gordon. “It is the root that is stealing your gift of youth. Put the root down. Become strong again.” He held up a stiff index finger.

Mahu looked at Gordon as though he had just lost his mind. “Root good!” he protested. “Father of Mahu taste root. Father’s father!” Mahu pointed at himself as if to say his father’s use of stingroot and his own existence refuted the connection between impotence and using the substance.

“Your father taste the Gift of Many Summers when young or old?” Gordon inquired.

Mahu wrestled with the truth. “Thirty-two summers. Then taste root. Young forbidden to taste root.” He held his hands out. “Root feel good!”

“Clan Father, this is the answer I have for making you strong.”

“Stingroot Ekav’s Gift!” Mahu protested. He looked down at the gathering snow, leaned back against the wall of his house, cocked his head to one side, grimaced, and shook his head. “You have sore muscles, ache in joint?”

“Yes.”

“What you do?”

“For some aches there is medicine. For others I say ‘ouch.’”

“Root always make better,” insisted the Clan Father.

Gordon smiled. “Your wives, Mahu,” he said. “Think of them.”

“Certain are you, God’n?”

“No. But I ask you to do what you asked me to do, Mahu: try. Do without the root. See what happens.”

A haunted look in his eyes, Mahu took a small leather pouch from his waist, opened it, stared into the leather bag. “I cannot ask you to do what I would not do myself,” he said. “I will try.” He then emptied the pouch on the ground. Turning away, Mahu walked up to his dwelling, entered, and shut the bark and leather door behind him. Five of the pale white stingroots lay in the new snow.

“One day at a time, Clan Father,” Gordon said quietly to the closed door. He turned to go home.

Whoever’s rooster it was made the first announcement the next morning. Next came a swooshing sound. “Much snow last night,” whispered Pela into Gordon’s ear. She put her hands above the covers and acted it out in pantomime. Sweeping. Her neighbors were using brooms to sweep clear their paths. Shortly thereafter came a third sound: a trio of female voices doing that curious screaming-singing yodel. Mahu’s wives, Keila, Suna, and Min, were spreading the news about what a few hours away from stingroot had done for their husband.

“That didn’t take long,” remarked Gordon. He dressed, grabbed his pack, and followed Pela to Mahu’s house. The three wives were in the snow dancing with their brooms and yodeling out the news. Mahu had gotten sick, complained about aches and pains, then very early in the morning came a great uprising. Driven by desire, the Clan Father had managed to overcome his aching joints three times.

As Gordon was about to return to Pela’s house, he saw a delegation from Cleft Mountain with Kag Ati in the lead stop in front of Mahu. He watched as Mahu stood in the falling snow and talked to Kag Ati, gesturing and explaining the miracle. Soon the remainder of the miracle seekers and clan delegations—some hundred or more—were gathered to hear Mahu talk about strength, weakness, and the Gift of Many Summers. Some of the men emptied their pouches of the root while others waved their hands and growled in protest.

“Root make strong, not weak!” Kag Ati insisted.

A few others joined the Cleft Mountain Clan Father in voicing similar sentiments until Mahu held up his hands for silence. “Mahu now strong at thirty and nine,” he said. “I throw away Gift of Many Summers and am strong. I hear of Jatka’s juice to rub away aches. Maybe I try that. No more stingroot.” He copied Gordon’s gesture of ten rigid fingers thrust up into the air. “Think,” he encouraged them. “Try. Then decide.”

The men who had dumped their root pouches went to their huts and tents to await the miracle, while some of those who did not dump their pouches noted the location of the discarded roots for later retrieval out of Mahu’s sight. The young men, not enough summers to have tasted the root, absorbed what they had heard and seen. They returned to their huts to think and to enjoy the miracle they had not yet lost. Those who were too young and who used the root nevertheless listened in horror and went their separate ways to decide upon priorities. Kag Ati turned his massive head and glared at Gordon for a long moment. Abruptly he pivoted and walked west to where his horses were tethered. Soon he and his men rode across the frozen river into the hills.

By noon the next day the snowfall had stopped and Ekav filled the sky with glorious light. Pela and Bonsha went down to the river’s edge to watch the fishers stone-drop holes in the ice. Others in the village were sweeping their paths, still others brought in wood, while others went to Mahu’s wives to learn of the benefits of abstinence from stingroot.

While Gordon observed the village activity, he felt hungry and reached for his pack as he walked through the cedars along the riverbank to join Pela watching the fishers. As he passed a large tree, his attention on the inside of his pack, something smacked the right side of his head, the universe shattered, and he fell into mind shadows.

Three things moved into Gordon’s awareness. First, he was securely bound, hands behind his back, his fingers numb and cold from diminished circulation. Second, his upper torso was propped up against something rough, the knob of a broken branch poked uncomfortably in his back. Third, he had a headache that could flatten Black Mountain all by itself. Blood was crusted beneath his right ear, as he opened his eyes to a smear of light and dark, fuzzy silhouettes around a fire, some moving, some not. It was night. Men and women in a circle around a fire in a clearing, horses tethered just beyond, their backs warmed by furs, the frozen vapor of their breaths filling the line with mist. Also beyond the circle of people were their skin shelters looking like teepees.

Gordon lifted his head and looked. Perhaps eighty men and women with a few children around the fire. The men nearby wore heavy furs with untrimmed seams and carried toothed clubs and spears tipped with long, symmetrical flint points. Only one familiar face: Kag Ati, Cleft Mountain Clan Father. He was on a raised dais seated upon a bench covered with furs. Next to Gordon was another man who was tied and guarded. Gordon could see his face but didn’t recognize him. Aside from Kag Ati, there was no one he knew. Gordon felt a moment of relief. Pela and Jatka were safe.

Kag Ati was going through the things in Gordon’s pack. A huge black dog sat at his side next to three young females, presumably Kag Ati’s new wives. They were before a leather shelter that looked like a teepee with a rounded top. The youngest wife, not even in her teens, was wearing Gordon’s spare briefs on her head. The middle wife, no older than eighteen, was wearing his socks on her hands like mittens.

One of Kag Ati’s hunters squatted in front of Gordon and smacked the back of his hand against Gordon’s chest. “Chayma Azi,” said the hunter. He was a young man, barely twenty.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gordon. “I am the captive.”

“He is awake, Clan Father,” called Chayma to the fire. The clan leader looked up from the pack.

Kag Ati stood. Holding Gordon’s pack by its straps, he walked through the path created as his people made room for him to pass. He stood over Gordon. “God’n of the Red Cliff,” said Kag Ati. “Strong at thirty and eight.”

Gordon moistened his lips and said, “Kag Ati of Cleft Mountain: Clan Father and thief.”

Kag Ati’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Tied like an animal, you insult me?”

“If you are going to kill me, I have no reason to be polite.”

“What about less pain? Is that a good reason?” shouted Chayma Azi.

“A good reason,” said Gordon, “but not reason enough.”

Kag Ati shook his head at Chayma and motioned for the guard to return to the fire, which he did. The Clan Father held out the pack with one hand and tapped the side of his head with the other. “I know.” He let the pack hang from its straps at his side.

The clan leader squatted before Gordon, the pack between them. Gordon could see the shockcomb was on top. “I know God’n’s secret.” He pulled a stone knife from his belt and held it in front of Gordon’s eyes. “You make Kag Ati strong.” The Cleft Mountain Clan Father leaned close to Gordon. “With root, ah? Kag Ati stay with Gift of Many Summers and you make strong.”

“How do I make you strong, Kag Ati? If you keep using the root you stay weak. Ask Mahu.”

Kag Ati held up the pack. “This!”

“What of it?”

“Think Kag Ati fool, God’n? Before you went to Pela’s bed, ah?” Kag Ati’s heavy eyebrows went up. “At feast? I see you. I see Mahu.” He held the pack in his lap. “You hold pack here. Pela sings. Mahu hold pack here. Mahu’s wives sing.”

Gordon looked at the pack, vaguely remembering that at the Temptations he had held the pack between his knees while he reset the shockcomb. Mahu had held the pack in his lap while he examined the bag’s stitching. Kag Ati had been there and had witnessed both events.

Kag Ati smashed the back of his hand angrily into Gordon’s face. “Make strong!” he demanded. “With root! With pack! Now!” The clan leader held his knife and drew the needle point down Gordon’s left cheek, leaving the blood to bead up from the razor cut. He then held the point at Gordon’s throat. “I kill you, God’n,” he warned.

“I must see in pack,” he said to Kag Ati. If he could get his hands on the shockcomb, he could vanish or bury Kag Ati beneath a ton of rock. “I need to see in pack. Untie me.”

Kag Ati frowned suspiciously. “You clever, God’n. I hear about Coyote. Trickster, ah? Maybe God’n trickster.” He held out the bag in front of Gordon’s face. “See what you see, then you make Kag Ati strong.”

Gordon looked into the bag. Eleven minutes left on the shockcomb reset. The face of the locater was flashing which could mean anything from the locator’s charge running low to Harith managing to find a replacement vehicle and being in the area looking for him.

“Now you make Kag Ati strong?” The clan leader held up his blade, let the needle sharp point dance dangerously close to Gordon’s eyes. “I keep root.” He brought his lips close to Gordon’s left ear. “I not get strong, God’n, I bring my people to Red Cliff and kill them all. You think on Pela, now. You think on your new son.”

Gordon closed his eyes and nodded. “You see the way Mahu held the bag? The way I held the bag?”

“Yes.”

“Hold the bag that way, Kag Ati. Hold it and wait.”

The Clan Father stood, holding the bag in both hand. “Everything in here I need?”

“Everything you need.”

“Kag Ati not get strong, God’n, I fill Red Cliff with blood, ghosts, fire, and shattered bones,” he warned. “Believe me.”

“I believe you.” Gordon looked away from Kag Ati into the shadows beneath the cedars. He saw the reflection of yellow eyes watching him. No joke too old for the Trickster, thought Gordon. Go down this path, Kag Ati. Learn why you should not have gone.

“The path is your own,” came a distinct voice into his head. He looked again and saw the light distorted between himself and the fire. The voice had spoken in Arabic.

“Taleghani?” he thought, calling with his mind. “Can you understand me, doctor?”

“Can you understand me?” he whispered out loud.

“Now you can understand me,” the voice in his mind answered. Then the voice said, “Of what use is a terminal lesson, Gordon? Look to Bel.”

Back at the fire, Kag Ati was on his platform. By one hand held Gordon’s leather pack high above him. “This the true magic of God’n. All in here. His tale how old men become strong by putting down Gift of Many Summers—” He swung his free hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Ha!” he bellowed.

Gordon listened as some of the crowd joined Kag Ati’s sentiment with laughs and jeers. Some remained silent, though. Gordon lifted his head and studied those he could see. Some frowns, some whispers. Some knew stingroot was the problem because they had put it down and had become strong again. They were intimidated, however, by the vocal displays of those who didn’t want to part with their drug, particularly that of the Clan Father himself.

Look to Bel, the ghost had said. If he existed, Bel, god of agreements, truth, and honor, was watching. Even if he didn’t exist, Gordon’s honor did and was at peril. He had lied to Kag Ati. The lie seemed a bigger mistake than dying at the hands of an ignorant addict. Coyote watched; Coyote always watched, and now he had help from another dimension.

Gordon struggled to his feet and shouted over the heads of the people. “Kag Ati,” he called. “What is in that bag will not make you strong. Putting down the Gift of Many Summers will make you strong. Using stingroot is what makes you weak.”

As dead silence filled the clearing, one of the guards came to knock Gordon back to the ground. The Clan Father called, “Bring God’n here.”

Two guards led Gordon through the closest side of the people’s ring, to the right of the fire, and before Kag Ati. “Manga Hadjat!” called the Clan Father to other guards. “Bring the naticha!”

In a few moments the other prisoner, shaman of the Cleft Mountain People, was dragged before the Clan Father. Manga Hadjat’s hands were bound behind him, his face bruised, old blood crusted in his moustache and furs. Gordon could see from the looks on the faces around the fire that many were shamed by Manga’s treatment. Kag Ati brought down the hand holding the bag. Holding it in front of the naticha he said, “This is the strength of God’n. We keep root! Say it. Say it!”

“I tell you only what I know,” said the naticha quietly but with a tone that seemed to Gordon as though Manga had already accepted his own death. “My oath before Bel, Clan Father, was to bring you truth—bring the people truth—that all may live, prosper, and walk in peace and joy.”

“What of this bag?” demanded the Clan Father.

“I know nothing of it, Kag Ati. I do know that putting down the Gift of Many Summers returned my gift of youth, that doing so has brought back the strength to several in this party.” He stood upright and looked around at the faces. “I know some of those who put down the root and became strong.” He turned slowly and settled his gaze on the Clan Father who looked at Gordon and held out the bag.

“And you say, God’n?” demanded Kag Ati.

“What’s in that bag will kill you, Kag Ati. It won’t make you strong”

“You say everything I need is in here, God’n.”

“I lied.” He glanced at the naticha. “Truth,” he said. “I was afraid and I lied.” He looked at Manga. “I live easier with myself by saying truth, Clan Father.” He looked back at Kag Ati. “What is in that bag will kill you.”

“Magic makers,” Kag Ati said disgustedly. “Seers of things to come. Ha!” He nodded to the guards and both Gordon and the naticha were forced down to the hard packed snow. When Gordon looked up again he saw Kag Ati standing upon the raised place before his fur covered bench. He held the bag aloft and said, “I show you all truth! The truth of strength! The truth of Kag Ati!” He sat upon the bench, placed the bag in his lap, and waited. Half a minute, a minute, and Kag Ati’s frowning face frowned more deeply. He licked his left thumb then stared down at the bag.

“It will kill you, Clan Father,” Gordon repeated quietly. “I know this.”

Ignoring the warning, Kag Ati opened his knees and pulled the pack deep into his crotch. “God’n wrong,” the Clan Father said confidently. All waited for one minute, two, then for a split second it looked as though Kag Ati were holding an illuminated silver beach ball in his lap. Then ball, pack, the Clan Father’s genitals, inner thighs, a good bit of his abdomen, as well as his hands up to the wrists were gone. Mercifully his horrible screaming didn’t last long.

Once Kag Ati lapsed into unconsciousness, the only sounds came from the huge fire as the burning wood hissed and popped. Still looking at the Clan Father’s bloody dead form, Gordon said to the guards, “Cut me free and release the naticha.” He looked at the closest guard. “Now.”

As though released from a spell, the guards bent to the tasks of releasing Gordon and Manga Hadjat, their eyes stealing momentary glances at their leader collapsed upon the bench, his horror of a wound facing the people. Gordon walked over and climbed up the step to Kag Ati’s bench. Bending over he checked for a pulse in the Clan Father’s neck. Nothing. Kag Ati was dead.

As they watched the men of the Cleft Mountain heap the wood on Kag Ati’s funeral pyre, Gordon looked to his left. Manga was watching the fire. “Manga,” said Gordon, “who will lead the Cleft Mountain people?”

“You killed him, God’n. If the gifted agree, you are the new Clan Father.”

“I did not kill Kag Ati. I tried to keep him alive and failed. He died at his own hand because he would not listen to your truth or mine. Let the gifted of the Cleft Mountain people choose your Clan Father. They know the people best. Together they know the best for them.” He turned and saw the guard who had cut free his bonds standing with five other guards. They were separate from the others, all looking down, their weapons on the snow. Some women and children a few paces off were gesturing and silently trying to get the attention of the guards to wave tearful good-byes. “What is that?” Gordon asked Manga.

“They are all hunters. Kag Ati made them his personal bodyguards when he became Clan Father and threw Gru Amti and his guards into the flames. They expect to be forced to join Kag Ati in the fire.”

Gordon went to the guard who had cut him loose. “By what name are you called?”

“Avak Tav, new Clan Father.”

“I am not Clan Father. Manga will explain that. My name is Gordon. Avak Tav, can you find the way to Red Cliff?”

The guard frowned. “I am not to die?” He held a hand out to the other guards. “God’n, we are not to die?”

“Not by my hand,” said Gordon. “You are all hunters,” he said to them. “Be hunters again. We will need many hunters for what is to come.”

“I guide you to Red Cliff,” said Avak Tav. “May I tell my family?”

Gordon nodded and motioned to the guard who had first addressed him with a slap on his chest. “Chayma Azi,” he called. “Gather up all here who can ride and have the horses prepared. The riders will need food to carry. They will go a long way. Food for the horses, as well.”

As Chayma Azi left on his mission, Gordon saw his spare underpants hovering just beneath his gaze. Looking down, he saw Kag Ati’s youngest widow. “Are you my husband now?” she asked, her eyes very large and filled with fear.

He looked up and behind her were the former Clan Father’s remaining two widows. More fear but no tears. He bent to the youngest one and said, “By what name are you called?”

“Misa,” she said. “Misa Hado. Do you want the headdress back?”

“No. You may keep the headdress. Come with me, Misa.” He turned her by her shoulder and they walked to where the other widows stood. Zibi Na at twenty-two was the eldest. The widow standing next to her, Tuieh, was eighteen. They were both quite beautiful. He regarded the trio and said, “I will be father to you all. Feed you, make shelter, help you learn skills, in time find good husband for each.”

Zibi Na reached out and touched his arm. “You be husband.” Raven haired, slender, delicate features, eyes of tourmaline green. It was the Temptations all over again.

Gently he removed her hand from his arm. “Father, Zibi Na. Father or nothing. Choose.” He looked at the other two. “Choose.”

Chayma Azi came and apologized for interrupting. “I have the riders together. Others are preparing the horses.”

“Good. My thanks and I’ll speak to the riders in a moment.” He turned to the three widows. “Well?”

“Can we keep Runner?” asked Misa. Kag Ati’s big black dog peeked out from behind Zibi Na. He looked like a cross between a black Lab and an Irish wolfhound. A shaggy black shadow with one yellow eye open on the right. His left eye had been injured sometime in the past and was missing, leaving the animal with a permanent wink. Sometimes, Trickster, a new joke. “Welcome, brother,” he said to the dog. “Keep Runner,” he said to Misa as he laughed and followed Chayma Azi to where the riders were gathered.

Early the next morning, Avak Tav and Gordon led a small column of riders down the North Trail, past Ghaf’s tent into the village. Gordon pulled up his mount before Pela’s house and sent Avak Tav to see Mahu and to ask him to call a meeting of whoever could attend at the clanhouse. Pela stepped from the door, her expression changing from joy at seeing Gordon alive, to distress that his head was bloodied, then to confusion at the number of additional wives he seemed to have acquired.

He explained to her Kag Ati was dead, he was responsible for the death, and that the three females were Kag Ati’s widows “If you will have them, Pela,” he said, “they will be your stepdaughters.”

Pela’s expression transformed by slow degrees into one of wonder as she looked up at her husband. “Tana has been good to me,” she said as she placed a hand on Gordon’s knee. “Two moons ago I was Pela Fur Maker, childless and alone. You come, God’n, now I have husband, son, and three daughters. We must have a bigger house.”

Gordon dismounted and saw Jatka running toward him from the east village. He put his left arm around Pela’s shoulders and held her tightly to him. When Jatka arrived, breathless from running, Gordon placed his right arm around his son’s shoulders. “There won’t be a bigger house,” he said to them. “Not here. We must leave Red Cliff. All of us must leave Black Mountain Country.”

Every place was taken in the clanhouse, each one sitting upon a tier had one or two others standing behind him, the great circular wall crowded with more standing. Gordon stood in their center from the edge of the sunken fire pit. Among the faces were Tonton Annajaka, Gordon’s eldest daughter Zibi Na, Avak Tav, and Pela. In addition were his two other daughters, one on the children’s tier, the other standing next to his son on the adult’s tier. Ghaf, Kom and his son Ta Avi, and Tonton Annajaka were there. Tonton nodded at Gordon and he nodded at Mahu. The Clan Father stood and told of putting down the Gift of Many Summers and the difference it had made to him and his wives. He called for others to attest to what he had said. There were others among the gifted who rose to speak on this subject.

Next Gordon had Avak Tav and Zibi Na describe what happened at Kag Ati’s camp, the disagreement as to what would happen if the Clan Father placed Gordon’s bag in his lap, how Gordon was shown to be telling the truth once again, and the terrible result.

Finally Gordon told them about an obscure dusty oven of a place in the western desert of a great nation where a brilliant teacher who studied the past wanted to see what was at the bottom of a red sandstone cliff. He told them of Ibrahim Taleghani’s possession of a miraculous machine that would peel away years by the thousands and bring them back in time. He told them as well of the fears the teacher had should someone go into the past and turn over the wrong grain of sand—how it could possibly change everything in the future. He told them about the crater that was once a great mountain and how it would be smashed, filling all of the lands of Black Mountain Country with fire, earthquake, and flood. He spoke on how this destruction made it safe to travel back in time to look at them for they would no longer be alive to affect the future. He saw looks of horror on some, skepticism on others. Gordon nodded at Pela.

Pela stood and described the night she met Gordon and buried his two companions. She described the lights, the sounds the vehicle made as it came to rest in the cedars, then crumbled to dust. She described the clothes they all wore—no furs—and she spoke the Arabic words Taleghani had spoken to her. There were fewer looks of skepticism. Pela resumed her seat and Tonton rose to speak of her inspection of the site, what she had found, what Gordon had told her, and what Gordon’s ghosts had told her. She spoke of Baltok, the man she had sent to Shayvi’s Hill to meet Pela, what he had said he witnessed. When she sat, all was silent.

Gordon rose again. “From Kag Ati’s camp I sent riders who witnessed what happened at the Cleft Mountain camp to go to all the clan houses in Black Mountain Country. They will assemble the people there and tell them what we have just told you. Those who would live must make preparations, pack provisions, and leave. The snows get heavier and the going will be slow, so we must leave soon. Red Cliff People will join with Big Tree and Many Horses and strike north away from the mountain. Cleft Mountain people will head west. Green Meadows and the plains clans will strike east. Yellow Claw, Big Snake, and Black Shoulders will go south. All clans will bring their adopted clans and any peoples they find along the way with them away from the mountain.”

Ghaf the hunter stood. “This can’t be true.”

“I have gone to a lot of trouble to show I speak truth,” answered Gordon.

“Here I know all the woods and streams, the game, the seasons—”

“We need you, Ghaf,” said Gordon. “We need our hunters more than ever for guides, for food, and for skins that shelterers and furriers can use to protect us on our journey.”

Mahu stood and turned to look at the old hunter. “We must last the winter, old friend, and the snows are just beginning. We need you and the other hunters to show us how to walk on snow, build shelters from ice, where to dig to find fodder for the animals, and to keep us heading away from the mountain.

“We can’t make horses walk on snow, or cows, or pigs,” protested Ghaf.

“We can pack the snow,” said Gordon. “I will show you how.”

Ghaf looked at Gordon. “How far must we go?”

“I don’t know. We may not be able to get far enough away in time. I hope we can.”

“Why did you not tell us sooner that we might have gotten an earlier start?” shouted a young man from the second tier across the fire pit. Several other voices muttered agreement.

“Would you have believed me?” Gordon asked. “Without the secret of the Gift of Many Summers exposed, without all who saw how Kag Ati died, would any of you have believed me?”

“I find it hard to believe you now even so,” shouted another voice.

Tonton Annajaka stood and walked around the fire pit until she faced Gordon. She held a clenched hand out to Gordon and opened her fingers, revealing a small heap of sand upon her palm. “I believe you, God’n.” She looked around at the faces of her friends and neighbors. “I have seen this terrible storm coming since I was but a girl. Before the year is out, it will be here. If we are to live we must leave.” She looked back at Gordon. “But what of turning the wrong grain of sand? If we should travel far enough, if some of us should survive, what of your own time?”

“This is my time,” he answered quietly. “Perhaps it will make no difference. Perhaps one of your descendents will build a terrible weapon that will end all life. Then, perhaps we will bring into being something better.”

Gordon took Tonton’s hand, turned it, and emptied the grains of sand into his own palm. He looked up and studied the faces looking back at him. Raising his hand, he threw the sand in a wide arc up into the air. As it fell to the floor stones he took Pela’s arm and left to gather their children and begin packing.

The lead horse pulling their heavily loaded travois left fifteen days later following the path made by the huge roller the woodworkers, harness makers, and thatchers completed at Gordon’s direction to be pushed by six horses. After another four days more horses arrived from the east. In another three days, all who would leave Red Cliff were traveling north. There were a few left behind, reported Jatka: some young ones and some old ones stayed. After all, as everyone knows, the Gift of Many Summers only grows along the banks of Avina’s Valley west of Red Cliff. They could not be certain of a supply in the north.

Many are the tales of danger and adventure as the Black Mountain people struggled north through the winter storms to escape the coming sky fire. Some of the very old, some of the very young, died from the cold. Some died when food grew scarce, some died when the winter bears became more hunter than prey. A large number of the Big Tree People rebelled at the hardships and turned to go back to their forests at the base of Black Mountain. Some of the Black Mountain and Many Horses Clans joined them. Most continued north.

The night Avak Tav and Zibi Na wed, a thousand stars fell. The late evening sky filled with fiery streaks from the east close to the horizon. They were so many all felt that their prayers had been answered. As they burrowed into their shelter of ice and fur that night, Pela said to Gordon, Jatka, Tuieh, and Misa that she was to have Gordon’s child. Her prayer had been answered.

It was many days later, the day sky clear and windless, the air warming and the planters beginning to talk of land and seed, when a few of the remaining members of the Big Tree Clan said that it was far past the time Gordon said the mountain would explode. Gordon was on his horse listening to them when Jatka pointed out to all of them a tiny bright fire in the sky that quickly became a tiny sun of its own. Gordon called for all to dismount and try to control the horses, but few did. They watched in awe as the fire streaked below the southern horizon, causing a great brilliance in the entire sky that hurt the eyes.

Gordon was still calling for the riders to dismount and control their horses when a wall of sound hit them all, driving man and beast alike down into the snow. A breath of hot air warm enough to make the snow sticky came from the south, paused, and was replaced by an icy wind sucked from the north to feed a giant gray tower of ash and steam that climbed above the southern hills. Some watched in awe while others chased down the horses and livestock. “There will be a shock through the ground,” Gordon called, urging others to spread the warning. “The ground will lift and shake like a dog—” And the earth rose, shook, cracked, and fell, tossing about men, beasts, rock cliffs, and giant cedars like straws in the wind.

When earth again became earth and snows continued to melt from the warmer air, what animals that could be recaptured were under control, and the dead and injured tallied. Most of those who had left Red Cliff had survived. Now there was a land to find and Bloody London to rebuild.

As the snows melted away, they found a fertile land of red cliffs. On a hill with good water and in sight of the sea to the north, they built their shelters and corralled their animals. From flying over it in another existence, Gordon recognized that distinctive place on the coast. In one of the infinite futures of the universe it would someday be called Tobruk, the best natural harbor in North Africa. In spring, the crops all in the ground, the homes going up, Pela gave birth to a baby boy. Custom had the boy unnamed for its first moon, allowing the father to select a name that would honor the child as well as honor his and Pela’s hopes for the child. It was during that time when Avak, Jatka and their scouts returned from exploring the deserted harbor on the north coast. They returned with strange objects that looked like burned stones and were incredibly heavy for their size. One of the hunters, a muscular lad of nineteen born to Big Tree Clan and for Black Shoulders People, Silis Ti, took one of the burned stones to Gordon who was in his partially built home holding his baby wrapped in fur while Pela slept.

Jatka and Avak were with Silis and Jatka said, “Father, look at what Silis found.”

Gordon looked at the stone in the hunter’s hand, shifted the baby until he could hold it with one arm, then held the stone with the other. He grinned. “Remember, Jatka, when we were on the trail north from Black Mountain, the night Zibi and Avak wed and so many stars fell.”

“I remember.”

“This is one of those stars.”

“Very heavy to be a prayer, Father. Heavy even to be a stone.”

“They are all over the ground, on the beach at the harbor, and more in the sea,” said Avak. “What is it made of?”

“I told you once about iron. That is what this is mostly. You say there are more of these?”

Silis laughed. “Thousands. Umtok could build himself and everyone else a fine rock home and have stones to spare.”

Avak said, “I don’t think he could lift any of those big ones.”

Gordon hefted the stone and handed it back to Silis. “The three of you take an extra horse each and bring back as many of these as the beasts can carry. If you do, I will make each of you a new knife.”

“A flint for so little a task?” said Silis. “I’ll leave now.”

“Not a flint, Silis. I’ll make you a knife of iron. Perhaps even one of steel. It will take awhile to make the blades.” He looked at Jatka. “I must make a lot of charcoal, build a furnace, figure out how to force air in it...” Gordon let the sentence trail off as he frowned.

“What is it, God’n?” asked Avak, a tone of concern in his voice.

“Something that never crossed my mind before. What came first, the anvil or the hammer?” Seeing the confused expression on both of their faces at the new word, Gordon said, “Never mind. You three go and get the stones. Jatka, take an additional horse and bring back the biggest and heaviest of the burned stones the horse can carry.” He frowned as he thought. “I’m going to need wood. Lots of wood.”

As the three left to assemble the horses and supplies they’d need for their journey, Pela came up behind Gordon, took the child from him and rocked the baby in her arms. “Have you found a name?” she asked.

“I have.”

“Then you must tell everyone,” she chided.

Gordon Redcliff climbed into a high tree and yodeled at the top of lungs that he had news. “Today I name my son and he is called Iron Eyes.”

Others passed it along, even though the name seemed a bit odd. Gordon climbed down from the tree, looked into the face of his child, placed his hand on the child’s shock of obsidian black hair, and said to him, “We’ll do copper and bronze ages when you get a bit older.”

Pela grinned widely as she looked to the east. “Look, God’n!” She raised a hand and pointed. “Oh, look!”

He turned his head and in the distance he saw a female great wolf coming their way. “Be on your best behavior, Iron Eyes,” Gordon whispered to the child. “Your aunt is coming for a visit.”

Copyright © 2009 Barry B. Longyear