Chapter Seven
Real People
20, 000 BCE
(Before the Common Era, or BC - Before Christ)
The forest that the children had thought was so impenetrable turned out to be only a small thicket of trees clinging to the sheltered side of a mountain. The man in the fur coat picked up Zack, who promptly fell asleep on his shoulder, took Alice by the hand and led her down out of the trees into broad moonlit plains. Thin silver ribbons of water wound their way across the open fields. Alice looked for houses, or some sign of a camp, among the hills and humps of the grasslands, but she saw none. She couldn't imagine where the man was taking them.
So, never one to waste time wondering, she asked him, "Where are we going?"
"Back to my people, of course! I can't leave you wandering around in the dark. Now, can I?" He paused, and glanced back at her with bright eyes, "Unless you know your way back to your own people?"
"Well, no, I don't," admitted Alice, still wondering where the houses were.
"Well, then," said the man, as if that settled the question.
"But Zack knows the way home!" she protested, a little stung that the man would assume they were completely lost.
"Then tomorrow I'll bring you back here. Perhaps you can show me where your tribe is, or maybe we'll find someone looking for you."
Alice shook her head. She was trying to think of a way to explain things, when the man suddenly asked, "Do you have a name?"
This was a question she knew how to answer! "I'm Alice, and that's my brother Zack. He isn't even 4 years old yet, but I'm already 5!"
She did hear the man's reply of, "Interesting names, I'm called Hawk..." but she didn't stop talking to acknowledge what he'd said. Telling him her name seemed to be all the start she needed and words tumbled out of her in excited confusion as Alice tried to explain the incredible thing that had happened to her brother and herself that afternoon.
"...and then there was a BIG dinosaur! And I don't know if it was a tyrannosaurus or not, but I KNOW it was a carnivore! And it chased us, and then Zack took us forward on the time road, and the meteorite killed everything, and all the mammals filled up the earth instead of the big dinosaurs, and we saw a BIG scary bird. It was bigger than you, it was bigger than a BUS! And it opened its mouth at us and it was all red inside and its tongue was BLACK! And..."
The man, Hawk, said nothing throughout this extraordinary account. When Alice finally wound down he said, rather thoughtfully, "Well, spirit world journeys are really not my area of expertise. You'll have to tell your story to our Shaman. I'm just a hunter."
An idea occurred to Alice then, and without thinking she asked, "So, do you think we're Gods?"
The man laughed heartily, "I think you are two lost children. And I think you, little girl, are a marvellous story teller. But the Gods do not sit crying in the woods, and the Gods don't scream when they are startled by a simple hunter who is wondering what all the noise is about."
Alice was rather hurt. She had thought it was a reasonable question, after all in all the books she ever had read the primitive people always thought that people like herself were Gods. They worshipped them and were awed by things like flashlights and cameras. She wished she had brought a flashlight on this trip. That would show him!
This cheerful man in the big fur cape didn't act anything like she thought a prehistoric man should.
"And here we are!"
For a long moment, Alice wasn't sure what he was talking about. Where are the houses?
Then she realized that the low humps in the land were actually roofs, and the houses were dug into the ground, with small round doors set right down in the earth. There was a faint glow coming from each doorway and dark smoke issued from a hole in the centre of each roof.
There were other dark shapes around the camp, racks and things hung up, and more things that she couldn't identify. Hawk shifted Zack's weight on his shoulder and called out, "Mossflower! Come see what I've found!"
A skin covering was pushed aside and a woman's head appeared in one of the doorways, and she answered, "Where have you been? Must you keep wandering? Even your namesake alights to rest every now and then!" Then she saw the children, and said sharply, "No one told me anyone was missing! Whose are they? Where did you find them? Oh, you bad children, whose are you and whatever possessed you to go out at night?"
Zack woke up in sleepy confusion. "Daddy?" he asked, looking up at Hawk's face. Then he realized that he wasn't in his daddy's arms and he began to cry. "Where's my Daddy?"
"They're not ours!" said Hawk loudly over Zack's steadily increasing wails. More heads appeared in doorways and before long there was a small crowd standing around Hawk and the two children.
"Is there another tribe nearby?"
"I didn't know there were any other people around here!"
"Where are they?"
"Well, the little one speaks our language, maybe they're related to us?"
"But look at their clothes!"
Mossflower's stern sharp voice cut through the hubbub. Even Zack stopped crying and struggling. "Stop! These are children. Tired, lost children. They need food and sleep, any fool can see that. Tomorrow when the Sun, with grace, shows his face again, we can sort all of this out. Not this very minute, tomorrow! Go to bed, all of you!"
There were a few muttered comments and some laughter, but the other people drifted off. Hawk put Zack down on the ground and Mossflower said in a softer voice, but still one that you could never think of arguing with, "Come on now, I have some stew still on the fire and I'm sure my children will be happy to make room for you in their beds."
There didn't seem to be any other thing to do but follow Mossflower into her small round tent, so that is just what Zack and Alice did.