A Texas girl finds herself admiring a light in the sky only to find out it is indeed an alien, which transports her to another time long long ago in Africa and pairs her with a Neanderthal population in hopes that her descendants will populate Nort...
Bright and hot, the Sun stood at its zenith. Flies were everywhere, and the breeze had stopped altogether.
My son would have been a man these four rains, said Ujiji.
Tisani will be sad, said Sinomi, I'm glad she wasn't here.
Yet, would it have been better for her if she was?
A young man came running up the stony lane. He had an urgent look on his face. As soon as he caught sight of the two leaders of the Clan, he began talking in an urgent and rapid voice. Rather than follow the winding lane he cut directly through the thorny brush and stood before them.
He told them that something terrible had happened, someone had been killed, eaten while they tended to their midday meal. The cat, he told them, had come right in the middle of the village and swallowed the baby whole and then grabbed hold of Pamba's head and dragged her off. She screamed for a little bit, but then she was quiet.
They all three ran back to the village to see what they could do.
******
How many moons had passed? What has Ujiji done?
What can he do? Said Zobei; a clan elder at thirty rains.
Nothing, Sinomi said, not since he killed Zansibi. And without a shaman how are we to understand the spirits? Only the shaman can tell what they will do.
The Spirits punish us, said another.
Even in the dark, said Zobei, we are threatened with fire from the sky, but no rain. And do the spirits talk to us? No, they whisper from far away. They shake the ground and force us to move, and Zansibi is dead.
Riangi is gone, Tumi said, who else is there to take Ujiji's place?
No one spoke. The clan elders were all too afraid of being the one to say it. But Tumi was fearless. He was forever speaking his mind regardless of the consequences, and he was young. He broke the long silence.
The Stone will tell us.
The Stone, I said to my gathered clan. What could I say that Julie had not said better. She saw the stone from her visions the Taso showed her. A large round black boulder that sat almost completely above ground as if it had rolled there and nestled into the soil on a hill overlooking the valley on one side, and the wooded forest on the other. Growing next to the globe was a tall acacia tree, which towed over it. That nothing else grew nearby meant that it held dark powers that only a shaman could decipher. The giants put it there, they believed, just as the gods put the Sun in the sky by throwing a rock like this one so high it stuck there.
Riangi and Kamrasi asked to be told this story so many times. The thought of giants roaming the earth was magical. Tell us again Dada, they would say, how did the giants make the lakes and rivers? One of my elder clan members stood up bravely and proclaimed the question, How did they make the lake?
Whenever one of them would die, Ujiji said, he would fall down so hard that he would leave a huge hole in the ground. Then the giant became water and filled up the hole.
Dada, Kamrasi said, where did they go, the giants? Are they still here? We don't see any.
They're gone. Back into the earth. They left.
Oh.
But the Spirits protect everything you see, the boars you eat, and the trees that grow the fruit that tastes sweet. They protect the rivers and even the mountain that throws fire at us.
Ujiji missed his father at times, and often lamented over the way things went. He secretly hoped that he was still alive - that they might meet one day. But that was a foolish thought better left to the idle minds of children.
* * * *
Riangi was 19 years old when he disappeared, I told the gathered clan. His little brother, Kamrasi was two years younger and had finished the coming-of-age rituals two years prior during the winter season. At this ritual, Kamrasi proved himself a better hunter than his brother. He was never allowed to hunt with the elders until his coming of age. But as a youngster, he killed small animals with weapons of his own making. The elders disapproved but said little because the child had skills that many adults envied.
Kamrasi had a penchant for killing. He loved the hunt and couldn't wait to take part in the actual stalking of the prey. He would practice killing with clubs and rocks, and sticks, which he would sharpen with knives he made from flint he found himself. When Kamrasi was four, he killed his first rat. It was nearly as big as him. He took it home to his father, and proudly held up his trophy, brimming with pride.
There's my little man, Ujiji said to his boy, what is it we have here?
It's a big rat Dada, the boy said.
Oh, Ujiji said, bending over with a smile and taking the rat from his son. And holding it up so that his friends might see the sight of his son's first prize, he said, so it is. Look here what my little man has caught for himself.
The others laughed, embarrassing the boy into going home to his mother dragging his kill behind by the tail. Next time, he swore to himself, tears rolling down his face, it would be something larger. Still, he gave himself his first hunting trophy, a raised scar.
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