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...
Little Jason had just seen his first year pass. The fiery mountain had been quiet for the last two months with only an occasional rumble and disturbance. This was attributed to the presence of Julie who aggressively taught the inhabitants of Lake Basindi English, not for obvious reasons, but also to help her teach them about the concepts of days and nights, weeks, months, years, and seasons.
She found their concepts of time - based on the hunter/gatherer's need for rainy seasons and migrations - too simple. If she could only get them to grasp the agrarian concept of hours in a day. She wondered if they would ever apply this cooking method towards cannibalism. A practice she had not witnessed yet, and for that she was thankful.
Riangi and Junga had ostensibly become fast friends, spending many days together hunting, bonding as men do in the throes of the killing fields. But Julie didn't trust Junga, her intuition more sensitive than Riangi's. Riangi could be seen walking about the clan with his brother and Junga, boasting of their natural competitive friendship. Sinomi would even pry about and ask to be included in hunting and fishing parties with the Basindi warriors.
Julie, though, would often overhear the Shaman talking to the clan elders, about the outsiders. She would get little tidbits of spy news from the Baba girls who would tell her what they heard the elders were talking about. Still, the clan overwhelmingly adored Julie, and believed her to be the Spirit of the Sun. She was kind, friendly, and supportive and learned the language so well they would often come to her for advice.
She had already been weaning Jason on small bits of cooked liver, and tenderloins, which she would first chew before feeding to him. Jason would play with the children of the clan elders and could understand both languages. Julie, of course, always spoke English to him and that is what he understood the best.
Jason is one year old today, she told Riangi and Junga. He has seen the passing of one rain and one migration of the Fasthorn, insisted Riangi. He glanced over at Junga and they both chuckled. To her surprise, Jason had already been walking as early as six months.
He walks early because he is my son, Riangi told her.
He drinks the lake water, added Junga, that is why.
He is strong because he is the son of Yellow Face, said the little Baba, that is why.
The latter was the more prominently held belief in the village and since everyone believed that Julie was supernatural, as was her breast milk. Every day Basindi women would bring their newborns to Julie and ask that she breast-feed them in hopes that their children would turn light colored like Jason.
At first, she refused but soon acquiesced under the sheer numbers. But on the advice of Riangi, she only took the children of clan elders. She didn't mind so much except her greatest fear was that her tits would sag because of so much use.
Living with the Basindi was so different from what she was used to with Riangi. Although the area had once been very beautiful, the volcano had slowly incinerated the entire vicinity. Now dry and waterless, the land adjacent to the lake looked desolate, except for the area near the lake and falls.
In the time Julie and Riangi lived there with the other travelers, she had explored the lake and its immediate area, often walking for hours with Riangi, and sometimes with some of the girls, but always, there was a Basindi warrior with her.
She noticed that the warriors hardly ever came home with large game, that mostly they ate small animals like foxes, dogs, and lizards, and a fat and prolific breeding rat they called the 'Pakapa'. But mostly they ate fish from the lake.
What are they doing over there, she asked Riangi one day close to Jason's first birthday.
They are fishing for Jilaebi.
Look at the size of those things, they look as if they could swallow a child, she said and looked over at Jason in Riangi's arms, so tiny and frail. She hoped his bright blue eyes would remain that color, and not change from the baby blues many babies are born with. Jason's hair was thick and dark, with tiny little ringlets on either side of his head. Back in Texarkana, my Momma'd be all over this little critter. She squeezed Jason's cheek. The baby squealed, cracking a wide grin and exposing tiny new baby teeth.
Riangi smiled and let Jason walk. They glanced over at the fishermen trying to haul in a five-foot-long Jilaebi. Three men, Kitquanna among them, had used their spears to help haul it ashore. Julie laughed at the sight as the youngest of the three kept falling back into the water every time the fish swung its tail.
Joey would make some hellish fish and chips with that, she said.
Some what fish, he asked.
Julie still lost in memory, looked over at the father of her child and said, Joey. Over at the Pier. It's a little place where they make food and sell it to... she stopped, Riangi looked lost, aw forget it, she said. She often thought of teaching them rudimentary agriculture but the soil was too sandy and nothing grew but the sturdy palm trees and hearty shrubs. Why the hell couldn't they build a proper shelter?
Julie was pregnant again. Jason had been running all over the place by fifteen months and was actually more vocal at that age than Julie remembered children being back home. Julie was pregnant again and the women wondered if the child would be a proper color this time, and the men would wager on it using shells and bright blue stones as currency.
The great fiery mountain would periodically throw black cinders from the top of its ever-glowing cap. The ground would shake regularly as though the earth's heart was beating. This worried Julie and even Kamrasi and Riangi who would talk about the dangers they felt were imminent. Kamrasi had successfully traded goods with the Basindi and gathered enough items to take home to his father whose body now lay rotting in the bottom of the old boar pit.
As the months waned and the seasons changed, they were ever more eager to move on. The food was good and the hunting and fishing fair, but it wasn't home. The visitors had grown used to eating cooked food, much to the joy of Julie, and Riangi spent hours telling Julie and Jason about his home and the troubles they were having. He would teach them the customs and the rituals of his home clan, the Mirimbura, and what life was like living at the crux of the two rivers – Nase and Zoe as they merged to form the great river they called Zar.
Then one day Sinomi went exploring, and something happened that would change things forever.
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