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...
I don't remember my father dying, I was not yet three at the time. I remember the whole jungle turning into a sauna. It was like a year's worth of rain falling at once and the heat turning it into steam. I remember the trees being flattened. For two days, as we walked home, nothing but the smallest bushes stood. We saw no wildlife either.
Julie had stopped at the top of the dingle surrounding the deadly scene and stared in awe at the destruction nature had done – a great tidal wave in the middle of a desert. The river had grown. According to Kamrasi, before the great flood, he could throw a stone across the river and hit the other bank, but now he couldn't even throw a spear that far. And it was fast with huge rapids. Day by day the river became wider.
The waterfall had grown as well from a small glass-like stream into a hungry, wild, roaring fall. Julie and Kamrasi called it Victory Falls because they had defeated the evil Basindi culture.
And now she was uncertain about her purpose in life, in her new life, and she held onto my little hand and squeezed it very tightly. I remember looking up at her as she was wiping away her tears. And she rubbed her tummy, which was growing with child. I rubbed mine also out of hunger.
Kamrasi had been staring at her for a while, studying her face, her blue eyes. She looked at him and said, Ya still think I'm Yellow Face, don't ya? He looked blankly at her without speaking, then turned and started walking.
Yellow Face is gone, he said, pointing towards the sky above. Looking up, he stared for a short while with a confused look. Julie saw his concern and told him the Sun was still there only the black smoke from the mountain covered it and probably would for a while. None of us knew the implications of what she said or how long the sky would stay black.
After about a week of walking, the forest thinned, and the debris was more spread out. Dead trees on top of high hills and rocks, piles of trees a hundred feet high, and even boulders were rolled into collections. The new river followed a new terrain. Islands where there were none before, flatness where there were once hills. Here and there, we'd come across the body of one of the Outsiders or some animal's bloated carcass. Even the great Jilabe from the lake Basindi were dead. We were hungry enough to try and eat these, but Kamrasi's skills of leadership prevented that from happening. We did find the occasional crocodile, what the old timers called dragons, and these were easy enough to kill.
I can't believe they're gone, she said, as if Riangi's and the other's deaths were her fault. She had done nothing but survive. Her main reason for being there was to mate with Riangi, or so she thought. The Ori never really told her what she had to accomplish once here. They just planted her here and said, go at it. He was her anchor, her guide through this new world. When she was troubled or frightened, Riangi would calm her not by his words, but by his resolve, his surety. Now she had to look to Kamrasi for comfort. Over their three years at the Outsiders village, she had gotten to know Riangi's brother quite well.
As we made our way home, he would entertain us with tales he had heard as a child. But these were more than just stories; they were real. Everything known about the spirit world was passed down in stories told during the meal while walking, hunting, or in song. Just as we do today at the Sabatta. He told us stories about the bright spirit in the sky that perhaps Julie hadn't heard yet. He told us of how the giants had tossed a big round stone into the sky and how it got stuck and became the Sun, and how when the giants died, they would fall down and make a huge hole, which would fill up with water and become lakes after the giants melted.
She would, while listening to his stories, say I know, Riangi told me, or if he hadn't, she would listen carefully and say when he paused, things like No way, or Git the hell outta here. She began to like Risngi's little brother. She saw many similarities between them and their share of differences too.
From what she could make out, there wasn't too much going on here that warranted grand changes between generations. All sheep look the same, her daddy always said. Of course, he was referring to what he called Chinamen, and Colored folk. Boy, would he have somethin' to say now if he were here? If they looked, they was different, she'd say.
It's a wonder she was always so happy. There were times when there was absolutely nothing to do. How much more exciting could living in Texarkana be?
The old ones spoken language was dull and awful simple. Julie wondered how far back in time the first sentence had been used. We live as close to nature as you can get without swinging on trees, and thus the vocabulary had to be equally one-dimensional. She explained what one-dimensional means by having one of us draw a line in the sand. That's one-dimensional, she said.
We'd look at her, and someone would say, It's a line. And then there'd be snickering, and she'd go off half-cocked.
Julie changed that by offering us her own language, her own words for things the old ones never thought about before. I knew all along because I could speak both languages.
The world had taken a new path the minute she met Riangi.
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