His injured shoulder was aching as he edged upwards towards the light. When he was three-quarters of the way up, disaster struck.
The tree root he was holding had a weak spot further up. For years, it’d been scraping against the sharp edge of a protrusion of rock whenever there was movement, especially the comings and goings of various creatures clambering up and down. It was very worn and weathered at that point. After several minutes of rubbing, as Ayak made his way up, it began to tear further.
He took a deep breath and exerted himself even harder, hoisting himself a few feet higher. To his despair, this added pressure on the root proved too much. It split from the tree and sent him tumbling back down to the bottom again.
Ayak broke his fall by sliding sideways. He tried to clutch whatever he could on the side as he went down. However, he quickly lost any grip as he accelerated. He launched into the air and crashed onto the bottom of the cave for a second time. Although he knocked his head on the hard, sandy floor, his fall was cushioned by the tree root which had dislodged and which he was still clutching.
The blow to his head knocked him unconscious. He was completely motionless, almost as if dead. But inside his mind, he could sense he was still alive, because an unusual event happened.
Ayak felt himself floating out of his body and right out of the cave. His mind rose like a spirit right above the savannah. He could see the grassy plains, hill-tops and river beds below. He could see numberless animals and hominids living out their lives. He was positioned like the Sun, covered in light, looking down even on the vast Mountain of the North which he had once feared for its enormity. Everything was in miniature. The thorn trees were like small plants on the rolling plains.
Then, the ape-boy became sad in spirit. He had spotted the extent of the scorched earth left by the fire. His eyes started darting everywhere to find his parents. But he couldn’t find them or his tribe. Suddenly, he became afraid that he would remain stuck up in the sky forever and never see his father and mother again. The peace he’d sensed as his spirit took flight out of the cave had gone.
At that very moment, his mind dropped back into his body. It was a shock. Everything was dark and all traces of his vision were gone.
The ape-boy lay still, shaken. He could feel pain in various parts of his body. He opened his eyes. Light overhead from the sinkhole started to dim. Dazed, he closed his eyes, wondering what had just happened to him.
After some time, he felt his face and head for signs of any blood. His thick, long hair was matted and dusty. He could feel a bump on his forehead. The most painful part of his body was still his sore shoulder.
He could hear in the background a creature gnawing at a bone, unperturbed by his fall.
Ayak opened his eyes again, slowly focusing, trying to think clearly. Next to him was the root. He observed that it was longer than his body. In addition, it was fairly thick, tapering down to a long, thin tail. He tore off its thinnest section at the end and began chewing it. He wanted to get stronger.
As he was eating the plant, he recalled times spent with his father at the river in the valley. Sometimes they would float branches down the river which had broken off from the trees along its bank. Sometimes, they’d raced pieces of wood to see which one could go the quickest.
An idea came to him. He thought about the body of water at the bottom of the cave. If the root, which had broken off the old tree at the top of the sinkhole, was large enough to float, perhaps he, too, could move with it, like going downstream? Rivers were like paths – you could move down them.
With his weakened shoulder, he didn’t believe he could lift himself up out of the big hole. Its sides were too steep and slippery. So, he was forced to look for other possible escape routes.
Above the cave, daylight was diminishing rapidly. His imagination had been emboldened by the vision of the savannah he’d just experienced. It had been like flying high above the cave, high above everything. He’d been given a burst of psychic energy bundled up with hope.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN TOR HOBBLED BACK to his tree home, Kyra could read from his face that something terrible had gone wrong. He looked shattered. Always, her man and her son had come back together.
As Kyra tended to her partner’s injuries, she looked into his eyes for clues as to what had happened to their child. She feared the worst.
Deep down, Tor blamed himself for the loss of his son. At first light, he would set off to search for him. In the distance, the bush fire was still blazing, lighting up the horizon. He got little sleep that night.
The fire burned for the whole of the next day and throughout the following night. The anxious couple decided to postpone the start of their search until it had burnt itself out. On the afternoon of the third day, a downpour finally doused the blaze.
On the next day at dawn, the couple began their search. The grasslands were still smouldering. Most of the greenery was gone. Only a few trees and bushes had escaped the wrath of the flames. Burnt carcasses were strewn across the plains.
They found no signs of their son all day. In the evening, they were tired, hungry and thirsty. They rested near the reeds along the river in the valley. Tor went hunting and speared a hog. He ate its heart to give himself some of its strength. Kyra ate some of the brain meat.
Soon, a few hunting hyenas approached them, snarling. Tor threw them some meat, hoping to get rid of them. While the unwelcome visitors were tearing at the scraps, the hominids moved away, taking some meat with them.
They followed the course of the river towards its source in the mountains. What the parents couldn’t know was that the missing boy was under that very ground where they were walking.
In the twilight, Tor and Kyra crossed over a small hill into a green and yellow plain. The area was quite stony and rocky, interspersed with grass, shrubs and a few trees. Herds of antelope and teams of equids were still grazing.
They found shelter among some rocks. That night, the Moon was large and round, a yellow orb. When it rose, the light it cast was welcome, bathing things in light.
On an impulse, Tor drew the round shape of the full moon in the sand with a stick. He couldn’t get his drawing as spherical as the real object in the sky. Kyra looked at it and up at the Moon and then picked up several small pebbles and stones and placed them on either side of Tor’s Moon to show stars. This pleased them no end.
The next morning, they resumed their journey after sucking some eggs out of their shells they’d found in a nest.
Soon afterwards, the morning took a turn for the worse. They came across an expedition of Big Heads. This tribe was out hunting but hadn’t caught anything. They were camped out on the side of a rocky hill, surveying the landscape for potential prey. When Tor and Kyra walked by, the sight of a female aroused the attention of the group’s alpha male. As their leader approached the visitors, some of his gang followed him.
Normally, there wasn’t much inter-breeding between the two branches of hominids but this alpha male was a highly sexed individual. In addition, he was frustrated and bored with the day’s fruitless activities.
The pair started running away but some Big Heads chased after them. Tor turned around to face their attackers, brandishing his spear. This action stopped them in their tracks. He was outnumbered, but his spear had a much longer range than their weapons did. The Big Heads had never mastered the skills of the spear. They still preferred using bones as clubs.