“Would you have believed me?” Gordon asked. “Without the secret of the Gift of Many Summers exposed, without all who saw how Kag Ati died, would any of you have believed me?”
“I find it hard to believe you now even so,” shouted another voice.
Tonton Annajaka stood and walked around the fire pit until she faced Gordon. She held a clenched hand out to Gordon and opened her fingers, revealing a small heap of sand upon her palm. “I believe you, God’n.” She looked around at the faces of her friends and neighbors. “I have seen this terrible storm coming since I was but a girl. Before the year is out, it will be here. If we are to live we must leave.” She looked back at Gordon. “But what of turning the wrong grain of sand? If we should travel far enough, if some of us should survive, what of your own time?”
“This is my time,” he answered quietly. “Perhaps it will make no difference. Perhaps one of your descendents will build a terrible weapon that will end all life. Then, perhaps we will bring into being something better.”
Gordon took Tonton’s hand, turned it, and emptied the grains of sand into his own palm. He looked up and studied the faces looking back at him. Raising his hand, he threw the sand in a wide arc up into the air. As it fell to the floor stones he took Pela’s arm and left to gather their children and begin packing.
The lead horse pulling their heavily loaded travois left fifteen days later following the path made by the huge roller the woodworkers, harness makers, and thatchers completed at Gordon’s direction to be pushed by six horses. After another four days more horses arrived from the east. In another three days, all who would leave Red Cliff were traveling north. There were a few left behind, reported Jatka: some young ones and some old ones stayed. After all, as everyone knows, the Gift of Many Summers only grows along the banks of Avina’s Valley west of Red Cliff. They could not be certain of a supply in the north.
Many are the tales of danger and adventure as the Black Mountain people struggled north through the winter storms to escape the coming sky fire. Some of the very old, some of the very young, died from the cold. Some died when food grew scarce, some died when the winter bears became more hunter than prey. A large number of the Big Tree People rebelled at the hardships and turned to go back to their forests at the base of Black Mountain. Some of the Black Mountain and Many Horses Clans joined them. Most continued north.
The night Avak Tav and Zibi Na wed, a thousand stars fell. The late evening sky filled with fiery streaks from the east close to the horizon. They were so many all felt that their prayers had been answered. As they burrowed into their shelter of ice and fur that night, Pela said to Gordon, Jatka, Tuieh, and Misa that she was to have Gordon’s child. Her prayer had been answered.
It was many days later, the day sky clear and windless, the air warming and the planters beginning to talk of land and seed, when a few of the remaining members of the Big Tree Clan said that it was far past the time Gordon said the mountain would explode. Gordon was on his horse listening to them when Jatka pointed out to all of them a tiny bright fire in the sky that quickly became a tiny sun of its own. Gordon called for all to dismount and try to control the horses, but few did. They watched in awe as the fire streaked below the southern horizon, causing a great brilliance in the entire sky that hurt the eyes.
Gordon was still calling for the riders to dismount and control their horses when a wall of sound hit them all, driving man and beast alike down into the snow. A breath of hot air warm enough to make the snow sticky came from the south, paused, and was replaced by an icy wind sucked from the north to feed a giant gray tower of ash and steam that climbed above the southern hills. Some watched in awe while others chased down the horses and livestock. “There will be a shock through the ground,” Gordon called, urging others to spread the warning. “The ground will lift and shake like a dog—” And the earth rose, shook, cracked, and fell, tossing about men, beasts, rock cliffs, and giant cedars like straws in the wind.
When earth again became earth and snows continued to melt from the warmer air, what animals that could be recaptured were under control, and the dead and injured tallied. Most of those who had left Red Cliff had survived. Now there was a land to find and Bloody London to rebuild.
As the snows melted away, they found a fertile land of red cliffs. On a hill with good water and in sight of the sea to the north, they built their shelters and corralled their animals. From flying over it in another existence, Gordon recognized that distinctive place on the coast. In one of the infinite futures of the universe it would someday be called Tobruk, the best natural harbor in North Africa. In spring, the crops all in the ground, the homes going up, Pela gave birth to a baby boy. Custom had the boy unnamed for its first moon, allowing the father to select a name that would honor the child as well as honor his and Pela’s hopes for the child. It was during that time when Avak, Jatka and their scouts returned from exploring the deserted harbor on the north coast. They returned with strange objects that looked like burned stones and were incredibly heavy for their size. One of the hunters, a muscular lad of nineteen born to Big Tree Clan and for Black Shoulders People, Silis Ti, took one of the burned stones to Gordon who was in his partially built home holding his baby wrapped in fur while Pela slept.
Jatka and Avak were with Silis and Jatka said, “Father, look at what Silis found.”
Gordon looked at the stone in the hunter’s hand, shifted the baby until he could hold it with one arm, then held the stone with the other. He grinned. “Remember, Jatka, when we were on the trail north from Black Mountain, the night Zibi and Avak wed and so many stars fell.”
“I remember.”
“This is one of those stars.”
“Very heavy to be a prayer, Father. Heavy even to be a stone.”
“They are all over the ground, on the beach at the harbor, and more in the sea,” said Avak. “What is it made of?”
“I told you once about iron. That is what this is mostly. You say there are more of these?”
Silis laughed. “Thousands. Umtok could build himself and everyone else a fine rock home and have stones to spare.”
Avak said, “I don’t think he could lift any of those big ones.”
Gordon hefted the stone and handed it back to Silis. “The three of you take an extra horse each and bring back as many of these as the beasts can carry. If you do, I will make each of you a new knife.”
“A flint for so little a task?” said Silis. “I’ll leave now.”
“Not a flint, Silis. I’ll make you a knife of iron. Perhaps even one of steel. It will take awhile to make the blades.” He looked at Jatka. “I must make a lot of charcoal, build a furnace, figure out how to force air in it...” Gordon let the sentence trail off as he frowned.
“What is it, God’n?” asked Avak, a tone of concern in his voice.
“Something that never crossed my mind before. What came first, the anvil or the hammer?” Seeing the confused expression on both of their faces at the new word, Gordon said, “Never mind. You three go and get the stones. Jatka, take an additional horse and bring back the biggest and heaviest of the burned stones the horse can carry.” He frowned as he thought. “I’m going to need wood. Lots of wood.”
As the three left to assemble the horses and supplies they’d need for their journey, Pela came up behind Gordon, took the child from him and rocked the baby in her arms. “Have you found a name?” she asked.