Finding Old Ancestor
Water must come from somewhere.
Old Ancestor gives us water from the sky, returning in its season. But she also leaves water on the land, if ever the rain does not reach us. Water that runs along the ground will lead you to its home, if you follow it back to where it came from. That is how we found Old Ancestor, when I was newly Mother of Mothers and the rain stopped.
You have known good seasons always. I hope you always will know good seasons. Even if you do, it is always good to know what it is like when they are bad. Now, if you go to ask Wide Sky, I am sure she will tell you how she escaped being eaten!
The killing time was long ago now. All your mothers were children then, but their mothers remember. I remember. Old Ancestor's rain did not come at its time, and the grass did not grow high and thick. We walked all through that time, searching for grass for our stronghorns and food for ourselves. We ate all we could find, so little as it was. Many died, stronghorns and people. Hunger lived in us all.
A second time of rain came, again without rain. Every stronghorn became bone. We were like bone ourselves, bone inside skin. The dry, dying grass was no good food for us. Without the stronghorns for meat, for shelter, there was nothing to keep us alive. The only thing to do was go somewhere else while we had the strength.
Can anyone know how far we went? Or how many nights we walked? The only thing we could carry was hope, hope that each next day we might find grass or trees, fruit or meat, or water. Instead we found people. People also without stronghorns, also looking for water. Where we were going, they came from. Where they were going, we came from. To each other, we said the same thing: nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Without our hope, what was left to do but wait to die?
You remember Walk Beside, although her house has been taken apart now. We did not know her then. She was one of the others. She spoke for her women, as I spoke for mine. We spoke together, and we decided together. We would go another way, as many as could. My heart hurts still to remember the ones who did not come. Those too ill, too weary, too old, too weak, too far from hope to hear it.
The joy we felt when we came to a stream! It was thin, but it fed growth, and we ate for the first time in many days. We stayed there many more days and thought to stay forever, but more people came. They came along the stream, and one of them was Follow Rain. You know her now as our water finder, but she was not water finder then. She was a girl then as you are now, and their water finder was Long River.
Long River spoke for her women. The stream, she said, was a river once, but the endless heat was eating it. Her people argued what to do. Stay and wait for rain, or go up out of the world to Old Ancestor, as the first people did in ancient days. Long River chose to go, and many chose with her. "What," she asked of us, "will you choose?"
It was Follow Rain who made the choice. She saw us standing together and said our names. Long River, Walk Beside, High Rock. You know her spirit-voice, but this was the first time any of us, even Long River, had heard it. We knew at once what it meant. Where the river passed high rocks, Old Ancestor would be waiting for us. All together we joined Long River and her people to leave the hot, dry world behind us.
The journey was long and hard. Although we had water, there was still little to eat. Not all who started were still with us when the hills beside the stream became taller, harder. We expected every day to meet Old Ancestor and go into the world above with her. But she did not appear, and the day came when the stream became smaller, smaller, and smaller still, fading until no water ran. The stream was gone. Its channel was wet, and by digging holes we could gather a little water, but none flowed. Here were the high rocks, but where was Old Ancestor?
That is when despair went into Long River. She sat beside the empty stream and would not move. First she wept, and then she shouted. "We are too late! Old Ancestor is dead!" Those who heard her also sat and wept. When I next breathed, I felt fear coming in. And so I stood. "Old Ancestor cannot be dead," I said, "or there would be no more light. If she has stopped the water, it must be because she is near."
I said this to quiet those who cried. I did not think what my words meant until everyone looked to me, each face saying "Where?" Then Walk Beside stood with me. "Without water," she said, "we cannot all go to find her." Together we made the plan. I would go, with Long River and three others, and the rest would wait for ten days. We five would go five days and come back in five more, with water or with Old Ancestor.
Two men stood to come, Empty Horn and Kick To Break. A woman also stood, Wide Sky. But when we went to Long River, the despair would not let go of her, and she still refused to move. Follow Rain stood.
"You may be a woman," I said to her, "but you are not yet a mother. You must stay."
"If Long River will not go," she said to me, "you will need a water finder. I must come."
And this was true.
We prepared, gathering tools and a small amount of food, and we slept, ready to walk with the new day. But Follow Rain woke me early, before the light.
"Long River is dead!" she said to me. "I went to speak with her, but her life spirit is gone!"
Despair is a spirit that spreads itself by sight. It fills a person, taking the place of hunger and thirst spirits, so that she takes no food or water, and her body weakens until her life spirit escapes. Then, when another looks upon the dead one, the despair goes into her. It likes especially those who already are weak, and who among us was not weak? Therefore we could not leave this body to be seen by anyone.
"Wake the others," I said to Follow Rain, "Empty Horn, Wide Sky, and Kick To Break. Bring them to where Long River was."
When they came, I had already hidden the face with a piece of old hide, to delay the bad spirit. "We must go now," I said to them, "before any others wake. Long River's spirit is gone, and we must take what is left away with us." Follow Rain stepped forward to help with the others, but I stopped her. "Now you must stay," I said to her. "The rest must believe that Long River is with us."
"But how," she asked me, "how will you find water without a water finder?"
I did not answer except to say "Tell them Long River changed her mind."
She looked at me, her face pale. I turned and went after the others.
The first day was a bad one. We were four, not five. Although we were not tired, we walked slowly. Although we were not hungry, our stomachs were restless. We spoke little, not wanting to ask questions no one could answer.
Where was Old Ancestor?
Could we find her?
Was Long River right after all?
The second day was worse. We walked in the empty stream, where there was no hiding place. At times we heard sounds, as if something moved in the hills. When we had stronghorns we were wary always of other animals wanting to eat them. This place had different animals, but still hungry ones, and these were here wanting to eat us.
We talked what to do--to fight, or to hide. Wide Sky refused both. "There is no time," she said to us, "to hide or fight. You must find Old Ancestor and get water from her. I will stay here. They will rather hunt one than three." No argument and no plea from any of us could change her mind. The only thing she would accept was a knife, and with sorrow we went on without Wide Sky.
We walked a third day, and a fourth. To find water we had to dig deeper, and many holes stayed dry. We ate less, to keep enough food to return with. And then, early on the fifth day, the empty stream broke into two. Each went a different way. We did not ask ourselves, which one will take us to Old Ancestor? We did what we had done ever since meeting Long River; we turned toward the larger stream.
We did not walk far before a voice shouted "Over there!"
"What is it, Empty Horn," I asked him, "and where?"
"I did not speak," Empty Horn said to me. "It came from there." He moved his head toward a tree beside the stream.
"A bird," Kick To Break said to us. "We should not delay."
"I see no bird," I said to him, "only a tree."
When we continued, the tree cried out again "Over there! Over there!"
"Stop," I said to the others, "this is not the way."
"What other way can it be?" Empty Horn asked me.
"Can you hear the tree?" I asked him. "It knows where Old Ancestor is. And it is right. A big stream goes a long way, a small stream a short way. If Old Ancestor is near, it is the small stream that will take us to her."
I turned and went to the small stream, and the others followed. And as we walked along it, the tree was quiet, because we were going the right way.
All that day we were anxious as we walked. This was the fifth day. At the end of it, we must turn back. But we had not found water, and no other tree would tell us where Old Ancestor was. When the light hid itself behind the hills, and our shadows were eaten in darkness, we stopped. Our five days were ended. We had failed.
When light came back into the world, only Kick To Break and I stood to walk. Despair filled Empty Horn, and he lay on the ground. "No water," he said to no one, "no hope, we will die and they will die, the world is ending."
My heart hurt to hear this. I knew Empty Horn from when we were children. "You have come so far," I said to him, "come a little farther." But he hid his ears and would not hear me.
Kick To Break pulled me away. "There is nothing you can do," he said to me, "that can help him. We must leave him and go back ourselves."
"Must we let him die alone?" I said to him. "For my people, that is the cruelest of fates."
"For mine also," he said to me, "but we cannot stay to look upon the body or the despair will take our lives also."
"The despair is already in us," I said to him. "It only waits for us to give up. If we go back now, we will take the despair with us and it will kill everyone else also, and what Empty Horn said will be true."
"We have no more days," Kick To Break said to me. "We must go back."
"Let us go on two more days," I said to him. "We will find Old Ancestor. She will give us water and food. We will be stronger, and can return in less time than we came."
"Do you think we can run in three days," he said to me, "the length that we walked in seven?"
"You do not have to," I said to him. "If you go back, you can tell them that I will come."
"I cannot walk five days alone," he said to me. "If you will go on two more days, then I also will."
We went faster through that sixth day. Our food was gone, and hunger bit into our stomachs, but even so we rested very little. Two days is really not so much time. It would be better to reach Old Ancestor and start back before the end of that day. But the night came and we found nothing. If I had not been so tired, I would not have slept at all, because of how anxious I was.
We woke to the seventh day. The end of hope. We kept walking through the last of the light, only because if we stopped at all there was no more we could do. The stream curved around a hill that caught some of the last light at its top. As I looked at it, one final hope came into my thoughts.
My name, High Rock, comes from those places in our old land that stood high above the ground. By climbing onto one of them, we could see things from far away. "I will go up to the hill," I said to Kick To Break, "to see what is ahead." I saw by the movement of his head that he heard me, though he did not answer and he did not stop.
By the time I reached the top, the light was gone from it and from all the places around. There I stood on a high place, to look for something, and there was only darkness around me.
Only? But I was wrong, the moon was there. Two moons, one high and round, and the other low and ragged. The moon in the sky and the moon in the water.
Water.
Not a small pool, but a lake of water! If this was Old Ancestor's water, was it not Old Ancestor herself who showed it to me? How had I looked upon the moon so many times, and never noticed her wrinkled and smiling face?
A shout came to my ears--Kick To Break's voice. He, too, had found the lake. Tonight we could drink and rest, and tomorrow eat, for where there is water there must also be good food. These were my thoughts, until I heard the sound of some large thing falling into water.
What more foolish thing is there to do than run in the dark in a place you do not know? But that is what I did, I ran to the sound, and how it was I did not fall I still do not know. All I could think was that Kick To Break had gone into the lake, and I was afraid for him. Small amounts of water are safe and good for drinking. Too much water at once will fill a person's stomach and push the life spirit out.
At the bottom of the hill, a fallen tree crossed the stream where it left the lake, and a tangle of mud and plant trash held the water back. Small waves moved across Old Ancestor's face, surrounding something just underneath. It must be Kick To Break, or where else was he? I could not reach him except by going out onto the tree. But the farther I went on it, the more it moved.
Perhaps Kick To Break had stood here also, and the movement had thrown him in. I could not get near enough to touch him without also falling in. I stepped back once, and stopped. Then I jumped. Once and twice, three and four times I jumped in the same place, and the fifth time I jumped away from the tree to the side of the lake.
The tree turned aside. The wall of trash broke. Water moved through the opening, pulling Kick To Break along. When he came close enough to me I reached, reached, and finally touched and held the hide tied around his belly. With every breath I pulled and pulled and at last he was safe, safe out of the water. But he did not move, did not breathe.
Dead! After days, months, season after season of searching for water, we finally found it, and before he could even drink it it killed him! "I cannot walk back by myself!" I shouted to no one. In anger I beat on the body that had held Kick To Break's life spirit. Under my hands, his heart beat back.
DISCLAIMER
The following is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. It is NOT a real rescue breathing technique. Please understand that I can't reasonably have a Neolithic culture know proper CPR even if I did make them up.
You have listened long, and listened well. If you remember nothing else I have said, remember this. Even if water has covered a person long enough to fill her stomach, her life spirit may still be inside. Take an empty piece of pipe tree, or if there is none, make your hands a pipe. Blow hard through the pipe, into her mouth, to push the spirit back into her stomach. It may be that her life will come back to her, as it did to Kick To Break.
Although he did not die, his life spirit was weakened, and we stayed at the lake so that he could rest. When we left to walk back, we did not go all the way. After three days we met Walk Beside, Follow Rain, Wide Sky, and all the rest who had waited. The water I released from the lake reached them on the tenth day, and they knew to come. All together we made our houses here in the world above with Old Ancestor.
Although we had water, our stomachs were still uneasy, because there was no rain. For so long there had been no rain that no one knew now when its season should be. Each time Old Ancestor showed her full face, I asked when the rain would come again, if it would come again.
Some days after a night that I asked this, Follow Rain came and told me to go with her. We went to the edge of the lake. "I have felt a change coming," she said to me, "but I have waited to tell it so that you could know it yourself. You cannot see it behind the hills, but I think it is near enough for you to hear. Listen."
I closed my eyes. I heard the same nighttime sounds that you all know, but there was something more. A low and dark rumbling, faint because of its distance, but I knew it. Thunder, the promise of rain.
You have known good seasons always. I hope you always will know good seasons. Even if you do, it is always good to know what it is like when they are bad. Now, if you go to ask Wide Sky, I am sure she will tell you how she escaped being eaten!
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