Hard Being a God
by David Barber
The Bison People were waiting for the herds to come.
Each spring, bison and horses crowded through the valley, and the hunters hid and waited. Though the animals could smell them and snorted warily, the hunters had chosen well, and the valley was very narrow here, with steep scree slopes. The bison could only press closer together.
At a signal, spears flew, and there was great slaughter, the hunters wrenching their spears from one animal to chase the next. Behind them the women, children and the old fell upon the warm bodies with flint blades.
Later, everyone sprawled in the firelight, engorged and greasy with meat.
These were the years the People thrived.
* * *
Afterwards came times when the spring thaw was late, there was a a year when mothers wailed for children culled by the cold, the same year the chief who led them into such hardship was driven out, his name forgotten, the year Stone Axe became leader.
Then there was the year the gods came.
The old and the young walked as slowly as the sun, the People taking a day to plod from horizon to horizon. A hunting party scouted ahead into the valley.
There were four hunters, and Wild Dog was the best of them. He had lived thirty years, though he could not say exactly when he had been born. Around the fire, the People outdid each other with boasts about Wild Dog, how he had felled a bison with a single throw, how he could hit a bird on the wing, how he could spear the moon! He smiled faintly and said nothing. He showed no interest in leading the People, though Stone Axe still watched him.
Sharp Blade and Cloud Watcher were brothers, proven hunters, good readers of sign, but impatient and quick to anger.
Some said Broken Tooth, son of Stone Axe, was too young for the hunt, was there only because his father insisted. Wild Dog, who made his first kill at that age, only shrugged.
The brothers treated Broken Tooth roughly, blows and curses when he trampled over sign, and the time he snapped a branch while they stalked a lone antelope, they beat him with their spears.
* * *
Four hunters in a line, covering ground at an easy lope. They could run like this all day.
The way Wild Dog told it later, the bang echoed down the valley like a crack of thunder, though the sky was clear. A distant herd of horses, short-legged and shaggy, were startled and bolted.
“Did you see that?” Broken Tooth pointed excitedly, but the brothers were examining the ground for sign. Wild Dog, knowing his eyes were no longer sharp, asked what he saw.
“Like staring at the sun,” Broken Tooth said. “But then gone, like a sneeze.”
Sharp Blade cuffed him with his spear.
“There were men, too,” protested Broken Tooth, ducking away.
* * *
No men, but sign even a child could read.
Sharp Blade’s gaze followed the careless tracks up the scree to the mouth of a cave. “Just two of them.” He shrugged, though all the People toiling up together would not have left such a trail.
No one spoke, but everyone thought this was bad. The People had never shared the valley with others.
Sometimes as they travelled, they met other tribes. They might swap gifts and stories. Sometimes they might negotiate about a bride. They shared the fire, where custom insisted none could raise a hand to another, but were glad to go their way, no longer holding their spears close.
Cloud Watcher pointed out the tracks did not lead down again. They were still staring upwards when two figures came out the cave.
They were wearing blue, or their skin was dyed blue. It took them an age to notice the silent hunters. They dodged out of sight and, moments later, the gods spoke again.
In the firelight, Wild Dog told the tale of the blue men. How thunder and a flash came from the cave mouth. And all the while the sun was shining. How the four of them had bolted like horses.
The People chewed this over while the fire collapsed into embers, and sparks flew up into the night.
The old woman spoke: “Not in my memory has there been such a thing.”
The People waited for her slow, ancient thoughts.
“Some say the blue men are hunters from a new tribe,” she mused. “But what hunters have no spears? Who knows what the gods look like? We take shelter when they argue in the sky with thunder and light, but to come down here, to this valley, at this time? It is a mystery and a warning.”
“But the valley is ours,” insisted Stone Axe. He glared from face to face. “We stay.”
* * *
These were the years after Wild Dog was killed in the hunt, a wounded bison turning on the hunters.
He was getting old, his aim no longer true. He and his woman were heard arguing over this. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, he shouted once.
One year, there was thunder in the valley again, and all the People heard it, and saw a flash like the sun on water lighting up the cave.
Sharp Blade, Cloud Watcher and Stone Axe slogged up the scree slope, while the People watched silently below. It was chill and dark in the cave, and empty. They jabbed with their spears, seeing cave bears everywhere in the shadows.
“We need torches,” Stone Axe whisperd, and they were glad to go back down again.
* * *
It was Broken Tooth who first ventured deep into the cave. Some said he was showing off, like a young man dancing, or a hunter giving children liver still warm from the kill. Some wondered if he was challenging his father. Some said he might be a shaman one day.
Do not think of a tunnel dug by men, but a black bowel coiled inside the earth, where he must stoop and splash and squeeze through fistulas in the rock. It grew colder the farther he went in, the footing slippery, with just a small wavering flame parting the dark ahead from that behind.
Sometimes the way opened into spaces roofed with dancing shadows, and his heart beat aloud. It was no place for those who see things in the night.
In the farthest cavern, Broken Tooth found what he had come for. The gods had been there.
Each year after that, when the People returned to the valley, the bravest of the young faced the darkness alone. Some left an ochre hand print, sometimes a girl left flowers near the nameless things the gods had hidden there.
Broken Tooth idly ran his hand over a bison drawn on a boulder. It was the totem of the People, and they marked the valley with signs like these. Over the seasons, the pictures faded in the weather, as if they grew old like people. This one needed redoing.
He turned and looked up at the cave, the idea of paintings large in his thoughts.
* * *
It was the first of the years when the snow waited until summer to melt. Even the oldest could not remember times so hard. Bison still passed through the valley, but the herds were thinned and horses had already turned south.
Broken Tooth said they must stay. “The gods have chosen this place,” he argued.
But the People knew what hunger was. This was the year the shaman was driven out into the snow, his name forgotten.
He watched the People trudging away, following the horses.
Struggling against the tug of the icy wind, he climbed to the cave, and pulled the makings of fire from his pack.
When he became their shaman, the people nodded at his words about pictures for the gods. Now painted animals stampeded round the walls. Here, the rock bulged to flesh out the hump of a bull’s shoulder; there, hunters danced around a wounded bison. The animal looked past its death to the gods.
Later, as the word spread, others came to paint horse totems as an offering, though Broken Tooth felt the gods shrugged at these. Hadn’t horses fled from the gods that first time?
His flame guttering, he made his way back. It had begun to snow, and the climb down is treacherous. Nameless, he struggled on through the blizzard, not knowing what else to do.
Later, far behind where he lay, there was a last clap of thunder and, for an instant, the snow glittered as if caught by the sun.
*
* *
“Well, Dick, that video clip shows the Altamira cave paintings today. It used to be a mystery why they went so deep inside the cave system to paint those animals. First time we went back, it was bare walls.”
The TV camera briefly switches to Dick. Wearing his serious face, he nods, as if understanding all this.
“Then next time, we found soot from torches. Guess they’d started exploring. So we bugged the cave with motion-activated cameras like this.”
Dr Lopez tries to show the TV camera a tiny gadget with a gleaming eye.
“When we went back to recover them — next day for the team, years for them — we found little flower shrines round each one, and on the walls were handprints and bison and horse drawings.”
“Of course that put an end to it. The rules are very strict.”
“That’s right, Dick; they painted only where we put the cameras, that’s why they had to go all that way in. Those pictures were for us.”
It feels like a natural ending, and Dick prepares to wrap up the interview, but Dr Lopez talks over him. There is one last thing he has to say.
“They kept the faith for millennia, making cathedrals of other caves as the Word spread, hoping the gods would come back. Though we never did.”
Copyright © 2017 by David Barber
