The Blessing Stone Read Online Free Page A

something resembling floating logs. These would be crocodiles, with only their eyes and nostrils and small hump of back above the surface of the water. Although crocodiles mainly hunted at night, they were known to strike during the day if they sensed an easy kill. More than once the humans had seen one of their own snatched from a river bank and carried under in the blink of an eye. Although they were dismayed to find the surface of the sluggish stream covered with soot and ash, they saw nonetheless an abundance of bird life along the banks—plovers and ibis, geese and sandpipers—which promised nests filled with eggs. And because the sun was dipping to the horizon and shadows were growing long, they decided to stay here for the night.
    While some of the females and the children began gathering tall grasses and pliant leaves for nest-beds, Old Mother and Tall One and other females dug into the pond’s sandy margins for shellfish. Frog and his brothers searched for bullfrogs. During the dry season bullfrogs laid dormant in burrows beneath the ground, coming out as the first raindrops of the rainy season softened the earth. As it hadn’t rained here in weeks, the boys expected the catch to be good. Fire-Maker sent her children out to gather the droppings of whichever herd had grazed here recently and then she got to work with her sparking stones, using dried twigs to start a slow smolder. When wildebeest and zebra dung were added, a fire was soon burning, and the males set up torches made of tree limbs and sap around the perimeter of the camp to keep predators at bay. An hour of foraging also produced wild chicory leaves, nut-grass tubers, and the carcass of a fat mongoose not yet gone maggoty. The humans ate greedily, devouring everything, saving not a seed or an egg against tomorrow’s hunger.
    Finally they sat huddled against the night within the protection of a fence made of thorn bush and acacia branches, the males congregating on one side of the fire while the females and children gathered on the other. Now was the time for grooming, a nightly ritual that was impelled by the primal need for companionship and touch, and which in subtle ways established whatever crude social order existed among them.
    Using a sharp hand ax that Hungry had fashioned for her from quartz, Baby chopped off her children’s hair. If left untended, the hair would grow down to their waists and become a hazard. Baby was proof of it, having run from her mother when she was little because she hated to have her hair groomed, so it had grown down to her waist and stood out with grease until one day it became entangled in a thorn bush, trapping her. When the Family had finally disengaged a hysterical Baby from the sharp trap, patches of her scalp had been torn away and bled profusely. That was when she got her name, because she couldn’t stop crying for days. Now Baby had scarred bald patches on her head and the rest of her hair grew out in frightful tufts.
    Other females picked through their children’s hair, cracking lice between their teeth, and plastered the little ones and other females with mud carried from the pond. Their laughter rose to the sky like the sparks from the fires, along with the occasional sharp word or warning. Although the females were thus busily engaged, they all kept their eyes on Barren, so called for having no babies, who was following pregnant Weasel around. Everyone remembered when Baby had given birth to her fifth offspring and Barren had snatched it away, placenta and all, and run off with it. They had all chased after her until they caught her, the newborn dying in the fracas when the women had nearly beaten Barren to death. After that, Barren always trailed after the Family when they went scavenging and slept far from the fire, like a shadow at the edge of the camp. But Barren was becoming bold of late, and hovering around Weasel. And Weasel was frightened. She had lost her three previous children to a snakebite,