The Blessing Stone Read Online Free Page B

a fall from a rocky precipice, and to a leopard that had boldly sneaked into the camp one night and carried the infant off.
    On the other side of the main fire, the males were gathered. Once a young male became too old to stay with the females and babies, he went to sit with the older males, to watch and to imitate scarred and calloused hands as they chipped flint tools and sharpened long sticks into rudimentary spears. Here the young males, no longer under their mothers’ dominance, learned the ways of males: how to fashion wood into weapons and rock into tools; how to identify animal spoor; how to smell the wind and scent a prey. They learned the few words and sounds and gestures the males used for communication. And, like the females, they groomed one another, plucking live things from tangled hair and plastering mud on one another’s bodies. The mud, as a protection against the heat, insect bites, and poisonous plants, had to be reapplied every day and was an important part of the nightly ritual. Young males jockeyed for the honor of grooming Lion and the older males.
    Snail, so named because he was slow, was bellowing his protest at having to sit guard. After an exchange of shouts and angry fists, Lion settled the dispute by cracking a spear over Snail’s head. The defeated man shuffled off to his post, wiping blood from his eyes. Old Scorpion rubbed his left arm and leg, which were growing strangely numb, while Lump tried to scratch an itch he could not reach, resorting to the nearest tree where he rubbed himself up and down the rough trunk until his skin broke and bled. Occasionally they glanced across the fire at the industrious females, creatures the males subconsciously held in awe because only females created babies, the males being unaware of their own part in the process. Females were unpredictable. A female who wasn’t interested in sexual copulation could be vicious when forced. Poor Lip, who used to be called Bird Nose, had gotten a new name after an encounter with Tall One. When he had tried to penetrate her against her will, she had fought back, biting off part of his lower lip. It had bled for days and then oozed pus, and when it finally healed it had left a puckered gap so that his lower teeth always showed. After that, Lip left Tall One alone, as did most of the other males. The few who did try to mount her decided after an exhausting fight that it wasn’t worth it, there were plenty of compliant females around.
    Frog was sulking by himself. For the past year he and a young female, named Anteater because of her passion for honey ants, had enjoyed a special togetherness, like Baby and One Eye, who were currently cuddling and fondling and enjoying sexual pleasure. But now because Anteater’s belly was swollen with child and she wanted nothing to do with him, Frog’s advances were met with slaps and hisses. He had seen this happen before. Once a female gave birth, she preferred the company of the other females who had children. Together they would laugh and chatter as they nursed their babies and kept an eye on the toddlers, while the scorned males were left to their solitary pursuits of tool- and weapon-making.
    The mother-child bond was the only real bond the Family knew. If a male and female paired, it was rarely for long, the course of their relationship running hot with passion and then dying out. Frog’s friend Scorpion squatted next to him and cuffed his shoulder in sympathy. He, too, had experienced closeness with a female until she produced a baby and then wanted nothing more to do with him. Of course, there were those, like Honey-Finder, who remained affectionate to one male, especially when he tolerated her babies, as Lion did. But Scorpion and Frog had no patience with the females’ babies and preferred females who were thus unencumbered.
    Frog felt the heat rise within him. He looked in envy at One Eye and Baby, fondling and grooming each other. One Eye enjoyed sexual release whenever he