Ante Mortem Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the man—used both her voice and hand gestures to hurry them on, while her two daughters whimpered beside her.
    “ Run!” she urged. “Run or be killed!”
    She needn’t have shouted because both her son and her mate were already running as fast as they could, spears dropped somewhere along the way, completely forgotten.
    They bowled into the cluster of females, nearly knocking them over in their attempt to get inside to safety.
    “ What’s happening?” Teva cried, grabbing her son by the shoulders to examine his wounds. The boy, whose name was Gel, rubbed the snot from his upper lip with the heel of his hand, trying mightily to hide his tear-streaked face from his sisters. The lip, just beginning to show the first wisps of facial hair, trembled despite his efforts to still it.
    Napro stood just inside the cave, looking out, absently rubbing a blister on his forearm. Outside, the stones continued to rain down, some of them still smoking and fire-red. He was amazed that both he and his son had made it through with no more than superficial wounds.
    “ What does it mean?” Rani, his eldest daughter asked, stepping up beside him.
    He shook his head, hands moving slowly, reluctantly. “Maybe the end of the world.”
    Rani’s eyes narrowed as she raised her chin in defiance of the situation, though she made no reply.
    A shuffling sound from behind caused them both to turn and see Fee, the old medicine man who had joined their clan less than a season past. Napro and Gel had found the old man near the lean-to that had been his home. Fee was maimed after a battle with a wolf, close to death and had not the man and the boy happened upon the scene and frightened away the beast, Fee would certainly have been killed and eaten by the wolf.
    Together, father and son had carried the old man back to their cave where Teva had patched his wounds, fed him animal lard and broth and kept his temperature as low as possible. By the time Fee was well enough to return to his lean-to, the clan had discouraged it greatly, insisting that he was far too old to live out in the wild without the protection of stone walls to shield him from future animal attacks and inclement weather.
    At first Fee had been stubborn—he had many seasons left, he argued, though that was clearly not the case. He had already seen his fortieth winter come and go and no one had ever heard of anyone living to be as old as he now was.
    Fee insisted it was the herbs and roots he made into a thick tea and drank nearly every day that had kept him alive long after the times his own clan had perished.
    Now the old man peered over Napro’s shoulder at the falling stones and grunted. Both Napro and Rani stared at him and he signed, “The gods are angry.”
    Napro nodded grimly. It was the very same thing he’d been thinking but hadn’t wished to say aloud. “What have we done to anger them so?”
    Fee shook his head, his eyes more sad than frightened. Behind them came the sound of Zic, the youngest child, weeping. Zic, unlike her older sister, was sensitive and wept easily. Only nine, she spoke of wanting to leave this place, go somewhere “without so many spirits.” She was convinced the land around them was haunted with the ghosts of the dead and often spoke of seeing specters while out gathering berries near the burial ground.
    For the most part, her clan let her speak of such things without much protesting. In fact, they barely listened to the child’s senseless rambling when she went on about such things. Only Fee paid what the child said any mind at all, for he had seen many things in his lifetime that could not be explained away. Sometimes, he suspected the child might be right. Perhaps humans weren’t the only ones sharing the land with animal, plant and insect life.
    The next hours were spent with Teva attending to Gel and Napro’s injuries, Zic’s constant sniffling as she clung to Rani’s side and Fee watching glumly as the outside world grew