The Blessing Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

out, they made their way to the water hole where zebras and gazelles tried in vain to drink. The water could not be seen for the thick coating of soot that lay upon its surface. But the humans, able to scoop away the volcanic fallout with their hands, found water below, albeit gritty and foul tasting. While the others began to dig for eggs and shellfish, and search the shallows for frogs and turtles and lily roots, Tall One turned her eyes to the west, where the smoking mountain stood against a sky still dark with night.
    The stars could not be seen for the great clouds of smoke that billowed out in all directions. Turning, she squinted at the eastern horizon, which was turning pale and where the sun would soon appear. There the sky was clear and fresh, the last stars still visible. She looked back at the mountain and experienced again the revelation of the night before when, for the first time in the history of her people, she had taken separate parts of an equation and fitted them together in an answer: the mountain was spewing smoke…the wind was blowing eastward…therefore contaminating water holes in its path .
    She tried to tell the others, tried to find words and gestures that would convey the essence of this new peril. But Lion, acting only on instinct and ancestral memory, knowing nothing of the concept of cause and effect but understanding only that the world had always been one way and would always be so, could not make such a mental leap. What had the mountain and the wind to do with water? Taking up his crude spear he gave the command that the Family move on.
    Tall One stood her ground. “Bad!” she said desperately, pointing westward. “Bad!” Then she gestured frantically eastward, where the sky was clear and where she knew the water would be clean. “Good! We go!”
    Lion looked at the others. But their faces were blank because they had no idea what Tall One was trying to say. Why change what they had always done?
    And so they abandoned camp once again and started their daily foraging while watching the sky for vultures, which could mean a carcass and the possibility of long bones filled with tasty marrow. Lion and the stronger males shook trees to bring down nuts and fruit, and seedpods that would be roasted later in the fire. The females crouched over termite hills, inserting twigs to draw out the fat insects and eat them. The children busied themselves with a nest of honey ants, carefully biting off the swollen nectar-filled abdomens while avoiding the ants’ sharp mandibles. With the food coming in such meager portions, foraging never ceased. Only rarely did they come upon a newly dead beast not yet discovered by hyenas and vultures, and the humans would strip off the hide and gorge themselves on meat.
    Tall One walked with dread: The water will be worse ahead.
    Toward midday she climbed a small hillock and, shading her eyes, scanned the lion-yellow savanna. When she immediately started calling and flapping her arms the others knew she had found a clutch of ostrich eggs. The humans approached cautiously, espying the large bird guarding the nest. The black and white feathers told them it was a male, which was unusual, as it was normally the brown females that sat on the nest during the day, while the males sat on it at night. This one looked huge and dangerous. They kept a lookout for the female, who certainly must be nearby and who would be just as lethal defending her nest.
    Lion gave a shout and Hungry, Lump, Scorpion, Nostril, and all the other males went running at the ostrich with sticks and clubs, yelling and hooting and making as much noise as possible. The giant bird flew up off the nest with a great flapping of its wings and confronted the intruders, chest feathers standing out, its neck extended forward as it attacked with its beak, kicking with its powerful legs. Then the mate appeared, an enormous brown menace racing across the plain at top speed, her wings outspread, her neck extended