Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page A

smirking as though he had just played one of his tricks, sang out with a child’s bright smile that he had never gone away at all, but that their mother had hidden him deep in the secret part of the cave where he would be safe. And he laughed.
    Zan spoke one afternoon to his uncle, Chul, to whom he described these disquieting visions. Chul listened, scratched his bald head, and with open mouth gazed stupidly at the air. Then, slow of speech, he said something he could not know: that Dael was alive. Had he died, Chul said, Zan-Gah would feel it inside. Dael was in some trouble, he thought, and his call for help was reaching Zan-Gah because twins shared a single spirit and were never really apart. This was surely the reason Zan-Gah so often dreamed of him.
    Zan left Chul’s presence examining his inmost self. He found no message of his brother’s death there, and could recall no dream in which Dael had been killed. It was the lioness that was dead. Had Dael died, Zan would surely sense it, but his heart delivered no such report. “If Dael were dead,” Zan reasoned, “ I would be dead too, forwhen does a twin long outlive his brother? The great cat had her chance at me but I survived—and so does he! I am certain of it!”
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    The time had come to tell his mother and father what he intended to do. When he saw them alone he declared in a tone that admitted no contradiction that he would seek his brother, and would not return without him. He told them of his dreams and what his uncle, Chul, had said about them—that they were a cry for help from a twin whose spirit he shared, and that he would answer it or die. Zan did not say that the loss of his brother had been his fault and that, but for a morsel of meat, Dael would be safely home. Nor did he say that he would never feel whole and complete unless he recovered the missing part of himself, but Thal could see that it was so. He knew that each morning Zan awoke with a deep sense of loss because he, Thal, rose with the same bleak and empty feeling. He knew that for Zan it was like the persistent, dull pain of an aching tooth, or the anguish one strangely still feels in a limb that has been lost.
    Nevertheless, Thal refused to let Zan go. He answered with an angry outburst, and when Zan stubbornly insisted, Thal actually lifted him up by the shoulders, gazing wildly into his eyes and telling him that he
would not
. But although Zan made no reply, with dismay he saw in the eyes of his son that he
would
. “Father,” Zan finally said, and his voice was calm but firm, “Dael calls to me every night in my sleep, and I must answer.” Thal did not know what to say. He realized that whatever had happened to Dael could happen to Zan as well, whetherDael had been killed by a beast, or a man, or was indeed alive and in the hands of enemies. But the boy was unshakable. Zan-Gah was a rock and would not budge nor be dissuaded. This his father also saw.
    Wumna, however, knew exactly what she would say. Her “No!” was loud and certain. She too would be a rock! But the rock melted. Falling upon her knees and throwing her arms around her remaining son’s waist, she wailed that he would not, could not go, clinging to him as if she meant to hold him on the spot forever. Zan tried to comfort her, feeling real grief that he must so upset his mother, and looking for words that might ease her heartbreak. “Mother, you should be happy—happier than you have been for this whole year. I will be leaving as one and will return as two—I promise.” But Zan knew that the words he spoke could well prove untrue, and so did she.
    In the end, after much argument, Zan got his parents to the point where, without agreeing or giving in, they said no more in opposition. It was clear that they could not stop the determined lad, and that neither tears nor words would do any good. They began to see a glimmer of hope for Zan’s project, and