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The three humans awakened with the first light of morning, ready for the day's trek, which Jandell hoped and assumed would be reasonably short since Theeba had indicated that his village was little more than a day away from where they had met.
Meenah and Jandell rinsed their faces and filled their water skins in the nearby creek, while Theeba worked to tie on his pile of hides. The wolves assured that all of the trees and bushes around the campsite, as well as the ashes from the evening’s fire, were well marked and irrigated.
As they traversed south, the fat, gnarly trees thinned out and strange, even more contorted bushes began to appear among them. The walking would have been difficult except that Theeba and the wolves were following a path that looked to be maintained by humans. Meenah noticed some bunches of small, green berries growing on the gnarly bushes and stopped to taste a few. She grimaced and spit them out right away.
Theeba noticed Meenah’s tasting activity, but didn’t stop her. He just laughed. He spoke his language while pointing at the sun and indicating it was going from east to west many times, but farther and farther northward. Then he pointed at the berries, said “Garpa!” and made a small circle with his forefinger and thumb, and expanded the circle while he pointed again to the sun heading north.
“Oh, I get it,” claimed Jandell. “These berries grow and ripen as the season becomes warmer, of course. Then they probably taste good.” He turned to Theeba and asked, “Kloppen?”
Theeba smiled and waved his hands up and down in assent. Then he took the berry cluster from Meenah and wrung it with his hand to show juice coming out. He danced around a bit and made some gestures at the juice on the ground, which the couple didn’t understand, followed by pouring imaginary liquid into his mouth from a skin. Then he staggered around like he was drunk.
Jandell and Meenah burst out laughing, with Theeba joining, which sent the wolves running around them and making their shrill, plosive sounds.
A little further along the path, Meenah noticed something gleaming in the sunlight under one of the green berry bushes. She stopped to investigate, finding it to be made of some smooth, translucent mineral. She had to use her knife to dig down the length of her forearm to pull the object from the ground. When she had cleaned it off with her knife and some water, they saw that it was an object that must have been made by the gods – a translucent, cylindrical container for liquids the size of a man’s forearm that tapered to the top to form a perfectly round pouring spout. Meenah and Jandell set it down on the path, dropped to their knees, put their foreheads to the ground between their arms, and said in unison, “Oh Markanova – thank you for this wonderful gift of your magic.”
Theeba seemed mystified by their actions. He took the object, poured water from his skin into it, shook it around, emptied it, and repeated those actions several times until the container was clean. Then he handed it back to Meenah, smiling, and said, “Lopro!”
“That’s strange,” said Jandell to Meenah, “Theeba seems to know exactly what this is, and even has a name for it. Perhaps it’s not from the gods – maybe his people make them somehow.”
Meenah thanked Theeba with a gesture and wrapped the Lopro inside her sleeping hide, then the group continued their walk. The going was getting easier as the path widened and was joined by other paths, like the feeders of a river; so Jandell thought that they might be getting close to Theeba’s village.
When the sun reached its highest point, the group emerged from a thicket, and the wolves bounded off in front of them, headed for a large grouping of huts. Theeba stopped and smiled at Meenah and Jandell. He pointed toward the village and said, “Theeba bobella – Moocha bobella!”
The sight was welcome and wondrous to Jandell and Meenah. The “bobella,” which they assumed must mean “home” or “village,” appeared to be much larger than the Ren village, and the huts looked quite different. Instead of reed and mud construction, these huts were larger and much more solid and permanent-looking, built of stones and the branches of trees. They had roofs of thatched high grasses, and a stone column jutting from the middle. Many of these columns had smoke emitting from them, so Jandell assumed that they must be designed for internal fires.
Instead of being surrounded by forest like their own village, this one was flanked by very large, open fields where there were obvious crops of different kinds growing, not only corn. Many people, both men and women, were working in those fields. A very straight stream of water flowed among the fields, and the villagers were somehow able to direct portions of the water onto different fields. In the middle of the village, or perhaps on the other side, there was some sort of high mount or hill, looking to Jandell like a large pile of rocks except with very straight sides. Something was mounted on top of this hill, although they couldn’t discern what from this distance.
As the trio approached the village, the two wolves came running back out toward them, followed by two small children – a boy and a girl of around eight and ten winters old. As they neared, yelling out “Kaakaa! Kaakaa bobella!”, Theeba dropped his heavy load of hides and opened his arms, sweeping up the two tots with hugs and kisses. After a minute of this, they both stared in amazement at Jandell and Meenah over Theeba’s shoulders.
Theeba said something in explanation of the two strangers to his kids, then picked up his hide bundle and proceeded on toward the “bobella,” one child holding each hand. Now, a large woman was walking toward them as well, alternatively smiling and looking curiously at the Ren couple. The wolves ran excitedly around all of them. Theeba greeted the woman, presumably his wife or mate, with a hug and spoke to her rapidly to explain – as best he could – the appearance of these two previously unknown humans. The woman smiled at them, bowed slightly, pointed at her forehead, and said, “Jurba Oka, feg jurba?”
Meenah picked up the meaning, touched her forehead, and said, “Jurba Meenah,” then pointing Jandell’s forehead, “Jurba Jandell,” and she bowed.
“Meenah, Jandell – donbar bobella!” she said while smiling warmly and gesturing toward a path among the huts and adding, ”Dokkel Oka.”
The children wanted to help their father, but they couldn’t lift the bundle of hides, so Theeba let them carry his axe, his knife, and his water skin while he re-hoisted the hides onto his back. As the group walked into the village, neighbors and children came out of their huts to watch them curiously as they walked by, shouting questions to Theeba and Oka. Other animals that seemed similar to wolves but looked quite different also came out to frolic with Bollah and Masser.
The group stopped at one of the wood and stone huts where Oka pulled aside a hide that was hung over the entrance and motioned for the Ren couple to enter; Theeba and the children continued along the path. The interior of the hut was very different from typical Ren huts. For one thing, instead of being just one open space, it was divided by hanging hides into four different spaces. The largest space features a sort of stone pyre containing a small fire with a column above through the roof to catch and exhaust the smoke. Jandell was amazed at how it worked to provide some light and warm the space.
Another difference was the formed pieces of wood arrayed around the space. Shaped so that people could sit on their backsides without sitting directly on a hide on the ground. Oka motioned for them to sit on two such objects. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness of the room, they began to notice other items on small ledges around the rectangular space. Three of the objects were what Theeba had called “Lopro,” but different sizes and hues than the one in Meenah’s hide roll. They were filled with liquids, so they must be used for storage and drinking. Several other objects must have been made by the gods, but Jandell couldn’t guess their function.
Oka produced two small cups made from some mineral and dipped them into a metallic pot that was propped up by rocks over the fire. She brought the containers to Jandell and Meenah and indicated that they should drink it. Meenah, being the more adventurous in such things, tried it first. The liquid had a greenish tint and a bit of an acrid smell, but after her first sip, she smiled and gestured that it was OK. Jandell tried it next and agreed that it was not too bad. After a while, they both began to feel very happy and a little bit dizzy. Oka could see that they were thus affected and laughed heartily as the Ren couple giggled along with her.
Soon, Theeba and the children returned and entered the hut, followed by a small and very old man whom Theeba and Oka seemed to revere. He was very thin and very bald, with deep creases in his face, but he looked very wise. Theeba produced a special, hide-covered wooden seat for him and placed it in front of Jandell and Meenah.
The old man sat in the seat and looked directly into Jandell’s eyes without blinking for many heartbeats, and then he did the same with Meenah. Finally, he said, “Jandell a Meenah, jurba Sobo – Matra Bobella. Donbar!” He smiled and put his two hands to his face – evidently some kind of salute or welcoming gesture.
Sobo then began to talk slowly while he gestured around with his hands, but it was soon evident that Jandell and Meenah could not understand a word of it. So instead, he turned to Theeba and had a long discussion. At one point, Theeba brought out the flint and demonstrated it for the elder, who watched in amazement. He then leaned over and touched the lace-work on Jandell’s outfit, examined his amulet, and his axe. He repeated his examination of Meenah’s clothing and possessions. Finally, he smiled at the couple and said once again, “Jandell a Meenah, Donbar Moocha bobella!’
The old man then had a further discussion with Oka and Theeba, which seemed to come to some decision with which the children seemed to approve because they laughed and jumped up and down. Theeba helped Sobo get up and escorted him out of the hut, while Oka barked some orders to the children. The kids went into one of the divided areas and re-emerged several heartbeats later carrying their hides and apparel, taking them into another divided room, which Jandell guessed was their parents’ sleeping area.
Oka then motioned for the couple to get up, and she helped open the hide, revealing a small sleeping area, saying, “Meenah, Jandell glep koda!”
“They are apparently letting us stay here with them, Meenah!” he said.
While Jandell made the head-shaking, hand-waving sign of yes with a smile, Meenah added a deep bow with her hands together, which she hoped Oka would take for a deep thank-you. They put their weapons and other belongings next to their hide rolls in their new sleeping space, and then came out to sign with Oka and the children.
As they came out to the main space, Oka smiled and asked them, “Jandell, Meenah naga kloppen?”
She pointed to her mouth and to something cooking on the fire, but Jandell made a sign with his hands on his distended stomach that they were full and not hungry, and then he added the “thank you” sign. After that, he pointed out the entrance and with his two forefingers, pointed from his eyes outward, moving his fingers around and asking “bobella?”
Oka looked a little mystified, but the girl child laughed and said to her mother, “Jandell rap sobantee bobella!”
Meenah picked it up and affirmed the daughter while pointing outside, “Meenah, Jandell rap sobantee bobella!” And then to Jandell, she said, “I’m beginning to understand some of their language. ‘Sobantee’ is to look around or see. ‘Rap must mean want or desire.”
Oka now smiled in understanding, pointed to the cooking food and made a gesture of stirring with a stick while saying, “Oka gambon fennibah. Jandell a Meenah dokkel Goffa a Boken.”
As she said “Goffa,” she pointed to the older girl child, and then to the boy as she said “Boken.”
The children jumped up and down with glee, and Goffa grabbed Meenah by the hand. Boken took Jandell’s hand, and the children led them out of the portal, obviously very excited about showing them around the village. No doubt strutting around the neighborhood with two strange aliens in tow would give them much children’s bravacho. Once outside the hut, the two wolves joined them, and the children pulled them by the hands in a trot.
They followed the children and wolves along a path among several huts like Oka’s until they came to a large, open-walled hut where Theeba was working along with another man and two women to scrape and process the hides he had gathered. They stopped work while Theeba explained to his colleagues about the Ren couple, introducing them by name. They spoke too rapidly for Jandell and Meenah to follow, but the Ren couple smiled and bowed as they heard their names. Jandell made gestures expressing interest in the tools they were using, never having seen anything like them before; so Theeba demonstrated their use in scraping and shaping the hides. The tools, along with Theeba’s knife and axe, were made of some kind of yellow-hued metal. The only metal objects the Ren had were pieces that were passed down from earlier generations or found on the ground – made by the ancient gods, according to the priests.
As Jandell picked up a yellow scraping tool and examined it, feeling its keen edge, Theeba said something to his daughter. The children ran over and gleefully took the Ren couple by their hands again, leading them off on a different path. Soon they came to another large, open hut with several stone hearths near the center. Fires or burning embers could be seen through small holes in each hearth. Five men were working around the hut – two of them blowing into some kind of tubes going into one of the hearths, and the others pounding or grinding on various yellow metal objects.
The five men working in the hut stopped to gawk at the strangers, while Goffa explained who they were. She also apparently asked one of the men to demonstrate his craft. The man smiled and spoke rapidly to them until Goffa apparently explained to him that these strangers, although appearing to be humans, could not understand human language. The worker then motioned for the couple to follow him over to one of the hearths, where he had his colleague pull out something on the end of a stick sitting in the fire. It was a bowl the size of a man’s skull, shaped from some kind of rock or hardened clay, and inside was a red-hot and smoking liquid. The man carried the hot bowl on the stick over to a stone table, where there was a piece of hardened clay with a recess shaped like an axe-head. He then poured the extremely hot liquid into the recess.
Their guide then took the couple to another large rock with a flat top, where another worker was using tools to further shape and sharpen a similar axe-head. Jandell said to Meenah, "I get it! They somehow find this yellow metal, melt it in a very hot fire, and then shape it into whatever they want. It hardens when it cools. That’s amazing!”
Jandell went back over to the hearth and made a gesture of putting something into one of the clay bowls, and then looked at the guide with his outstretched palms up. The guide looked mystified, but Goffa – now a bit accustomed to Jandell’s sign language – said something to him, and the guide smiled and took them to a pile of rocks sitting in the corner. The rocks had an unusual greenish color. Jandell looked at him with his palms up again as if to say, “OK, rocks – so what?”
The guide turned and talked to the man with the clay bowl on a stick. He came over and put some of the rocks in the bowl along with some silver-colored sand in a pile next to the rocks, and then pushed the bowl back into the hearth. He and another man blew into tubes and Jandell could see that the fire inside was becoming white-hot. When the worker pulled the bowl out a short while later, there was the liquid metal again. Jandell and Meenah both smiled in awe and made the thank-you sign to their guide.
Next, the children led them to what appeared to be the center of the village. There was a large, open area that was paved with flat stones, upon which many children were playing games involving what looked like a roundish deer bladder filled with air. The children all stopped their games and rushed over to look at the strangers, firing questions at Goffa and Boken.
Jandell and Meenah were ignoring the children because their attention was drawn completely to a huge structure on one side of this plaza – the mound they had seen from a distance when entering the village. It was a building made entirely of stone. Each of the four planar sides of the building sloped upward at a large angle, terminating in a small, flat platform at a height of about twenty spans. On the side next to the plaza, there was a centered stone stairway up to a platform about three spans high, and then the stairway continued from the back of this platform up the angled wall to the top. On top of this building was a large, silver metallic cross – a slim round column about two spans tall with a cross beam of about one span in length mounted most of the way up. From the low platform. There were also two large rectangular openings, framed by squared pieces of wood, to an inside chamber.
A man emerged from one of the openings, apparently drawn by the excited noises of the children. The man was wearing the golden-hued fur of a cave lion, draping all the way to the ground. Atop his head was the face, teeth, and eyes of the lion – worn like a hat. Despite the fearsome headwear, the man was clean-shaven and smiling with a kind demeanor as he looked down from the platform upon the Ren couple and the surrounding children.
Meenah smiled back at this strangely dressed man and said, “Look, Jandell, he’s wearing the same symbol as the one on top of his mound!”
Jandell nodded in agreement, noticing the small cross icon worn as an amulet suspended from a bright yellow metal chain around his neck. The man beckoned them to come up the stairs to the platform. Goffa pulled Meenah by the hand toward the stairs, and then she and Boken ran up to the platform and, as they neared the cave-lion man, they got down on their knees and clasped their hands together before him. Goffa looked around and motioned with head movements for Jandell and Meenah to take the same posture.
“He must be a priest, and the children are showing us how to approach him,” said Meenah.
“Very strange costume, but I think you’re right,” Jandell agreed. “Let’s play along.”
After the Ren couple duplicated the Children’s position, the priest touched each of the four on the forehead with the cross amulet and then said, “Kotra Moocha a Fargia – donbar! Dokkel Padro.”
The children arose, and Goffa motioned to the Ren couple to do the same, saying, “Jandell, Meenah – dokkel Padro!”
They got up and followed the priest, who led them into the interior of the strange, huge stone building. It was very dark inside except for some torches mounted on the walls. The torches appeared to be wooden sticks dipped into some kind of black pitch that was burning brightly. Looking up, Jandell couldn’t see a ceiling – it just disappeared into the gloom. Between each set of torches were mounted cross symbols of various sizes, ranging from the length of a forearm to the height of a man. The largest cross, in the center of the back wall, was mounted on a stone base and surrounded by torches. Jandell and Meenah were shocked and gasped to see a man spiked to that cross.
The priest knelt in front of the symbol and bowed his head with his hands clasped together in front of him – the children and the Ren couple copied his movement. The priest began to sing some words that were apparently a prayer to some god represented by the symbol.
As their eyes grew more accustomed to the dark space, Jandell and Meenah noticed more detail. First, the man on the cross was not real, but an amazingly detailed sculpture of a bearded man, almost naked and with cuts from knives on his thin body. Second, the stone was mounted on a very weird base made from materials the Ren couple had never before seen. It was cylindrical and translucent red and had some sort of thin, regular vines or twines with different vibrant colors twisting in and out. It seemed to be to this magical base that the priest was pleading and singing. It was then that Jandell realized that the other crosses around them – even the one hanging from the priest’s neck – were attached to a crude representation of that enigmatic base.
Finally, the priest stood up, smiled, and touched each of the four on the forehead as he said some words of holy invocation. Then he bade them rise and led them back outside.
The sun was setting, so the children led the Ren couple back to their home. Oka greeted them warmly and offered them some food from the pot on the hearth. It wasn’t long before Theeba returned to the hut to the squeals and hugs of the children and joined them in their meal. Goffa babbled away to her father, telling him about their day, leading the guests around. He looked at the couple and obviously wanted to speak with them, but their few common words and signs were just too limiting. Finally, he seemed to make a decision and turned to his wife and kids to discuss it with them. After a few minutes, they all shook their heads and waved their hands up and down enthusiastically in agreement.
Goffa picked up her empty bowl, brought it to the couple, and pointed to it, saying, “Groob! Groob!”
Jandell and Meenah looked at each other quizzically, and Jandell asked, “The bowl is empty; do you think she wants us to put something into it?”
Boken then ran over by his sister, pointed to the same bowl, and exclaimed, “Groob!”
As usual, Meenah was the first to get it, saying, “Groob!” She picked up her own bowl, pointed to it, and said “Groob! I get it, Jandell, they want to teach us the names of things in their language. They want to teach us to talk. Groob! Groob!” She pointed to the different bowls as she spoke.
The children laughed and danced around while Theeba and Oka smiled in satisfaction. Oka then picked up her food preparation knife and said, “boba.” The children danced around singing, “boba, boba!”
Jandell pulled out his own knife, held it up, and said, “boba!” producing squeals of delight from the children and laughs from Oka and Theeba.
Meenah got into the act by going over to the wall, pointing to a bottle and proclaiming it to be a “lopro!”
After another thirty new Moocha vocabulary words were taught to the Ren couple, the excitement wore off, and everyone began to get very weary and sleepy. Oka heated some water and washed the children with some sort of strange piece of absorbent material she called a “gotch,” and then she took them into her sleeping area and tucked them into their hides. She then offered the gotch and warm water to Meenah, who gratefully rinsed herself after many suns. Jandell followed suit, and the couple retired to their sleeping area.
For the very first time, Jandell and Meenah were together and felt very safe, clean, and protected in a warm and comfortable environment. They had slept together numerous times on their long trek, but only fully clothed and usually clinging to a tree branch, and worried about wild animals or the branch breaking. Now they stood next to the soft pile of hides, and Jandell could just see a playful smile on Meenah’s face by the light of a tallow candle seeping through the cracks of their bedchamber hide-door.
Meenah slipped out of her beaver-fir clothing to reveal her slim, nubile body and perky breasts. Jandell was too dumbfounded to move, but Meenah sidled over to him and began to untie his lacings. He quickly turned around to face away from her, embarrassed that she might see the huge erection that had developed, but she just laughed softly and reached around with her hands to grasp and gently massage it. As she continued to remove his deer-skin clothing, she rubbed her breasts on his bare back and stroked his erection softly. The erotic feeling was too much for the young man and, as he gasped uncontrollably, a great gush of milky semen shot across the small space and onto a separator hide.
Jandell turned back to Meenah in deep embarrassment, about to say something, but she just whispered a laugh and put her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. “It’s OK, darling,” she cooed softly in his ear, “my mother taught me these things. It’s completely natural. Let’s lie down together now, and after you recover a bit, I’ll teach you some other things that you’ll like even more. I have a nice quiver for your arrow.”
Twenty suns later, Jandell and Meenah were becoming quite comfortable in the Moocha village. They had learned enough of the language to carry on simple conversations, and the villagers forgave them for not knowing the subtleties, like speaking differently when addressing a person of higher or lower status. They had learned that a higher status was earned through age, brave deeds (very similar to bravacho), wisdom, contributions to village life, and spirituality. The elders had decided to accord them a relatively high status for their ages because of the daring trek they had made, their introduction of some new technologies like the flint, and the knowledge of another community of humans that they hadn’t even known existed.
On this day, they went together to the priest and told him that they were not formally married, asking him if he would join them in wedlock in the Moocha tradition. At first, he was somewhat taken aback, because Moocha couples were not allowed to lie down together before marriage; but he was understanding due to their unique situation and agreed to perform the ceremony in another ten suns – with the caveat that they sleep in separate huts until then. Jandell was dismayed that he would miss his “quiver” for that long, but the couple agreed. Meenah had made a Moocha friend her age named Kwerni, who invited her to stay with her and her parents until the ceremony. Kwerni’s mother agreed to speak for Meenah at the ceremony, and of course, Theeba was more than happy to represent Jandell as his surrogate father.
Ten suns were barely enough time to prepare for the ceremony. Oka – a rather large and matronly woman of forty-some seasons – offered to let Meenah wear her matrimonial garb; an otter-skin robe decorated with tiny, sparkling sea shells that she had kept in storage for sentimental reasons. Meenah didn’t understand how it could fit, but it turned out that it did fit – perfectly!
Oka smiled and explained, “Many seasons ago, when I your age, I skinny like you.”
Although Meenah had come to love Oka, she secretly cringed at the thought that she herself might someday look so matronly.
Two Suns before the wedding ceremony was to take place, Jandell was in the forge hut practicing making arrowheads from the yellow metal when Oka came rushing up the road shouting, “Jandell! Come Oka! New people here! YOU people.”
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