The Mortal Wound (Caveman Chronicles)

The Index -|-

Kpleeb woke with a start. Eyes open, he stared up from his bed. There was nothing to see but the deep of night. His ears scanned the darkness for any sign of what might have awakened him. His turned his head and heard only the crinkling of the dry straw under his bedding. Nothing presented itself as the reason. He did not need to urinate. He could feel the warmth from Thoka’s body next to his, her chest rising and falling with the breath of deep sleep.

He reached out with the invisible forces, as Thoka had taught him in the past. To say that he expected no sense at all from the invisible forces was an understatement. He had rarely felt anything, to be more honest, he had only felt the forces once. That occurrence had proven to him that he could detect, but it had never happened again, and Thoka had not been able to explain it. He reached out anyway because Thoka had told him that it might take time to become attuned to the forces.

He almost twitched when he felt it. There was something there. He could not explain it really. It was just a feeling, a sense of the unexplainable hanging in the air. He rolled and gently placed his hand on Thoka’s side, but she did not stir. He pressed slightly and shook her.

“Wha- what do you want, Kpleeb?” Her voice was sleepy.

“Do you feel anything?” Kpleeb felt a little foolish, hoping that she would not slap him and roll over.

Feel? Anything?” Her query sounded confused.

“Yeah, like, the invisible forces. It feels weird to me.” In his mind, Kpleeb shrugged.

There was a pause. Kpleeb thought that maybe she was considering how to ridicule him.

“Hmmm,” said Thoka after a long moment. “Something is different, but I’m not sure what it is, or why. Let’s wake Zara.” Thoka sighed and rolled out and upward from the bed before crossing the room and kneeling next to Zara’s pallet.

Zara woke more slowly as children tend to do. She was normally cheerful in the morning, but this was far too early. When she did finally awake, Thoka pulled Zara to her feet and hugged her and rubbed her back gently.

“Zara, do you see anything different with the invisible forces or Qon?”

Zara yawned deeply into Thoka’s neck and opened her eyes. “It’s strange, Mama.”

“What is, Zara?”

Zara squinted. “All of the colors are mixed and blurry.” She paused. “And distant.”

Thoka looked at Kpleeb. “I think we should go to the cave. You take Zara. I need to get some of my tools from the shop.”

Kpleeb nodded. They had talked about using the cave as the most defensive position, even if they believed their defenses would hold. “Okay, let’s go.” Kpleeb grabbed a woven sack and threw a handful of things into it. A change of clothing for each of them, a few yellow stone cups and combs, and a woven hat. He grabbed his spear from where it leaned against the door frame.

“Come on Zara!”

“I’ll be right behind you, Kpleeb,” said Thoka with a tight smile. “It’s probably nothing, but I’d rather have Zara safe.”

Kpleeb took Zara’s hand, and they walked out of the village in the direction of the cave. The walk was long, at least twenty minutes, more because it was so dark. The concern weighed on the edges of his mind, but did not want to worry Zara, so he turned on his hand-lamp and talked to her in a quiet tone.

“I am proud of your work on the caves, Zara. This is a safe place and has everything we need.”

“Why don’t we live there all the time then, Da?” Zara’s tiny feet jogged along next to him in the bobbing pools of yellow light that were generated by the hand-lamps.

“We live with the Ganix because they follow the Pale One. We need them and they need us.”

“Why is Mama the Pale One? She is just Mama to me.”

Kpleeb ran through his head a few easy answers, but found none to his liking. What struck him most was that he could not explain Thoka’s relationship to the Ganix.

“It’s because of their prophecy, but I don’t know if it’s real,” he said. “The Ganix believe she is the Pale One, so she is the Pale One.” He shrugged in the dark. “We cannot survive and flourish alone.” [And we cannot repay the entities alone either.]

They walked in silence until they reached the cave. The entrance was an oval shape that was cut into a rock face behind a few trees. The shape was rough and imperfect, but it smoothed out as it gained in depth. Kpleeb had watched, amazed, at Zara’s ability to bend the stone. She had learned quickly, and after a few paces into the stone face, her efforts had begun to produce a perfectly smooth and curved surface. The result was a cave that was elegant compared to the caves he had grown up in. Those had been altered by eons of water flow and the occasional caveman digging crew and were rough and inconsistent.

The lights came on we they entered the larger room. Uuiit’s angle sat against the rearmost wall. There was a triangle hatch opened on the bottom, rear side. The opening was dark. Zara toddled to the red, multi-tiered cabinet that they had brought from Uuiit’s house and touched the side of it. The device began to glow.

“Da, the defenses are resisting something.” Zara squinted imperceptibly.

“What is it? An attack?” Kpleeb pictured a death white mounted on a ferocious, multi-tusked yak, swinging a spiked chain and baring its sharp teeth.

Zara blinked. “Something is coming, Da. It’s big!”

Kpleeb closed his eyes and tried to feel the invisible forces again as he had done earlier. Other than the general sense of weirdness, he couldn’t feel anything. There was no sense of resistance or nearness or size. He sighed.

Zara gasped and lifted her hands.

Kpleeb heard a distant and muted rumble that echoed through the stone that surrounded them. “I want to see,” he said, turning toward the stone hallway that led outside. He left Zara behind and jogged until he could see the darkness outside. Stepping past the trees, he saw lights in the sky that were not normally there. They were reddish and flickering above the tree line toward the Ganix village. There were occasional, quick flashes of a purple light.

After a few moments, Zara padded up to his side and took his hand. “Da, there are many strange things happening there.” Her tiny hand pointed. “I’m scared!”

Just then there was a low rumble, and the reddish glow from the horizon was amplified momentarily before dying down.

Zara gasped.

They waited quietly for a handful of long minutes. Time stretched while the lights played in the sky, but there were no larger explosions. Then Kpleeb saw a form struggle haltingly out from the darkness. It was Thoka.

Zara dropped Kpleeb’s hand and ran toward the form. “Mama!”

Kpleeb moved toward the dark form. Thoka stumbled and fell to the rocky ground. When Kpleeb reached her, Thoka coughed and he felt a splat on his leg. He knelt next to her.

“Kpleeb,” Thoka said. “It’s coming. Have to get Zara inside.” She coughed again, and her head rolled back.

Kpleeb grasped Thoka under the armpits and lifted her torso. She was heavy, but his heart and adrenaline were racing. Zara silently walked beside him as he dragged Thoka toward the cave. Thoka’s feet made small furrows in the dirt until they were hidden in the gravel. Kpleeb proceeded into the larger cavern where he knew it was safe and gently laid Thoka on her back.

In the light he could see that blood trickled from her mouth and down her chin and cheek. She was unconscious and an angry terror rose in Kpleeb’s throat. “Thoka! Thoka,” he said shaking her. “Don’t panic, Kpleeb,” he muttered.

Thoka stirred and coughed again and more bloody spittle leaked from her lips. She moved her arm toward Kpleeb, and he saw a purple rash on the inside of her arm and on her torso near her elbow. Kpleeb gently shifted her gown, and saw that most of her torso was mottled with thumb-sized black and purple sections. There was no pattern, and it did not appear to be the result of bruising.

He gently brushed her skin with his finger tip and Thoka let out a blood-curdling scream. Her back arched and she bared her teeth in a rictus of suffering. The moment passed before Kpleeb could react, and Thoka slumped.

Zara cried out and flung herself to her knees at Thoka’s side. Kpleeb put his arms around them both, but after a moment, Zara clenched her tiny fists and stood with tears streaming down her face. “She’s gone, Da. Arhhhh!” Her voice shrieked in a wail of pain and anger.

Kpleeb put his hand on Thoka’s chest and felt for movement. He could feel no heartbeat. He put his ear to her pale lips and could sense no breath. He felt tears forming and blinked his eyes to shoo them away.

How can this be happening? What has done this to her? The entities?

Zara stood and silently ran toward the entrance of the caves, her bare feet made tiny slapping sounds on the smooth rock. Kpleeb stared after her in an emotional haze of disbelief and suffering.

It has to be the entities. These gods, Uuiit and the others. Who else could bring such destruction against Thoka? Yet how could they not? Hadn’t they changed me and Thoka? Aren’t we their workmanship? He gritted his teeth in response to a fierce anger that flashed through his mind. They made us what we are and discarded us. Now they kill us.

He looked again at her body and the strange rash. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, so foreign and colorful. Thoka’s eyes were now glassy and her face was blank. The realization struck him. She truly is gone.

Just then, a sharp and distant whine echoed from the direction of the cave’s entrance. Kpleeb’s head whipped around, and after a second the high-pitched whine ended and was followed by a rumble. The cave shook slightly with a momentary tremor.

Kpleeb clambered to his feet and ran toward the tunnel. “Zara!” he yelled. Her name echoed through the cave and down the length of the tunnel. “Zara!” he repeated.

There was no reply.