CIRCLES OF STONE (THE MOTHER PEOPLE SERIES) by JOAN DAHR LAMBERT Page B

again and slept far into the morning.
    When she awoke,
Screech was not there.  Alarmed by his absence, she called to him. 
There was no answer, but soon she heard him lowering himself into the
cave.  He had bulbs and tubers in his hands, as well as two speckled
eggs.  His face was covered with yolk and bits of shell.  Zena had
learned to eat eggs neatly by inserting a fingernail into the top and bottom of
the shell and sucking out the contents, but Screech had not yet mastered this
technique.
    Abruptly aware
that she was ravenous, Zena devoured the eggs.  They were her favorite
food, and satisfied her hunger more than anything else.  Screech watched
her, his eyes round and serious.  Zena held the baby up for him to see.
    He reached over
and touched it gently, then brought his face close to sniff it. The scent was
new and complicated.  Blood and milk and feces were all
intermingled.  He sneezed. Zena put the infant to her breast and suckled
it peacefully while she ate some bulbs and tubers.  Then she rose to her
feet, gesturing to Screech to follow.  Gathering a large armful of the
soiled grasses, she pushed them up through the entrance to the cave.  The
smell of birth was strong and would attract attention.  Screech helped
her; together they carried all the nesting material away from the refuge and
scattered it, to dissipate the scent.
    Weary but content,
Zena stood for a moment gazing at the vista below.  Though she had been
here for many years, she never ceased to wonder at the beauty and abundance of the
place she had so unexpectedly found.  Then her eyes were drawn to the
plume of smoke that always rose from the mountain with the bowl-shaped
top.  Today, the plume was thick and very dark.
    She frowned
anxiously.  For weeks, the mountain had been belching smoke and soot, and
sometimes it emitted ominous low rumblings.  When the wind was right, the
air carried a thin layer of grit that covered everything - rocks, grasses, her
skin, even the berries she ate.  As she watched, a deep russet glow showed
momentarily at the base of the plume.
    Zena turned
away.  The belching peak, with its ominous smells and noises, worried
her.  But for the moment, she was too tired to care.  The mountain
would have to wait.  And for almost a month, it did. Then, in a momentous
explosion of flame and molten rock, it erupted.
    CHAPTER FOUR
    The antelopes
could not settle to their feeding. Their heads snapped up constantly, and they
pranced skittishly from place to place as if drawn by an invisible force. Zena
watched them uneasily.  She did not know the cause of their nervousness,
but she felt it too.  Some danger greater than a leopard or tiger, or even
a storm, was gathering around them. It was like the tingling feeling she had
before the rains came, when terrible rumblings came from the sky and flashes of
light speared the clouds, but much bigger and more oppressive.
    She turned to look
at the mountain.  For weeks, it had been emitting a strong, acrid smell
that coated her nostrils, made her eyes water.  The noxious fumes were even
stronger today.  The light was strange too.  A sickly, gray-green
cast overlaid the normal blue of the sky.  She could not see the sun, had
not seen it all day.  It seemed reluctant to show its face, as if weary of
its unaccustomed struggle to break through the constant haze.
    Plumes of black
smoke spewed from the mountain's bowl-shaped summit.  Zena watched as they
dispersed into wispy grayness and then coalesced into bulbous clouds edged with
sulfurous yellow.  They seemed to cover all the earth with their ominous
pall.  Her sense of unease increased.  The mountain was the cause of
the animals' nervousness; she was suddenly sure of it.
    She shuddered,
terribly afraid.  For the first time in years, she wanted her
mother.  She did not know what to do, whether to take Screech and the
infant away or to remain in the security of the cave until the danger from the
mountain had