The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood

his siblings, and how he had romped with them when they were young.
    And then there was Tall One.
    She was different from the others, not just taller but also wiser. He saw how somberly she would observe the smoking mountain on the horizon, how her brow would furrow at the sight of the black clouds billowing across the sky. He himself had observed the same phenomenon and found it troubling. But more than Tall One’s intelligence was Thorn drawn to her strong body, her long limbs and firm stride. He liked the way she laughed, and how she treated the weaker females with fairness and always made sure everyone had something to eat. She made him remember the females in his own family, a memory that was rapidly growing dim.
    Thorn didn’t know why he had left his family. One morning an inexplicable restlessness had come over him. He had gathered his hand ax and his club and had left. Other males before him had done the same: his mother’s brother, Short Arm, and Thorn’s older brother, One Ear. Not all males left Thorn’s family. Most stayed. But the wanderlust gripped a few in each generation, and when they went away they never came back.
    Thorn had walked away from his sleeping family with vague images in his mind: of the female who had given him life, of his female siblings. Now, as he looked at this tall alluring female, he was not aware that the shortage of willing females in his family had been at the root of his departure, that he had left out of instinct, just as other young males from other human groups had from time to time over the generations joined his own family. Thorn hadn’t said good-bye. In time, his family will have forgotten him just as, in time, Thorn would forget them.
     
    The lake finally became so polluted that the last of the ducks disappeared, forcing the Family to move on.
    Conditions worsened. They started coming upon dead animals and although at first it meant feasts of meat for the Family, as they continued their westward trek and found more and more dead eland and wildebeest, elephant and rhino—hundreds and thousands of stinking carcasses, the air thick with the stench of rotting flesh and clouds of black flies—the flesh by now was too putrid for the humans to eat.
    Tall One realized that the herd animals were dying because the vegetation was covered with ash and cinders. Only the scavengers were eating well, the jackals, hyenas, and vultures, all growing fat. She and Thorn were in agreement that there was a connection between the volcano and the animals dying. But Lion insisted that the Family keep moving westward to find water and food.
    With each passing day, the water sources became increasingly foul. Food grew scarce as small animals had vanished and plants were buried in soot. The sky grew darker and the ground rumbled with increasing frequency. Each sunset Tall One would watch the smoking mountain with dismay and understand clearer than ever that Lion was leading them into danger.
    Mothers’ milk dried up and infants perished. After carrying her dead baby for days, Weasel finally sat down beside a towering termite hill that days ago would have provided a feast for the Family but that was now inexplicably devoid of termites, and she bent her head over her baby and stayed there while the Family moved on.
    One night Tall One tossed in restless sleep, her dreams visited by the smile and comic antics of Thorn. She stirred in a heat she had never felt before, and a longing that was like hunger yet it was not food she desired. She awoke to the lone howl of a distant dog, and then she saw a silhouette moving through the sleeping camp. She recognized Thorn and wondered what he was doing. Perhaps just to relieve himself. Perhaps he would come to her nest-bed. But Thorn crept straight through the camp, past the periphery and out onto the open plain. Tall One followed, but only as far as the protective torches and acacia-branch fence, where Snail and Scorpion sat sentry. She waited for Thorn to