Page 20 of Caveman Alien’s Horn (Caveman Aliens #26)

20

- Sprisk -

At breakfast the next day, Cora brings out her pack and takes out a sheet of fabric that’s different from the one she made yesterday. This one is much stiffer and coarser.

“I want make something from this,” she says.

I spit a small bone out into the fire. “What will you make?”

“Stand up, please?”

Confused, I get to my feet. Cora holds the fabric up to my loincloth, then turns me around.

“Is just enough. Can sit down.”

“Thank you,” I grunt. “I thought you liked the other fabric more. When did you make that one?”

“Right before you came to tree and took me,” she says easily. “It was in my pack.” She opens the pack and takes out a fine needle made from wood. “Oh, look. My friends gave me this.”

“Nice friends, those alien women.”

“They really are,” she agrees as she starts to work with the fabric and the needle, threading it with one of the stronger root threads. “Better than I thought.”

I leave her to her mysterious work and do some simple and necessary chores. I’m picking firewood, getting water, refilling the lamps with oil, checking the stores of fruit juice and finding them low, kissing Cora on the cheek and then tickling her to make her squeal, as well as digging up more roots to use for her loom.

Those roots are everywhere under us, going out from the huge central mushroom to the thousands of white ones all around the edge of the clearing. It looks like they will just keep coming whenever I rip one out of the ground. In the places where I got some yesterday, there are already full roots as if nothing had happened.

The portal I made out into the jungle is still there, creating a gap in the wall of mushrooms. The ones on each side are pushing at it, shaping their round caps around and above the logs. Yesterday, I could see the sky from inside the open portal, but now there’s only fat, white mushroom caps.

They’re still growing sideways, but not in height. If this goes on for another few days, they will take over the whole clearing. Already they’re getting closer to the hollow tree than what feels comfortable.

“I may have to stop some of the mushrooms from growing,” I tell Cora as I hand her a piece of dried meat as a snack. “They’re getting a little too comfortable here.”

“Your portal worked well,” she says and holds the fabric she’s working on up to my waist. “Maybe do something like that. Hmm. About here should work.” She marks a spot on the fabric with her thumb and keeps working with the needle.

It’s not a bad idea, so I quickly build a simple structure from the biggest logs we have, right up against the wall of mushrooms. It should shield the hollow tree from the encroaching wall of white.

We enjoy a nice lunch, and then Cora hands me the bundle of fabric she’s been working on all morning. “This is yours, Sprisk.”

It’s a loincloth, but this one is a little looser than my leather one and goes a bit lower on the thigh. It has a simple drawstring and two tidy seams.

“Some would call this a kilt ,” Cora says. “It not is one, but is close enough.”

“A kilt . I see.” I take off my old one and put the new one on. It feels strange, almost like I’m not wearing anything. “It’s so light!”

Cora takes the fabric between two fingers and pulls at it, adjusting here and there. “Is better fabric for you. If wearing white kilt, the invisible skin is useless. Everyone can see bright white kilt! The Bigs laugh, think you silly. But this, brown like the ground. Oh, it look like it fits.”

I take a few steps back and forth. In the front, this new garment has many small folds, which makes my manhood much more comfortable. “It does. Perfect!” I take Cora into my arms, lift her, and spin us around. “Look, it makes me do this! It’s not me! It’s the kilt!”

She squeals and laughs. “I not believe! I think is Sprisk, being wild. Not blame the kilt for that!”

“Bakitan says I’m the wildest man in the clan,” I tell her as I throw her into the air and catch her again. “Now you see it, too.”

Cora grabs hold of the hem of my new outfit. “Stop, or I pull it off!”

“But I can’t stop,” I laugh as I spin her around in my hands so that she ends up with one leg on each side of my waist. “The kilt makes me wild!”

We’re practically face to face, so I hold her close. “Thank you. I can’t remember the last time someone gave me something.”

“Is my pleasure,” Cora chirps. “I want to give you things. You like the kilt?”

I lift her higher. “I love it, and I will always wear it.”

“Mmm. Always?”

“Well, perhaps not absolutely always. I can think of times when I may not want to wear it. And I notice you just said something about ‘pleasure’. Perhaps we should have some pleasure now? After all, we have been working for a long time. And then we can see if I will wear the kilt during pleasure, too. Do you think I will? Finding out will be so exciting!”

She laughs at my silliness. “I don’t think you will wear it during that. I’ll be disappointed, and maybe I’ll wear my clothes, too. All right, unicorn . Let have us some pleasure.”

As it turns out, Cora’s right. Neither of us wear any clothes during pleasure.

- - -

C ora teaches me to use the loom. The weaving itself is the fun part, stepping on the treadles and using the shuttle and beating with the reed. But there’s so much else that’s more annoying than fun, like tying threads together to make them longer, making sure the tension is the same all over the fabric, and fixing the many other problems that can happen. By far the most tedious part is something called ‘warping the yarn’, which is attaching the lengthwise threads before the weaving can even start. I can’t take it for long.

“How many of these things do we need? ” I seethe. “There are as many as there are grains of sand in the creek!”

“Yes,” Cora says. “The more there are, the better the fabric turns out. We have infinite root threads, so can make really good fabrics. But need more heddle rings for that. The loom is so big, there room for many more of them. Maybe you can make?”

I quickly straighten up. “Yes! I mean, all right. I can do that.” I give Cora a quick kiss and escape from the terrible warping process.

I make a good few rings, but I quickly run out of gresk bones. I’ve checked the snares every day, but I haven’t caught any of them yet.

“Maybe today is the day,” I say to myself, having been influenced by Cora’s muttering habit.

I walk over to the portal, noticing that the mushrooms haven’t grown that much since last I checked. I make my way through it and into the jungle.

I’m struck by the intense smells. The clearing doesn’t have any of these odors, feeling much cleaner. This is the way the jungle always smells, full of life and decay. I’m just not used to it anymore. I’m also struck by how noisy everything is. The clearing is nothing like this, probably because the mushrooms block the sounds.

I pick fruits, dig for edible roots, and gather berries and nuts on my way to the snares. I find lots of food without even looking that hard. The jungle feels friendly today, as if itwants me to keep being happy.

I reach the first snare and find it empty. The second one, too. But the third has a gresk in it, alive and struggling to get out. I don’t want to scare it more than necessary, so before it sees me I run my horn through it in a spot I know will kill instantly. Taking my stone blades out, I gut and clean my prey and throw it over one shoulder.

The way back to the clearing is calm and pleasant. I hide from a prowling rekh and avoid five other dangers, including one big, sound-hunting korp and two beautiful and fluttering but highly venomous treps.

I make my way through the portal into the clearing, noticing how quiet it is and how little the air smells.

I lean on the portal and look over at Cora by her loom. Sweet stars, she’s like the sun, brightening everything around her just by existing. How gentle her movements, how intense her concentration! How graceful her movement when she tucks her hair behind one ear!

Can this be real? Is this really happening? Is she here with me, for real? Did I perhaps die at some point, and this is some kind of wonderful afterlife? The mushrooms and Cora’s presence would seem to indicate that, strange and unreal as they are. But no, this is not the afterlife. The jungle is still right outside.

“Cora!” I yell across the clearing. The habit of being silent in the jungle is not important here. All I can attract here is irox, and they don’t like this place.

Cora turns on her bench and waves with her whole arm, a white smile on her face.

I start to walk over to her, looking forwards to smelling her and touching her and hearing her eager little voice talk about weaving.

Oh, if I could just live in this moment forever…

- - -

I cut up the gresk and make more of Cora’s heddle rings from its bones.

Cora comes over, stretching. “Got good start on next sheet. Now I know how to do it right with root threads. Is easier now.”

I hand her a leaf with a stew of roots, fruits, and gresk meat. “How much fabric will you make?”

“As much as I can. For more clothes for you. For me. And perhaps for my friends.”

I wish she hadn’t mentioned them, but I’m so happy anyway that I don’t mind too much. “What if...”

She looks up at me. “What if?”

“I was just thinking, when you were weaving. What if some of the threads had different colors? Perhaps that would be pretty. I mean, the white is wonderful. It looks so clean. But the jungle isn’t really clean. There may be spots.”

“Do you know how make colors for threads?” she asks, excited. “Is very nice with loom and thread with colors. Can make so pretty clothes!”

“The boys in the clan sometimes play with colors,” I tell her. “I think I remember what we used. We can look for those plants tomorrow.”

Cora gets out the sheet that we wove yesterday. “You’re right. Is very white, looks clean. But could get dirty easy. I will use this for myself. For…” She holds the sheet across her hips. “For under. Soft and smooth. Will be so nice!”

She starts marking and cutting the sheet while we eat. On a whim I take one small piece she cuts off and drop it on the fire.

“Oh,” Cora exclaims. “It doesn’t burn!”

It’s not entirely true — the fabric stays white for a while before it slowly turns brown and curls up. But there are no flames, and it takes a surprisingly long time before it reacts to the heat at all.

“The mushroom roots can’t burn,” I ponder. “Or they nearly can’t. I’ve never seen anything so thin that burns so slowly. It would be terrible kindling.”

“It may be useful if meet a dragon,” Cora points out. “Can hide from flame.”

“And there is a dragon in the jungle now,” I growl. “I’ve seen him once or twice in the Borok tribe. Praxigor the dragon.”

“I’ve never seen him,” Cora says. “And I can’t say I ever want to.”

“At any rate, he’s not here. And we won’t turn him into an enemy.”

There’s movement over by the portal.

I bounce to my feet, and my skin goes shimmery. “Stay here.”

There’s someone standing there, someone big.