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

26

- Cora -

Korr’ax draws his sword and puts the blade in the flame for a second.

I show him where to cut the umbilical cord. He does, very carefully, right in the middle.

Bryar holds her baby out. “Want to hold her?” she asks, voice hoarse and thin.

Korr’ax clumsily takes the mewling little bundle into his arms. “She’s so small!”

I leave the little family to themselves and walk out of the cave, more tired than I’ve ever been. “That was easy.”

Astrid pats my back, hard. “Thanks to you, Cora. You have no idea how nervous we were before you got here. But then you came, and we all knew it would be fine.”

Alba hands me a mug of frine. “That was awesome. You just took charge! Like a freaking boss! Where is the old Cora, and what have you done with her?”

Bronwen unwraps a loaf of bread. “It’s not newly baked, and it’s not breakfast time yet. But is there a wrong time for a snack? No, right?”

I drain the frine in one go and eat two slices of bread in as many bites. “It was an easy birth, I think. Everything went right. There wasn’t much for me to do, thankfully.”

“But you were so calm, so we were, too,” Astrid says. “And Bryar. I think that helped a lot.”

“Maybe.” I wander out to the edge of the platform.

Let me see. The clearing should be in that direction?—

“Oh fuck!”

Bronwen hurries over. “What’s wrong, Cora?”

“Are you seeing that?” I point.

“Oh! What the hell is that?”

I thought that maybe Sprisk’s clearing would be barely visible as a pale blue dot in the far distance. But there’s nothing pale about this dot. It’s a point of blue-white light, just at the horizon. At first I think it’s a bright star, but then I see it’s like a searchlight pointed straight up, but still visible from the side. It creates a sharp column of light that goes so high up, it looks like it reaches space.

“That’s Sprisk,” I tell her, my voice weak. “What’s going on with those mushrooms? ”

“Mushrooms?”

I have only told the girls some of the story, so that we could focus on the birth. “Yeah. There’s a bunch of giant mushrooms there. I think they make that light.”

“Uh-huh.” Bronwen stares at the light. “Mushrooms.”

“Cora, they’re asking for you.” Piper says and takes my hand.

I go back into the cave. Bryar is still smiling with her baby in her arms. Korr’ax is standing beside them.

“Everything good?” I ask.

Bryar grins. “Cora, I want you to meet little Kora. With a ‘k’, but still. Thank you for your help. We will never forget it, and neither will she.”

My face scrunches up. “Kora? Oh my God…”

It’s too much. I’m moved and happy and sad and overwhelmed, all at the same time. As I take the little newborn in my arms, I break down in sobs. After a while, Korr’ax has to rescue his baby from the crazy weeping lady.

“Yeah,” I tell the girls when I recover. “ That’s why I wanted to be a midwife.”

I don’t think they can make much sense of it, so they gently lead me halfway down the stairs to a cave that faces away from the sunrise. There’s a soft bed with many layers of furs and leather sheets, a change of clothes, and a vase with white flowers in it, smelling mild and clean.

I lie down, finding the bed comfortable but not as airy and accommodating as the net in the hollow tree.

I’m dead tired. But still it takes me a long time to fall asleep.

- - -

T he sound of drums wakes me up at about noon. I’m still tired but not really able to rest, so it’s just as well.

Making my way up to the platform that the girls call the ‘penthouse’, I’m again struck by the incredible view. The blue light of the clearing isn’t visible in daylight. But I’m sure it’s there.

Piper and Bronwen are sitting in wooden chairs, keeping vigil and sipping an infusion of exotic leaves.

“You should try it,” Piper says and fills a mug with the steaming concoction. “It’s nothing like coffee or tea, it doesn’t taste that good, and we’re not sure if it’s toxic or not!”

I accept the mug and sniff it. It smells not quite like celery and not quite like spearmint, but with hints of both. “My kind of drink. How are the mother and child?”

“Really good,” Bronwen says. “Bryar was able to get some sleep. Korr’ax was not. I never saw a more harrowed guy. Oh, and this is my husband, Noker of the Foundling clan.”

I turn. A giant of a caveman comes towards me, wearing a huge, colorful headdress that stretches across his head from ear to ear. It does nothing to make him any less intimidating.

I take a step back. “Greetings, Noker.”

“Greetings, Healer Cora,” he rumbles. “Do you hear the drums? It is a day or celebration. There’s a new life in the Borok village. And an honored guest, the tribers say. I think they mean you, and not me.”

“I think it’s both,” Piper says. “You can be an honored guest or an honored member of the tribe,” Piper says. “You choose, Cora. We all want you here, but you decide. Some of us are members of both the tribe and the clan. And Sprisk is very much a Foundling.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” I tell her, glancing in at Bryar. She looks asleep, and there’s no mewling sound from the baby, so she’s probably sleeping, too. “But it’s nice to be wanted. Thank you.”

“Sprisk is indeed a Foundling,” Noker says, glancing out at the jungle. “One of our best, for what that’s worth. I know him well.”

I take a sip of the not-tea. It’s as grassy as matcha and as spicy as ginger. In total, it’s one of the best-tasting drinks I’ve had on Xren. “I thought I did, too.”

“But you were wrong?” His eyes are a startling yellow, piercing me from high above. And that headdress is part of his head. He’s half dinosaur, just like Sprisk.

I sigh. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“I never knew Sprisk to be anything other than what he seems. I know he looks different. He’s half Big, as I’m sure you know. He has a wildness in him, I grant you. But that part is never mean. It’s always kind. Indeed he may be the kindest man I know. Perhaps that is what confuses you.” Noker turns around and walks down the stairs.

I stare after his dinosaur back. “Did he just tell me that the reason I don’t understand Sprisk is that I’m an evil bitch?”

“They are a little bit direct, those Foundlings,” Piper says quickly. “Don’t let them rattle you. Want some newly baked bread with the closest thing we have to cranberry jam? Bronwen just baked a new batch for the celebration.”

I stay up at the penthouse almost the whole day, catching up with the girls and meeting their husbands. Alba gives me a quick tour of the village, which is indeed very fine but falls critically short because it has neither a loom nor a unicorn.

Bryar finally chases Korr’ax out of the cave so we can all do some serious talk, and I tell my tale without censoring any part, except Sprisk trapping the vismonks in the snare. I don’t want them to know that about him, at least not yet.

The girls give me lots of sympathy and make me cry with laughter from their own stories of how they each got married. They’re as good a group of girls as I could ever hope to find, all having been through some really tough times but come through it stronger. Piper’s story of how she met and married Brak is extra interesting to me.

After, dark I spend a good few hours staring at the blue light in the distance. It’s just as intense as last night, maybe even more so.

That’s the spot where Sprisk and I tried to make a life for ourselves. It wasn’t much, but it was ours.

I’m sure he’s still there now, so averse against becoming a tribesman that he couldn’t even come here with me.

“You fixed me,” I mutter. “But I didn’t fix you. I didn’t even try. I guess I just didn’t think there was anything to fix.”

It crosses my mind that a unicorn is not just a strange caveman with a horn, a warm heart and a wild side, but can also mean a person who is unique, someone whose like you will never find again.

The next day I check on Bryar, find her and little Kora perfectly healthy, and then fill my backpack with as many useful things as I can find without arousing suspicion. Then I doze in the cave until sunset, when the drums start.

It’s a real Stone Age celebration of the first birth of a girl baby in the history of the tribe. Everyone is invited, apparently, both other tribes and Foundlings and non-members like me. There’s drums and chanting and dancing and everything. It’s all kept somewhat quiet because of the newborn Kora and her mother, but it’s as sincerely joyful an event as any I’ve seen before. The only one who’s missing is Praxigor the dragon, because he can be scary and nobody wants the newborn to have to deal with that.

I don’t do any dancing, but after a couple of mugs of frine, I join the chorus of Shape of You .

A little later I spot the young Foundling Bakitan come into the circle of light around the huge central campfire.

My heart jumps in my chest. If he’s here, then maybe Sprisk is coming, too! But there’s no sign of him.

I watch the young Foundling walking over to the small group from his clan. They greet him with pats on the back and some laughter, grabbing his hands and looking at them.

After a while I make my way over there, ignoring Brak and Noker.

“Greetings, Bakitan,” I begin as I take his hand and pull him aside. “How you do like the celebration?”

He gives me a shy smile. “Greetings, Cora. It’s very different from how we celebrate in the camp.”

“It is quite noisy,” I agree. “Too noisy for me. And now I want get back to mushrooms.”

His eyes shift uncertainly. “Oh.”

“Is a secret,” I tell him. “Nobody else must know. But you know where is the mushrooms. Can you tell how to get there?”

He gives me a look of disbelief. “It’s far, Cora. Really far. And dangerous.”

“I know that. And still want to go. How find it?”

He stares emptily at me. I suspect it’s a crazy question, because Bakitan has lived his life in the jungle and will have internalized many things. It’s like asking a Major League batter how to hit a homerun. The answer will be hyper complex and depend on so many factors that he might as well just say ‘swing the bat at the ball’.

“Just try,” I urge him. “I think know which way is it. But how I keep going the right way if can’t see the sun?”

He stares past me, as if he hopes that someone will come to his rescue. “It depends…”

I can’t keep torturing him, so I cuff his shoulder lightly. “All right. Is one of those things that impossible to explain, right? Don’t tell anyone I asked! So embarrassing for me, I not know how go in jungle! Oh, did you try to dance? Is fun! Look at the Borok men!”

I manage to divert his attention, hoping he’ll forget the whole thing. I may remember enough of the route myself to find it without any expert pointers.

I walk over to Astrid, wearing her shaman’s outfit and looking like she was born in this village. “I’ll check on Bryar and then hit the sack. I never knew a cave could be so comfortable!”

“They sure beat our damp old tunnels for comfort,” she says and embraces me. “Thank you so much for coming. You don’t know what it means to me that you’re here. Will you stay? Please? It’s a pretty good life here in the tribe. I sometimes think I can be happier here than on Earth. Oh, never mind me. I’m drunk. It’s okay, though. I’m a shaman. Nobody will notice if I say strange things. I do that all the time.”

I give her an extra squeeze. “Never a better time to celebrate a little. It’s a wonderful village.”

Walking up the stairs, I check on Bryar and Kora, find them both perfectly fine, and then get back to my cave.

I take a short nap, fueled by the frine, then eat as much fruit and cold meat as I can stuff into me. When I make my way quietly down the stairs, I notice some tribesmen are still eating and drinking by the table under the totem wall, but I walk around the edge of the light from the fire and reach the gates without anyone talking to me.

The guards do, though. “We will let you out, Healer Cora,” one of them says. “But we need to know where you’re going and who will escort you. Do you have a weapon?”

Damn it. Of course they want to make sure that I’m safe in the jungle.

“Uh. I have knife somewhere…” I take my backpack off.

“I will escort her,” comes a voice from behind me. “I’m Foundling Bakitan. We are going to the Foundling camp, which is nearby.”

It’s Bakitan, looking determined as he approaches.

“You don’t have to—” I begin, but he cuts me off with his louder voice.

“My weapon is the jungle skills of any Foundling, as well as this blade!” He holds up a long knife that glitters in the light from the torches. “It’s not a blade like most Borok men carry, but it has always been good enough for me. I think it shall prove sufficient for the short walk from here to our camp. No Big has been spotted in this area for many moons, they say.”

The guards smile tightly. “Then pass, Healer Cora and Foundling Bakitan. If you do encounter a Big between here and your camp, you will be so close that you can simply yell for us.” They open one door in the double gate.

Bakitan and I walk out, into the jungle.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “You can go back inside.”

“I will come with you to the mushroom clearing,” he says. “ Someone has to keep you safe.”

“ I will keep me safe,” I tell him, not wanting this young man to risk his life. “I know how to stay quiet. Sprisk taught me how avoid Bigs and all the dangers.”

“Just this night you asked me how to get to the mushrooms,” he points out. “Sprisk will never forgive me if he knew that I abandoned you to yourself on a long walk. And if you really know how to be quiet, this is time to show your skills. We are in the jungle right now.”

Oh damn. I just got mercilessly schooled by a teenage boy.

Well, it’s not like I mind having him with me. But he shouldn’t have to risk his life for me on this harebrained adventure.

“You can help me get halfway,” I try. “At sunrise, you go back.”

He doesn’t even reply, just turns his back and starts walking.

I have no choice but to follow him.