Jodi Lee - Ante Mortem

“What’s happening?” Teva cried, grabbing her son by the shoulders to examine his wounds. The boy, whose name was Gel, rubbed the snot from his upper lip with the heel of his hand, trying mightily to hide his tear-streaked face from his sisters. The lip, just beginning to show the first wisps of facial hair, trembled despite his efforts to still it.

Napro stood just inside the cave, looking out, absently rubbing a blister on his forearm. Outside, the stones continued to rain down, some of them still smoking and fire-red. He was amazed that both he and his son had made it through with no more than superficial wounds.

“What does it mean?” Rani, his eldest daughter asked, stepping up beside him.

He shook his head, hands moving slowly, reluctantly. “Maybe the end of the world.”

Rani’s eyes narrowed as she raised her chin in defiance of the situation, though she made no reply.

A shuffling sound from behind caused them both to turn and see Fee, the old medicine man who had joined their clan less than a season past. Napro and Gel had found the old man near the lean-to that had been his home. Fee was maimed after a battle with a wolf, close to death and had not the man and the boy happened upon the scene and frightened away the beast, Fee would certainly have been killed and eaten by the wolf.

Together, father and son had carried the old man back to their cave where Teva had patched his wounds, fed him animal lard and broth and kept his temperature as low as possible. By the time Fee was well enough to return to his lean-to, the clan had discouraged it greatly, insisting that he was far too old to live out in the wild without the protection of stone walls to shield him from future animal attacks and inclement weather.

At first Fee had been stubborn—he had many seasons left, he argued, though that was clearly not the case. He had already seen his fortieth winter come and go and no one had ever heard of anyone living to be as old as he now was.

Fee insisted it was the herbs and roots he made into a thick tea and drank nearly every day that had kept him alive long after the times his own clan had perished.

Now the old man peered over Napro’s shoulder at the falling stones and grunted. Both Napro and Rani stared at him and he signed, “The gods are angry.”

Napro nodded grimly. It was the very same thing he’d been thinking but hadn’t wished to say aloud. “What have we done to anger them so?”

Fee shook his head, his eyes more sad than frightened. Behind them came the sound of Zic, the youngest child, weeping. Zic, unlike her older sister, was sensitive and wept easily. Only nine, she spoke of wanting to leave this place, go somewhere “without so many spirits.” She was convinced the land around them was haunted with the ghosts of the dead and often spoke of seeing specters while out gathering berries near the burial ground.

For the most part, her clan let her speak of such things without much protesting. In fact, they barely listened to the child’s senseless rambling when she went on about such things. Only Fee paid what the child said any mind at all, for he had seen many things in his lifetime that could not be explained away. Sometimes, he suspected the child might be right. Perhaps humans weren’t the only ones sharing the land with animal, plant and insect life.

The next hours were spent with Teva attending to Gel and Napro’s injuries, Zic’s constant sniffling as she clung to Rani’s side and Fee watching glumly as the outside world grew dark.

The stones continued to fall, but only sporadically now. An occasional thump from a far distance and, even rarer, the cracking sound of rock on rock when one clattered against the roof of their cave. They could tell by the thuds that the stones were growing smaller as the night wore on, until finally it sounded as though nothing more threatening than hail was falling from the sky.

Still, no one slept that night, wondering what it could all mean.

The following morning, they were all up before the sun rose, as was their custom, though none of them dared venture beyond the perimeters of the cave until the sun was up and peeking over the horizon.

Without any sleep or their evening meal, everyone now suffered from grumbling bellies and short tempers. Napro finally raised the courage to poke around outside and check to see if all was safe. If so, he and Gel would pick up where they left off the previous afternoon, retrieving their spears and hunting for game.

What he found scattered around the area near their cave was just what he’d expected to find: stones, of various shapes and sizes, some of the larger ones having shattered like shale upon their impact with the hard earth.

Napro crouched, examining one of these split open stones. It appeared as though the rock had been more than just a rock; more like an egg of some sort. The inside of the stone sparkled wetly in the sun, a thin sheen of something almost gelatinous coating the hollowed out insides of the rock.

Frowning, Napro found a nearby twig and poked at the slime. The tip of the twig dripped thick, snot-like fluid and, disgusted, Napro tossed it away before rising to his feet once more.

He picked his way carefully around the fallen stones, giving an especially wide berth to those which had cracked apart. He had never seen anything like them and the sight of that snotty liquid made him wary and nervous.

When he was convinced that there was no immediate danger lurking about, he went back to the cave to summon Gel. Finding breakfast might prove to be more difficult than usual, however, as he suspected the animals had also been terrified of last night’s bizarre storm and had most likely gone into hiding. As it was, Napro heard no rustling within the forest, heard no birdsong, not even the buzzing of insects.

Spooked , he thought. Even more spooked than we humans had been.

But, as far as he could tell, there was no immediate danger and therefore felt it was time to summon the clan and get everyone busy, either hunting or gathering. He dismissed last night’s storm as just a freak of nature, after all. Not the act of an angry god. If it had been so, he suspected none of them would have been alive come morning.

He made his way back to the cave and told the others that it was safe and they could now go about their daily routines. Fee stayed behind with Zic, as his legs ached with the fierceness of fire and he was no good at hunting since he’d been attacked by the wolf.

Teva and Rani disappeared into the woods to search for firewood, berries, roots and later, if Napro and Gel managed to kill anything, the woman and her teenage daughter would skin the animal and cook the meat, salvaging the bones to make tools, weapons and sometimes jewelry.

The man and the boy ventured forth, towards the area they were in when the rain of stones had first begun. As they approached the burial ground, Gel kept his eyes downcast, staring at the fallen rocks with trepidation. Like his father before him, he saw what appeared to be a thick clear slime oozing out from the inside of the larger stones, and, also like his father, he paused, bending down to examine one. “What is this?” he asked.

Napro turned back. “I don’t know, but don’t touch it. It could be poisonous.”

“Maybe Fee could use it in his secret teas,” Gel laughed. “Maybe he already does, considering how awful they taste. Like animal urine.”

Facing forward again, Napro said, “Come, Gel. We must find our spears.” He began walking, but instantly sensed that his son had not obeyed him. Once more, he turned to look at Gel who remained stooped, staring at the rock, all amusement vanished from his face and replaced by something resembling fear.

“What is it, boy?” Napro asked.