A Word of Power
When you are the wise woman of a village, Fava thought, people believe you know everything. They want your counsel when there is an argument about who killed an aurochs—the one who threw the first spear into its gut or the one who finished it off. They want you to heal festering wounds. This morning, Tchupa had come crying copious tears, pleading for Fava to bring her husband back to life. Fava had to explain that doing so would require greater magic than she had. She could only provide a tea made with blue bergamot flowers to give Tchupa courage and to numb her grief.
Now this!
Fava was busy in her small hut made of mammoth tusks, covered in hide. She’d been grinding roots to make a tincture to prevent wounds from festering when Thantok rushed in. He was a brute with a soft gravelly voice and brows so deep his eyes peered out beneath his sockets like smoldering blue fires. Thantok stood panting in the doorway, out of breath, and said, “Trouble!”
He loved to bring bad news. He stood propped by his spear after a long run, hair shining red in the sunlight. Clamshell bangles on his wrist gleaming like bone. Thantok held the unwelcome news on his tongue as if it tasted delicious, but before she could ask more, he explained, “They are stealing our mammoths, all of them!”
For a hundred generations, certain humans had poached from the Neanderthals. The Bear Clan and Rhino Clan were gone, like so many others. Her Mammoth Clan had fled north to escape, abandoning warmer climes. But some newer human tribes were hungry, slinking about, feasting on other people’s meals—not like the Neanderthals.
Each Neanderthal Clan had stuck to its ancient territory, taking sustenance from their totem animals. Most clans harvested meat for food, fur for warmth, and bones for weapons. They did not hunt another clan’s totems. This kept harmony among the Neanderthals. Fava’s people had maintained peace with some human tribes, but this new one ignored such boundaries.
Other hunters raced up behind Thantok and a dozen gathered there.
So, some humans were stealing their mammoths. She imagined them—weak creatures painted in red mud with their long spears, and she smiled.
“Mother Kwaw will not allow it.” Kwaw was the matriarch of the last mammoth herd, far older than any Neanderthal and wiser than any human. She knew how to avoid their pits and spears!
Thantok grinned, eager to deliver more bad news. “It is not humans that drive the mammoths. It is something terrible. It is men made of metal like this—” He pointed to an ingot of silver Fava wore on a thong around her neck.
She frowned. Metal? Men of metal—neither Neanderthals nor humans?
“They do not really drive the mammoths,” Thantok warned. “The herd merely follows them.”
When you are the wise woman, everyone comes for counsel, Fava thought, but deep in her chest, despair welled. She knew much, but she did not know everything. Even the oldest who had lived a lifetime could not know all.
Some things she did know. She knew how to talk Mammoth. She had learned it from the wise woman before her. “You are destined for greater things,” the old woman had said when Fava at eight had mastered the first call. Fava had learned to reproduce mammoth words by trumpeting and swaying and pretending to flap her ears.
Over time she’d learned to speak with the matriarch mammoth, Kwaw, whose name meant “Grand Mother” in the tongue of the Clan. Mammoths were wiser than other mastodons, as wise as Neanderthals. It was the Grand Mother who gave permission to take an old member of the herd who was dying or feeble. In return, the Clan honored the mammoths and protected them from other predators—both wolf and human.
“I will talk with Grand Mother,” Fava said, perplexed.
“Take your magic!” Thantok urged. “You may have to kill these men of silver.”
Fava raised her brows in disagreement. It was too soon to talk of war, but he was right. She might need magic, real magic. She might need to speak a Word of Power to crush these creatures.
She reached out around her and pulled magic from the air, invisible filaments that felt like spiderwebs wrapping her arms, binding her heart. When she’d gathered it all, the Word of Power crouched in her throat like a cat in a tree, ready to pounce, and she nodded to the hunters. “Let’s go.”
The journey to the hunting fields took many hours of running. The whole village followed, even mothers with babes. It was a long run, even for Fava and her Neanderthal Clan. Along the way, she kept gathering magic, focusing on a great Word of Power. Would she slash the silver men, or crush them, or make them grow heavy and fall through some ice? What was the best way to destroy such creatures? Was there a way?
An icy wind blew from the glaciers that crawled along the valleys, chilling the sweat on her forehead, making her lungs burn. Even though the grass was lush and flycatchers fluttered about snapping up crickets and mosquitoes, the sun seemed sickly as it dropped for the day. It died a solemn death as if it would never rise again.
Fava worried. Other clans had passed away, become no more. Why not hers? Had these silver men brought a disaster that she could not recover from?
Some among the group suggested that they “go back” to the warm lands in the south. Though, Fava knew that life is like a river and only flows one way. There can be no going back.
When darkness crept up from the shadows to swallow the land, she spotted the first sign of the intruders. There was a tall, silver tree, higher than the hills in the distance, catching the last red rays of the sun.
“They came in that,” Thantok said, pointing his spear. “It is a boat that sails through the skies!”
Thantok had not warned her of this. Always withholding more than he reveals. Fava felt awed by the intruders’ power.
As the Clan raced through a valley between icy glaciers, they came upon metal men marching through the dusk.
They did not look evil or craven. They were shiny and walked beside the mammoths like friends, neither driving them desperately from behind nor leading them as a mother duck guides its hatchlings. The Grand Mother herself led the way.
Fava stopped, wondering what to do. Should I try to crush the metal men? She did not know how much energy that would require. She would have to focus hard to drop boulders on each man with pinpoint accuracy. She bent her will, began to form the word “Crush!”
Let’s try the easy way first. She stood and swayed from side to side, her hands low and waving like a trunk, then reared her head and trumpeted in Mammoth, “No follow!”
Grand Mother halted. The silver men stopped.
Grand Mother trumpeted, “We go!”
Fava’s eyes followed Kwaw’s trunk wave toward the sky ship.
Fava wanted to argue, to urge the mammoths to stay, but to her surprise, the silver man beside Grand Mother raised a metal staff in the air. A small golden light issued from it. The man spoke in perfect Mammoth, trumpeting, “Come!”
The word hit her with such force, Fava staggered. It was like being hit by a fierce wind from nowhere—both compelling and remarkably gentle.
She imagined rocks hurtling from the gloom and crushing metal bodies. She prepared her spell. She glanced around—the ice cliffs above! She could call down boulders of ice!
Fava prepared the Word of Power, but the silver men spoke faster, “Come!” Though it was but one word, in Mammoth it held layers of nuances. Come, my friend. Join the herd. Be at peace.
They raised their staves, and the golden lights shone like glowing eyes in the dusk, and suddenly light filled her mind.
The heavens darkened instantly, and she saw stars, more than she’d ever imagined. Fierce, piercing her heart.
Come to the stars.
At once, she recalled her mentor’s voice promising, “You were meant for greater things.”
She beheld the metal men’s designs. They had not come to kill the mammoth. They had come to rescue, to lead them to a new home, far away, and now they were calling her, too.
In her mind, Fava glimpsed a distant world, one where pastures grew green and thick.
A new home in the stars. A better place than she’d ever imagined.
She realized it was a Word of Power greater than others, more potent than any weapon she could imagine. “Come!”
To the stars, my friends. Lay down your weapons and come.