I JOINED THE crowd running toward the other side of the village and stopped when I saw Bugeyes lying on the ground just outside Woolly’s cavern. Then I spotted the two puncture wounds in the boy’s backside. They were the same size and distance apart as those I’d seen in the severed boar’s head. Bugeyes was faint with loss of blood, and his father, Frogface, was trying to stanch the bleeding by covering the wounds with leaves. Bonehead stood staring down at his wounded friend in slack-jawed disbelief. I glanced up at the cavern and saw one anxious mammoth eye peering out. This was not looking good.

“Your fault!” Frogface screamed at me. “Your nasty boarauchenia attacked my son!”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“We’re truly sorry about your son,” said Echo, stepping forward. “But Woolly would never do something like this.”

“Stinking Piggyback!” Bonehead snarled. “Shut mouth!”

“Hey!” Hamhock piped up, drawing himself up to his full four feet and puffing out his chest. “That’s my sister!”

Bonehead shook a fist at the kid. “Me crack little—”

“If you touch him,” Echo warned, “I’ll—”

“Silence!” barked Boulder, stepping out of the crowd. “SILENCE!”

Everyone stopped talking and watched the Big Man walk around the semiconscious Bugeyes. He made a show of examining the two puncture wounds and glancing darkly in Woolly’s direction. On his second time around, Boulder stopped directly in front of me, his look suggesting I was a pile of pig poo that he’d accidentally stepped in.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You want us to leave?”

“No, you can stay,” he said with a chilling calmness in his voice. Then he pointed at Woolly. “If you kill your boarauchenia.”

I stared at him, feeling nauseous. “And if we don’t?”

“Go with your Piggyback friends,” he said, gesturing toward Echo and Hamhock. “If you don’t bother us again, we won’t bother you.”

I looked from Boulder to the rest of the crowd. I saw my family on the other side of the throng, watching me with stunned faces. I looked over at Woolly. I was sure he wouldn’t attack an innocent person, but Bugeyes was not exactly innocent—maybe he’d thrown rocks at Woolly or done something equally stupid.

Echo was shaking her head as if she were reading my thoughts. “Woolly didn’t do this,” she whispered. “He’s not vicious.”

I glanced at the young mammoth, then at Echo and Hamhock again. They were now banished from both tribes and would have nowhere to go. Stony was already standing with them. I turned back to Boulder. “I’ll go with them,” I said.

The Big Man looked smug—as if he’d just made a big bet and won. “All right, Lug,” he said. “Your choice.”

I didn’t look at my family as I left. I knew that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to go. As the sun descended, my friends and I led Woolly back through the jungle to the big red cavern by the creek. For the rest of the evening, the young mammoth just lay there, staring straight ahead, his huge brown eyes resembling nothing more than empty caves.

“He’s so traumatized that he won’t even communicate,” Echo whispered to me. “I’m sure he saw whomever attacked Bugeyes.”

The gusting wind keened through the cave that night, biting into my flesh as I tried to fall asleep. I thought about how strange life was. Just when you thought your biggest problem was solved, something even more colossal happened. What was it that Crazy Crag had said? There’s always something bigger coming around the mountain? Maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all.

I was dozing off when Stony nudged me awake to take the night’s last watch. I sat next to Woolly and watched the pale reddish dawn light bleed out of the horizon. Every feature of the landscape stood out in stark silhouette. I stared at the jagged cliffs and the fingerlike outcropping that marked my secret art cave—always beckoning. Woolly’s hollow eyes drew me back. What kind of monster had this poor creature seen? Whatever it was, I had a sinking feeling that Bugeyes wouldn’t be the last victim. I looked back out at the silhouetted cliffs. Suddenly, I had an idea.

“Rise and shine, everyone,” I said. “Rise and shine!”

Hamhock sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Echo somehow managed to glower at me with her eyes still closed. Stony and Froggy kept right on snoring.

“Wake them up!” I said to Hamhock as I ran out of the cave into the dawn light. “I’ll be right back.”

I crawled through a pitch-black tunnel, the familiar scent of dank limestone like sweet perfume to my nose. Moving by feel, I turned left at the first fork, then right, then right again. I heard a loud scampering noise behind me and wondered if it was a big tunnel rat. After a while, I glimpsed a thin shaft of sunlight in the passageway ahead. I climbed through an opening above me and stood up in a spacious oval chamber. Its vaulted ceiling was dotted by myriad sunlit holes that dappled the floor with a stunning sprinkling of light.

On the walls were paintings of my family, of other clan folk, of raucous weddings, of somber burials, of peaceful jungle llamas, of nervous-looking dodos, and of every other beautiful bird and beast that I had found in the forest. An entire wall was devoted to paintings of my father and me doing things together, including one of us painting together. Of course, making art was strictly forbidden “uncaveman-like behavior,” and my father would have never painted with me. But seeing this made me feel like it could happen someday. All of my art was here in one place—the secret fruit of years of cultivation, careful craft, and hard labor.

I walked over to my most recent painting—a bare gourd tree. It was something I’d been working on since I’d noticed the trees losing all their leaves. Beneath that half-finished artwork lay my pigment rocks—red ocher, yellow ocher, lime white, and umber. I sat down beside them and considered how it would feel to remain in my cave and forget all my troubles—to work on my art and not bother with the rest of the world. I couldn’t resist picking up the yellow ocher and crushing a bit of it in my hand. The powder was such a vivid color, so much more beautiful than the dusty gray of the caves where I spent most of my time.

Then I thought of Stony and Echo and Hamhock, and even injured Bugeyes. I felt like I needed other people—needed their help and needed to help them, maybe even more than I needed my paintings. I picked up the other pigment rocks, tucked them into my leaf sash, and headed back out of the cave.

Stony, Echo, and Hamhock were already up and waiting for me. Woolly was still sprawled on the floor, staring blankly at a wall. I walked over to him and offered him the rocks that I’d brought. “Woolly,” I said, “would you show us what happened to Bugeyes yesterday?”

The young mammoth eyed the colored lumps but did not move.

“It might save someone else from being hurt.”

Woolly looked at me for a long time. Slowly, laboriously, he got to his feet. He grasped the yellow ocher rock with the tip of his trunk and raised it to the cave wall. Then he began to draw.

At first we all agreed that Woolly was drawing a yellow cat with a rat in its mouth. Then Woolly gave the rat bulging eyes and the cat two incredibly long teeth. He made the two canine teeth long enough to skewer the rat.

“Is that … Bugeyes?” asked Echo, pointing at the ratlike figure.

Woolly nodded.

“Okay,” I said, pointing at the catlike figure large enough to hold Bugeyes in its mouth. “What is that thing, then?”

An ominous purring sound emanated from the back of the cave.

I whipped around and gasped. A monstrous feline with shining golden eyes emerged from the darkness. The giant cat moved sinuously—massive muscles rolling beneath thick tan-and-black-striped fur. He stopped directly in front of me and made a complicated sound that was half hiss, half roar.

I stared, mesmerized, at his foot-long saber teeth—extending far down past his chin—streaked with dried blood.

He made the same vocalization again.

Focus on the sound, I thought, my eyes still locked on his hideous teeth. On the sound.

And the meaning of the cat’s message soon became clear. “My name,” he was saying, “is Smilus.”