The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron

Author:Claire Cameron
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017-05-01T21:00:00+00:00

16.

Girl woke just before the sun, stepped out of the hut, and walked in silence to the hearth. She squatted down by it with open palms, feeling the warmth from the night before. She leaned in and blew on the hottest of the ash-covered embers, and a glowing piece of charred wood in the middle throbbed with heat, a chest-aching red. She steadied her breath and blew once more. A flame jumped up to bite the twigs and bark she piled on. The flicker crackled and caught. The warmth licked at her skin and ruddy cheeks. Another day had started.

Soon the yolk of the sun cracked into the sky and color bled. She watched as it climbed along the line of the cliff and disappeared behind it. In a few days, as the sun rose, it would kiss the top of the cliff. That meant it would be time to go to the fish run. Her mouth watered at the thought of orange flesh. With that feeling, there wasn’t a decision to make, only the urge to go. She would travel to the meeting place. She would gorge on fish. Her belly would be full.

Girl heated water in a cured sack to open a new cache of bison meat. By pouring hot water into the frozen cache, she could access some of the slabs of meat they had saved after the hunt. There was more than enough food for the short term. Rather than getting distracted by sadness, she worked the saliva around in her mouth. She could double her portions and eat when she was hungry, something she had rarely been able to do before.

She gently flexed her hand and was relieved to see the muscles work. The leopard had taken a deep bite and some of her flesh was gone, but the ripping hadn’t been as bad as she’d first thought. Before crawling into the hut the night before, Girl had forced herself to stay up and tend to her wounds. She soaked and boiled mustard seeds. She chewed these until they were mashed and then spat out the fine paste. Next she put water in an emptied turtle shell and rinsed her wound. She sliced off the loose flesh with a sharp stone. This she did with a piece of meat between her teeth to muffle her cries of pain. She stanched the blood by holding the smooth side of a folded hide over it. Then she packed the wound with the mustard-seed paste until her arm looked whole again. It stung enough to make her moan. She took a piece of hide that was scraped thin and wrapped this tight, like a second skin, around her forearm. Her fingers were working well. They showed no sign of getting puffy, which was the first sign of dying rot.

Then, squatting, moving her fingers slowly, chewing by the fire, Girl ate her fill. She would build her legs back up. Soon they would be muscled limbs the size of tree trunks with thick knotted knees.

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