Waking Some Ancients
by Gail Wanman
Holstein
an excerpt, by permission, of Waking The Ancients, published by Thundercloud
Books
Leah
sent the others out into a windy morning, armed with sacks and a few kernels
of corn. They were to gather any snared game, then re-bait and reset the
traps.
No arguing. Let Alissa lead. Stop at the spring on the way back.
The moment they left, she headed for her cave.
She¹d estimated the upright slabs at about four feet long; the hole must extend two feet deeper than the level where she¹d found her bowl. She scooped sand until she could haul up a slab and lay it on the ground.
Her fingertips felt something soft. Up came a piece of half-rotted fabric, on which the bowl had been sitting. It was spread over a network of twigs whose ends were planted around the sides of the hole, like an elephant trap.
Whatever was down there had lain undisturbed since the ancients left. Leah wasn't sure how to proceed, or whether she should. But it could be her magic. She pulled the sticks out, lining them up in the sand, and sat back to listen. She heard no rumble of earth, no howls. The wind at her ears seemed to carry faint voices; but she¹d grown used to that.
As she dug, sand and pebbles fell a long way, returning a deep echo. She stretched out in the sand and hung over the blackness. The sound of her breathing came back to her.
She ran to her tent for her flashlight, thankful that she'd been hoarding her batteries all these weeks. The powerful light swept an arc around the cavern. The upper walls were steep, lined with rubble. A wooden ladder, crosspieces tied with sinew, leaned against the side.
She made out the floor of the cave, at least fifteen feet below.
She saw pots. Dozens of them: bowls and seed jars and ollas lined the walls and covered the floor. Layered under centuries of dust, each one was filled with corn or beans -- food for hundreds of lean days. The ancients had never cracked their nest egg.
She leaned farther into the hole, picking out its perimeters with her light. She saw an ax, propped against the wall of the cave, its stone head lashed to a wooden handle.
Then she saw the skeleton.
She recoiled like a slingshot, scooting away from the hole, panting. When she could look again, she leaned back into the opening. The body lay on its side, knees folded to its chest, mostly held together by parchment skin that had mummified in the dry stillness. The ribcage had collapsed; a small bowl covered the skull. Nearby lay some cloth and arrows.
Leah hung upside down until her brain pounded. When she sat up, she was crying. She sobbed for the ancient, as if he had been her friend. He must have been a hunter like her son and husband. He lay there with his arrows and pots, everything he needed for eternity; and she mourned his death.
"I'm sorry I disturbed you," she whispered.
She rebuilt the cagework of sticks and laid the fabric over it. She wrestled the slabs back upright, propping them with rocks and backfilling around them until they stood firm. When all was covered with sand, she scattered branches and brushed away her footprints.
No one could tell there was a grave in the floor.
Waking the Ancients: A Novel of the Mogollon Rim