A NOVEL SET IN PREHISTORY
The Oak People
Chapter 15: Tipi finds the calf
Ansa
It is morning and the women are busy with the grass peas they brought back yesterday. There is a space next to Bo but Ansa moves on to sit beside Goi’s wife, Sorne, instead. Sorne is quiet and she never asks questions. Ansa picks up a thornbrush to rake hot ash over the pods. Gashi and Ikomar are at the higher hearth, splitting the first batch. She can hear popping as the parched grass peas jump into the basket.
Ansa looks down, trying not to let the others sense the churning in the pit of her stomach. She hears something outside and cranes her neck to see, but it is only Goi coming back with more brushwood. Bidari is outside, hunched over the tool hearth, blowing onto the tinder.
Disappointment at the failed hunt hangs in the air like stale smoke and there is not the usual chatter. Sweat trickles down Ansa’s face, dripping with a tiny hiss onto the hot ashes. Where is he? She longs to go to the path and look out for him, but the women will ask why. At last, there comes the sound of someone running. Tipi appears at the cave mouth, a slight dark shape against the brilliant sky. He is panting from the climb, his face alive with excitement.
‘It’s there!’ he shouts. ‘Only a baby — it can’t move!’
He bends double, trying to get his breath back. Ansa can feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling. The others stare at Tipi blankly.
‘What do you mean?’ his mother asks. ‘Where have you been?’
The words tumble out. ‘Down on the plain — under the terebinth.’
The women look at one another — puzzled. Is it a game? Tipi glances at Ansa but she looks away.
‘What have you found?’ Gashi asks.
‘A calf — an antelope! It’s new-born — hiding under the branches on its own. I don’t think it can move.’
Hearing Tipi’s raised voice, Goi appears at the mouth of the cave, the spear he had been mending still in his hand. Bidari is close behind.
‘Did you kill it?’ asks Goi.
Tipi shakes his head. He looks uncertainly towards Ansa.
‘Why not, you fool? A calf would be better than nothing.’
Tipi is stung by the reproach in Goi’s voice. ‘Yes, but it would be stupid to only take the calf!’ he shouts back.
Bidari cuffs him across the head. ‘Have respect for your cousin! And what did you mean — about the calf?’
Tipi’s face comes alight. ‘We could use the calf to lure his mother, and then we’d have her too!’
Goi chuckles. The boy is beginning to think like a hunter but he is ignorant. ‘The mother will be close by — she’ll smell us before we get anywhere near,’ he explains more gently.
Tipi’s face falls. Then he looks up again. ‘But tonight, when the light fades, she’ll go and graze again. She’ll have to leave him alone then.’ Tipi spins round to the hearth, where the women are sitting. ‘That’s what Ansa said,’ he blurts out.
Ansa can feel the heads turning towards her. She stares at the grass peas on her lap, the seeds a row of raised lumps inside each curved pod. Her fingers search for the little bag at her belt, the Balqa stone inside the kidskin.
‘Ansa?’ It is Goi’s voice, high with surprise. ‘What has Ansa got to do with this?’
‘She told me,’ comes Tipi’s reply. ‘About the calf. She said to go and look for it there.’
Ansa hears the click of disapproval coming from Gashi’s throat and she longs to be away from the cave, safe in her rockshelter.
Bidari has been listening and now he walks across to her, excited. ‘When did you find the calf, Ansa?’
Then Bo’s voice: ‘Why didn’t you tell us you’d seen it?’
She looks up at last, knowing that she must say something. ‘I didn’t see it. It wasn’t there, then …’ She stumbles over her words, knowing how stupid they sound.
‘Well then, how did you know it would be there?’ Gashi asks.
The confusion is like a mist. What can she say? How can she answer them? ‘I saw it in a dream,’ she says at last. They can’t blame her for that.
No one speaks. She rubs the kidskin bag between her fingers, again and again. Still no-one says anything.
‘We should take the calf,’ Goi says to Bidari at last, turning as if to go. ‘Before it finds its feet.’
‘No!’
Ansa no longer cares about staring eyes. She is back in the dream, feeling the fear, the pain, the confusion of the antelope. The mother has given herself and her calf to the people for food. Why else would she have visited Ansa in her sleep? They must not refuse her gift. Ansa scrambles to her feet, scattering pods on the floor. She pleads with Bidari.
‘The mother will go to graze again when the day ends — go and wait in the thicket with the calf! She will come back to him,’ she says, holding him with her eyes, willing him to listen. She can feel how unsettled the others are by her words.
‘But she will pick up our scent — she won’t come back to the thicket.’ Bidari sounds puzzled, even frightened.
‘Not if you cover your smell!’ she insists. ‘Use the calf’s own piss. Rub it on yourselves. Then she won’t know you’re there!’
Thank you for reading. You can find Chapter 16 here:
You can find an introduction to the novel and links to all the chapters here:
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