Chapter 5

I missed music.

Hard to believe I would hallucinate myself into a world without a solar-power giga-majig which allowed to me to listen to any song ever recorded.

I had to be in hell.

"You did this, Naris!"

"That's not... , Els."

"He offered himself to Earth-Mother, Naris! Do not say it was not because you... him! He had the right!"

"I didn't know he would do this, Els!"

"He sent Sham and Darek to Earth-Mother. He brought down a buck as his first kill. He killed two..."

"Bears," I whispered.

"The bears..." Naris said.

I wish neither of us had said it. Normally, our languages clashing caused ache, but the cocoon of pain I was living in magnified every pain, ache, twinge, please talk quieter, ladies!

"We're here, Achilles," Els whispered close to my ear. A cool, wet rag touched my face.

"I know what the cave-morons did to us, Naris," Els said after taking the coolness away. I almost laughed at the translation thing giving up on whatever they called them and going with my word.

"They did it to me to," Els continued. "It doesn't matter. We are unmated women of the Anue tribe. Caryn is right!"

"He is not the son of Fire and Moon!" Naris said.

"I don't know about that, Naris," Els said. "But I know this much, Caryn is right--her father would have called for Achilles to be leader."

"He is a man, Els. Just a man."

"It doesn't matter!"

"It matters, Els!" Naris said loudly. "He bleeds. He dies. And still he walked into the bears' den. For what he did--for what he thought he did to me. He made what Nek did worse, Els, because he is no different than Nek!"

"Naris!"

"He is a man, Els, and I felt like Fire was eating me from inside. He is a man, only a man, and if HE said Fire was his father and Moon, his mother, I would believe him."

They were silent for a while. If it had not taken so much effort, I would thrown out a gratuitous groan to see if they would drop the cool, wet thing on my face and leave it there.

"It hurts, Els, like I cannot breathe. It hurts that Nek took the blood I would have given Achilles."

"You brought us to him, Naris. You brought the women of Anue to our leader."

Anue? The Anue Tribe? What the hell were they talking about? Anue Tribe... a new Tribe. Anew Tribe. Fuck! Why couldn't we be the Apache? Comanche was cool too. Mayans! Or maybe the Tribe of Achilles's Really Hot Cavewomen. Though that would mean I couldn't recruit men.

Oh well!

Someone was feeding me. The meat tasted a touch raw, but the water was heavenly.

"What are you doing, Caryn?" Naris asked.

Please ladies, not so fucking loud!

"You do not believe as I do," Caryn said. "But he is the son of Fire."

"Caryn..."

"No, Naris!" Caryn shouted. "Like his Father, we feed him. Slowly and let him strengthen. Then we feed him more. He will not go to Earth-Mother if we feed him."

"You cannot know this, Caryn."

"I know what I know!"

"What of water?" Naris asked. "Water takes Fire away."

"Achilles is the son of Moon," Caryn replied. "Water will keep his... clean."

"Let us put... on him," Els said.

"No!" Caryn insisted. "Only water."

"He will die, Caryn," Naris protested.

Something touched my lips. I opened my eyes and looked at it. An orange. I groped around until I found the wood-thing they used as a cup. Taking the orange out of Caryn's hand, I squeezed it over the cup. There were more oranges nearby and my sword harness.

The purists would have said I violated my rule of a weapon being made for only killing. The juice felt great going down, much easier than meat.

"What did he do?" Naris asked.

"I don't know," Caryn said. "He made water out of the..."

They didn't know about juice! That probably meant having them bring me a beer after a long day of whatever cave-dudes did when they weren't hunting was not a part of the leader's rights!

Budweiser take me away!

I woke up exhausted. And hot! Boiling!

None of the girls were around. The cup did not have any water. I took a deep breath and shook my head to clear it. Didn't work well, but I felt awake enough to get to the water.

I needed to cool down.

The girls set three fires a small distance away from the trees which kept the bears' carcasses contained in a triangle. They got some work done on the bears, but it looked like slow going. With only one knife, they could not get far skinning and whatever woodsy people called taking a dead bear and making it food. At least, not while they were also keeping me fed and watered.

More knives would make it easier for them. I walked back into the cave and took another knife out of the bag. I would have to think about how to give one to Caryn, but I had already established one precedent.

The girls were by the stream. (Having experienced first hand why they called it a bear mauling, I appreciated the cave being closer to the stream than the girls' camp had been.) Els and Naris were sitting by the water watching Caryn stalking the fish, kind of like a kitten sticking it's paw in a goldfish bowl. Naris looked up at me as I approached.

I couldn't be in hell; fine cave women who spent several hours a day naked was a heaven thing. Couldn't be a hallucination, I wasn't that imaginative.

Naris had just finished a bath: her hair was wet, droplets of water clung to her nipples for dear life. She wore the knife on a cord around her neck. She must have put it on immediately after coming out of the water. She did something, a stretch but with a lot of wiggle to it. The movement was for my benefit, offering her body to me.

Cave-life was proving much simpler than the modern-life; kill a couple of bears and you were a rock-star. If I found a mammoth, maybe I could be elected emperor of the cave-world.

Though I had intentions towards Naris, I came down to the water for someone else. I dropped the knife next to Els and walked into the stream.

The water felt good! I sat down in the middle of the flow. I lay back and under the water. The wounds from the bear claws burned slightly, not intolerably, to remind me I had paid for my status in Naris's eyes. I came up for air and went back down again immediately. I did not need pain like I had when I killed the bears. I needed to drain the heat eating me alive. I went up again. Holding my head above the water, I let the coolness of the stream assault the furnace my body had become.