CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - ENDINGS

The story reaches its ending, if that's what it is....

It took just a few days before it struck Umbaga that the biggest mistake he’d made in his entire life was rescuing Melvin. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly obnoxious about the man but what he brought with him.

Like Aurora before him, it turned out that he carried an illness that the Neanderthal tribes-people had no answer to. It was probably the same condition that had seen Juju and Idju off, and this time it spread like wildfire through the community even though Umbaga had moved away from his original cave. But there was a thread of life even then.

It was probably down to the mad maid, Ursa. Her ample breasts had nurtured Mirumda and now that the child was weaned she discovered they were in demand elsewhere. It was a profitable sideline for her and she quite enjoyed the idea of feeding an endless parade of suckling infants with her enormous mammaries and in return receiving meat from grateful parents �" and even more that the idea she felt the actual sucking by baby mouths to be more pleasant than just about anything else in the world.

So, even though she was feeling unwell, Ursa went about what had become her duties. There were two little ones who appreciated her milk across where the main population fo the people lived and where Umbaga had lived until he’d moved to be close to Ursa and her breasts, and she took it to them. And with it she took their deaths as well as her own.

Within a short time the settlement was almost unpopulated and a whole line of recently dead lay feeding carrion on the Weeping Hillside. Umbaga himself wasn’t more than mildly ill, probably because his earlier bout had given him a sort of immunity and an ability to fight off the worst of whatever it was that killed most of his tribes-people. And even though it was the young and helpless that succumbed first to the outbreak, Mirumda was untouched. She, too, was immune, possibly because her mother had given that immunity to her, though Umbaga was in no position to rationalise that, he who had no knowledge of viruses or what future times would call germs.

When the epidemic had burnt itself out there were very few people left, too few to call a community. And slowly those who were left drifted off. There was nothing to keep them in a place so blasted by disease and one by one they took their few possessions and went away.

Leaving Umbaga and Mirumda.

He might have left too, but for no good reason he didn’t. Instead he lived an isolated life with his daughter, and she grew into a pretty child and then an awesomely beautiful young woman unlike any alive in those days.

“Mirumda pretty,” he murmured many times, and she blushed and whispered “tush” and went about her duties with a happy heart. And so they lived a ruggedly isolated life, father and daughter, until she was well into womanhood and he was growing old, being almost forty summers and starting to look look truly ancient.

It was then that the stranger came, and they could both tell, just by looking at the way he wasn’t dressed at all, that he came from a strange people who cared little for clothing.

“You stranger,” called Umbaga as the man approached down a barely beaten track towards the huge cave they still called home, though neither of them went anywhere near the deep and hidden passages strewn with ancient bones.

“Stranger is,” replied the newcomer, his accent almost as strange as his syntax.

“Going far?” asked Umbaga.

“Hunting is,” replied the stranger.

“Then you need the forest,” said Mirumda, moving next to her father from the shadows, where she had stood unnoticed.

“Forest … is,” murmured the stranger, and he stared hard at her and then shook his head.

“What is?” asked Umbaga.

“Forest is … say, woman, where from?” almost stammered the stranger.

“Daughter. My daughter,” replied Umbaga.

“Daughter? You father is?” There was a nervousness about the question that Umbaga couldn’t quite fathom, but he knew he wanted to know more about this stranger. His nakedness wasn’t exactly troubling, but it was unusual for a male to wander the woodlands with his teaser hanging free. He never had, not even on the hottest of summer days, and neither had any man he’d known. And one possibiity he was aware of … this man might be a forerunner of a group who might want to take over his home, his comforts and his daughter. He knew how beautiful she had become and that in all societies he’d heard of that kind of beauty was a bargaining chip for something or other. You have my meat, I take your daughter was a theme just about everywhere in the world.

“Drink is?” he invited, needing to discover more.

“Water,” nodded the stranger. “Clean water,” he specified, and Umbaga laughed. All his water was clean, and also the stone jars he supped it from.

“Water clean,” he confirmed. “Me Umbaga,” he added, his voice friendly despite his reservations. How could a man walk the paths and trails of the wild with his teaser hanging out? And why would he be content to be so naked when he might bump into strangers? And how could he find out?

He asked Mirumda to fetch some water. They had vessels containing it, filled from a stream that ran nearby. It came by a circuitous underground route from the moutain, and it was always cold and fresh. Loving the waterm Umbaga had created those vessels himself, had hollowed hard stone until it could contain enough water for their needs. The task had taken an age, but it had been worth it.

“Nice teaser,” grinned Mirumda and pointing as she busied herself fetching the water. Umbaga felt angry. This man was on their territory and yet he was quite freely exposing himself, and to a young woman at that. And not just to any young woman but to his own precious daughter. Such things simply weren’t done, not in a decent society.

“Me Owongo,” said the stranger. He sat down on the dry sandy soil at the cave entrance, and sighed. These people were different and yet … the woman was special. He could see that much.

“Never seen woman beautiful is,” he murmured, indicating Mirumda, who blushed.

And that was the beginning of the most important chain in the affairs of mankind on the planet they would always call home. Because before the day was out Mirumda announced she would go off with Owongo, wherever he was going, and Umbaga knew there would be no better partner for her anywhere in that land even though he knew virtually nothing about him. It was as simple as that. No ceremony, no proclamations, no devious promises that would one day sully the world of human relationships, just two people setting off together.

And to make everything even more right, Umbaga died that winter.

In the end it was the son of Old Man Tiger who leapt upon him, catching him unawares. And in the brief instant when it happened Umbaga was almost happy, for this was the way of things, this the pattern of all life … and death.

And to carry the story on, Owongo begat Owongo who begat Owongo … that was the way of things, and when he wasn’t begatting Owongo he was begatting Mirumda, and the generations rolled by until one far off and very particular generation arrived, and Aurora was begat by her spaceman dad after a steamy affair in a night club on Terra….

THE END

Author's Note

I hope you've all met Owongo before. He's just about everywhere in my writing, and has been for longer than I care to remember.