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Yuletide 2024
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2024-12-16
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The Stone Beast

Summary:

The rains haven't come, and the people of the village must roam further afield to gather food. And to find something strange and terrifying, coming out of the earth...

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Isri speaks:

It was me who found the stone serpent. We had all gone out to look for food – my mother Tahat, my sister Fola, and me. We had to go further than we used to go, out into the hills, because there was not enough food near the village. The old people who sit by the lake and fish kept saying the lake was shrinking and the fish had gone away. That's silly because fish can't go anywhere where there isn't water. And it hadn't rained for a long long time.

I was looking for burrows where something might be living, lizards or maybe a hare. Tahat always said I needed to find more to eat, otherwise we would all go hungry, and I was good at catching lizards.

I was nearly in the mouth of the beast before I looked up and saw it looming over me.

At first all I could see was the curve of a skull, old dark bone. I thought it was another one of the Old Ones, who crouch in their graves and under their rocks, and who sometimes whisper in the night. But the skull was not shaped like a person's skull. It was longer and flatter, and so big! It was so big that I could have gone inside it. I didn't do that because it had all of its teeth, and they were as long as my arm – yes, this long! – and they looked really sharp.

I wanted to scream but I didn't want to show I was scared. The hunters never look scared even when a lion or a crocodile wants to eat them. I was going to be a hunter when I was older, so I had to practice not being scared. And the beast didn't move, so I didn't think it was hungry. It did look a bit like a snake, a really big snake, and snakes like to lie in the sun so maybe that was why it had come out of the ground.

I walked backwards until I could see it better. It hadn't moved, and … and it was just bones, without any flesh. Without any eyes. But still I knew it was looking at me.

Fola speaks:

I was digging for roots when Isri – who'd run on ahead as usual, instead of helping us – came charging back, shouting about a huge snake.

"Did it bite you?" said our mother Tahat. "No? Just stay away from it. We can tell Gota where it is, and the men can come and kill it."

Snake meat was tasty and we hadn't had any meat at all for many days. My mouth began to water.

Isri stamped his foot. "No! I mean there is a big old snake made of stone, coming out of the ground!"

"Then it can go back into the ground," I said. "If we can't eat it, who cares?"

But Tahat said, "Let's go and look at it, then. How far is it, Isri?"

"This way," he said (which was not an answer) and set off up the hill. The bushes were dry and there was no fruit on them. I didn't know why he'd come this way, since there was nothing to gather here. He wasn't carrying anything, because he hadn't found anything, so he went faster than we did. We were carrying nets of tubers and grasses, and it was hard to keep up.

At last, below an outcrop of stone, coming out of the sandy ground, we saw the great beast.

There was not much of it to see. It was creeping out of the earth, hatching out of the earth, and it had pushed its head out and some of its neck. I counted as many of its neck-bones as there were fingers on my hand. The bones were huge and if it was a snake there would be lots more. It was scary, even if it wasn't moving.

My mother squeezed my hand, and said, "Don't be afraid. It is the Rainbow Serpent, and it being here shows that there is hope."

"Does it?" said Isri and I at the same time. "How?"

"I have seen its kind before," Tahat said. "It was a Serpent who sent me to you, when our rains did not come in the north."

Everyone knew that our mother had come alone, from beyond the mountains, the year before I was born. She had met Hadu, our father, when he was out hunting, and he'd brought her back to live in our village. But she had never spoken of any Serpent until now, nor of the rains not coming in her distant home.

"Do we have to cross the dry places?" I said. I was more scared of that journey than of the serpent in front of us. "To get to the rain?"

"No," said Tahat. "The rains will come to us."

Tahat speaks:

I looked at the Serpent, lying there in the sun, and I was cold and afraid though I didn't know why. If the Serpent had come to bring change, that change might be a good one for all of us. I hoped that what I'd told Fola was true, that it would bring the rains. The animals had fled our lake, and the lake itself was dying, drying. If the rains did not come, we would die too. And be bones, like this Serpent.

We hadn't found enough food, but we needed to tell everyone about the Serpent. And as we walked back to the village, I told the children about the great beast that had shown itself to my kin in the mountains.

"We did not know the beast's name, and it was not like any of the animals we hunted. My sister – yes, Isri, I had a sister! – my sister, she said it was just a very big lizard, like the ones we catch among the rocks, but we all laughed at her. Whoever heard of a lizard so big? But then, in the olden days, everything was bigger."

"Like the Old Ones?" said Fola.

"Yes, just like the Old Ones. They were giants, you know: their bones were so much bigger and heavier than ours, and their skulls were bigger too. They must have had so many more memories!"

"The Serpent's head was so big that it must have remembered the birth of the world!" said Fola.

Isri laughed, and so did I: and all the way back to the village we made up stories about what the Serpent might have seen, in its long stone life.

Hadu speaks:

My son found the Serpent, and I wish that he had not.

I can't wish that the rains didn't come. We danced under the grey skies, in the cool heavy downpour, for joy of an end to the dry time. The streams woke up and the lake began to rise, and the desert came alive with colour, and the animals started to come out of their hiding places to drink.

And the rain brought the fish to the lake's surface, from the depths where they had hidden. So Isri and Fola went down to their favourite rock, with a net that Tahat had woven for them, to catch some of those fish.

In my heart I curse the serpent, for it took my woman and my children. But I dare not speak the curse aloud, in case the rains do not return.

When we pulled their bodies from the lake they were holding each other's hands. They had died together, which was a mercy for them. Tahat was not a woman who would let her children go alone into the great dark. But I wished they had not left me behind.

We gathered flowers, the bright desert flowers that had bloomed to greet the rain, and some people brought small gifts, as they had when Tahat first came to our village. There were little pouches of ochre, and dried meat wrapped in leaves, and a little doll for Fola. I gave my son four arrowheads, though he had not yet strung his bow. I hoped that Tahat would teach him, when they woke.

The Serpent lies there on the hill, a morning's walk from the grave of my family. Many of the people go there to pay it honour. But I will not. My family will rot to bones. As did the Serpent. As shall we all. But while I live, Tahat and Isri and Fola will live in me.

Notes:

Dear Ouzel, thank you for this fascinating prompt! I had such fun researching it, and wondering about the people whose remains lie there in the desert: and I now know a great deal more about prehistoric climate change than I did a couple of months ago...

Earlier this year I read The First Fossil Hunters, by Adrienne Mayor, about how ancient peoples saw and interpreted dinosaur (and other) fossils. When I read about the 'People of the Green Sahara', and their remains being discovered by a palaeontologist looking for dinosaurs, the plot of this story sprang fully-formed into being.

I've also recently read The Gathering Night, by Margaret Elphinstone, which is set in Mesolithic Scotland around the same time as this story: the structure of that novel, with people speaking in turns, inspired me.

Thanks to N for beta!