Stone Age Mama

Chapter Five - Sandhome

-Summer-

The gourds that had been rolled into camp had bothered Belbet since she’d laid eyes on them. The light blue color of their outer shells was strange as it was. The inside was a green similar to a honeydew melon. And from what she could tell, they tasted pretty good, for gourds, especially when cooked with some of the spring onions they’d gathered. They had four of the car-tire sized things in their camp, and Belbet was thinking about the best way to go about drying the damned things so they’d be usable as cisterns.

The problem was, the only way she knew to dry a gourd was to just… let them sit. And sometimes, even the small ones could take months. She vaguely remembered something about a method of letting the vines die? ...Wait. Belbet’s head snapped up, her otter ears perking up. That’s it!

“Dahnei!” She called, pulling the girl away from her checking on her fishtrap. The girl was obsessed with making them now, and Belbet was proud of her. She’d even figured out to take the guts from her most recent catch to lure more into the trap. “Dahnei, can you take me to the field you found the pumpkins in?”

Dahnei’s little mouse tail whipped through the water, spraying droplets all around her as she nodded. Hopping up onto shore, she trotted along, leading Belbet through the sun-dappled forest. Belbet gripped the stone of the handaxe tightly, since it had only been yesterday the children were attacked by a wolf, after all. She wondered if maybe she should make weapons for them. Spears were a good idea… Humans had been using spears for aeons. But without massive arm strength, there was no way they were going to be able to hurt something as strong as that wolf.

She pondered it as their trek took them back to the pumpkin patch. And sure enough, as she searched through the area, she found what she was looking for. A few perfectly cured pumpkins, mottled and golden-gray in color, hidden under the new vines. She checked them, putting her shoulder into rolling them over, to make sure they weren’t cracked in any way.

“Perfect!” She cried, patting one and hearing the hollow ‘tomtom’ of the insides. She’d even heard the soft susurrus of seeds inside when she’d rolled it. “Help me roll these back to camp.”

It took all morning, until the sun was high and the heat near-unbearable, for them to get four of the cured pumpkins back to camp. She put them next to the four ripe ones, except for one. That one went to the river for a quick soak. After it’s soak, Belbet spent some time scrubbing the surface of it clean with some rough bark. Then, she set it out in the sun to dry again.

While that was being taken care of, Deenat returned, a huge array of gatherings in the basket she’d brought with her. “Sister, I brought as many things as I could find.”

“And seedpods and such, right?” Belbet asked, excited. Most of the seeding wouldn’t happen until end of summer or even fall, but gathering seeds was never not a good idea.

“Yes, yes.” Deenat sighed, rolling her eyes as she pulled the various offerings out of her basket and showed them to Belbet. Sure enough, there were a plethora of things Belbet did not recognise, but she trusted that Deenat wouldn’t bring anything poisonous.

There were dark leafy greens that reminded Belbet of spinach, but tasted sharp. Also some wild basil, which Belbet welcomed immensely. There were also some fuzzy peapods that yielded what looked like chickpeas and tasted similar enough to be useful. But it was the eggplants and figs that really drew her attention. She grinned, looking at Deenat with a happy nod. “You did well!”

“Well, after you showed me those seeds you found on your trip to the willow tree, and how to plant and care for them, I thought it’d be good to have more types.” Deenat shrugged.

“You’re learning.” Belbet smiled, “If we can diversify our diet, we won’t starve. Good.”

“Mama!” A little voice cried out, and a small body crashed into Belbet’s side, signaling the arrival of Mohniit. He held up a wriggly worm with triumph, ignoring his aunts annoyance at being denied a definition for the new word Belbet had said. “Fed! Fed chick!”

Meaning he had finished feeding the chickens. “Great! Good job, baby. You did very well.”

“You praise me the same way you praise your children.” Deenat laughed, shaking her head. She picked up the vegetables they’d gathered, heading for the hut. They’d put together a basket for storing the produce they needed to eat before it went bad. And Belbet had recently shown them how to lay out seeds to dry them in the sun so that they’d be plantable.

Now the garden housed seeds of all sorts of varieties, including the peppers she’d found on her journey. Not that any of that had grown very much since it’d only been a day since they were planted. Belbet looked over the garden, her boy in her lap, and took a deep breath.

“Let’s see… We need to find a way to store food. Salt specifically. ...If we can’t find that, we may have to deal with just smoked meat. Ah…” Belbet frowned, “That’s another thing to add to the list. We’ll have to figure out how to smoke meat. Maybe some kind of smoker… Would wood be enough, or do we have to wait for metal?” She sighed, rubbing at her beautiful boy’s ears.

“Mama, what me-ah?” The young bun tried to ask, and she sighed again.

“It’s something we don’t have any chance of making right now. And it’s pronounced ‘Meh-Tahl’.” She poked his little nose, and he scrunched it. Then, he wanted off her lap, so she let him down and he headed over to the pile of rocks he’d claimed as his toys. She watched him play for a moment and mentally added ‘make toys’ to her list too.

At the moment, her to-do list looked something like this: Somehow make a smoker so they could preserve meat, Make a storehouse to store said meat in, Make a kiln so they can use clay, prepare some toys for the kids, turn four cured pumpkins into four pumpkin cisterns, find beeswax to melt to seal those cisterns and make them waterproof, and last but not least, locate some fiber to turn into thread and then weave into cloth for clothing.

“The problem is, priority.” She muttered to herself, her eyes roaming over their little homestead. Eefim was out hunting, and would be for a bit. Deenat was just coming out of the hut, the basket she’d half-finished before bed last night in hand. Dahnei could be heard splashing in the river, probably trying to scare more fish into her fish traps. Getting up, Belbet headed for the hut, preparing to put together another meal for her family.

As she roughly chopped vegetables and descaled fish, she thought it over. They were in the early end of summer, which meant that they needed to start preparing places to store food for winter. That was priority one, or they’d starve. They needed to prepare firewood too, and food for the chickens. The problem was, they needed to store boiled, clean water to use for drinking, or they’d get sick. So, first was the cisterns, then a storage house for food. Then, a storage house or pile for firewood. If the food storage was big enough, they might be able to store chicken feed there too.

She hissed, her stone knife nearly cutting her finger in her distraction. A thought occurred to her. She needed to start making salves and tinctures too, so that they would all be able to heal better than if they just left it to nature. Her skin itched still from the mud she and her family had to wear as bandages. Clean, boiled mud, for certain, but still mud.

So how to divide the labor? She stuffed the fried fish meat, so hot it stung her fingers, into little pockets of mashed sweet potatoes. These she boiled, hoping against hope they’d stay together. ...They did not, but at least she had some sort-of-tasty fish soup. She chucked some carrots in with it, and called it good. This was about the time Dahnei appeared at her elbow, watching her.

“Want to learn how to cook, little one?” She asked, and her daughter’s nod gave her hope. “Good. Cooking well is one of the first steps to taking care of your family and keeping them healthy. Plus, everyone likes tasty things, right?”

“Right!” Dahnei grinned, and for a moment, Belbet could imagine her as the beauty she would grow into.

“When cooking food, it is important to remember that the human body needs variety. Plants, meat, and spices should be used in tandem so that the body gets all the vitamins and minerals it needs to grow well.” Belbet explained. “That’s why I try to put both meat and vegetables in every meal we have.”

Dahnei nodded, serious business in her furrowed brow as she watched the little balls of fish and sweet potato dissolve in the now-boiling water. Somehow, watching her little daughter seriously stir the almost-soup filled Belbet’s heart with an affection that made her want to squeeze something.

“Plus, cooking good food can show where we come from. Certain people will make food certain ways, and pass those recipes down to their children and their children’s children, and forever and ever.” Perhaps this was a bit much for a five-year old to understand, but Belbet knew how important it was, and wanted to share it. “Cooking can make you feel loved, and can be a way to show the people you love that you love them.”

The hug she received for that was worth Dahnei nearly burning herself in her haste. The soup finished pretty quickly after that, and Eefim, Deenat and Mohniit all gathered around to get their shares. It was comforting and oddly familiar to Belbet, crowding around a pot and all eating out of it. Well, pot was generous for what they had, but eating together because they don’t have separate dishes made it feel… special.

“We’ve got some projects we need to see to.” Belbet said, during the meal. “We need to build a storage house for food, and a firewood storage area too. We need to prepare for winter-”

“Like Little Squirrel!” Mohniit cried.

“Yes, baby, like Little Squirrel,” Belbet smiled as she continued. “The storage house has to have a sunken floor, so that it stays cool all year round. We can probably build it into the cliff wall, so long as we’re careful not to collapse it. I also need to find some bees. We’ll need beeswax, parts of their nest, to make the pumpkins into water storage. Has anyone seen any buzzing insects, the kind that sting?”

Everyone looked thoughtful for a moment, before Deenat and Dahnei both shook their heads. Eefim however nodded, “I saw some. Not far. I could show you?”

“Yes, thank you Eefim. We’ll need that wax if we’re going to store water, so we’ll need to bring fire with us.” Belbet nodded, secure in what her afternoon plans were.

“Why fire?” Deenat questioned, going for another spoonful of soup. The wooden spoons she’d carved were really well done, sanded down with literal sand.

“Because smoke makes bees sleepy, and if they’re sleepy, they won’t mind us stealing a bit of their honeycomb.” Belbet explained, grinning. “Which means we might have a treat for after dinner.”

Deenat rarely commented on the strange words her sister used anymore, and Belbet was grateful. The tribe didn’t have words for honeycomb or stealing. Recently, when Belbet uses strange words, Deenat waits and finds that the words are explained later through action.

“So, Deenat, could I ask you and Dahnei to start working on the storagehouse? For now just start digging out a square, like we did for the house. Pick somewhere next to the cliff, but don’t dig into the cliff yet. We’ll need to make beams to support it before we do that.” Belbet paused, debating. “I’ll leave Mohniit here with you. We might have to make a run for it, if the smoke doesn’t work, and he won’t be able to run fast enough.”

Deenat nodded, “I can watch my nephew.”

“Wonderful!”

After lunch, the group split up, and Belbet went into the forest with her nephew. She kept an eye out for herbs, pointing out several to Eefim so that if necessary, she could send him to harvest them later. Rosemary, thyme, she even saw some calendula and echinacea, which were both godsends. She made sure to stop, cut, and tie bunches of these herbs in bundles at her waist. They itched against her bare legs, but it would be worth it.

The bowl filled with embers they’d brought crackled in Eefim’s hand as he finally found the buzzing hive she’d been looking for. Sure enough, it was honey bees, but the bees themselves were smaller than the ones of Victoria’s day and age. These were barely the size of regular houseflies. However, they were clearly producing well because the hive was literally dripping with honey in the summer heat.

“This is perfect,” Belbet declared, earning Eefim’s attention. “Bees leave the hive at early morning to go look for pollen to bring back, and they don’t get back until early evening. So we arrived just in time. Let’s look for some moss or grass to burn, something that’ll make lots of smoke.”

The two of them gathered enough leaves and needles and moss to make for a very smokey fire right underneath the hive. Using big leaves and their hands, the two fanned the smoke towards the hive, watching the buzzing bees slowly leave the dripping wax castle. When the sluggish bees appeared to be as slow and sleepy as possible, Belbet covered her mouth and nose with her hand, and then reached out to break off a large piece of honeycomb. What came off was roughly the size of her ribcage, and she groaned under the sticky weight of it.

She did suffer one sting, and it hurt sharply, drawing a hiss from her lips. But she held on, and the two of them carried the massive honeycomb back to camp. They left it on one of the skin sides of one of their sitting furs, and then returned to the smokey flames. Helping Eefim put them out, Belbet then risked again, reaching out to grab a second honeycomb, from the immeasurable amount already there.

Bringing this back to camp doubled their honey and beeswax, and Belbet thought that was a good afternoon’s work. She asked Dahnei to go get her a cool rock to put on her bee sting, before working open one of the cured gourds. Cleaning it out, she set the seeds and innards aside to be sifted through later. Right now, she needed a place to put the honey. She wiped out the inside as best she could with a wet hand, and then dried it as best she could. She didn’t like that there would be water in with the honey, which could cause contamination, but… it was the best she could do right now.

With Dahnei and Eefim both watching with wide eyes, Belbet cut off the darker cells, which were surely full of baby bees, leaving them as they were. Then, she began squeezing the honey out of the beeswax and into the gourd. The beeswax she put into one of their boiling skins, and prepared to melt it down. Soon, they had a massive gourd filled with honey, and liquid beeswax ready to be poured into cured gourds.

Luckily, she had help with this part of the project. The moment she showed them how to saw off the tops of the cured gourds, Eefim took over and had the other two sawed off, cleaned out and washed by the time Belbet was done with hers. They put these three aside to dry in the sun, and helped Deenat with digging out the ground for their storage room. Mohniit even helped, picking up little handfuls of dirt and carrying them outside the carefully outlined hole.

By the time dusk hit they were all exhausted and collapsed around the fire. A poorly roasted skewer of vegetables, along with a section of the rabbit meat from Eefim’s catches the other day was given to each and dinner was a quiet, tired affair. The children didn’t seem to mind curling up immediately after dinner, and going to sleep in the house.

Belbet added the pumpkin seeds to her growing seed bank, stored in a small rabbit fur that Eefim had cured for her. Then, she took the bundles of herbs she’d gathered and hung them up, so that they’d dry for easy storage. She checked for seeds there, too, and started them soaking. Soon, they’d have rosemary, thyme, echinacea and calendula growing in their garden too.

Only then did she let herself crawl into the house to curl up with her two children, the fireplace embers warming the little space as surely as the bodies in it.

The still hours of the early morning dark were shaken awake by the shriek of chickens. Belbet slammed upright and pushed through the sea of limbs, which were also aiming to sit up, and headed for the door to their house. Stumbling out into the dark, she realized quickly the reason. There was something in the chicken pen with the chickens. Something that had pushed aside her little covering easily. Something with eyes that glowed in the dark, and teeth that caught the starlight in a gleaming white.

A fox.

Belbet felt shame spike through her for not having thought of such a thing. She’d forgotten the most basic rule of domestication. Protect your livestock. She picked up a rock and hucked it at the fox as hard as she could. She missed by a mile, but that and the loud yell she roared at it got the fox to flee.

She checked the carnage and sure enough, one of their chickens was torn apart, and the other was scared witless. She sighed, picking up the bloody body of the bird, debating whether they should truss it and have it for breakfast. Then another shriek took her attention away from that, turning to Mohniit, who stared at the bird with wide, watering eyes.

“Mama… chicky…” He whined, dangerously close to a meltdown.

“Oh baby…” Belbet sighed, passing the dead bird off to her sister, who took it and did indeed start preparing it for breakfast. Belbet knelt in front of her little boy, and wrapped him up in a hug. “We didn’t protect the chicken well enough, and so it’s passed on. Now, its body will nourish us as thanks for our care, and its spirit will be reborn somewhere. Okay?”

The two-year old couldn’t understand such an explanation, not really. He understood, “Chicky gone?”

“Yeah, baby. Chicky gone.” Belbet sighed, and rubbed his back when he burst into tears, clutching at her furs. She picked him up, carrying him to the fire to sit with her, even as he bawled his loss to the world. Dahnei soon joined them, curling against her mama’s side.

“I’ll find us new chickens.” Eefim promised, frowning as seriously as an eleven-year-old could.

“That might be a good idea. If we can get a rooster, they’ll fight foxes to protect the other chickens. But Roosters are more dangerous than regular chickens.” Belbet explained.

“Roo’?” A tiny, wet voice asked.

“Rooster. It’s a boy chicken.” Belbet cooed, “The one we have is a girl chicken.”

“I’ll catch one.” Eefim nodded, and his mother patted his shoulder. He looked at her, that awe still on his face, as if affection from his mother was something completely new. Maybe Belbet should suggest he and Deenat spend some time together?

“We also need to pour the beeswax into the gourds today, and fill them with boiled, cooled water.” Belbet held up her fingers, counting out what needed to be done today. “We also need to harvest more he-Hey, Deenat, cover that in honey and cook it. It’ll taste really good. We need to harvest more herbs, too, and make a drying rack. While we’re at it, we should make a fur-drying rack too. It’ll help with tanning the furs Eefim brings us.”

“We still need to finish the storage house too,” Deenat said, scooping honey onto the chicken meat she’d sheared off the small bird. She’d cut all the pieces touched by the fox out entirely, tossing them into the fish-trap-bound pile of scraps. “And getting wood for the woodpile.”

The sun rose as they chattered over their breakfast. It was eventually decided that Belbet would show Dahnei how to work with the hot wax, and then join Deenat in the garden, weeding and taking care of watering. Eefim would do as he’d been doing for a while, searching for birds to tame and eggs to steal and animals to hunt. Mohniit would, of course, be doing the most important job of all; being cute and smiling at them all.

Before he left, Belbet made Eefim take some of the meat they’d saved with him. “If you see the wolf, throw the meat at it and run away. It’ll probably eat the meat and leave you alone, and then you can come back safely.”

“Yes, Aunt.” Eefim promised, before heading out into the woods. The eyes of his mother and aunt followed him.

“Hey, sister,” Belbet started, working on melting the wax again. “You should spend some time with Eefim. When he comes back, maybe you two could skin the animals together?”

Deenat blinked, “Why? He can do it.”

“Because he wants to spend time with you. It makes him happy to see that you’re interested in him. Children need their parents to want to know about them.” Belbet explained.

Deenat frowned at the ground, as if it might hold the answers to her confusion.

“Just try it. I’ll bet it makes him really happy, okay?” Belbet smiled, before turning to her own daughter, and carefully showing her how to spread the wax inside the gourds. She showed her how to make an even coating, and then set it upside down in the dirt so the excess wax would drain out. “Just like that, baby. You can do it.”

Then, she turned to follow Deenat into the garden area. As always, the work there was almost meditative. Pulling weeds from in between the rows, digging out stones where she could find them. It felt good, to transform the land the way she was. She always felt lighter, softer, when she did, as if all the bad feelings in her melted into the earth through her arms.

Today, the feeling was even more pronounced. She could almost sense a slide of energy through her arms, into the dirt. And when it reached the earth, the energy pulsed. The pulse was soothing and warm, and when she imagined cradling it to her, she could feel the tingle of that energy along her skin. Boredom prompted her to imagine this tingle sinking beneath her skin, and to her core.

Somehow, when she imagined her inner core, it looked exactly like that ball she’d seen in her dreams. The small golden orb that sat in the curve of her hip bones, right above her pelvis. When she pushed the tingling towards the ball, it followed little rivers in her body, branching and flowing, before settling inside the golden orb.

Now that her attention was on it (despite her hands still picking up and tossing small rocks out of the garden area), she could feel a slight spin that seemed slow and steady. Inexorable, like the orbit of the planet around the sun, it spun in her belly in a counter-clockwise fashion that seemed odd to her. But when she tried to imagine it spinning clockwise, she actually felt a shock of pain flash through her, so she decided not to do that again just then. She’d have to prod at that sore tooth, so to speak, later.

Oddly, the feeling of moving the sparkles from the earth to her arms, through her body and that little golden orb, and then back to the earth actually soothed the pain as well as the general ache of exertion. She felt better, when she was done, than when she’d started. So when she lifted herself from the dirt, stretching out the pleasant ache in her back, she realized it wasn’t even really noon yet.

Checking on the gourds, she found they were in fact dry. She had Dahnei paint on a second coat, before letting her gather up some wood so they could begin boiling the ridiculous amount of water they were going to store. This would help in the long run not only with cleanliness but with cooking too. With Dahnei occupied, she turned her attention to her youngest, smiling upon seeing him piling dirt up in a mound.

She settled down in the dirt next to him, and started drawing out little paths from what she thought was a little mountain. The boy looked up at her, confused. No adult had joined him in play, his entire life, and his little rabbit ears twitched in confusion. Belbet leaned forward, “What are we playing?”

Mohniit looked between his mother and the little mountain. Then, he pointed. “Hill.” He began piling more earth along the side of the mountain, his scooping handfuls making it lopsided. The dark, silty earth made her think of making sand castles on the beach. So while Mohniit was patting his little masterpiece to pack it, she got up to get the wooden bowl she’d been working on. Since this wasn’t food-related, the bowl should be fine to collect water.

She jogged down to the river, amazed at how unwinded she was, collected water and then jogged back. Then, to the soundtrack of Mohniit’s annoyed whining, she dumped the water all over the little mountain and the surrounding area. This turned the soil into mud, and made it much easier to work, as she began making little holes and caves in the hill her son was making.

“See? Sandhome.” She’d teach him the real word for it later, but for now, she watched as he looked between the little hill, and the cabin they’d made out of the cliffside. It made her smile when he reached back and patted the mudcastle with a meaty *thwak* sound.

“Home!” He squealed, and she nodded, scooping more of the inside out, while adding more mud to stabilize the hole she was making. In a flash, between Mohniit’s little hands helping her (and collapsing her tunnel, but eh, it was his mountain) and the tunnel collapsing, she realized something.

She’d been wracking her brains, trying to remember anything she knew about metal smelting, because she knew that to make a smoker, you needed a metal barrel. But just then, she’d realized that pre-metal people were smoking meat. So how was it done?

In adobe, of course! In mud-baked little caves, with the fire underneath! She laughed, reaching out and dragging her muddy little son into a hug that made him yelp out, “Mama! No!” because she’d disturbed his rhythm.

She kissed his little lop ear, and then let him get back to his game. She had an adobe smoker to build.