The Standing Cave (832 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: Fiction
Rating: 2 on 24 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack 11058 Hates Johnny (View user info) at 2006-02-03 12:54:34 EST
With a keening howl, the wind swept through the narrow streambed, chasing a few dusty leaves and sloughing a thin layer of powdered snow off the frozen surface.
Mrukk watched the snow rise to dance with the leaves as he followed the course of the gust, turning his back into the wind and pulling his furs more tightly around him. After it passed, he turned his eyes to the leaden sky. Dusk was only a few hours away, and with the night came unsurvivable cold. Hunger roiled in his belly as he set off again, up the thin wash toward the source of the frozen stream.
As the gully opened up into the forest proper he knelt for a moment on the ice, studying a fast freezing splash of crimson. The wounded deer was fading fast and he was getting close. But he was also running out of time.
The few remaining Demosee were depending on him to bring food back to the caves before the true cold fell. He was miles away; he needed to find and finish the animal soon if he was to stand a chance of getting back alive. And if he didn't get back alive, his people would die.
He stood and pulled a fresh ashwood spear from the quiver strapped against his back. He scented the air, pulling it deeply through his nose, ignoring the way the cold clung to the moist membranes within, making them starchy and stiff. He smelled desperate copper. West.
Moving away from the stream, he was thankful the bleeding deer had made for the woods. At least he would be out of the wind. It sapped his strength, made him sleepy. He stamped his feet as he approached the shelter of the trees, trying to bring more feeling into his numb toes. He grumbled a quiet curse as one last gust of wind assailed him, pushing him a few steps off course.
This winter had been the worst in the memory of the tribe. One by one, the Demosee elders had succumbed to the coughing death until only he remained. The most junior of the elders, responsible now for the remainder. And what a small number still depended on him. A handful of young mothers and a half dozen children were all that remained of a tribe that, in Mrukk's childhood, numbered in the hundreds.
Disease and accident took some. Cold took the rest. When the cold came, game became scarce. The dwindling tribe moved south, but they could find no warmer clime.
He brushed a pine bough out of the way and entered the wood. At his feet, another spray of blood. He had to be close, there couldn't be much blood left in the creature. He followed the tracks and blood deeper, the forest growing thicker and darker around him.
As he crested a small rise, he came to a clearing. In the center of the clearing was a moss-covered hill two men high. In front of the thicket stood the wounded deer on shaking legs.
It was bigger than he'd hoped. He hadn't gotten a good look at it when he first cast his spear several miles away. It was a female, and the broken shaft of his first spear protruded from her shoulder. She was breathing hard, bloody foam spraying from her open mouth.
Mrukk took two creeping steps forward as she regarding him with unreadable eyes. He raised his spear to end her pain. As he released, she bolted again and the spear sailed into the thicket. It struck the mossy hill with the brittle sound of breaking ice and disappeared completely.
He barely registered it, because he was running down the rise into the clearing, trying to reach the deer before she made it back into the woods. He caught her at the edge, leaping to wrap his arms around her neck. His weight brought her down thrashing and he felt a stab of sorrow for the beast. She had suffered much and fought bravely.
But the survival of the Demosee was paramount. He managed to get a grip and twisted her head sharply, hearing the distinctive grinding crack of snapping neck-bones. She shuddered and spasmed for a moment, then was still.
He sighed, suddenly weary. Her blood was warm on his neck. He seized her legs and hoisted the deer over his shoulders, pleased with the way her weight settled on him. She would feed them for a week, and they could save some for salting. The real snows would be coming soon.
He carried her back to the mossy hill to retrieve his miscast spear. What he found was a hole the size of his fist in the side of the hill. He set the deer at the base of the hill and pulled the hanging moss away from the hole and stared in wonder. The hole created by his spear was framed in a jagged spray of colored ice. Some of it was the color of Jilca's eyes, some like a sunset. Some was a color he had seen only as a child, in summer thickets of wild berries. He stretched out a finger to touch the ice and withdrew it with a sharp hiss.
The tip of his finger bled from a slice in the pad. He stuck it in his mouth and leaned closer, trying to see inside the hole. The fading light didn't reveal much, but as he stared into it, one thing became clear. The hill was hollow.
He cast a long look into the sky above the clearing and at last decided he had a little time to examine the strange hill further. He began clearing moss away from the iced-over hole. Soon he had a patch nearly as tall as him pulled away. He stood back and stared. The colored-ice hole was half as tall as he was, and around that hole, the mound itself seemed to be made of evenly shaped blocks of stone. He approached the hole again, this time wrapping a slip of hide around his hand. He broke a piece of the colored ice away from the rent already made by his spear. It wasn't cold like ice.
He drew his last remaining spear and walked a slow circle around the mound, periodically probing through the moss. Each time, it made a thick hard <tak>. Almost on the opposite side of the hill, something completely different happened. The spear stuck into the hill with a hollow sounding <thwock>. He began clearing the moss again, more frantically than before. He didn't know why, but he wanted desperately to understand this hill. It was like a cave, standing alone. But it was not a cave. The shapes of the stone, the colored not-ice.
Soon, a man-sized slab of wood was revealed. He struck it again with the point of his spear, which penetrated minimally with the same <thwock>. This time, he heard a small echo. The slab gave a little, and he leaned his shoulder into it. The wood gave way beneath him, opening with a creaking groan to the side. The weak grey rays of the setting sun shone in over his shoulders.
The floor of the cave (it could be nothing else, now) was made of stone, but a different kind than the walls. This stone was also evenly shaped, but was of a different size and darker hue. Mrukk withdrew his spear from the wooden slab and stepped carefully into the interior. Dust rose under his feet and the smell of a long-sealed cavern assailed him.
His eyes adjusted in seconds, and he almost turned and bolted. Instead he forced himself to walk forward on trembling knees. The dead sat in rows on ornately carved wooden benches. Their furs were not furs at all. Here and there he spied pieces of leather, but the majority of the corpses were clad in something unknown. Something moldering that turned to dust under his hands. There were a score of bodies. They had been dead for a long time.
His eyes were drawn to the brightly colored hole of not-ice and he walked forward once more, traversing the corpses like they were a long lost tribe. He stopped briefly as he came to the end of the rows of dead. Before him knelt a final corpse, facing the others. On the ground before the desiccated frame was a small object, partially clothed in crumbling leather. A breeze from the opening brushed across it and it fell apart, revealing thin, impossibly frail and whitened leaves that blew into scraps in the slight wind.
Mrukk raised his eyes to the colored hole and realized it was bigger than what he saw from the outside. Dozens of pieces of the colored not-ice were set in a frame some unrecognizable wood or stone (or, the way the light reflected from it, something else entirely). Suddenly he saw it. If he looked at the frame as a whole, instead of focusing on each piece of not-ice, an image revealed itself.
He recognized the shape of a man, with a hole in his side where Mrukk's spear had crashed through. The man was bearded with long hair, much like Mrukk himself. His arms were outstretched and his feet crossed over each other. His head was turned up, and he seemed to be resting on a pair of crossed pieces of wood.
A shiver crossed Mrukk's spine like a creeping snow-fox. This image disquieted him more than the bodies, more than the very presence of this strange standing cave.
He left quickly, closing the wooden slab behind him. He hoisted the deer over his shoulder and made for the frozen streambed. There were many questions racing through his mind, which he felt would never really be answered, about the strange tribe-within-the-hill.
His people would have warm bellies tonight.
For now, that was enough.
User Reviews
Submitted by madddonkey255 (user info) at 2006-04-04 23:19:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This reminds me of Mitchell Smith's Snowstorm trilogy, if you haven't read it you should. It's about a tribe of people that live in a new ice age in the future after an apocalypse. I find it really good.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2006-02-22 18:20:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
There really needs to be more to this.
More!!!
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-02-17 14:19:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Thanks for linking this as it does truly kick ass.
Submitted by garcon_fou (user info) at 2006-02-09 12:17:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by CoffeeAndSmokes (user info) at 2006-02-07 14:42:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
awesome
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-02-07 12:44:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome as usual, but sadly with as few as usual readers.
Could you mail me Jack?
dave.groves.at.gmail.com
Thanks.
-Dave
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-04 16:04:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Words are a poor vehicle to describe this piece.
Fantastic, awesome, and great don't even come close.
It seems to be open to a sequel or three, so please consider
it. Thanks for posting this.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2006-02-04 15:17:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I am glad I clicked on this!
Excellent!
Submitted by omnifica (user info) at 2006-02-04 10:40:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
holy crap!
Submitted by GuinnessSince1759 (user info) at 2006-02-04 02:18:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I loved this.
Submitted by fried-green-potatoes (user info) at 2006-02-03 16:18:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"...it fell apart, revealing thin, impossibly frail and whitened leaves that blew into scraps in the slight wind. "
Outstanding, Jack.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-03 16:06:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
YOU DID IT
YOU FINALLY DID IT
GOD DAMN YOU
GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL
<pounds sand>
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-02-03 15:55:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fan freakin' tastic.
Submitted by madddonkey255 (user info) at 2006-02-03 15:49:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2006-02-03 15:03:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
YES!
Submitted by Spam (user info) at 2006-02-03 14:26:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Cheers.
Submitted by The_Yellow_Dart (user info) at 2006-02-03 14:16:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Teephphah (user info) at 2006-02-03 13:39:25 (#)
Ranking: 2
I knew this would get a +2 when I read "With a keening howl."
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2006-02-03 14:10:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
joe, after reading your tales of raccoon revenge, i have no worries about your marksmanship
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2006-02-03 14:04:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
creative motivation to make me a better marksman, jack
Submitted by belowground (user info) at 2006-02-03 13:49:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Kept me interested.
Submitted by Teephphah (user info) at 2006-02-03 13:39:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I knew this would get a +2 when I read "With a keening howl."
Submitted by MavisMing (user info) at 2006-02-03 13:07:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-02-03 13:01:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
fucking nice.
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2006-02-03 12:55:07 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
no time to proof. sorry, all.