Gos squinted from his high perch in the cave mouth, down the cliff face to the wide icy beach and across the pack ice, across the endless glaring white pack ice. He was young when this tiny cave became home. In those times, the sea ice was yet solid in front of him, so it was good that he found this shelter where birds and bats lived and nourished him. And important was this for Gos’s safety. Earlier, a band of wolf like beings had attacked Gos’s little group, killing and eating all but Gos and his parents, who had hidden in the frozen marshes, inland from this high cave.
When winds didn’t blow, Gos foraged along the edge of the ice, collecting crabs, turtles and beached fish. One day, a woman came home with him. She didn’t ask. He didn’t invite her; she just followed. Now, there was a female child in the high cave too.When winds didn’t blow, Gos foraged along the edge of the ice, collecting crabs, turtles and beached fish. One day, a woman came home with him. She didn’t ask. He didn’t invite her; she just followed. Now, there was a female child in the high cave too.
Early one morning, Gos saw a young bear gorging on the remains of a furred seal. He walked slowly across the ice to where the ravenous bear, oblivious to his presence, was soon battered senseless with a boulder of ice. Gos needed the meat, and he needed the fur; so bears were often his prey.
One fateful day, Gos noticed a strange odor as he stood squinting toward the horizon. Far out in the ocean to the south of the sea ice, the water began to bubble strangely, and deafening, howling jets of water and foam shot skywards. And this foam soon covered the scene, the whole vista, clear to the horizon. The sea rose and enveloped the beach and the lower cliff beneath the cave. Each day, it got worse. The smell was putrid. The fire would not stay alight. Breathing became impossible. The woman and the child died. Gos crept to the back of the cave, and laid down, waiting for his life to end.
A wind blew, and when it did, Gos, with much effort, was able to breath weakly. He found the strength to push the bodies of the woman and child out of the cave, into the rising water. He chewed on the flesh of the young bear and he pelted stones at the bats, killing none this time. Some days, the fire would brighten up; it depended on the wind. Gos understood nothing of what was happening. But what he saw made him choke with terror. The birds flew about the sky no longer; instead, their lifeless bodies drifted on the swell or lay scattered on the receding ice pack. He found that he could see better across the open water without narrowing his eyes to avoid dazzling light reflected from the pack ice.
Nor did Gos have any concept of time. He ate what he could grab, when he had the strength, and he labored painfully at breathing. Mostly, he lay terrified on the floor of the little cave.
Time passed; the atmosphere warmed. Barely at first then substantially. The water lost its chill and breathing came easier. Seepage in the cave was yet fresh enough to sip. The beach was submerged beneath the water’s surface, so Gos could not venture far down from the cave. More time passed, the sea ice below him began cracking and breaking up. As the water warmed still further, the air got humid, then rain fell as droplets melded with dust. Clouds appeared in the sky.
Far along the water’s edge to his left, Gos saw a massive whale; it had been thrown against the cliff by the turbulent, turbid, ugly ocean which swirled and bubbled and rose and receded some days and calmed on other days. He could see that death would soon come to the whale, so he waited and watched. As a youngster, he had learned about whales.
And Gos had seen as a youth how to transport fire. He gathered two flat pieces of soft rock, mudstone, the length of his foot and as thick as its width. He’d scraped at each piece with his hand-stone cutter to make a hollow such that when put together the two plats enclosed a space the size of his fist. Then, he scooped fire ashes with red coals into the hollow and tied strips of bear hide to hold the rocks for carrying. Thus equipped, and with a fresh bear skin and strips of bear flesh, Gos walked to the lifeless whale, gathering pieces of driftwood as he went. The beach, close to the cliff, was crackling beneath his feet, but this was not ice, it was hard and bright and of fine texture, a substance he’d not before seen, left by the rushing ocean.
As Gos neared the whale, he saw two figures lying prone upon the monster. One, a woman, was hungrily gnawing at the dark blubber, while the other, an infant, watched helplessly as the woman chewed, now and again taking fragments from her mouth and passing them to the child. Gos made his presence known as he approached, showing as best he could that he meant no harm. The whale’s tail was wedged against the cliff and this enabled Gos to climb up to where the woman was sitting by the pathetic hole that she’d chewed into the whale’s blubber.
Spreading the bear skin right there on the whale, Gos sat upon it then passed fragments of the raw bear meat that he’d brought, to the woman and her child. Before long, he had a fire burning, the driftwood he’d gathered and the oil of the whale blubber creating passable light and heat. He gestured to the others to also sit upon the bear skin, but was not surprised when they ignored the invitation. His talk meant nothing to them; no common words could be found, but gestures and imitation helped to connect the three. The woman though wrapped in a tattered fur, was visibly emaciated. She’d clearly eaten so little in recent times that Gos wondered if she could remain alive.
The sun came and went, over and over, and the three huddled atop the whale; Gos cut a deepening gash in the whale to win blubber and flesh. And he scouted for fuel, for heat and to partially cook the whale flesh. But he was uneasy; he couldn’t cease scanning the land and the sea, the land lest marauders should come in search of a meal of their own kind, and the sea lest the ocean should resume its terrifying eruption.
Late one evening Gos sprang to his feet, yelling guttural sounds, and, grabbing the bearskin and the remaining bear meat, he took the child under his arm and rushed off the whale and along the beach toward his cave home. The woman ran after him; he’d seen massive geysers far out to sea. Gos knew that breathing would again, very soon, become impossible.
Once the three were safely in the cave and had restarted the fire, they waited in fear for what would happen next. It started as before; the fire went low, they could barely breathe; experience told Gos to lie stock still on the floor of the cave. The others followed his example. Much later, a wind got up and breathing came easier. The tiny group established a routine for living. A pelican, the first live bird since the latest sea eruption, alighted in the cave entrance; Gos grabbed it. Fresh, warm meat.
The little cave provided space for the three of them once they’d rearranged the stones that Gos kept there for protection. He mounded the rocks to one side of the entrance, the more easily to take them up should marauders threaten to climb the cliff. The collection of driftwood was arranged, all the better to save space. They moved the fire itself to give room for sitting and sleeping around it. Turtle shells when not in use for keeping salt-water and for heating food, were nested inside one another by the wall. Gos draped bear skins across the entrance to dry, instead of leaving them heaped on the rough rock floor as before.
The three settled into a life of watching and waiting. Gos pondered and gazed across the ocean toward the far away horizon. He puzzled deeply about the awful turmoil around him. He knew it was much beyond his poor wit ever to understand, but his desire to retain life and hope still drove him.
Gos had not the slightest sense that he was enduring the beginning of the end of an ice age that had lasted many thousands of years. Nor did Gos know that his terrifying privations would be known of, far, far ahead in years. At night, he gazed up at the brilliant stars and sensed how small a part in the scheme of things was his minute being. But a tiny spark in his brain told him that henceforth his kind had to begin figuring it all out. He continued to ponder for the remainder of his short life, the deep suffering that engulfed him:
Why did the ocean roil so furiously? Why did it rise then recede in a coating of foam, over and over? Why did the ice break up and give way to a muddy, furious ocean? Why did breathing get so difficult?
What caused the never-waning, atrocious smell? Why did all the birds die? Why did the air and the water get warmer? Why did so many clouds appear in the formerly almost clear sky? Why did so much heavy rain start falling? Why did the surf leave a coating, a brittle skin, a shiny substance on the beach, that Gos had not seen before, and where did this strange substance come from?
End of Part One
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