Evolution

But Mother frowned. This match wouldn’t be right. She stood and took Eyes’s hand, prizing it away from the dismayed Ant-eater. Then she walked the girl through the scattered people until she found Sapling. He was lying on his back, gazing up at an empty sky.

Mother pushed Eyes into the dirt beside Sapling. He looked up at Mother, baffled. Mother said, "You. You. Fuck. Now."

Sapling looked at Eyes, obviously trying to mask his revulsion. Though they had spent much time in each other’s company with Mother, he had never shown any sexual interest in Eyes, even before her face had become so badly disfigured, nor had she shown any in him.

But now, Mother saw, it was right that they should couple. Ant-eater would have been wrong; Sapling was right. Because Sapling understood. She stood over them until Sapling’s hand had moved to the girl’s small breast.

A full month after Ox’s death, the people were woken by a wild, high-pitched keening. It was Mother. Bewildered, most of them already terrified of this disturbing woman in their midst, they came running to see what new strangeness was going to befall them.

Mother was kneeling beside the sapling trunk that had borne the skull of her child. But now the skull lay on the ground, broken into pieces. Mother pawed at the fragments, wailing as if the child had died a second time.

Eyes and Sapling hung back, unsure what Mother wanted them to do.

Mother, cradling the pathetic, broken bits of skull in her left hand, glared around at the people. Then her right hand shot forward, pointing. "You!"

People flinched. Heads turned, following her line. Mother was pointing at Honey.

"Here! Walk, walk here!"

The sagging jowls under Honey’s chin shook with terror. She tried to pull back, but those around her stopped her. At last Sapling stepped forward, grabbed the girl by the wrist, and dragged her to Mother.

Mother threw the bits of skull in her face. "You! You throw stone. You smash boy."

"No, no. I—"

Mother’s voice was hard. "You stop rain."

Honey squealed, as terrified as if it might be true, and urine dribbled down her thighs.

This time, Mother didn’t even have to perform the kill herself.

It did not start to rain that day. Or the next. Or the next after that. But on the third day after Honey’s sacrifice thunder pealed across a dry sky. The people cowered, an ancient reflex that dated back to the days when Purga had huddled in her burrow. But then the rain came at last, pouring out of the sky as if it had burst.

The people ran, laughing. They lay on their backs, mouths open to the water falling from the sky, or they rolled and threw mud at each other. Children wrestled, infants wailed. And there was a great round of coupling, an instinctive, lusty response to the end of the drought, this new beginning of life.

Mother sat beside her blood-soaked pallet and watched this, smiling.

As always she was thinking on many levels simultaneously.

Her sacrifice of Honey had once again been politically astute. Honey had not been a calculating opponent, but she was a focus of dissent; with her gone it would be easier for Mother to consolidate her power. At the same time the sacrifice had clearly been necessary. The sky and earth were appeased; mankind’s first gods had relented, and let their children live.

But on still another level of calculation Mother knew that the storm would have come whatever she did. If the rain had not followed her sacrifice of Honey, she would have been prepared to continue, working through the people one by one — pushing her spear even into Eyes’s heart if she had to.

She knew all these things simultaneously; she believed many contradictory things at once. That was the essence of her genius. She smiled, the water running down her face.

IV

Sapling walked slowly along the grassy river bank. He wore a simple skin wrap, and carried nothing more than a spear tied over his back and a net bag containing a few bone tools and artwork — no stone tools; if they were needed, it was easier to knap them on the spot than carry them.

In his thirties now — fifteen years after the deaths of Ox and Honey and the installation of Mother as the troop’s de facto leader — Sapling had filled out, his face harder, his hair thinning and streaked with gray. But his body was as whiplash thin as ever. It wasn’t possible to hide the tattoos that covered his arms and face, but he had been careful to rub dirt and mud over his skin to subdue their effect. Over the years the tattoos had proved alarming to strangers, and the barrier of mistrust was high enough anyhow.

He looked like a hunter, out exploring at random far from his troop, perhaps seeking to trade. But he was not alone; others watched every step, hidden in the foliage of the riverbank. His appearance was an elaborate lie. And his exploration was anything but random. He was scouting.