Evolution

There were thousands of deer in this herd alone, crowding out of the children’s sight. Like many giant herbivores in this paradoxically rich time, the megaloceros flourished in vast migrant crowds, wandering all across the Old World from Britain to Siberia and China. And this vast herd was bearing down on Jahna and Millo. It was a slow-moving barrier, immense antlers clattering, stomachs rumbling. The air was full of the overwhelming stink of musk and dung.

The children needed badly to get out of the way. Jahna saw immediately that they couldn’t evade the herd by running inland; it was too big, too widespread for that. The deer surely wouldn’t penetrate far into the forest, but they would force the children back into that deepening darkness, which was a place she really didn’t want to go back into.

On impulse she grabbed her brother’s hand. "Come on. The cliff!"

They ran across the frozen grass. The cliff edge sloped away sharply beneath a lip of turf. Hastily the children scrambled down. The bow on Jahna’s back caught on outcroppings of the rock, slowing her down. But they made it. They huddled on a narrow ledge, peering up at the ocean of black-brown fur that washed slowly along the cliff top.

The huge male looked on indifferently. Then he turned away, his burdened head dipping.

The antlers were heavy to carry, like weights held at arms’ length, and the buck’s neck had been redesigned to bear that load, with huge vertebrae and muscles like cables. The antlers were for sexual display — and for fighting; it was an awesome sight when two of these giant bucks clashed, heads down. But those great antlers would doom these animals. When the ice retreated and their habitat shriveled, there would be a selection pressure for smaller body sizes. While other species shrank to fit, the megaloceros would prove unable to give up their elaborate sexual displays. They had become overspecialized, their tremendous antlers over-expensive, and they would prove unable to cope with change.

The children heard a muffled growl. Jahna thought she saw a pale form, low-slung, stocky, move over the snow like a muscled ghost, trailing the deer. It might have been a cave lion. She shuddered.

"What now?" Millo whispered. "We can’t stay here."

"No." Jahna cast around. She saw that their ledge led down the cliff face to a hollow a few body’s lengths below. "That way," she said. "I think it’s a cave."

He nodded curtly. He led the way, edging his way down the narrow ledge, clinging to the chalk. But he was more frightened than he was prepared to admit, she realized.

At last, the perilous descent over, they threw themselves into the hollow and lay panting on the rough floor. The cave, worn in the chalk, reached back into dark recesses. The floor was littered with guano and bits of eggshell. It must be used as a nesting ground, by gulls, perhaps. There were blackened patches scattered over the floor — not hearths, but obviously the sites of fires.

"Look," said Millo, his voice full of wonder. "Mussels."

He was right. The little shellfish were piled up in a low heap, surrounded by a scattering of flint flakes. A flicker of curiosity made her wonder how they had got there. But hunger spoke louder, and the two of them fell on the mussels. Frantically they tried to prize open the shells with their fingers and stone blades, but the shells were stubborn and would not yield.

"Graah."

They both whirled.

The gravely voice had come out of the darkness at the back of the cave. A figure came forward. It was a burly man, dressed in a wrap of what looked like deer hide — no, Jahna thought, not a man. He had a vast, prominent nose, and powerful stocky legs, and huge hands. This was a bonehead, a massive bull. He glared at them.

The children backed away, clutching at each other.

He had no name. His people did not give themselves names. He thought of himself as the Old Man. And he was old, old for his kind, nearly forty years old.

He had lived alone for thirty of those years.

He had been dozing at the back of this cave, in the smoky, comforting glow of the torches he kept burning there. He had spent the early morning combing the beaches below the cliffs at low tide, seeking shellfish. With the coming of evening he would soon have woken up anyway; evening was his favorite time of day.

But he had been disturbed early by the noise and commotion at the cave’s entrance. Thinking it might be gulls coming after his piles of shellfish — or something worse, an arctic fox maybe — he had come lumbering out into the light.

Not gulls, not a fox. Here were two children. Their bodies were tall and ludicrously spindly, their limbs shriveled and their shoulders narrow. Their faces were flat, as if squashed back by a mighty punch, their chins were pointed, and their heads bulged upward into comical swellings like huge fungi.