Copyright A M Layet 2014
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A Reminder of How Things Used to be in the Good Old Days of the Stone Age...
It is cold, wet and muddy. (Some things never change). There are no cosy, comfortable beds, burgers, or take aways. But there are wild animals, wild mothers, wild sisters, and school. Also, roaming around the village, there is:
Lint – our hero, brighter than a spark.
Ma – Lint’s mother. Lint’s Pa died years ago, and since then, Ma has been flexing her muscles. She’s starting to look more like a man than the men do.
Olgan – Lint’s older sister. The fact that she is a girl is kept absolutely secret by all of the family, so that Olgan can attend the boys’ school and learn how to hunt. Also she’s smart; a little too smart, if you know what I mean.
Clan Chief Ghun – The boss. Not a very competent one, but no one seems to have noticed.
Magna – The girl’s teacher and a formidable woman, as the boys discovered last year when they attacked the girls. Magna beat them with her club and chased them back to the village.
Chapter One
When Olgan told Lint school started tomorrow, Lint looked at her blankly. Why tell me, he thought, it’s nothing to do with me. But then, one awful moment later, he remembered. It had everything to do with him. He went to school now. He had completed a whole year at school. It had been terrible. Or rather, Ekk, their vicious and lazy teacher, had been terrible. Ekk had seemed to think the whole point of school was to punish children, and, in particular, he had liked to punish Lint. For Ekk, school had nothing to do with learning. Lint had disagreed with this idea.
So Lint had organised a rebellion against Ekk, and the children had managed to drive him away at the end of the last school year. He had never been seen since. The boys had done what they liked all summer, and Lint had completely forgotten that school existed. But if school really was starting tomorrow, as Olgan said it was, there would have to be a new teacher. But who could that be? Lint had no idea.
Clan Chief Ghun also seemed to have no idea who the new teacher would be. He had not given the matter any thought at all over the summer break. This was not surprising; he rarely gave any matter much thought.
In fact, nobody had given the matter any thought at all. On the following morning, when the children trooped over to their clearing in front of the school cave and waited for their teacher to appear, they waited in vain. No-one came.
At first they didn’t notice there wasn’t a teacher. Then, they did notice, but they didn’t care. They were too busy running around. When they had had enough of running around, there were a few fights between the boys. When these ended badly, they all looked around for a teacher. At that point, some of them actually wanted a teacher to appear. But still no one came. Eventually the boys wandered off in ones and twos, bored, to sit down or find something to eat. No one thought to ask Clan Chief Ghun, or anyone else, who their new teacher was.
The next day they all lined up for school as before. As before, no one came. Very quickly the children decided there was no point waiting and headed back to the village and their exasperated mothers. Ma scowled when she saw Lint and Olgan returning so soon. Tan, their little brother, looked delighted.
‘School!’ she growled, stamping her foot.
‘Ma, there isn’t any school,’ Lint explained. ‘There’s no teacher, so there’s no school.’
But Ma didn’t appear to understand.
‘School,’ she repeated, coming closer, still growling.
Olgan tried to help.
‘Come with us Ma,’ she said, taking hold of one of Ma’s enormous hands. ‘We’ll show you.’
They lead Ma up to the deserted clearing. Then they took her inside the empty school cave.
‘You see?’ Olgan explained. ‘There’s no teacher, and no school. All the other kids have gone home too.’
Ma did see, but she was not happy. Her face looked like a thunderstorm as she stomped back to her hut in the village. When they got back, she gave both Lint and Olgan a very unpleasant chore.
‘Make tough,’ she told Olgan, handing her a fresh piece of animal skin. Olgan was supposed to scrape all the remaining fat and flesh off the skin. After that Olgan had to find a suitable rock basin, where she could wash the skin, and leave it to soak in her own pee. Lint was luckier. The hide Ma gave him had already been soaked. All he had to do was start smearing it with horse poo, which Ma had, very kindly, already collected for the purpose.
As soon as Lint and Olgan were finished, and their hands smelt as bad as Ekk’s breath, they disappeared without another word to Ma. The last thing they wanted was another job.
The following morning Lint and Olgan were determined to go to school. They had a good idea what Ma would make them do if they stayed at home. So, even though they felt very sure there would be no school, they set off in a hurry after breakfast with smiles on their faces. There was an unspoken agreement between them. Whatever happened, they were not going home to Ma.
But Ma, despite the size of her brain, was suspicious. She suspected there would be no school again. So she followed them; and Tan followed her. She waited on the edge of the clearing, the only adult present, while the nine boys and Olgan ran around and staged a few mock hunts. It was obvious Ma was losing patience when her foot started tapping and an eerie rumble, like an earthquake, sounded from deep in her throat. Eight of the children ignored it; Lint and Olgan couldn’t.
Olgan asked Dec if he would pretend to be the teacher. He agreed at once. He quite liked the idea. He shouted for the children to get in line, and they did. As normal, there were a few scuffles to decide the places in the line. For once, Olgan did not try to compete with Jet. But Ban and Hohn did have a short, sharp tussle, which ended in victory for Ban’s mighty right arm.
Dec marched up and down in front of the line, not quite sure what to do next. From the corner of his eye, Lint could see that Ma was still there, watching. He sighed. Why wouldn’t she just go away and leave them to it? But he knew that giving up wasn’t Ma’s style. She didn’t know how to give up. She didn’t know when she was beaten. She just kept on trying at whatever it was she wanted to do, until she did it. Lint thought this was the reason Ma was on her own. Another woman would have found another mate long ago, after the death of their first man. Not Ma. She had been determined to survive, all on her own. She had refused to mate again, and now there was no chance. No one would have her now. She was her own man.
Lint’s position in the line up was at the very bottom. He had Ekk to thank for that. Ekk had put him there last year, and Lint knew it would be a terrible struggle to move up now. Unta and Kelc would rather die than let Lint move ahead of them. For the time being, Lint was stuck, at the very bottom of the line. Except that today, he wasn’t at the end of the line. Somebody else had joined the line, and was standing next to him. Lint turned round and saw his little brother Tan, staring up at him with wide eyes, and a smile on his face.
‘No, Tan,’ Lint gave his brother a push and pointed at Ma, ‘You’ve got to go back to Ma. You can’t stay here.’
But Tan did not want to go back to Ma. He shook his head and turned his big smile on Dec, who had just arrived in front of him.
‘How long do I have to keep doing this?’ Dec asked Lint.
‘Until Ma gives up and goes away,’ Lint told him, ‘which she won’t do while he’s here.’
He gave his little brother another shove.
‘So we’ve got to get rid of him.’
Dec started waving his arms trying to shoo Tan away, but Tan thought it was a game. He tried to shoo Dec back. Dec growled, annoyed
that the little boy appeared to be mocking his authority. Tan tried to growl back, pleased with how the game was developing. Dec made a run for him. Tan darted back, screaming with delight, then took his place in the line up again, but this time on tip toes, ready to run.
‘It’s not working,’ Lint told Dec. ‘He thinks you want to play with him.’
Dec had another idea. He retreated into the cave and returned with a big stick in his hand. He whorled it through the air with a gleam in his eye that reminded Lint eerily of Ekk. Dec advanced on the little boy, stick held high. Tan ran for it. Dec chased him all the way back to Ma, who grabbed her young son by the scrap of his neck and raised an eyebrow at Dec’s stick. Dec lowered it immediately.
Dec returned to the line up which, while he had been busy, had become more like a scrum and less like a line. He roared his disapproval and shouted for them all to get back in line. Then he prowled up and down the line, his stick raised, ready to attack. He stared them all in the eye, he breathed on them, scrutinised their bent heads. He waited for them to put a toe out of line. He was ready to show them who the boss was.
Olgan tentatively raised a hand.
‘Dec?’ she asked, and waited for him to give her permission to speak. ‘Ma’s gone now. You don’t need to be teacher any more.’
The line dispersed and the children fled, before Dec could even reply.
Lint and Olgan headed straight for the woods, out of Ma’s sight. Unfortunately, the other children were less cautious. Hohn and Ayat walked straight back into the village to their own mothers. Jet and Ban followed them, then Dec and Kelc. Soon every woman in the village knew that there was no school, again. Lots of the women began talking, to each other of course. They were not allowed to talk to the men outside of their own family. Unta’s Ma, Gayn, could have told Clan Chief Ghun that there was no school because she was his mate, but, like all the other women in the village, she was a little afraid of him. So she did nothing, except wonder why there was no school.
By the afternoon, there were a lot of bored boys and annoyed mothers in the village. Dec decided to lead an expedition of boys into the forest. They hadn’t gone far when they bumped into Lint and Olgan, who were still doing their best to stay away from Ma. They quickly joined forces and headed off towards the girls’ cave, where they hoped to have some fun.
The last time they had tried to attack the girls they had definitely come off worse. Magna, the girls’ teacher, had chased them all back to the village and beaten every boy she could get her hands on. Jet still had a lump on one shoulder where her club had caught him. But Dec was sure they had learnt their lesson.
‘Don’t attack them outright,’ he told the others. ‘Just make noises and do other stuff.’
Once again the boys and Olgan hid in the bushes around the girls’ cave. They started off with bird noises, which quickly turned into snarling lions, growling bears and then a herd of stampeding mammoths. When Magna came out to shout at them, she found the bushes deserted. The last thing the boys wanted was another confrontation with her.
So Magna went back to her cave, and the nine boys and Olgan returned to the bushes and continued making animal noises. To make life more interesting, Lint added some bloodcurdling shrieks which made it sound as if he were being eaten alive.
Magna came storming out again. The boys and Olgan tried to escape, but this time they had left it too late. Magna saw their retreating backs as they fled and she was so mad she decided to give chase. She followed them all the way back to the village where their exasperated mothers had just surrounded Clan Chief Ghun and a group of men back from hunting.
‘Clan Chief Ghun,’ Magna began, heading straight for him. But Clan Chief Ghun wasn't listening. Someone else had got to him first. Someone else was already trying to talk to him. It was the only other woman in the village who dared to speak to Clan Chief Ghun: Lint’s Ma.
‘No school,’ Ma exclaimed, and spread her arms wide. ‘No school, no school, no school. No teacher.’
Ma had grabbed hold of Lint and Olgan the minute they set foot back in the village. Now she had one arm on each, and was holding them in place and presenting them, like evidence, to Clan Chief Ghun.
But Clan Chief Ghun was puzzled. There had never been a problem with school before. It had always been fine. He tried to remember what normally happened.
‘No Ekk,’ Ma added helpfully.
Clan Chief’s Ghun’s puzzled expression cleared. Now he remembered. Ekk had gone. So there was no teacher! This was a problem indeed. He scratched his head. It was at this point that Magna stepped in front of him.
‘Clan Chief Ghun,’ she said. ‘The boys have once again been at the girls’ cave, making a nuisance of themselves and disturbing my lessons. As I understand it,’ she gave Ma a quick glance, ‘the boys have lost their teacher. May I suggest that you appoint a new teacher to take over, from tomorrow. The boys cannot be left for another day to run wild and cause mayhem.’
But this suggestion was no help to Clan Chief Ghun because he couldn’t understand it.
‘Get new teacher,’ Ma told Clan Chief Ghun.
Clan Chief Ghun nodded. He understood this perfectly. Even better, he didn’t have to think about it. The answer to the problem was standing right in front of him, being annoying, and giving him a headache with all her strange words and long sentences.
‘Magna teacher teach boys,’ Clan Chief Ghun declared.
‘But I have the girls to teach…’Magna interrupted at once.
‘No!’
What Clan Chief Ghun lacked in sentence structure, he made up for in authority. No one in the clan was supposed to interrupt the Clan Chief. Whoever you were, if Clan Chief said ‘No,’ you did not argue back. He looked around and pointed at the nearest woman, who happened to be Dec’s mother, Fen.
‘Fen teach girls, Magna teach boys,’ Clan Chief Ghun announced, and, rather pleased with himself, he turned his back on the whole troublesome lot, women and children, and got back to the more important business of dividing up the fresh kill, using as few words as possible.