Chapter 1
The next morning, Bonk strolled down a path lined with trees on one side and the slow moving croc-filled river on the other. He was carrying a long straight pole made of a branch stripped of leaves. Its end was sharp, jagged and splintered ... and pretty much the most advanced weaponry in the world.
Bonk’s attention was on a heron standing in the shallow water. Strolling around admiring wildlife wasn’t a good habit to get into, because there were plenty of nasties around ready to gobble a distracted caveman for a snack. But Bonk liked to study wildlife hunting techniques in the hopes he might pick up some pointers, the sad fact being he needed every pointer he could get.
As he watched, the leggy bird neatly speared a fish and gobbled it down. Silently, a set of eyes floated along the river towards the heron. The crafty bird noticed and gracefully launched into the sky. The croc-eyes simply veered downstream to go look for less vigilant prey.
Reminded of the presence of everyday danger, Bonk looked around. Nothing was paying any particular attention to him except for a mosquito which was sucking in some of Bonk’s inner juices. He smacked the bug and headed home.
Bonk’s cave was located halfway up a steep embankment at the end of a small mountain range. The side of the hill was dotted with caves filled with cavemen, cavewomen, cave-offspring and a host of bugs that depended on them for meals. Further down the range, a small volcano belched out the occasional bit of smoke.
Bonk scrabbled up the loose shale to the cave’s mouth and entered the dark, damp opening.
“Close the door,” Hedz called as he passed the threshold.
Bonk stopped short, “Door?”
A look went across his mate’s face. “Oh, right. We don’t have doors yet.”
“Yeah, right,” Bonk said, as usual having no idea what she was talking about.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could pick out details. Hedz was nursing Baby Eff in the sleeping pit. Their sons Frigg and Bush were sprawled in another pit that had been dug out and filled with comfortable pebbles. Lump, an ancient woman, was watching with half-lidded interest. They knew little about the old lady who had come with the cave when they moved in. She didn’t eat much, said even less and was soon a part of the family. There was no sign of Eff’s older sister Gop. He vaguely remembered her talking about a something she called a sleepover.
The boys’ eyes were glued to a large rock.
“What are you guys watching?”
(The use of the word ‘guy’ is a particularly loose translation since the word ‘guy’ wouldn’t be invented until some guy named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the English Parliament.)
Bush’s eyes never left the rock. “We’re watching the fights.”
Bonk’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah, who’s fighting?”
“Centipede,” Frigg grunted.
Now Bonk could see the multi-legged creature crawling over the top part of the rock. It was huge and black, with twitchy antennae, clicking mandibles and a big fat stinger glistening with poison.
“Who’s he fighting?”
“Scorpion,” Bush replied, popping something into his mouth without looking. Bonk saw a turtle shell filled with munchies in his lap. The munchies were moving. Most likely they were grubs Bush had dug out from under a log.
Just then a large scorpion scuttled from the other side of the rock. The centipede and scorpion spied each other the same time and paused to allow their tiny minds to assess the threat - which didn’t take much time, because with such little brains there wasn’t much to think with. Coming to the same conclusion at the same time, they rushed each other, claws and fangs flashing.
“Woo-hoo!” Frigg exclaimed.
“Get-em!” Bush roared.
“Boo-ya!” Bonk yelled.
They hooted and hollered as the scorpion and centipede writhed, small drips of poison spit flying through the air.
Hedz’s voice cut through the room. “Actually, Frigg and Bush are in trouble. They aren’t supposed to be watching any rock right now.”
Uh, oh, when she used that tone.
Bonk tore his eyes from the fight. “Why not?" Then he noticed what his mate was wearing and his eyebrows shot up into what little he had of a forehead.
“What are you wearing?”
She grinned, showing sharp canines, “Oh, do you like it?”
“You’re, you’re, you’re wearing …” he stammered.
She supplied the word to him. “Beaver.”
“But, but we’re naked. We don’t wear anything! What you’re wearing … it’s … it’s .. indecent.”
Hedz preened. “No, it’s provocative. You just don’t know the difference.”
Lump spoke from the depths of the cave, laughter in her tone, “You’re trouble, girl.”
Hedz grinned, “I know, right?”
Actually, much to Bonk’s surprise, the beaver pelts were turning him on. That and her sexy moustache, which was the envy of all of his friends from the Portsbar. If it wasn’t for baby Eff in her arms …
At that moment, the boys roared, slapping their hands on the cave floor in excitement. “Look! He got him!”
As Bonk’s head whipped around, his mate’s ‘ahem’ stopped him in mid-whip, causing a mild case of whiplash that any injury attorney would drool over.
“Wha…”
Her eyes were those of a cave lion. “I said they aren’t supposed to be watching rock right now.”
Her voice was much like that of aforesaid cave lion.
“Why not?” Bonk asked.
She gestured to the wall behind her. “Look, they drew graffiti all over the wall again.”
She was right. The wall was filled with crudely drawn antelopes running from a pack of lions toward a river where enormous crocodiles waited for them with big grins.
“Hey, that’s not bad,” he said admiringly. “They got the dimensions pretty close this time.” He pointed. “And see how the mane on the lion is nicely detailed?”
Hedz wasn’t into art appreciation.
In a dangerous voice, she growled, “Frigg and Bush. Drew. On. My. Wall.”
“Actually, this is my man cave,” he said, speaking before his mind could filter out dangerous words. This seemed to happen a lot, so perhaps he had a defective mind-filter.
Silence.
Hedz just looked at him.
The boys seemed to have gone into suspended animation and even the centipede stopped crunching on its meal.
The silence was profound enough he could hear the frantic pounding of his heart which was responding to the crisis by pumping additional blood necessary for feeding muscles in flight.
Finally Hedz spoke.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Her words released the Dementer spell that had frozen the cave.
Bonk’s lungs started up again. “Um, yeah, thanks.”
“Anyway, they drew on my wall.” An emphasis on the ‘my’ that this time his brain wisely ignored.
“Oh, yeah, right. They shouldn’t do that,” he stammered. Then he frowned. “Um, why exactly shouldn’t they do that?”
“It doesn’t come off.”
“Who cares? We live in a cave.”
A voice came from behind Bonk. “Yeah, Mom. Who cares?”
Hedz stunned Frigg into silence with the ‘Mother-Look’ she’d invented the previous week, the same Mother-Look that would benefit future mothers for time immortal. Then she continued, “If we leave it there, some day scientists might think we lived like this.”
Bonk blinked. “We do live like this."
“Maybe, but I don’t want them to know.”
More female logic. Too bad there weren’t books on the subject, or any other subject for that matter. Not that he’d have read them, unless they had pictures. But it would have been comforting to know someone was looking into the issue of how women thought.
“What’s a scientist?” Frigg and Bush chimed.
“None of your busine
ss,” Hedz snapped. She turned back to her mate. “Now where’s breakfast?”
“Breakfast?”
“Yes, breakfast, you know, three square meals a day.”
Bonk blinked. Why would someone eat a square breakfast?
“Oh, breakfast,” he said, stalling, suddenly remembering why he had been out. He’d gone to get food, then swung over to the bathroom where he caught up on the daily news scratched onto the walls on a daily basis by his friend Deth. After that he had gone to his work area to tinker with a project he’d been working on. The thought of food had simply slipped his mind.
She crossed her arms. “Yes, breakfast.”
Time to be inventive.
“There’s, uh, no such thing. We just eat when we’re hungry. Regular eating intervals like breakfast, lunch and dinner haven’t been invented yet.”
He grinned hopefully.
Hedz started tapping her foot. “Okay, funny boy. I’m hungry, the kids are hungry, and ...” She gestured at Baby Eff, attached to her like a barnacle. “... I’m too busy to forage right now. Your entire family is hungry and you’re the big, bad hunter. So get something to eat now, or, or…”
She looked around the cave, Eff hanging onto her like a baby Orangutan. Bonk’s favorite club was leaning on the wall.
Hedz snatched it.
Bonk didn’t know if she was going to break it, or club him with it. Neither seemed like a good thing, so he broke for the mouth of the cave. “I’ll get you something! I promise. I’ll be right back!”
And he ran out.