A figure darted from behind Skyra, skillfully avoided Gelrut’s swinging spear, and took the man to the ground. With one hand on Gelrut’s throat, Sayleeh sprawled to the side and kicked the spear from his hand. “Do not be a fool, Gelrut,” she snarled down at him. “You are a skilled hunter and fighter of bolups. You are important to Una-Loto tribe. We do not want you to die today. My daughters do not want to kill you. Someday you will give up your strength to a woolly rhino or a cave lion, or you will give up your strength to raiding bolups, but you are a fool if you give up your strength to two girls of your tribe simply because they anger you.”
Gelrut stopped struggling, but his breaths were still coming in snorts.
Sayleeh said, “Skyra and Veenah are not like the rest of us, but they are Una-Loto. I am Una-Loto. Their birthfather is Una-Loto. Therefore, Skyra and Veenah are Una-Loto. Perhaps my daughters are better than the rest of us. Perhaps we could learn from them and become better ourselves.”
Gelrut’s breathing was returning to normal. “I will not give my strength to those girls today. Let me up.”
Sayleeh gazed down at him for a few breaths. Then she turned to her daughters. “Go. Do not return to Una-Loto camp until the sun has slept four times. When you return, bring meat and hides with you. If you bring meat and hides, you will be welcomed back into Una-Loto. Go!”
Skyra exchanged a glance with Veenah then shoved her khul into its sling on her back and picked up her hunting spear. She waited while Veenah did the same. Together they walked away from the hunters, heading deeper into the foothills of the Kapolsek mountains.
They moved up the first slope, picking their way through the ridges of rocks that made the area ideal for ambushing ibexes. Without speaking, Skyra took Veenah’s hand and was comforted by her birthmate’s skin against hers. Skyra turned to look back just once. The hunters were gathered around Gelrut, and she could no longer make out her birthmother among them.
2
War
47,669 years later - Present time - Arizona, USA - Day 1
If Skyra hadn’t already been on her knees, she would have collapsed. Her fingers and toes felt numb. A whooshing sound, like wind blowing over yano grass on the slopes of the Kapolsek foothills, filled her ears and seemed to steal away her self awareness. The scene before her couldn’t possibly be real, yet she saw the dead bodies. She smelled burning flesh and heard growling beasts feeding on the bodies waiting to be heaped into piles and set on fire. There were so many bodies. She had never imagined so many people—alive or dead—could exist in the entire world.
“Skyra, are you okay?” Lincoln was speaking to her in his language. His voice seemed far away, even though he was right beside her. He grabbed her arm. “Skyra?”
Skyra had known violence and death since she had been a young girl, but she had never seen anything like this. What was happening here, and how could she be in this unfamiliar place? It was completely different from her homeland, yet she hadn’t walked to get here. She and Lincoln and Lincoln’s tribemates had enclosed themselves within strange skin bags. Then the bags were gone. Skyra had opened her eyes to find she was in a new land. The place had been strange and beautiful at first. But now this—a vast field of countless bodies. The smells. The sounds.
Lincoln shook her arm. “Skyra, are you okay?”
She closed her eyes, trying to force away the confusion before she turned to him. “What is a war?” Lincoln had spoken this word only moments before as he stared out over the field of bodies.
“A war is a big fight between two groups of people. It can go on for years, and sometimes thousands of people are killed. There’s definitely a war going on here, and from what I can tell, the war is between bolups and nandups.”
She gazed out over the field again. Black smoke was billowing from mounds of charred bodies. Other bodies were still scattered on the ground, including dead creatures that were at least the size of aurochs. “This is the place you are from?”
“That’s not as easy to answer as you might think. It’s the place I’m from, but it’s completely different now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Eventually I’ll try to explain it all. Right now we—” He stopped speaking and turned to look down toward the base of the hill they were hiding on. “Here comes another cart.”
A rumbling sound grew louder. Soon another four humpbacked creatures came around the curve of the hill, again pulling a flat, wooden object mounted on turning circles of wood. Walking beside the creatures and the wooden object were men and women, all of them short and broad, with large eyes and thick brows. They were nandups, like Skyra. Injured, bleeding men were tied down on top of the rolling wooden object. Like Lincoln’s, their bodies were long and thin, and they had tiny eyes and flat faces. They were bolups—humans.
“I do not like the place you are from, Lincoln,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised. I just hope we aren’t stuck here. We need to get back to the T3.”
“Khambap-bolmuna!”
Skyra turned to the voice. A nandup woman who had been walking beside the humpbacked creatures had stopped and was pointing up the hillside toward Skyra and Lincoln. She had spotted them even though they were on their knees in the brush.
Skyra’s leg muscles began twitching, commanding her to move. She grabbed Lincoln’s arm and held tight. It was time to run.
3
Choices
Present time - Day 1
Lincoln Woodhouse stared at the Neanderthal woman who had shouted. His gut tightened as he imagined being captured and strapped onto the wagon among the other prisoners. He couldn’t even consider what might happen after that. The captured men on the wagon were humans—Homo sapiens rather than Homo neanderthalensis—and they appeared to be warriors or soldiers. All of them were bleeding, some were even missing limbs, but Lincoln doubted they were being taken to a hospital.
Skyra squeezed his arm hard enough to make him wince.
“I don’t think she saw us,” he whispered. “See, she’s not pointing at us.”
The woman was trying to draw her companions’ attention to something at the top of the hill beyond Lincoln and Skyra’s hiding spot. Lincoln resisted the temptation to turn and look—any movement might be detected. The temptation became even stronger when a faint moaning sound filtered down through the brush from higher up the slope.
“I want to leave this place,” Skyra muttered. “I do not understand these nandups. What are they doing?”
“They’re taking prisoners. This is a war, and they’re hauling off their enemies—the ones they haven’t killed.”
“Nandups do not eat bolups! Why are they taking them?”
“I have no idea, and I really don’t want to find out.”
The Neanderthals stared at the hilltop for a few seconds as they exchanged incomprehensible words. Then the entire group resumed walking and caught up with the camel-drawn wagon. Soon the entire procession disappeared over a low rise, apparently following the previous wagon that had passed by a few minutes ago.