In the Beginning Read Free Page B

any meaning for them it would have been this. Yet also it was a place of awe. Dom felt a shiver in his mind as they moved up the rocky slope that led to it.
    The rock face was sheer and high, blue-white in color, pockmarked with holes. The Cave was the biggest of these. At the entrance the top of its arch was more than five times the height of a man, its width even greater. Inside, the ground was rough, littered with boulders, but the central path that ran back, sloping slightly upward, was smooth—­polished by the bare feet of the tribe through many generations.
    Fifty feet from the entrance was the pool. Water dripped from the wall, in a continual trickle and splash, and filled a basin several feet across. The basin was always full—even when the water holes out in the savanna dwindled, the level of the water here did not change. This wonder was caused by the spirits of their ancestors, the old ones said.
    Beyond the pool the Cave forked, the smaller branch turning right and curving back on itself, its gradient still upward. This was where the tribe lived during the rainy seasons. To the left, though, the rocky slope fell away. Dark though it was, some light filtered in from outside and Dom saw the glimmer of white within. This was the Place of Bones.
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    He remembered also his father’s words to him next morning.
    â€œThe time has come for you to be a hunter, and each hunter must find his own weapons. In the hunt his club will be a part of his arm, his dagger part of his hand as the lion’s claw belongs to the lion’s paw. You must choose well and no one can do the choosing for you. Only the spirits of our fathers’ fathers may help you. Ask that of them, but do not disturb their rest. Go, then.”
    The tribe watched in silence as Dom went down the slope into the Place of Bones. He was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life, but he walked steadily, knowing that fear is the first thing a hunter must learn to master.
    Down the center of the cavern the heaped bones formed a ridge higher than a man and extending a long way back. For hundreds of years, thousands maybe, the tribe, when they had stripped hide and flesh from the carcasses of their kill, had brought the bones down here. Dom did as the old ones had told him and stood a long time with his eyes tight closed. When he opened them the white shapes glimmered a little more clearly. He walked beside theridge, searching. Occasionally he pulled out a bone to examine it, and others rolled away with a dry ­clatter.
    As a hunter he needed two weapons: a club and a dagger. Both were provided by the skeletons of the antelope. For the club he required a thighbone, and for the dagger a fragment of skull with the pointed horn. On the choice might depend not only his prowess as a hunter but his very life.
    After long searching Dom found a thighbone that would do and hefted it in his hand, feeling the weight that pulled at his muscles yet added to their strength. It seemed heavy, though light compared with his father’s club which he had to strain to lift. He put the bone to one side and looked for a dagger. He was pleased with what he found—a horn, easily detached from the shattered skull, whose sharpness pricked his finger. His task was completed and he could leave this place which troubled and frightened him. To go farther would mean entering the domain of the spirits, at whose threshold he now stood.
    He lifted the thighbone he had found and swung it. He hesitated, then put it down and went on deeper into the cavern, searching still. At last hefound what he wanted—a thighbone longer and thicker than the first. Raising it, he felt its dragging weight.
    Now he was inside the domain of the spirits. Apart from the heaped mound in the center there were other bones, lying in a long line against the wall. Any of the tribe who died within a day’s march of the Cave was brought to this spot to rest