URTAH THE BIG
By Merrily McCarthy
A line of curious white apes were walking along the edge of a cliff. They are watching a small herd of great white Ox below. The earth trembles slightly loosening edge rocks that tumble and fall on the few Oxen. One good sized rock bounces and careens through the air, smashing down on the head of a great Ox. The animal falls over, bellows, then dies.
The white apes see this and screech and jump up and down. They look at each other with the dawn of enlightenment making uff, uff sounds. They pick up stones and hurl them over the edge of the cliff at the remaining Oxen. As the rocks tumble and smash along the slope, the white apes screech and preen and pose in postures of bravado.
As a few more great Oxen get struck and fall over dead, the apes reach a crescendo of excitement. Then they stop. They are quiet.
A second dawn of enlightenment pierces the tiny space between their brows and they sneak semi guarded looks at each other. One, more shy white ape, receives the thought and begins to shake and tremble. He begins to reach for a sizeable rock, but not quick enough. The other competitive white apes’ grab up bigger rocks and before DerDumb has time to hurl or duck, the others seize the moment and the whole group descends upon DerDumb to strike him with their hard stones, screeching all during the bloody frenzy.
DerDumb manages to hurl his rock, striking one member of the group before sinking to his knees at the edge of the cliff. The standing white apes ascend on him smashing his head and body with rocks as he gargles, drowning in his own red blood and becomes silent and still and cold like the stones.
The living white apes poke at him laughing and try to pull him up to his feet thinking in their primitive curiosity that they have done no harm. As the dead white ape rises, he teeters on the edge of the cliff, the living white apes loose their grip and DerDum tumbles in slow motion down the side of the cliff and falls, impaled through his chest on the solid horn of the dead great white Ox.
The remaining apes screech and laugh in delight. They notice the white ape, Tuf, who got struck earlier during their fun, and noticed that he was clutching his head where blood was streaming down.
Urtah, the biggest white ape remaining, picked up a sizeable stone, walked over to Tuf and landed his rock in dead center on top of Tuf’s head. Tuf let out a loud bawww and fell over very dead. The remaining two apes screeched, jumped up and down bared teeth and laughed. The dawn of deadly combat gleamed simultaneously in their semi savage urges, as they both reached for stones and rose together in one last battle to the death.
Each of the remaining white apes fought for the thought, fought for the new knowledge. They discovered that stones raised can make things cease to move and this became the sacred knowledge. One white ape would live to protect this new knowledge. He would take it to the rest of his tribe and he would be the big man. Urtah proved to be more vicious and posed, ready for the final battle of survival.
As Tuf succumbed, Urtah screamed his victory to the whole valley, canyon and world beyond their imaginings. The remaining white apes knew that a new discovery had been made and soon Urtah would return with the knowledge. He did more than that however.
Urtah descended the cliff. Removed DerDums body from the horn of the great white Ox and ate his way through the neck of the bison, filling on fresh Ox blood. The other Oxen milled close by blowing, snorting and watching out of their dangerous wild eyes, the bloody transformation from white ape to vicious blood crazed beast.
When the head was severed, Urtah lifted it to his shoulders and struggled back up the cliff, ascending upward, heading home to his noisy expectant village with his trophy. The trophy would bring him awe and the dismemberment power. The horns of the Ox he discovered could pierce the body of a white ape and make him cease to move.
Urtah had to demonstrate his new knowledge so what he did to get this coveted attention was to drop the head of the dead great Ox at the entrance to his cave. Urtah announced his arrival back at his place and the other white apes cringed in recognition of Urtah’s power over things that move and cease to be.
Gumlop came trundling up. He had a chronic ache in his head and so had become ineffective in his ability to explore or climb cliffs with the other male white apes, of who were a fewer less now. Gumlop in his customary pained position was groping his head shaking it back and forth screeching.
In order to waylay the position that weakness should not be misconstrued with real superior power, now that the emptiness of the bodies of the other white apes could be seen and felt by the remainder of his tribe, Urtah was compelled to make certain of his superior dominant stance, without question, even Gumlop’s weakness stood in his way.
Urtah quickly groped the nearest large stone, swiftly raised it over Gumlop and screeched loudly of his power and the power of the stone. He smashed, sending Gumlop to the ground where he ceased to move. The remainder of the tribe scurried around, poking, screeching and laughing at how the stone in Urtah’s hand made Gumlop no longer move and cease to be.
Urtah being the discoverer, explorer and always curious, wanted further satisfaction. He sought what was inside Gumlop’s head that made him screech in pain. This knowledge would give Urtah even further power within his group. Urtah reached his hairy hands around the gapping opening in Gumlop’s skull and ripped. The blood sprayed as he pulled apart the bones with his bare hands, spilling more blood and brains all over Gumlop’s face and neck and his own chest. Urtah stuck his fingers inside the mass of tissue and dug around. A look of amazement crossed his countenance. He could find nothing that could cause Gumlop’s pain.
He withdrew his bloody fingers, now covered in bright red goo and brain tissue and held them up for all to see. Nothing there to cause pain, you see! Then Urtah did the power acquiring move, he licked his fingers! Not out of hunger for blood, but to absorb the spirit of Gumlop and for Urtah to show his lack of fear over the weaknesses and Gumlop’s ceasing to move.
The tribes remaining members shrunk in awe at such power and spiritual dominance. Some cowered against the rocks, some hugged the rocks, some ran into crevices holding rocks. Some squatted, perching on rocks, like they were making love with the stones, perhaps to give rebirth to the stones or to Gumlop.
This manner of extreme submission was ever inspired by the dominant power of Urtah who had brought home the new knowledge, moving stones could make moving things cease to be, or not move, but the stones cold be moved, over and over again, and never ceased to be. Stones became a sacred object with a life of their own.
Urtah knew this new knowledge came from the earth. The earth had made the stones fly. The earth had made the stones fly through the air and strike the great white Oxen. Urtah was like the earth. He could raise the stones and hurl them through the air like the earth, and he too cold make things cease to be. The earth was sacred. The earth gave him knowledge and it gave him power. Urtah was the supreme white ape.
Urtah was having other urges at the moment. Aside from the aforementioned events he felt the food that had entered his mouth earlier, had now passed to the exit area of his body. Another sacred mystery. He put food in, chewed and it stayed inside his body and came out, eventually at the hole between his legs, usually when he squatted unceremoniously behind a rock or a bush.
Although he was usually finished in the time and space of a grunt, Urtah always noticed his excrement was either thin and wet, or solid and stank. The stank came from different foods he stuck in his mouth. Yet he knew other smells came from other animals and varied according to whom had done the excretions.
It all smelled different and he could tell who it was by the smell. Even if their were spies from other tribes around. He could smell their excrement as different from his own, or that of his tribe members.
Excretement was an identifiable body stamp, a way of deciphering who was doing what or who was close by. Excreting was a natural urge, not controlled, no devised, other than by the body itself and it’s natural processes. It was a tangible, given, never changing process, that Urtah had learned to expect and undetermined but occurring intervals depending always upon whatever he shoved into his mouth. The wait for the process was a learned measure of time. It was another of Urtah’s sacred biological mysteries. A fundamental truth he could depend on.
Urtah was more cunning than the others because he sniffed a catalog of odors, and had them tucked in his cranial skull, understanding he would use these smells to have knowledge of the animals systems surrounding his habitat. It was knowledge and the more smells he knew and could picture to what it belonged, the more power and dominance he had over his tribe and his neighboring creatures; such as the other humanoids, animals, birds, insects and creatures of other types. Urtah gained power through discovery and curiosity and experimentation.
Excretment was a special moment for Urtah. Beside the smell, it was hot, steamy and made shapes in the earth as it fell from between his legs, into the dirt. The shapes told him things. So he would sniff, stare at the shapes and hold the images in his mind. He would associate those shapes with the shapes he found around him in his world and this told him secrets and gave him clues to other mysteries.
Sometimes the excrement was puddles and loose, sometimes it was in small tiny pieces and sometimes in mounds and sometimes it came out in long straight round formations. Those, Urtah noticed were similar in form to sticks of the same size, broken off from the main body, like him, and he noticed they also looked like the dangle of his body where the water came from at other moments. All of this information took on a reverence and made a spiritual sacred connection for Urtah. This sacred knowledge was being given to him by his earth and his body, his white ape body.
On days where it fell, laying out straight Urtah would take the high dry paths that went straight through the trees or through the rocks. When it was loose and in puddles, Urtah would go by way of the waters, and flowing rivers. And when in bits and pieces he kept to his tribe. Urtah had learned to read signs from his body to give him necessary instructions that would bring him more safety and sacred knowledge.
Urtah noticed at times the dangle between his legs was firm and hard, both being the same thickness and length, he deemed this as a moment of extreme power and sought one of his females in his tribe. He had discovered the break in the body of the female white ape, unlike him, he had no break. This break in her made him feel the power to push his hardened dangle into her break until it released itself, and became soft. The female white ape, his mate, Ubo, would screech and struggle and bite into his neck, like he was trying to hurt her. Well maybe he was.
If long round hard things went into other white apes, what more power and knowledge could be obtained by Urtah. He recalled the great Ox, and Derdum being impaled by a shape that was long, hard and strong. Excretment, dried, could not make a hole through another white ape, and Urtah knew his dangler went in, but got weak, so he concluded he needed a horn or a broken stick or even a rock, some object that looked the same but was not connected to his own body and not able to easily change form.
Without covering, Urtah was squatting watching his excrement pass, and his dangler getting thicker and fatter, when in the midst of this meditation Gumlop’s angry brother Set, walked up, grunted, picked up a rock and crunched it atop of Urtah’s dangler.
A screech of pain from Urtah’s lips rang throughout the canyon. The rock damaged the dangler, but not irreparably so, and Urtah sought leaves and grasses to wrap around his dangler. The cool leaves and grasses eased the pain. Urtah was beyond angry. He had the look of a mad genius with blood lust in his eyes and as he worked and gathering things, the pain merely inspired him to greater creativity and levels of inspiration. Urtah had hit in his mind, a pain threshold that inspired him to a peak of greatness in the power of combining things.
He found a length of stick, or tree wood the exact size and dimension of his dangler and thereby spiritually got his, in symbolic style, his damaged dangler reinstalled. Perhaps just in proxy, or essence, but he laid the stick on the earth and contemplated a spiritual stone that could make Set cease to be.
How would he put the stick and the stone together? Long grasses or Ox tendons or Mammoth hair? Urtah found what he needed of the longest and the strongest fibers. He assembled his product, a first weapon, an object unlike all others known, yet totally symbolic in it’s intent and deed, for the sole purpose of converging upon Set and making him cease to be. An object of a shape and strength that would put Urtah without question in dominant position within his tribe.
Urtah, because of his pain, and great sense of superior experimentation, had given birth to the Blood Axe. A weapon whereupon his power to be determined, by it’s ability to make things cease to be.
Meanwhile Set was laughing loudly and screeching to the remainder of the tribe how he had snuck up on Urtah doing plops and had smashed a rock on his dangler, nearly flattening it. Everyone howled at the superior move. The group that was gathered around Set, saw Urtah moving up behind and toward Set. They saw his bound dangler and they became quieter and the extreme vision of measurement that determined the danger. Urtah’s arms were behind him, so no one saw the Blood Axe. It was made out of wood and stone and sinew and like Urtah’s dangler, held together by what he was. It was made to penetrate, like the dangler, a living body, in a measure of pain, anywhere it was directed. It was loose and could fly through the air like a bird, free, like a rock, strong and hard. It was a new and superior preparation make from Urtah, and their earth.
The smile dropped off Set’s face as he turned around and perceived the danger approaching him from Urtah’s closer and closer proximity. The laughter from the group ebbed and before he could screech or howl or laugh again, Urtah released his arms and flew them through the air with one grand sweeping curve, ramming up into Sets protruding dangler. The sharp edge of the rock connected with the soft white ape flesh and Set’s dangler flew off across the open space, landing in the fire pit.
A couple of female white apes Ug and Spaa, dove to retrieve the delicacy, not for reattachment, and affection for Set, but to eat Set’s member and thus gain his powers and knowledge. The member provided a tasty treat and Ug and Spaa gained Set’s fertility, virility and his power over whatever was left.
They knew not the meaning of affection, and could observe, Set, in a moment would no longer cease to be and that was for certain the plan carried on by the movements of Urtah’s momentum. Urtah sought his relieve.
The blood from Set’s body squirted in a geyser, spraying all the near bystanders and Set teetered in body shock, and horror, and dishonor at his own male dismemberment. The first blow had pierced the pelvic bone, sent the dangler flying and began a drain of blood that brought the white women apes howling eager to lick and gorge, in uncontained orgy. Never had they seen such as the power of Urtah.
In memory of Derdum, Gumlop, Set and the others they ran to find rocks in order to feel the power of the rocks and experience the new knowledge over making things cease to be, by their own strength and their own movements. They did not yet fully understand that if they used the rocks against each other they would not no longer cease to be and the knowledge shared by many would be lost to those who remained.
As the remainder of the tribe began to smash each other, downing men, children, women and the elders – Urtah screamed for them to stop. He could see and understand they were not ready for the power of the stones and in particular for the awesome Blood Axe. Like a bowling ball Urtah rolled across the camp, knocking stones out of hands, and hurling them into others, sending people flying, trying to stop them all from making each cease to be, after all, who would know or have knowledge if there was no one to teach, or to give the knowledge of the sacred ways of secret measures and silent pictures roaming in Urtah’s mind. Who would Urtah have for comforts? If there were no other white apes, the knowledge would die and cease to be, like the white apes. Urtah knew someone the thoughts were connected to his body and his actions and this was a gift from the earth and the sky and the rain and the fires.
Many of the tribe were smashed, mostly male white apes, many ceased to be, those that survived, Urtah assembled.
The dead bodies, unmoving, were moved. They found an empty caverns, and Urtah and the remaining members of his white ape tribe dropped them into the moist and dark recesses and placed them to set. Around them they skirted a pot and a tool and sacrificed small animals to lay and guide them in the world of unknown places. After this was accomplished and the work done, they assembled the rocks to the front as an entrance to their members who no longer were able to move and celebrated their remaining livingness. This they did and left, screeching and howling their conquest over life and over their new discoveries.
A birth agony screech came from under a rock overhang. Jut, a female white ape, a young member of the tribe, was giving birth. She had last laid with Set and this was a remarkable sacred event, connected to the break in the woman and the dangler of the man. It was the mystery of being and the manifold interpretation of mystical wonder.
White female apes were quite different than the male white apes. Yet not really primary in the tribe. But they could do things the male white apes could not do. They all ate food and that was a similar experience. It also exited their bodies in a similar manner, yet other substances did too. Other mysterious and strange liquids and moistures and smells. Urtah was privy to this sacred knowledge and the ways found in the differences, like the open wound between the female white ape, the unhealed space between her legs, and the food that went in, and the blood that came out after the time of so many suns crossing the sky and the way his dangler could pierce into Ubo, his mate, sometimes and later, after more moons of no blood, her stomach would get bigger and she would excreta a body that looked like a small one of him. This would cause him to screech in shame and he would run away to find Ox and herds of Ox and chase them to the edge of the cliffs and watch them fall and then he and the other male white apes would drag an ox or more back to the tribe where they would eat.
At this moment Urtah has a duty to provide to Jut. She had lost her mate and it was by his rock on behalf of his dangler.
Sometimes a rock would do, but this could only be performed by a superior dominate white ape, as Urtah’s position surely gave him. A suitable large smooth round rock, perfect for the job was located. Urtah moved into position by the woman giving birth. She opened her eyes in surprised recognition. Screeched in agony and birthing pain and watched in frightened horror as Urtah lifted, a few feet up from her swollen belly, the smooth round rock.
The idea was to use the rock as a drop stone and the weight and impact would help push the little white ape body out, that is if it was dropped when Jut’s body squeezed. Well, sometimes it worked. However if the rock was too heavy or dropped to far up it killed the female and sometimes smashed the baby too much.
Usually it terrified the young mother so badly it did not need to be dropped, and it would induce birth by fear.
The stone was held suspended by Urtah, the white ape female screeched, and the other attending female white apes, those that weren’t holding her legs agape for the baby’s initial exit, made an unprecedented move to stay Urtah’s release of the rock.
He snuffed a snort, lifted his right hairy white ape leg and placed his big foot on the top part of the abdomen of the birthing white ape. He stomped, she groaned and the baby flew out of the womb, with a splat into Ubo’s surprised hairy arms. She had fortunately been standing directly in front of the straddle observing the break and the movement of the womb, so she could signal Urtah on the right moment to drop the sacred birthing stone.
This was a lot of work and the white females apes usually just found a crevice and or rock opening and went in bumpy and came out flat and with squalling white ape infant bound up with grasses. But things were changing in Urtah’s presence.
The baby screeched. A new member had been added to help repay the debt of loss to the living on that day, even if it was from Set. Proudly, howling his joy on the release of new life Urtah stepped forward, touched the newborn hairy white ape, who grasped strongly onto the offered big hand. Urtah made a mental image of the strength and handed him his very own first tool, his Blood Axe.
The newborn white ape groped the handle and screeched a blood curdling howl. A new leader had come of age. New things had been leaned. Today was a good day for Urtah. Much had been accomplished and now he set about preparing his tribe.
The white ape infant was returned to his mother, and Blax began to suckle her teat, entwining his strong fingers into the matted breast hair.
Urtah turned to other matters. He gathered around all the tribe and instructed them to go to the hills and around the area and he held up his Blood Axe This he held up so they could look for sticks and stones and grasses and sinews to make their own weapon. If they wanted to live another day, they had to make their own Blood Axe. It would be used to hunt, to fish, to survive and otherwise, Urtah would use his Blood Axe to penetrate their livingness until they ceased to be.
The tribe member set out to do this duty. They new this would give them sacred power, like that of Urtah, and this sacred power would give them the way to keep their position or place in the tribe. Urtah set on display his Blood Axe so the White Apes of his tribe could copy his weapon. In doing this they were also using Urtah’s superior knowledge and what he had learned and gathered from the earth.
When they could not figure out the proper size, weights or lengths of ties to attach the stone to the stick he helped them. Urtah kept relating everything to his dangler. It was the unique measurement and the weight and the manner in which it would enter into the shaped opening between Ubo’s body. He could feel this power and he could recreate this same measure and power with his Blood Axe. It was meant to penetrate into the blood of all bodies and change the livingness in some way.
Example was Urtah’s quickest and most certain way of demonstration. So when one of the white male ape youths wanted to know how the Blood Axe worked, where it got it’s magic, Urtah showed him, as well the rest of the tribe. He cut off the youths axe hand, and as the other white apes screamed with delight at the bloody display, Urtah, with one deft blow severed the young apes head.
This again established the superior dominance and magic of Urtah’s place as the Big Man and his all powerful Blood Axe.
Urtah was the Big Man. No one dared contest this truth. As the sun turned day and the moon turned dark, so Urtah’s knowledge grew into unimaginable proportions, at least for all his known conscious realization. Tomorrow he would discover more.
As the days had passed so had more of the tribes food supply. The 20 or so members of his tribe consumed 2 to 3 Ox everyday. Then their were the thieves from other hidden wandering bands and the wild cats and the strange night howling beasts with glowing green eyes. Wild dogs managed to single out straggling oxen or lost calves. The herd was hard to keep up with at times. Urtah had much to look after, the tribe, his status, his power, his new accumulating knowledge, his female, Ubo, the heard of great white Ox, the roaming savages beyond the dark and other places he could not see; only heard the sounds on the swollen night winds. Often he caught their rank smells adrift in the crisp morning breezes.
There was the situation with the food supply and keeping their herd of white Ox in tact, growing and useful as a food source. And now their was the production of weapons made of wood, stone, and sinews, that would increase his tribes dominance and power and keep him in their sight as the Big Man. Urtah beamed, caught a hurtling rock and threw it back from whence it had come. He was awed by the power of his own strength.
He grunted. The watch fires needed tending. He and some of his tribe, Baw and Unnn, had broken sticks of unmeasured portion one day in fits of the baring of teeth and movements of rage, totally breaking down the tall green grass living on hard sticks. Broke it into bits of measurements and lengths, like danglers. They pushed, jumped, pulled and bit through the hard wood and let it lay in a huge pile just outside their cave entrance.
That night in a tremendous thunder and lightening storm came. Bolts of light shot from the sky striking boulders causing them to shatter and explode like projectiles. One shard had ripped open the belly of an ox She laid bleeding and bawling while the lightening struck all around her.
The cowering cave dwellers watched awestruck by the power of the light and the echoing voice from the clouds and the sky. They were afraid but did nothing to save the dying ox, who bled to death during the full force of the storm. They learned that the light forced out of the sky by the blackness of clouds, and the terrible trembling noise could change big rocks to small pieces, and those pieces could make living things cease to be.
Another bolt screeched down, tore into the broken wood at the cave entrance. Flames sprang up. The flames rose licking like little yellow tongues through the broken sticks. The hot red, and yellow fire began to eat the wood, turning it to burnt black ash. The cave swelled with gray swirling smoke and the tribe of Urtah coughed and sputtered but did not dare move lest the fire eat them also and the lightening strike their bodies like they had seen it strike the large rocks and soft belly of the white ox. The were afraid of the sacred powers of the above and the beyond.
At the time Urtah knew he had to break the spell of the magical powers of the earth and sky over them and beyond, so he grabbed a stick whose end was glowing orange, and to prove it would not hurt him he poked his cheek sending sizzling flesh and sparks into the air. He felt the pain and howled running out into the torrents of water raining from the sky. The cold wet gushed over him mulching the hot spot on his cheek and melting away the glowing stick to a black cold point.
This time Urtah poked at his foot. He howled again as it brought a gush of blood into the air. That too got washed away by the rain. But Urtah had learned something. He learned fire was hot, changed wood to ash and his meaty flesh to a smell that made him want to eat. He learned a pointed hot stick hurt and could enter his body like his dangler entered the broken part of Ubo’s body.
He went into the cave to find her. His stick and his dangler, both hard, were of the same length. One he knew he could turn to soft, the other he would find a place to poke it and it’s size would stay the same.
The fire at the cave entrance would be another matter. He touched a nearby rock. It was blistering hot, as the pain on his palm attested. This was useful information. This fire from the sky was very powerful and useful indeed. He must keep it. He set up tribe members that he called fire watchers.
These members were given the task of gathering and breaking sticks to keep the fire going. To keep the fire power it must never go out! With this eternal flame Urtah’s tribe would have the power of the fire forever, as well it’s power to change things and to hurt the livingness in his tribe or save them..
Urtah snuffed. He would look into the rock in the belly of the dead Ox. Perhaps this night be helpful, if he could keep it from happening to him.
After the intense storm he had the fire watchers secure the burning sticks. He told them to keep it burning by finding and adding more sticks. He went to find the dead great Ox. He had an idea.
Urtah secured Baw and Tet to help him drag the dead Ox nearer the fire. Together they began to dig into the soft warm flesh beneath the skin, pulling off strips of meat. Finding a burning stick Urtah stuck the meat on it and held it into the flames until it began to sizzle and change texture. He held it in the air for all to see.
After a the heat left somewhat Urtah bit into the smoked fired meat. It tasted inviting to him. He passed the stick with the cooked meat on it to UBO who had been watching with some interest. She bit into the meat of the Ox and smacked her lips.
She passed the stick and meat to Baw. After several of the tribe had tasted the new way of eating Ox. The others began to pull off their own strips of cow flesh, poke the glowing sticks through and cooking the meat in the fire.
Everyone approved of Urtah’s new idea for eating Ox meat and using the fire.
Besides loosing their accessibility to the Ox, Urtah noticed a decline also in who he knew and remembered of the female white apes in his tribe. Their appeared to be more males. Why, or where they had gone was somewhat of a curiosity to Urtah. He knew he needed to be surrounded by more cattle and more males who had mates.
This necessitated a visit to a neighboring band; Urtah had to replenish his stock and his band, one with food and one with child bearing companionship. He formed a plan.
In the morning before sunrise they would go visit the Craig’s, a tribe that stayed in a place up the valley down the cliffs and around the bends.
Selecting a small number of his tribe they set out before daylight. They reached the edge of the cliff and descended, easily loping the remainder of the way.
At dawns break they entered the Craig’s steep rocky lair. Down the gorge always they heard the rustle of Ox in the brush and an occasional beller of a startled calf. The Craig’s were still, some sleeping, some stirring in the morning twilight amidst grunts and snorts and the whistles of sleep.
Urtah and his group were going to catch them unaware. The plan was to capture the female white apes of the Craig tribe and their children, rustle up and steal their Ox and eliminate or scare away the white male Craig’s.
In as much that it was a surprise. It worked. The plan was aided by Urtah’s new weapon of power, his Blood Axe, prompted by the scent of females, who were greatly in demand back at Urtah’s camp.
The Blood Axe made the difference in the conquest. The male Craig’s were no match for the ensuing slaughter and the women and children were awestruck by the over whelming powers of the white apes of Urtah’s tribe. They quickly succumbed to the superior military advantage.
Urtah and his group drug the females and their offspring back to their camp. Their displeasure at the displacement was sounded through their screeches and cries into the mid morning skies. The women and children had been captured and forced into slavery by the aggressive and dominant conquest of Urtah The Big. They would provide mates for his men, the children slaves for his services. The Oxen would be chased into Urtah’s dwindling herds to help feed his tribe.
Life is good. Urtah let out a blood curdling scream at the top of the rise to his campground, putting his whole tribe on alert to their conquest and arrival.
They would be on the move soon.
The solstice gathering at Stone Henge would prove most useful this year. As others came from other tribes they would embrace Urtah’s new Blood Axe and honor his fire-bearers, his large herd of wild Ox and most importantly his large tribe of people.
They would raise fires and the Big Man would stand on the cross stones and scream his new knowledge and power to the stars and the changing position of the sun. They would eat and make trades of women, children, Ox, weapons and especially of knowledge. This would last a day or a week or a while, as the sun crosses the skies and the moon rises and the earth turns. They would erect a megalith and the standing stone would tell them it’s messages and what to do next.
After the gathering and the celebration of the tribes at Stonehenge, the new raised rock to mark this moments gathering to the solstices, the new stone was hugged and listened to.
The whispered message told the tribe to move to New Grange. New Grange was built by a tribe who it was believed connected the world of the past with the world of the future. And at just the right moment in time and space the light ignites the sacred door and the sacred tablet of disappearance and transformation. Urtah quivered in anticipation of this new adventure.
