A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

He goes through the wood, he sleeps there,

In the morning he shall come again.

No! he comes no more. Ogga has sent him away.

The river runs, the lake runs

And the Mover runs never again.

So sang Ogga, on the threshold of poetic feeling, in the days of the Ice. His voice was not unmelodious, its chanting cry, with half symptomatic expression, rose on the night air in that stony desert, while the river sang too its endless lament, and, awakened from sombre reveries, the snowy owl darted from its perch, sweeping the ground with silver wings. Long before the light of the rising sun had built a bridge of golden mosaic across the East upon the flaky clouds, Ogga had left his improvised camp. The ivory tusks were secreted beneath the rock. His reindeer mantle was again clasped about his shoulders, and the nephrite blade which had hung about his neck was in one hand, the stone hammer stuck in his belt, the precious basket yet holding a remnant of its first contents under his arm, and with his other disengaged hand he had seized the spear. He strode along the banks, varied with many inequalities, of the murmuring river, and from his haste seemed intent upon some well defined object. As the day dawned, descending from the first light-touched crest of Zit with widening circles over all the landscape, its increasing splendor fell with a sudden flash of brightness upon a bank of white clay directly in the path Ogga was following. The river had uncovered this nucleus otherwise buried in superimposed stones and sand, exactly at the spot where its waters bending southward had forced their way through the narrow obstacle of this transverse ridge. The river delayed in its course had formed in its eddying impatience a shallow expansion. On the edge of this deeper pool Ogga halted. He dropped the spear and the basket and the knife, and ran to the clay bank. He dug into the plastic and slightly granular material, filling his closed hands with it. Returning, he placed the knife, the spear and the hammer, which he detached from his belt, in the shallow water, and then one after the other, smeared and rubbed them with the sandy clay. The adherent blood was slowly removed, and the lustrous implements became again sweet and comely.

The man regarded them with admiration. They were his friends, his solicitors and helpers. Used well, they returned to him in results all his attention, and they were well formed, symmetrical, expressive, apt, faithful, unchanged, unchangeable. His hand glided with blandishing pressure along the keen edge of the green stone, and he placed the ivory apex of the spear lovingly against his cheeks. He was well pleased. Ogga laughed.

Then the man threw off his own garments and naked ran like a deer up and down the sandy plain for the space of a mile or so, his hands and arms now moving over his head, now shooting outwards, now falling with resounding thwacks against his thighs. The speed and exertion were really considerable. Ogga glowed and burned, his cheeks were hot with flame, the drops of sweat slipped down his breast, his breath panted. As he turned back on his last lap the man rushed onward into the water, and splashing, half plunging, sank from sight in the cool pool.

A few yards from the shore his black hair rose above the ripples, a dash into the shore and the ablution was finished. Then, his habiliaments resumed, his allies, the friendly weapons, placed aright, the young hunter strode southward to the distant shore, still miles away, while the steppe country grew less drear and savage. The glaciers were farther and farther away, the clouds about Zit hid its pinnacle, the land became smoothed and green with carpets of grass, deer sprang suddenly aside in flight through spruce and willow groves, a low hum of waves seaward became audible, and now and then a gull flew piping above his head to some faraway eerie. A south wind wooed him, and his heart, by some instinct of approach to a great joy, became light and eager.

It was the afternoon of the same day that Ogga saw the sea. He saw it limpid, shining from its mirror-like face with dazzling refulgence. He was on a sort of knoll made by a northern outlier of the long meridional dike which framed on its sea side the country of Lhatto—the Fair Land. From this tubercle of rock covered with soil, he gazed directly down upon its glassy surface. He went cautiously on, not accustomed to the ragged descent, over split, splintered and weathered rock cleavages. But his strength, the supple resources of his knit and tireless body, met the unusual exercise, and Ogga at length stood upon the shore of the Ocean.