A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

Beasts and birds and plants crowded then into a shorter space, in an area to which fled the evicted tenantry of the north, and into which by an equal impulse of migration, entered the denizens of the south. These were their clustering companions. They moved amongst them, merged and lost, as part themselves of the aboriginal concourse, and yet lifted above all this commotion, this myriad footed and colored and flowered tapestry of life by the carriage within themselves of the destiny of men, by the possession of a secret emotion that was to be finally resolved in the tragedy of death.

A note of interrogation may be here interposed. How was it that Ogga and Lhatto and Lagk should thus move away from their occupations and attachments, and begin an aimless wandering, a listless adventure among perils and surprises and uncertainties? It can be understood better by implication and suggestion rather than by explanation. It was not rational. It was ethnic. It belonged to the period of zoological settlement. It was part of the animal movement which was establishing biological centres, determining geographical range, bringing too the sparse population of the world into a heterogeneous distribution, by which the world itself might become more quickly peopled.

And there were imminent reasons too. To roam, to pass from place to place, to follow streams, to thread mountain passes, to trace the shore, to pass north and south, east and west by centrifugal impulses, which cannot be defined or limited, belonged to the infancy of the race as they now solely are implanted in the infancy of the individual.

Who shall gauge the “world fever” in the youth of a day which knew no boarded and bricked and stone domiciles? When the contact with the elements and all the retinue of their phenomena with the beast, the fish, the plant, was so quick, so constant, so marked, that man was drawn into, or rather was the finished expression of geographic mutability, of the ebb and flow of life in its incessant effort to cover and possess the earth.

The nomads in the deflections of their travel drew towards the sea coast. Lhatto told Lagk of the great plain of water, and her pictures, not inadroitly made, gave her absorbed listener a desire to see the liquid wonder. Ogga had not been unobservant. The love which Lagk bore Lhatto, his unconcealed devotion, the simple earnestness of his industrious attentions came to his ears, and passed before his eyes, not inaudible nor unseen. But from the confidence of his possession, from the massiveness and rigorous simplicity of his nature, he did not care to impugn the motives of Lagk, nor the fidelity of Lhatto. He felt a tacit self-reproach that he had ever injured Lagk, that he had forced him to a lower physical level, and it seemed, in his magnanimous motion for restitution, some consolation that Lagk found joy in Lhatto’s company, and that Lhatto returned to him a certain measure—not traitorous nor fatal—of affection.

They finally reached the coast range, a wide and fertile vale had been traversed, the foot hills of an encompassing mountain chain surmounted, the dark forests, entombing the gray rocks in a sepulchre of shadow, crossed, and upon the flat shoulders of the mountain the three stood looking westward over the ultra-marine floor of the ocean, with its lighter aqua-marine margins, while scarcely moving, though turreted upward in the zenith, in illimitable surfaces of resistance, the white cumuli formed an ermine wall against the unimaginable Orient. The scene was splendid in its breadth and inspiration, and in the clear atmosphere, its coloring was simple and strong. It was almost noon.

Lagk gazed as if the splendor, the beauty, the oceanic magnitude of the water had stunned him. What traces of genealogical survival in his memory, remote, unfathomable, dimly rising to the surface of his psychic consciousness, may not have contributed to his profound feeling! For sometime, doubtless before Zit was imprisoned in the glaciers, his ancestors, wanderers on the earth, had crossed that azure field, had trailed along its resounding shores, and fed themselves upon the life, the fish and mollusks, that spun a web of being upon the edges of its unfructified and barren breast.

Lagk turned questioningly to Lhatto: “When we came you said I could hear the story of the Great Water Spirit. There is the great water—tell me the story. Ogga will listen too.” Ogga was quite willing. And so Lhatto, sitting between them, with her head in her hands that rested on her knees, and her eyes fixed, as if in corroborative inquiry, upon the sea, told the Legend of the Great Water Spirit.

The Legend of the Great Water Spirit.

“Many, many suns ago the Great Water Spirit was in the air over the whole earth, so that Zit could not be seen. It was a white spirit that was very sorry because it had no children, and it cried, and its tears ran down upon the earth and wet the trees and the rocks. And then it stopped crying. And the little lizard that had run into the wet places which the tears of the Great Water Spirit made, when they dried up whispered very loud, ‘Great Water Spirit, you have no children, cry much and you will have more children.’ So the Great Water Spirit cried again and its tears ran down upon the earth and made holes of water. And the little lizard ran into the holes of water and kept quiet until they too were dried up. Then it whispered very loud again, ‘Great Water Spirit, you have no children, cry much and you will have children.’

“And the Great Water Spirit cried again, and its tears ran down and made holes of water and little running places. And as it cried, Zit began to be seen, but all its tears that fell upon Zit were changed to ice, and as the Great Water Spirit cried it grew thinner and thinner. And the little lizard was happy a long time in the holes of water and the running places, and when they dried up again it had grown bigger and could talk more and it called out very loud, ‘Oh, Great Water Spirit, you have no children, cry until you die and you will have children.’

“And then the Great Water Spirit made terrible noises and cried and cried, until the tears hid Zit again and the mountains and the trees, and the tears ran down in rivers from the hills, and the ground was full of tears and spouted them up again, (springs,) but where they fell upon Zit they only made snow and ice. And still the Great Water Spirit cried and the tears tore the ground and carried down trees and pushed out rocks, and the tears ran on and on, until they came together and made the ocean, and then the Great Water Spirit died and the air was clear, but the tears ran on over the ground. But when the Fire-Breather up high (the Sun) sent its arrows on the ocean, the Great Water Spirit went up again in the air and made the clouds, and when it saw the holes and murmuring and spouting places dry, it cried again, and the tears kept its children—for these were its children—alive. And all water runs to the ocean and the ocean is the grave and the cradle too of the Great Water Spirit.

“The tears of the Great Water Spirit are the rain. When the Water Spirit is glad there is no rain, and when the Water Spirit is not glad there is rain. And the ocean is all the tears of the Great Water Spirit. And the Water Spirit wanted things to live in the ocean. And so it saw on the hills the foxes, and it went over them and cried, and the tears came down big and fast and the foxes were carried into the ocean and made seals. And the Water Spirit saw snakes and lizards and little birds on the hills, and it went over them and cried, and the tears came down big and fast and the snakes and lizards and the little birds made the fishes of the ocean, because they were carried into the sea.

“And many, many suns ago, before Zit was, and the Ice Spirit was not, there came a boat on the ocean, and when the Great Water Spirit saw it, he was very angry. And he cried and blew and the tears filled the boat and the blowing upset it, and the Men Spirits in it were killed.

“But the Men Spirits made another boat and pushed it out on the ocean, and they pushed it so fast that it got a great way over the ocean before the Great Water Spirit saw it, and when he saw it, he ran over the water making much noise, and he cried great tears and blew—but the fire spirit (the Sun) shot his arrows at him so that he ran off, and the Men Spirits in the boat came to the land and lived here.

“And more Men Spirits came and walked over the land. And then the Great Water Spirit was more angry and he cried and blew, and tears came from his eyes, and snow blew out of his mouth, and he asked Zit to help him. And Zit made it very cold, and Zit kept the Fire-Breather under the ground, and he made it so cold that the rivers were solid, and the ground was hid under the snow, and the Men Spirits and the bear and the wolf and the deer came away, and the trees and flowers went with them, and Zit ruled alone, over the ice. But when the Fire-Breather moves, the ice goes back a little and the day comes when Zit will die.”