Chapter 328 - Whom Gods Destroy, Uroboros, 23,000 Years Ago part 1

I open my eyes and it is day, the roof of our wetus glowing faintly with its light. I can see the sky through the opening in the roof of the tent, a luminous circle more gray than blue. It is a wan, colorless light, winter light. Our wetus is cool but for the area nearest the hearth, where orange coals shimmer beneath a blanket of ash. Near the hearth it is warm.

As am I.

I am alive!

I see my breath misting faintly above my mouth. I feel my heart beating in my chest. When I touch the back of my hand with my fingertips, the flesh is supple and warm and pink.

Pink and warm with mortal blood!

I do not question where I am or how I got here. The answer could not possibly be as satisfying as waking here, now, a living man with his mortal, loving family. My children lie sleeping all around me, like a litter of puppies in a basket, and the fire needs tending. I must feed it some wood so the wetus is warm when they wake. It is my duty and joy to make sure my children are safe, well fed and warm. That is my sole concern for the moment. Later, perhaps, I will consider just how I got back.

Pushing aside my thick fur covers, I rise and crawl across the body of my tent mate Brulde. He is still asleep, snoring softly. One of his hands lies upon his chest. The other arm is curled limply around the body of our wife Nyala, who is snuggled up to his side, her honey blonde hair obscuring her face. I pause for a moment to admire their forms, both naked and entwined in furs, forgetting for a moment the chore I'd risen to perform. Has there ever been a more stirring sight, my lovers, my loves, child-like in repose?

Perhaps.

Just one.

"Gon?" Eyya says softly. She sits up, her hair in her eyes, our sleeping furs falling away from her breasts, which are full and round with milk for our babies. "Where are you going?" she asks.

"To put some wood on the fire," I say quietly to her, and then I do it. I take several sticks of wood from the stack beside the hearth and place them carefully upon the shimmering coals. The fire has burnt down during the night, but I am very good at making fire. A bit of kindling and a few puffs of breath and a narrow vine of gray smoke begins to curl up into the air. It twines toward the vent in the roof of our domed hut like ghostly ivy. The smaller sticks pop and crackle as they blossom with yellow-white flame.

"Come back to bed, Gon," Eyya whispers. "I'm cold." She smiles at me, pushing her hair away from her eyes. Her eyes are big and brown and kind, and fringed by the longest, most beautiful eyelashes I've ever beheld. Oh, my beautiful Fat Hand wife, how sorely I have missed you! "Come back and make me warm again," she says, and I certainly mean to do just that! That, also, is my duty and my joy.

I return her smile and start to crawl back to her, already becoming aroused, and then little Den begins to cry. His cries wake Nyala, who sits up with a groan, which awakens Brulde, and I lose any chance I might have had to snuggle with Eyya this fine winter morn. Though sex is revered in my culture, and none in our household would be offended by our lovemaking, it is terribly difficult to ignore a hut full of people while trying to couple. Especially fussing babies. And crabby second wives.

"Get your butt out of my face, Gon!" Nyala snarls, smacking me across the rump. "Make yourself useful and grab baby Den. He's probably wet his bedding."

Brulde blinks around in confusion, eyes puffy with sleep, hair sitting on his head in a comical tangle. He blinks around as if he does not know quite where he is, or perhaps he is wondering how all of these people got here. He ought to know. He made about half of them. But he always looks like a confused little boy when he wakes.

Den cries: "WAAAAAHHHH!"

"Gon!" Nyala barks.

"I'm going," I say, crawling to the other side of the tent where the children sleep.

Were sleeping.

Little Den is a loud crier and his wails have awakened all five of his siblings. They wriggle and rise, rubbing bleary eyes: Gan and Hun and Breyya, Gavid and Leth. Leth and Den are still babies. They sleep in cradle-pits, small, fur-lined depressions in the earth, to keep them from crawling away when we sleep. Leth rises up on her chubby little arms, blinking around the tent with big blue eyes, and then her face crinkles and she begins to wail, too.

"Ewww! Leth pooped in her bed, Da!" Breyya exclaims, pinching her nose in disgust.

Gavid wants me to pick him up, arms held out, but I wave him off. "I have to get Den," I tell him. The toddler thrusts out his bottom lip and wraps himself in his arms, shooting daggers at his little brother with his eyes.

But Papa Brulde is there to give the boy what he wants. "Don't you stick that bottom lip out at me, Gavid!" Brulde cries, sweeping the boy into his arms. Brulde tickles him with his curly blonde beard and Gavid shrieks, pushing his other dada away. "What?" Brulde asks, laughing as the boy squirms and giggles in his arms. "You wanted to be picked up!"

I make my way to Den's cradle-pit and lift the child from his little nest of moss-padded fur. His fur is soaked, and his swaddling is soiled. I gulp and turn my face away. The smell is nauseating.

"Oh, Gon, he's dripping," Nyala says, annoyed by my weak stomach. "Give him to me! I'll clean him."

"Gladly," I say.

"Yeah, gladly, right," Nyala mutters as I knee-walk across the wetus to her, holding the stinky baby at arm's length.

I fetch Leth for Eyya, who presses a nipple to the crying baby's mouth. "Save some for me," I tease her, and Eyya swats me on the shoulder.

"Fetch some deer meat for us, Gon," Nyala says as she cleans Baby Den. She wraps him in clean swaddling and hands me a wad of soiled moss and fur. "And put this outside when you go."

"Ewww!" I groan, wrinkling my nose like Breyya. I roll on my side and look out through the flap of the wetus, parting the door just enough to peek through. It has snowed during the night. The world outside is white and twinkling. The camp, the forest, even the mountains in the distance, are obscured beneath a blanket of glittering snow. Just the sight of it makes my naked body rash into goose bumps.

I snake an arm out and give the soiled material a toss. It lands upon a small mound of dirty diapers piled against the wall of the hut. Someone will have to haul them down to the river and wash them out before long. Hopefully not me. I close the flap quickly and turn to look for my leggings. Hun rises and totters across the tent as I wiggle into my breeches. They're getting a little snug. Winter weight, I tell myself. "Papa," Hun says and falls into my lap. I finish pulling up my trousers and recline with him on my back, hoisting him up close to my face so I can smell his baby-fine hair. Babies have the most appealing aroma! There is no other smell like it in the world.

"Good morning, big boy," I say, smothering him in kisses.

"I'm hungry, Papa," he says.

"Me, too. Why don't you go outside and fetch us some meat?"

"No!" he shouts, pushing his face against my chest. "It's too cold!"

"Well then, I guess you're going to be very hungry this morning," I reply.

He clambers off me and pushes on my shoulder. Stout little Hun very nearly rolls me over. He is Eyya's boy and has that Neanderthal strength, even so young and small. My father is always making him lift things to impress our fellow tribesmen. Gan likes to show off how strong his half-breed grandson is. "You go, Papa!" Hun shouts, and I laugh.

"All right! All right! Ancestors, you are a bossy little badger!"

I put on my coat and boots and crawl to the flap of the tent. Push outside. Rise to my feet. The wind whips through my hair, blowing fine spicules of ice against my cheeks and brow. We are at our Bubbling Waters camp, our wetus set up near the edge of the settlement. I look back over my shoulder at the domed huts of my fellow tribesmen. There are already a few men out and about this morning. They trudge through the snow, going about whatever errands have driven them from their own warm hearths this wintry new day. They are all dressed in their heavy winter furs, and white clouds of steam blow from their mouths. One of the men takes note of my appearance and waves, and I raise a hand in return.

"Hail, Gon!" he says, crunching in my direction.

"Hail, Strom," I say. "Where is your tent mate Hyde?"

Strom laughs. "Still sleeping! We are going hunting in the southern highlands today, if he ever gets his lazy butt out of bed. Would you and Brulde like to join us?"

"I will ask him," I say, "but we have plenty of meat right now. We killed a large buck just two days ago, about halfway to Far Away Camp."

"Nice!"

"Perhaps when this cold spell breaks…"

Strom nods. He continues on, calling back over his shoulder, "Well, come to our wetus if you change your mind."

"I will," I say, and then I walk quickly to the deer we have suspended from the tree beside our tent. Shivering in the cold, I take my knife from its sheath and carve several large pieces of meat from the animal's haunch. The meat is frozen, but my stone blade is very fine. It glides easily through the stiff muscle tissue of the dead animal. Humming contentedly, I stack the venison on the snow beside my feet. I cut a sizeable amount of meat from the animal's rump. I have a large family and they all have healthy appetites.

And then I hear the screams.

My body jolts at the panic-filled cries. I wheel around with my knife, thinking someone, or something, has frightened my wives and children, perhaps some beast or foreign invader.

But my wetus is gone. My village is gone. Even the heavens and earth are gone. Sprawled below me are the tenements of the Shol, the stinking underbelly of the God King's empire. Down below, filthy, starved, desperate mortals scurry like vermin through the city's dark passages. The sight is something out of a fever dream. The smell of the city is a physical assault.

My wives, my children… only a dream.

Nyala, Eyya, Brulde, all my beautiful babies… only a dream!

Gone! Gone! All of them gone!

In anguish, I open my mouth to give voice to my agony, to cry out to my ancestors at the unfairness of it all, but I have no voice. I have no lungs to birth the cries. In fact, I have no body at all. That, too, the God King has taken from me. Khronos, my immortal enemy, father of our race, has bested me, and he has taken all that I have and all that I am as spoils of his utter triumph over me.

I am Gon the Divided God, and I have no body. I am just a head on a pike, a testament of the God King's unfettered supremacy, capstone of my conqueror's nightmarish kingdom.