Crisscross Moon - 18. Chapter 18

18.

Except when the larger group of warriors came back, the boy had to forget all his plans because he realized something very bad had happened. The men came back. They searched all around the cave to make sure no attackers were hiding. Then they went inside. But when they came out, they still didn't bring the women and children.

The boy was sure they couldn't all be dead. Even if the smoke had done something he'd never wanted it to, it couldn't have killed everyone. The cave was too long. The smoke couldn't have filled it completely. And the warriors didn't act like they'd found anyone dead. They just kept going into the cave, taking only torches, so they seemed to be looking for something. But the boy couldn't figure out what.

The warriors went in and out all day. It seemed that every man went, and then they began to bring food. So it wasn't like they were burying their dead. At night, most of the warriors went back to their meeting house, but they left two of the younger men as guards. The next day, some of the men started to work in the fields, and others gathered wood in the forest . This wasn't normal work for men.

The boy didn't know what to think. He couldn't get into the cave, to see what the men were seeing. He couldn't even get close to the men, to listen to them talk. He'd been able to sneak up on the girl, but the men were far better hunters. They could sense almost anything when it was near. The boy had to keep far enough away to protect himself.

Still, he knew he'd lost the girl and should just leave. There seemed no point in staying. If something had happened, and all the warriors in the village didn't know what to do, there was no way the boy would figure it out. He now wasn't even sure why he wanted the girl. He could live longer than her husband and finally take her sons and family back to his village, and she could still die having his first child.

The boy wondered if enough of the men in the village had seen him. He wondered if he could simply appear as if he'd been on a hunt and offer them food. There was always the chance he'd simply be killed, no matter who he was. And once they realized he was the man who'd caused whatever had happened in the cave, he'd be tortured as well.

There was also a chance the warriors would come after his own village. If he'd somehow managed to kill all their women and children, these men would kill the men and older boys in his village and take all the women and younger children home. Still, these warriors might not know where he was from, or they might not be able to find his village. He wondered if he went back and told his leader what had happened - what he'd done - if the leader could come to this village and make peace.

No, his leader would just have him killed. Or his leader would bring the boy back to these men and help to kill him. The boy knew that unless he went home and never spoke of what had happened, he was dead.

But he couldn't stop thinking of what was happening in the cave. He tried to figure out a way to get inside, but the warriors never left the entrance unguarded. The boy could only imagine.

He thought about bears. But bears couldn't kill all the women and children. Even if the boy had made the bears crazy with the smoke, some of the women and children would get past them. And if there were bears, why would the warriors keep going back into the cave? Besides, most bears were too large for the narrow entrance. Only the smallest bears could get through, and they weren't big enough to do that much harm.

The boy thought about snakes. There were always snakes in caves. There were snakes everywhere. But if there were so many, and they were so dangerous, the men in the village would never have decided to use this cave.

He thought about mountain lions. They could go through the narrow entrance more easily than bears, and they were more dangerous than almost any animal. But the women would know not to go into any cave with lions. And not to stay if any came in.

He thought about the food. The food and water in the clay jars could have been old and could have turned bad. But the boy had eaten some of it while he explored, and he was fine. He'd even taken some of the food back to the cave he slept in, so he didn't always have to hunt. And the food never hurt him.

The more the boy thought about it, the more he realized that the worst thing that could happen in a cave was that someone would get trapped and die. But this cave was long enough that it had taken the boy several days to explore. The walls were rocky, and it had taken time to explore all the cracks, to search for other passages. The boy had also seen caves that had fallen in, but this one wasn't like them. Rocks could fall and close off part of a cave. Narrow tunnels could be blocked because of their small size. But whole caves didn't just collapse without reason. And smoke and bears and mountain lions and snakes and women with children weren't enough of a reason.

But that had to be what had happened. Part of the cave had collapsed, and the men were trying to dig the women and children free. Or part of the cave had collapsed, and the men were trying to get the dead women and children out. Though that wasn't what the boy was seeing. Every day, the men took food into the cave. More food than they'd need just to feed themselves.

So the women and children were alive. Or some of them were. Maybe most. The boy wondered if the girl was one of them. If she was already dead, that was even more reason for him to leave.

But though the men were taking in food, they weren't taking in water. That didn't make sense because the boy knew there was no water in the cave. There wasn't a stream. The only water was stored in the jugs. And the women would quickly use that, especially if they'd used some of it to put out part of the fire. The reason the boy liked the cave he slept in was because there was a stream.

That stream had saved his life. After the girl had saved him, after those first bears had tried to kill him, there had been others. That first day, the boy had been sleeping in a different cave from the one he used now. That day, the boy was still realizing how injured he was and was accepting the fact that there was no way he could get back his village before it moved. He'd simply gotten away, found a cave, and crawled into it to sleep.

That day, he didn't even know if he would live. He didn't know there was a village nearby. And he didn't know if the people were friendly.

He also didn't know about the bears. They'd been further into the cave when he went to sleep. When they woke, the first thing they saw was him, lying by the entrance. And the first thing they did was chase him out.

He could barely run. He could never have saved his own life. If the girl hadn't helped him, he'd quickly have been killed. Though he didn't know why he hadn't followed her back to her village. Maybe because she'd seemed so afraid. But the warriors there may have helped him. The women might have tended him until his leg got stronger and he could go home. Or the men in this village may have been friendly with the ones the boy's warriors had just attacked. They might have been just as happy to kill him.

(continued)