Glade and Ivory Ch. 22

The voyage north that Glade would make across the Great Sea wasn't one she'd planned and most definitely not one she would have chosen, although it was true that she and Demure had often sat together on the shore and looked over a sea that stretched towards the North rather than the West. And they'd often speculated whether this water stretched to the very end of the world or whether there might be land beyond.

"The further North we go," observed Glade, "the further we are from the Sun. And the further away the Sun, the cooler it is. If we travelled across the sea it would just get colder and colder."

"No one would want to live where it's colder than even here," said Demure, shivering under the deer-skin that covered her shoulders even though it was now Spring. "Perhaps the sea has no other shore. Perhaps it goes on forever."

"So where do the ice floes come from?"

Demure shook her head. "Perhaps it's so cold that the sea turns to ice," she ventured.

The lovers were now living together with a tribe of Raft People who tolerated the women's presence in their village for as long as they were willing to provide sexual services whenever requested. This was a tribe with a fairly relaxed attitude towards life. They were generally communal in all that they consumed, whether it was food, drink or sex. Like Glade's own tribe, it was a community of mutual sharing. There was no concept of private property, private life or even privacy.

This openness and generosity was possible because the tribe lived in a region of great bounty. There was fruit from the tree; flesh from the migrating herds of deer and antelope; and, as a result of the tribe's expertise at fishing from rafts, no shortage of food from the sea.

Initially Demure found life amongst this tribe rather disconcerting. All her life she was accustomed to taking advantage of other people's weaknesses and here were people whose weaknesses she didn't know how to exploit. They had no understanding of status. They had no concept of ownership or privilege. Her attempts to gain advantage over other people were met with incomprehension. But eventually even she relaxed. If her talent at manipulation wasn't going to get her anywhere then perhaps it was better if she didn't even try.

Glade was more at home although she still missed the warmth of the South and the shelter of the Forest. She revelled in the license to fuck and the generosity of a people who had plenty to eat and plenty to spare. She became skilled at using the rafts the tribe employed to such advantage and passed on as much of her knowledge as she could to Demure for whom laziness was her chief obstacle to learning. Glade's lover was naturally intelligent, even if her aptitude was most often manifest as deviousness and cunning. Soon enough she also had sufficient skill at handling the rafts to make a useful contribution to food-gathering which in turn ensured that the lovers' presence could continue to be tolerated.

Glade soon discovered that rafting wasn't as simple as just pushing the raft onto the sea's surface. There was skill involved in making a raft behave. One could use sticks with flattened ends that could steer the raft in any direction. There was a variety of sticks to use. Some were employed to spear fish, some to paddle the raft and others to navigate shallow waters. It was also advisable to carry aboard a thin canvass of deer or antelope hide which, supported on a framework of sticks tied together by sinews, could catch the breeze and manoeuvre the raft out to sea where there was a greater haul of fish.

There were many other skills associated with using a raft at which the Raft People were expert, such as how the raft was constructed and how fish were caught. This last employed the art of weaving together intricate nets from sinews and reeds which could be used to catch many fish at once. The Raft People were ingenious in many other ways. They came up with novel and sometimes surprising solutions to the problem of how to capture the fruit of the sea. Sometimes they followed flocks of sea-birds to where they congregated above a great harvest of small fish. Sometimes they left woven baskets on the shore to capture lobsters and crabs when the tide was high. There was always plenty of game and fruits to harvest on the days when the sea was too rough for even the hardiest fisherman.

Glade and Demure became almost complacent. Perchance now, at last, they wouldn't one day need to set off again in pursuit of a new home when the goodwill of their hosts was exhausted. Perhaps the two women could simply settle together as a couple unusual more for their intimate closeness than for their sexual predilection.

Perhaps they could grow old together.

But, inevitably, this was not to be.

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Ivory also had to adjust to unwelcome change. Although she missed Glade terribly, she was kept too occupied during the day to fall victim to depression. At night she was distracted by Ptarmigan's relatively innocuous fondling. Although she'd expected Glade and the chief to be away for more than a couple of days, it was now a quarter the way through the moon's cycle and the expedition had still not returned. With most senior tribesmen accompanying Chief Cave Lion, Ivory felt distinctly vulnerable when she heard that the Mammoth Hunters were no longer alone in the valley.

"What shall we do?" Ptarmigan asked anxiously when this news was brought to them by Leopard, a young man whose voice had barely broken.

"We should chase the invaders away!" gruffly insisted Grey Wolf, the most senior hunter left behind.

Ivory wondered what Glade would say on this occasion. "How many of these strangers are there?" she asked.

"I saw only five or six," said Leopard. "I don't think there are more."

"Even so, few can be a danger," insisted Grey Wolf. "Perhaps we should kill them."

"That's not right," said Ivory with alarm. "Only if the strangers mean us harm should we kill them. If we were to kill them for other reasons, their spirits will curse us. It is imperative that we don't bring evil onto our tribe."

"So what do we do?" said Grey Wolf who huffily accepted the received wisdom of the shaman's apprentice. "We can't have two tribes living together in this valley. There's barely enough space for us."

"We should speak to them," said Ivory. She thought back to Glade's own way of reasoning. Was there some advantage that an act of kindness could bring to the tribe? "Maybe they can help us find a way out of this valley. After all, they may know this area better than we do."

Alas, Ivory's hopes were unfounded. The six strangers consisted of only one adult man and the others were women and children. Like Ivory's tribe they were also lost and, judging by how gaunt they were, no more expert at finding food and sustenance. However, it was difficult to be sure of anything about them beyond their pathetic gratitude at not being killed by Ivory's more numerous kindred. They didn't speak a language that resembled hers. They looked distinctly alien. Their skin was darker than Ivory's but nowhere near as dark as Glade's. Their noses were flat and broad, their hair was light brown and curly, their ears were small, and they were relatively short. And about their shoulders they wore relatively thin ibex-skin furs.

Nevertheless, after the strangers prostrated themselves abjectly on the ground and begged tearfully for their safety in a language that combined clicks, growls and a phlegmy grunt, it was impossible for Ivory not to feel some responsibility for their welfare. Ptarmigan who was more used than anyone to being an outsider in the community instantly petitioned for the strangers to stay. Grey Wolf immediately offered a voice of caution.

"We have to look after our own first," he said bluntly. "We have no need for more mouths to feed. The chief wouldn't allow our meagre resources to be so casually shared."

"We should wait until my husband arrives and see what he says," said Ptarmigan with uncharacteristic firmness.

"As you wish," Grey Wolf conceded reluctantly.

Ivory sighed. She wasn't convinced that her generosity towards these harmless foreigners was such a good idea. She may have spared the tribe the wrath of unjustly slaughtered souls, but she had burdened them with more mouths to feed that could well prove to be a liability as resources became increasingly scarce.

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At first, the Raft People had only one alien visitor to contend with. He was a swarthy, stocky man dressed in stitched-together rabbit skin, his genitals and upper thigh obscured by a short skirt, and he wore a headdress fashioned from the skull of a baboon onto which antelope horns were attached. It was difficult to interpret the expression on his face as it was heavily tattooed with an abstract swirling figure and his words, spoken in a language that even Glade didn't recognise, was more or less incomprehensible.

However, he seemed harmless. He stayed for a couple of days as a guest in the village where he fucked a few women and consented to being fucked by one of the men, though it wasn't apparent that this was his normal preference. He learned a few words of greeting and departed the village on relatively amenable terms. In fact, the Raft People were almost sad to see him go. He had an easy laugh and his cock was of good length and thickness.

Less than a moon later, he returned and this time he was in the company of several other men and an equal number of women. This time he wasn't so welcome. Although he and his companions were happy to share in the village's generosity, they didn't participate in the duty of providing the village with the food they so obviously enjoyed eating. The easy humour and laughter that had made the baboon man such pleasant company was less attractive when it came from a group of people who sat and joked together and made little attempt to communicate with their hosts.

The other men were of the same stocky, swarthy build as the baboon man and were mostly identifiable by the skulls they wore on their heads, such as quagga, hyena and antelope. Their faces were also heavily tattooed. The women covered their heads with stitched-together rabbit-skins as was the rest of their dress, but this was arranged such that the bosom and crotch were displayed at the front, but the buttocks covered at the rear.

The men and women kept themselves apart from each other, although Glade noted that this sexual apartheid was not as extreme as that practised by Demure's tribe. All the same, there was a curious double standard whereby the men were at license to fuck the women and sometimes the men of the host village when the opportunity occurred, but no such license was allowed the women. In fact, they showed no public display of affection to anyone, including their own menfolk, and were aggressively distrustful of even the most innocent intimacy. The men watched the women jealously even though they passed hardly a word with them and were especially alert when their hosts approached the women. Glade was sure that the men and women did fuck together, but this was a practice they kept notably private.

The Raft People generally expressed their feelings and desires by subtle allusion and were very tolerant of each other's quirks. As a result, they were extraordinarily ill-equipped for the task of explaining to their guests that they had outstayed their welcome. Glade and Demure were women with much greater experience of the world than their fellow villagers and it was clear to them, Demure especially, that the baboon man and his compatriots didn't really care whether the villagers were any longer enamoured by their presence. Indeed, they appeared to wilfully misunderstand the Raft People's feeble attempts at protest.

This became more vocal when the Skull People started moving into the huts and shelters of their hosts. Naturally, the abodes they chose belonged to those women and men who had been most open to fucking new exotic flesh, but who were now regretting their earlier intimacy. Glade hadn't been one of these women although she'd been tempted. Uncharacteristically, it had been Demure who advised her lover against her natural urges.

"I don't think this situation is going to be tolerated for much longer," said Demure, as the couple floated together on a raft and speared fish in the Great Sea. "Our hosts may be almost as free with their personal space and their affections as your tribe once were..."

"...before it was exterminated..." said Glade, who could never forgive the Knights for their crimes.

"Yes indeed," Demure agreed, as if she had nothing to do with it. "Our hosts may have levels of tolerance and understanding beyond almost all compare, but they will soon reach their limits. Enough will be enough. They may not have a tradition for making their feelings known, but they outnumber the invaders and will soon forcefully evict them."

"'Invaders'?"

"Trespassers. Intruders. They're not here to share, they're here to take."

"I don't think the Skull People will leave willingly."

Demure made no reply and brusquely threw her spear into the water. She drew it back onto the raft by the length of coiled sinew and reed that secured it to her ankle. She'd caught a small fish that had dared to approach the water surface for one last time. Demure and Glade pounced on the thrashing fish that might otherwise wriggle back into the sea, perhaps into the jaws of a manatee or great auk, and swiftly sawed through the fish's throat. They then threw it into a woven basket in which were already heaped four or five other fish.

"You're right that the invaders won't leave willingly," Demure replied at last. "Therefore, we must be careful to keep our distance. Once one set of guests becomes unwelcome, it's possible that other guests won't be so willingly tolerated."

Glade pondered Demure's words and followed her lover's advice and example when they returned to the village. She was careful to demonstrate just how generous she and Demure could be with their overflowing basket of fish, whilst at the same time ensuring that she sat amongst the Raft People at quite a distance from the men with skulls on their heads.

Demure's calculations were based entirely on numbers. The Raft People's village was unusually large. There were more than a hundred men, women and children who were all well-fed and well-sheltered thanks to the bounty of nature on this stretch of the Northern shore. Most villages Glade had ever seen were composed of rather less than a third of this number and sometimes of barely a dozen souls. But when the company of Skull People one day expanded from the seven or eight who'd originally arrived to more like thirty or so, Glade wasn't so sure that Demure had chosen the stronger force to support.

It was obvious to Glade that the baboon man's tribe was much more belligerent than the Raft People. Not only were the men dressed in more macho fashion with tattoos covering their faces and the skulls of various animals worn on their heads, but they were rarely seen without a weapon such as a flint-knife, a sharpened stick or a club studded with sharp stones. Even their carriage and manner of speaking was inherently more bellicose than their relatively mild and deferential hosts. Could the Raft People assert their will effectively on guests who made no pretence of according them respect?

Glade and Demure sat together with the unusually silent and restrained Raft People on one side of the huge communal fire on which two antelope and a shark were roasting. On the other side, the Skull People were joking and carousing with vulgar abandon. Or at least, the men were. Their women were huddled together, only eating what food was offered them, and nursed the children whose gender was clearly distinguishable at a very young age by the choice of dress.

The new guests wore even more elaborate skulls on their heads, including okapi, wart hog, wolf and even leopard. The man with the leopard skull had a vicious scar down his cheek and forehead that crossed over where an eye was missing. His tattooed face was further adorned by a small bone through his nose, whilst the splendid fur that covered his shoulders but parted ostentatiously at his crotch was stitched from several wildcats including cheetah, leopard and ocelot. Demure remarked to Glade, who wouldn't otherwise have noticed, that this man, as the most strikingly dressed, was probably the Skull People's chief.

Glade was soon rather less anxious about the presence of the leopard man, who was actually the least rowdy of his company, than she was by the attention of another of the new visitors. This one's head was crowned by the skull of a mountain goat, with splendid horns, and whose tattoos only just disguised a badly broken nose and a deep scar across his cheek. Although Glade had learnt a few words of the Skull People's language, she could glean less about the man's intentions from his words as from the affection he expressed towards her and even more so towards Demure.

"This is a man who likes the taste of the exotic," remarked Demure in her own tongue which almost dead language was still her main means of communication with her lover. "There's all this brown flesh, but it's the black he wants."

"You are very beautiful," remarked Glade loyally, who believed this with increasing fervour over the passing years.

"It's not beauty that attracts our stunt-nosed friend," said Demure, as she slid an arm discreetly away from the mountain goat man's grasp. "He doesn't want to admire my skin. He wants to stick his prick inside my hairy black lips. And once he's fucked me, he won't care a fuck about my beauty a moment longer."

The fire died down. Meat was torn off the roasted game. Blood dribbled down the chin and onto the chests of the ravenous Skull People. And amongst the laughter and raucousness that came from just one side of the smouldering fire, the guests were chewing at mushrooms and herbs whose properties were more obviously narcotic than nutritional. The Raft People were more eager than usual to conclude their nightly feast. They were happy to be relieved of the tension of sharing the fruit of their efforts with guests who showed only the most superficial signs of gratitude and whose company had become less than amicable.

Glade and Demure were very soon amongst only a small number of Raft People left at the feast and still the mountain goat man hadn't left their company.

"We're not going to shake him off," complained Demure. Although the man held her possessively around the waist, she was careful not to betray the meaning of her words by maintaining a strangely bland tone in her voice.

"What are we going to do?" wondered Glade, who sat to one side and emulated her lover by keeping her voice similarly unstressed.

"Well, we're not going to argue with the ugly cunt," said Demure whose angry words contrasted with a voice that sounded light and cheerful. "Whatever the shit wants to do, we're not going to be able to stop him. If he wants to fuck a black cunt from the savannah or a brown cunt from the forest, we're going to have to let him."

"We'll just allow him do what he wants?"

"Exactly," said Demure.

She turned her head back to the mountain goat man and smiled almost encouragingly as he pawed her bosom which like the rest of her was uncovered. Neither she nor Glade were comfortable wearing clothes and only did so when it was especially cold. However, nudity on the southern coast of the Great Sea was only rarely associated with sexuality, so this didn't explain the man's obsession with Demure.

When Demure and Glade stood up to return to their shelter, the mountain goat man accompanied them. He continued to speak jocularly in his incomprehensible throaty language and was accompanied also by a woman in a rather plain rabbit-skin fur whose pendulous breasts fell free of the furs that covered her back and buttocks.