The Other People were everywhere.

Peering at the eastern sky from under overhanging brows, Renumon watched the rising sun with a sense of resignation.    The last five summers had seen the Other People spreading farther into the World, moving out of the face of the rising sun, more and more every year.  Renumon’s people, the First People, had lived in the World since time forgotten.  The World had always been theirs, and the World had always provided for them.  But now the Other People came out of the rising sun, and they were strange in many ways. 

They even looked different.  Renumon was used to thinking of ‘people’ in terms of his own, the First People.  The First People looked like people should look.  They were short and squat, with slightly bowed legs, barrel chests and massively muscled shoulders and arms; chinless, prognathous, large-nosed faces projected from under sloping foreheads and overhanging brow ridges.  The First People looked familiar and comfortable.

In contrast, the Other People looked odd by any standard Renumon was used to. They were too tall, flat-faced, and ugly, with weird projecting foreheads, tiny noses and strange bony bumps under their mouths.  Their hair was even different, thick and dark, not pale like the First People’s hair; their eyes were mostly brown, very few had eyes of the more normal light blue.  Even their skin was darker.  And yet people they were, different in ways that Renumon could not comprehend, but people all the same.

Renumon’s family occupied a large, dry, comfortable cave in a small stretch of forest, with a clear stream bubbling nearby.  It was an ideal dwelling, one that had been their home for four generations, but lately Renumon was beginning to wonder if it was time to find new hunting grounds.  The spirits of this place seemed to be favoring the Other People.

On reflection, Renumon was frequently forced to admit that the Other People had done some good things.  They had brought with them new weapons, new techniques for working flint.  Renumon’s people had a harder time with the casting spears and the new tools were harder for them to knap with their thick, blunt-fingered hands, but the Other People were always willing to trade their superior implements for the soft, pliable furs that the First People were so good at producing.  And the healers the Other People placed here and there in the World, always in an open, well-marked spot; they cared for the First People and their own kind without discrimination.  Only last year, one of them had nursed Renumon’s mate Maia through a bad lung fever.  Renumon had stayed at the hut between the two hills for three hands of days, hunting for the old, white-haired woman of the Other People while she cared for Maia, sleeping outside in the lee of the hide-covered structure.  Renumon had been saddened to learn of the old woman’s death, and had grieved for her.  To this day, as a matter of honor, he occasionally dropped off a piece of meat or a warm fur for the young dark-haired girl that had replaced her. 

But there had been incidents, usually between the young men of both sides.  Renumon’s brother’s son had been killed in a scuffle two summers ago, and his brother followed the boy into the spirit world only days later, in an ill-advised attempt at revenge.

At his brother’s death, Renumon had ascended to be First Clansman of his tiny band, and since then had counseled peace and a policy of non-confrontation.  The Other People were too many, his people too few; the Other People’s spears flew twice as far, twice as fast, their flint knives were better, their clothing and boots warmer, their hunting tactics more effective.  Renumon feared that all the First People could do was try to live in peace for the remainder of the time the spirits allowed them in the World.

“Dear one,” Maia spoke softly from across the glowing firepit.  “Come, eat something.  I’ve saved a marrowbone for you from the great deer we killed yesterday.”  Renumon turned to look at his mate of eight summers; seeing her always brought a peaceful sense of well-being.

“A marrowbone?” Renumon raised his bushy eyebrows, a twinkle of humor in his eyes.  “Not a whole haunch?  What man could hunt on such a tiny breakfast?”  Maia chuckled softly.

Around the fire, the other members of Renumon’s tiny band were stirring.  His sister, Aleeya: his aged mother, Goda, his younger brother Redamon, and his brother’s mate Keeya shared the family hearth.    The First People preferred to keep to small family groups, disdaining the Other People’s practice of living in large, disorganized, noisy tribes. 

Squatting by the fire, Renumon accepted a broken marrowbone from Maia, and set to extracting the rich, fatty marrow with a narrow ivory scoop.  Goda came to the hearth, hunkering down across from her son.

The old woman adjusted her furs around her, grunting at the dull pain of rheumatism in her hip as she squatted down.  Her hair was snow-white, and her large, beaky nose projected from a ruinously wrinkled face.  It had been many years since Goda had been strong enough to hunt or forage for plants more than a short walk from the cave; still, to Renumon, she was Mother, the one who gave him life, and as long as he lived, he would see that she had a spot by the fire and enough to eat.

“Will you hunt again today, son?” she asked. 

“It is harder every summer, Mother,” Renumon admitted.  “The animals know the Other People’s spears fly farther than ours, and so it is harder to get close enough for a kill.  All the easy game is gone.”

Goda reached over her head to where strips of venison hung from a drying rack.  Taking a small piece, she gripped it between her three remaining front teeth and used a flint blade to slice off a small piece.  Adjusting the meat into her few remaining molars, she chewed reflectively for a few moments and swallowed.  A brief reverie came to her mind.

“When I was a girl, I came to this place to mate your father.  Five bison hides, three spears, and four pre-worked flint blanks he paid for me.  Yes, yes!  Pretty I was, then, and many men bargained for me.  But your father won me, and I traveled back to this cave with him from my home past the mountains where the sun sets.”

“Many, many herds we saw then, auroch and bison, mammoth and rhino, great deer, elk and antelope.”  Goda smacked her lips at the memory.

“Those herds are gone now, Mother.” Renumon reminded the old woman.  “The mammoth have gone north to the ice.  The auroch and bison are avoiding the Other People and their magic weapons.”

Ignoring her son, Goda droned on.  “Then the Other People began to come to this place.  Always chattering, always moving, always living in great flocks like waterfowl in the autumn.  They hunted the game as we did, to eat and make clothing.  But they kept coming, always moving, always more, from the rising sun.”

“The herds moved away from them, my son.  They moved away to beyond where the sun sets.  The First People’s lives are going with them.”

Goda closed her eyes for a moment, remembering. 

“My hip hurts today, Son,” she admitted.  “Winter comes again too soon.  I will take my meat, I think, and go back to my sleeping furs for a while longer.  Perhaps you will take me to the Other People’s healer tomorrow, yes?  Or perhaps the next day.”  Rising with a wince of pain, the old woman did just that.

Renumon sucked the last of the marrow from his bone and tossed the empty femur into the firepit.  Sucking his teeth, Renumon lay down on the bare ground near the fire and rolled to his side.  Lost in thought, he idly scratched under one armpit, and braced his chinless jaw on the web of one hand, wrapping his fingers around his large, protruding nose.  His mother’s words weighed on him more than he cared to admit.  There were no children in his band; too many starving times in winter had seen to that.  Maia was pregnant again, and the child would come well before winter.  Renumon hoped that hunting would be good this summer, that enough dried meat would be laid by to allow Maia to keep her milk for this child.  The herds were drifting away, and Renumon wondered now what did lay beyond the mountains to the west.  The great herds that gave food, clothing and life?  A new chance for the First People?  Renumon didn’t know, but he did know his people on this side of the mountains were fewer every year.  Last summer’s Gathering had been but a handful; Renumon remembered Gatherings from his childhood with over twice as many.

Laying here won’t bring back meat, Renumon reminded himself.  He looked up, and peered back to the back of the cave.  His sister, brother and his brother’s mate were up and moving about.

“Redamon.  Keeya.  Aleeya” he barked.  “We will go hunt to the north today.  Maybe we’ll find another great deer, eh?”  The other three grinned back at him; the previous day’s kill had been a rare bit of luck in these times.  After gathering up a variety of heavy lances, lighter casting spears, and stout clubs, the hunting party trotted off to the north.

Mid morning came, and the hunting party had no more to show for their effort than two hares and a giant hamster.  Renumon was getting frustrated; the sun was growing hot.  Noting a sheltered grove of willows lining a small stream, he called a halt for a rest break.  The four hunters knelt by the stream, drank deeply of the clear water, and laid back in the warm autumn sunshine.  Renumon reclined in the grass, closing his eyes.  In a moment, he was enjoying a pleasant daydream of an endless sea of horses, bison, and auroch when a faint sound aroused him.

A disturbance, something was approaching, swiftly from the east.  A whispered command from Renumon had the other three alert in a moment.  The barely heard sounds drew closer.  Renumon listened carefully, finally realizing:  Footsteps, several people, running. 

The source of the sound appeared in the space of a handful of heartbeats.  Four of the Other People, running hard, sweat darkening their leather tunics.  Something was suspended between the two in front and the two in the back.  Irritated, Renumon stood and waved his arms.  “Go on!”  He barked.  “We hunt this valley today, and there’s no game as it is!”

Without breaking stride, one of the Other People looked at Renumon briefly, and then gestured to their burden.  The inert form of another of the Other People lay in a sort of sling of hide that his fellows were using to carry him.  His tunic back was ripped and bloody.  Suddenly ashamed, Renumon nodded curtly and sat back down, gesturing a silent plea to the spirits, Great Ones of the World and Sky, help him.  That being done, he frowned at himself.  How weak have I become, he thought, to be so rude?  The Other People jogged on, heading to the west.  The healer lived in a hut in that direction; no doubt that was where they were bound.

The three others looked studiously at their feet, embarrassed.

“We will go home.” Renumon announced.  “There’s no meat to be found here today.”  The four hunters formed into a file to trudge back to the cave.

Leading the others, Renumon was lost in thought; his mother’s words weighed on him.  Goda talked about the west, he thought.  She spoke of the herds to the west, the endless herds.  It’s a hard thing to think of leaving our home, but the Other People are taking all the good hunting here.  Their young people are fighting with our young people.

The First People were not nomads. They generally lived in one place, one valley, generation after generation, unless some calamity forced a move.  And yet it was a move that Renumon was now forced to consider, a drastic move to a distant place across a forbidding mountain chain.  A move that would allow his people, the First People, to continue the way of life that they had followed undisturbed for millennia.  Renumon didn’t know it, but for all the history of humanity on the planet to this point, there had been different kinds of humans in different places; wherever they met, there was conflict.   Renumon lived in a time of drastic change; the newcomers, the Other People, were slowly taking over, destined, as they were to be the only surviving human species on the planet.

The sun stood high in the sky when the hunting party returned to the cave.  Goda and Maia greeted them, accepting the two hares, the giant hamster and a ptarmigan that Aleeya had taken with a skillfully thrown pebble.  Maia noted Renumon’s troubled expression immediately.

“What is it that bothers you, dear one?” she asked softly, laying one stubby-fingered hand on his heavily muscled arm.  Renumon looked down at the bulge of her advanced pregnancy, all too obvious under the loose-fitting leather wrap.  Maia’s deep blue eyes glowed softly at him, shining from under her overhanging brows.  Her chinless mouth crinkled in a smile, framed by long waves of pale blonde hair.  

“We saw some of the Other People, one of them was hurt badly.”

“Spirits protect him, then,” she responded.  “Come and have something to eat.”

“I will, my mate, and everyone should eat well this day.  We must think and talk.”

The family turned as one to look at their leader, thick eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.

“The Other People,” Renumon replied.

They shared their meal in silence, all six of them sitting close, shoulders and legs touching, drawing comfort from the physical closeness.  The First People lived in an easy, harmonious physical intimacy that depended on close contact, and many leisure hours were spent simply sitting quietly together.  Renumon now drew heavily on that reservoir of comfort and ease.  After a time, still closely surrounded by his family, Renumon reluctantly spoke his thoughts, his heart.

“It grows harder every summer to find game,” he began.

“Winter grows near now, and we have barely enough meat dried to feed us until spring.  The mammoth, the bison, and the auroch are all hunted by the Other People; they grow fewer every year.  We live on rodents and birds.”  He gestured to the bones of the ptarmigan gleaming whitely by the fire pit.

“My mother, this morning you spoke of your journey here long ago.  You spoke of the land beyond the mountains to the west.”  Goda nodded agreement, leaning closer against Redamon.  “The Other People come always out of the east.”

He let his family ruminate on that thought for some time.  The six of them sat, closely, minds turning.  Finally, Renumon went on.

“The Other People are everywhere in this place, now.  The spirits favor them.  Their spears are faster, and their legs are faster.  This is their land now.  In a clan, it is always so that the old must one day make way for the young.  In this world, they are the young ones, and perhaps we are the old ones who must give way for them.  We must find our own way, to the land beyond the mountains, beyond the sunset, where the herds await us and we can live in our own way.”

Maia looked at Renumon, surprise registering in her deep blue eyes.  Redamon, his trusted brother, spoke for the family.

“Are you saying we should leave our home, brother?  Should we go to the west, to our mother’s old home?”

Renumon closed his eyes and nodded.

“For our people to have a home where we can live as we always have, we must go.  For the First People to be the only people again, we must go.  The Other People will follow us one day, I am sure of that.  But we can only do what we can do.”

“My family, we must go,” he concluded. 

Nearby, Goda sat staring ahead. Her legs were not strong, and the odds of her surviving the trip were not good.  Maia cradled her belly, keening her grief softly.  The family huddled closer together.

Finally, Maia rose, and began gathering her tools and implements.  “Better that we go, now,” she stated, and taking a large, partially worked reindeer hide, she spread it flat and began piling on her belongings.  Galvanized by the leader’s mate’s show of resolve, the others began to gather weapons, tools, prized possessions.

Renumon noticed his mother standing to the side, off by herself; she wasn’t gathering anything, she didn’t seem to be preparing to leave. 

“Mother,” he finally asked, “Do you need help?”

Goda looked at her son, her eyes clouded.

“First Son,” she began.  “I am old.  I cannot make this journey.  You know this is true.”

“Yes, Mother,” Renumon admitted.  He moved to his mother’s side, and then sat at her feet in the First People’s timeworn gesture of respect.  Goda placed a hand affectionately on her son’s head, fingers entwined in Renumon’s pale blonde hair.

“It is a good thing that you take the family back to the sunset side of the mountains.” Goda continued.  “The Other People are going to be the only people here soon, I think.  But the First People must find a home, a place where we can have children, where we can live as we have.  You are right to speak of these things, First Son.”

Renumon nodded, ashamed.  He had known that his mother probably wouldn’t survive the crossing, but in this harsh Ice Age world, the lives of the young must take precedence, and Maia’s pregnancy was nearing its inevitable conclusion. 

“Listen to me now, First Son,” Goda ordered, her eyes suddenly bright with decision.  “The Other People’s healer is on the way west, on the way you must take the family.  I will go there to the healer, and there I will stay. The girl there will care for an old woman who will die soon anyway.  It will be a good thing.”

“Mother,” Renumon began, but Goda cut him off with an upraised hand.

“No, First Son, you have decided, and you can not go back now.  The spirits have loved us in this place, Son, and the sky will weep tears for us when we are gone.  But the First People’s time here is over.  The Other People are friendly with us now, but they will have no need of our friendship in seasons to come.  They are too many and we are too few.  They will hunt the game that was ours, live in our caves, drink from the streams that once belonged to the First People.  If we stay, Son, our young men will grow angry, their hearts will turn black, and they will fight with the Other People, and they cannot win this fight.  The First People have everything to lose by this, and nothing to gain.”

“But we will not be forgotten by the spirits of the land, Son.  Our lives are written in the soil and the grass and the wind of this land.  The earth beneath our feet is sacred, made that by the dust of our ancestors back to before our memory.  In days to come, the Other People will feel our spirits here, they will find our tools and our bones, and they will remember the old ones, the First People, and some of them will regret what was.  But day and night can not live together, and the First People are in the evening of our time, even as the Other People are the dawn of a new day.”

Renumon was saddened.  “Mother, if the First People are to be gone, what does it matter where we spend our last days?  If we are the last of our kind, why journey to a far place to meet our end there?  Am I wrong in this?”

“First Son, dear child,” Goda assured him, “You do not do this thing for all the First People.  You do this thing for the child Maia carries, for the children your brother and his mate will have, and for the mate your sister will not find here.  You do this for the hunts you will lead in that far place where the herds are still thick as blades of grass on the steppe, where you will regain your pride as the hunt leader for your family.  The men, the women, the children who have lived in this place are gone, and the First People will live here only in the dim memories of the Other People, who will one day tell stories of the Old Ones who lived in this land when their ancestors came.  But in that place across the mountains, you, my son, and our family will go on, for your child’s time at least.

“That may be all you can do, but you can do that one thing.  And it will be a good thing, my son.  When you are there, in the good place, you will know.”

Around them, the family bustled about.  There was little to gather.  Sleeping furs, weapons, tools, the supply of dried meat, a few animal-stomach water bags, several leather pouches with assorted supplies, some gathered nuts and seeds.

“Mother,” Redamon approached.  “Won’t you come with us?  Renumon and I will carry you on our backs, Renumon, tell her we will?”

“No!” Goda barked, eyes bright at last.  “You would have to eat more for the strength to carry a useless old woman.  The women would have greater loads to bear, and Maia already carries a child.  I will not allow this thing.”

The brothers looked at each other silently, their eyes filled with sorrow.  They knew their mother was right, but that didn’t make the decision any easier.  The young had always been cared for before the old; they were the future of the First People.  Renumon shook his head sadly, and went to gather his weapons and tools.

A short time later, the family was ready.  The three women and two men carried loads wrapped in hide and strapped to their backs with wide thongs.  They carried lances, spears, and Renumon had a large club of oak.  Buried deep in Maia’s pack was a small, rough ivory carving of a horse, a parting gift to Goda from her father many seasons ago.  Goda had slipped it to her in secret, asking her to return it to that far place.  “It is fitting that something of me should return to the place that was once my home,” she whispered to her son’s mate.  “Find a secret place, perhaps a nook in a bank or a cliff, and leave it there for the spirits to find.”  Maia had nodded, unable to speak, tears streaming down her face.

Goda stood to accompany them as far as the healer’s hut, leaning on a stout stick she used as a walking staff.  The family looked once more at the cave, the stream, the trees that had been their familiar home for generations; then, silently, they filed out, marching to the west on sturdy, bowed legs.

Trailing behind, Goda stopped for a final look back.  “Spirits of this place, smile on the next family to live in this good home that was ours,” she pleaded.  “They will be of the Other People, and their ways will seem strange to you.  But they are good people, and they will honor you in their own ways, even as we, the First People, have done.”

Blinking back sudden tears, she hurried after the young ones as fast as her arthritic hip would allow.

The sun was lowering in the sky when the family arrived under the saddle between two spires of rock.  Above them in the saddle, the family could see the round form of one of the Other People’s huts sending up a pale blue streamer of smoke.  From the hut emerged a woman of the Other People, her long hair the color of a raven’s wing.  She stopped in midstride, noticing the family standing in the valley below her home; after a moment, she raised one hand in greeting.

Renumon raised his thick-fingered left hand in return.  He was familiar with the new healer that had replaced the old woman.  Only a hand of days ago he had left a pair of ptarmigan at the hut.  The woman of the Other People did not speak his language, but smiled and was polite.

Goda turned now to the family and spoke.

“I will stay here.  The Other People’s healer will surely be able to benefit from some of an old woman’s wisdom.”  The woman of the Other People spoke none of their language, and Goda spoke none of hers, but the family left that unsaid.

“My family,” Goda continued, “my sons and daughters, go now to that far place, through the mountains to the place in the world that I called home when I was young.  Find others of the First People there, make children, and hunt in the old ways.  The Other People will come there in time, but for now, be glad there is still a place for our kind.

“I will stay here, and that way at least some of the First People will still be here to speak to the spirits of this place that has been so good to us.”

One by one, the family came to the old woman, and one by one they leaned together with their mother, pressing their sloped foreheads to hers in an ancient, gentle expression of love.  Tears wet all their faces.  Renumon was last, his pale blonde hair askew, cheeks wet with his grief. 

“My mother,” he began, unable to say more.  Goda closed her eyes and nodded, pressing her forehead fiercely against her son’s.

And then Goda suddenly stood as tall as she could, drawing her dignity, the dignity of her ancient race, around her like a cloak.  “Go!” she commanded, pointing to the west.  “Go now!  Your future will not wait for you!  Do not stand here grieving for an old woman who will die soon anyway!  Go!”  She turned her back on the family, and leaning heavily on her staff, stumped up the hill towards the hut.

Renumon watched her go for only a moment, and then sighed in resignation as he turned once more to the west, leading his family in single file towards their future.

Goda stopped once, as the family crested a ridge before dropping out of sight; the mist of age dropped from her eyes for a moment, long enough to allow her to see the squat, barrel-chested forms of her family marching west, into the fiery red face of the setting sun.  Another moment, the ridge hid them from view, and only the setting sun remained, dropping slowly out of sight beyond the end of the world.

The old woman raised one hand in an ancient farewell, and turning, continued up the hill to the waiting woman of the Other People.