It may not have sounded like a vocalized intelligence to a modern person. It may though, have sounded like a song to a Mesolithic hunter, although the tone would seem unnaturally low, echoing as it did from within unusually deep chests. The words, such as they were, would have a ‘moist’ quality, pushed forward as they were by thick broad tongues over a receding chin. The low rhythmic song was sung by two hunched figures, naked beneath the falling snow, huddled around a sooty hilltop fire, their large heads tilted back, their large eyes gazing from beneath heavy brow ridges into the night sky above, into the unsmiling silver sheen of the Night Face, having risen its fullest.

“…Came They,

Sparks of Ember Star

Bloody They,

Original People bring

Wise They

—Sun-in-Hand;

Call They.”

And so he chanted along with Grandfather Ghost Walker, the last words of the Original Song, as they squatted about the sooty fire; the sacred flames fueled by the black burning rocks of these deeply creased hills, sparely covered with stunted pines and rocks as naked and unpainted as the two men.

He wanted dearly to learn the secrets of Sun-in-Hand, and was moved to ask in the profane way; the way of the camps, with the harsh spoken word. It then occurred to him to ask in the hunting way, by sign, but this too would be wrong. He must ask in the Old Way, signing with his eyes as he echoed from his chest and throat, not using the tongue and mouth other than as an opening that permitted the serene sound of the First Ones, the ghosts that had hunted the world in its Morning Time, to lend context to the things asked with his rolling eyes,

“Grandfather

To Night Sky I sing,

Sun-in-Hand

Bring?”

Grandfather Ghost Walker then rolled his eyes in the knowing way and howled at the rising Night Face. He then reached beneath his ground hide of mammoth fur and drew forth a huge bundle.

He brings the sacred things!

Noting the eagerness in the younger man’s eyes, Grandfather Ghost Walker gave a snort of distain and the backhand of admonishment to his initiate. Tusk was momentarily hurt, and wanted to hang his head in shame for days and nights. But Grandfather raised his head with fingers flattened from countless tasks and smiled the fierce smile of barred teeth that indicated the need to act with resolve, and motioned for the younger man to stand.

Do as he says in order to be as he.

Tusk stood, now much taller than his hunched grandfather, but no broader. Grandfather then uncovered his sacred knife, carved from a single mammoth tusk and as long as a man was tall. It was, or it had always been said by the hunters, carved in the likeness of the great They knives of star metal that They had once used to slay the enemies of the Original People. The elder, now sprouting half his hair gray, handed the sacred weapon to Tusk and gave the narrow eyes of giving-with-expectation.

Tusk gave the wide eyes of receiving-with-commitment and took the great tusk knife in his hands.

The weight of it, the power!

Grandfather then made the cast down eye sign of staying, and Tusk knew that he was to accompany the Ghost Walker of the Original People until the elder passed into Dream Time.

Now Grandfather held up a round caribou hide, greased with musk oxen fat to keep out the wet, and unwrapped it to reveal the thing of legend, the object of stories since the Original People floated across the Water Dread in hollowed out mammoth carcasses.

Sun-in-Hand!

Tusk leaped in the air with excitement and Grandfather grinned the grin of knowing another’s feeling. Grandfather then began leaping about, holding the sun-colored hoop above his head as he and Tusk leaped and cavorted in a circle around and around.

I am one day to Ghost Walk; to enter Dream Time on behalf of the Original People!

Grandfather had leaped all he could leap, and gave the look of sly knowing and howled, not this time to the Night Face, but to the Nightfall Star, the star that moved. Tusk added his deep rumbling howl to that of Grandfather and they echoed their joy across the deep ravines and wooded bottoms of this high country, where rocks burn and the wolf-bears ruled.

The deep-cleft hills are my home now, the flinty crags my camp, as I beseech Dream Time on behalf of the hunters below.

He looked to Grandfather with eyes of thanks and howled into the night, defying the great wolf-bears to risk the point of his mighty tusk-knife! He howled on as Grandfather squatted back on his worn old haunches beneath the falling snow and gazed up at him with eyes of pride.

When his energy was spent Grandfather once again gave him the sly eyes of knowing and held up the Sun-in-Hand. The elder then pointed, with the three remaining fingers of his strong hand, at the carved signs. The elder then rolled some of the carvings beneath his fingers. The carvings moved and gave off a clicking like chipping flint. Finally, when the carvings clicked their last, he felt something—no smelled it—in the air. Grandfather then extended his hand and let the sacred relic of their people fall—and it did not!

With a low ‘whomp-whomp-womped’ sound the sun-fire hoop hovered like a bird going nowhere. Grandfather then motioned for him to step close to the hoop and look down into it. The first thing he noticed was that snow fell into the hoop but did not fall out. He then saw a sky-blue and sun-yellow mist, and there he stood, entranced, mouth open, hands out to his side in wonder, unable to even imagine the effects this act of sacred They Power would have on the Hunting World and in Dream Time. He just stood, struck dumb, able only to smile and stare, so, so glad to have been chosen as the next Ghost Walker; the one man in all the Hunting World that the Original People, and even the Sunfall People, Dread People and Caribou Chasers, would journey to for dream Interpretation and song purification.

Grandfather then tapped him on the shoulder and smiled before he sang,

“Dream Hunter

You,

Gift Taker

You,

Far Seer

You,

They Caller

You!”

Grandfather then seized the hoop and pushed back the carvings, and the Sun-in-Hand slept. The elder then crawled into his ground hides and went almost immediately to sleep, leaving Tusk standing guard, a mighty tusk-knife in hand as he looked down over the deeper darkness of the hill-clefts, wondering now, if the great black Grandfather Wolf-Bear of nightmare had heard his brash challenge.

I shiver in fear.

May Grandfather Ghost Walker not know and may Grandfather Wolf-Bear not come.

I shiver still in the lonely night.