"Damn", this antler was useless. He walloped it down hard on the compacted earth again, as hard as he could, but only a little bit more of the brick red earth came away under its point. He grabbed the dirt with one hand and tossed it up, and out of the hole he was digging. It was about as wide as he was tall and so far he had dug down to a point where he was almost waist deep in it. The brown water in its bottom covered his feet, which became cold when he stopped workin. But he needed the pit to be much deeper, even deeper than he was tall. And then at least he might catch some decent food. Perhaps one of those wild pigs that roamed the hazel woods at the side of the gorge. Pig would be good, But goat, rabbit, mouse, rat.... he would eat any of them. He wasn't fussy. Just hungry! His misery was completed by the fine drizzle. The bottom of the hole was turning into a muddy quagmire, and he could feel the slippery mud ooze up between his toes. But he had been lucky. On a recent recce he had found a strange container, hard and smooth on it's circumference. Someone in another twenty thousands years would probably have called it a plastic bucket. Shiny red, and split down one side. Quite how it had come to be under the hawthorn bush he had no idea but presumably had lasted thousands of years since the last race of humanity had ruled the world. Anyhow, he was well made up with it, finding that if he held ir carefully he could use it to scoop up the wet filth from the bottom of the hole and dump it over the edge.
He had just bent down, head below the rim of the hole and come back up to tip another load of thick brown slurry over the side when he spotted a shape approaching along the riverbank, moving furtively amongst the trees that reached out to hang over the water. First he saw her face, and then her hunting stick. And when she spotted him he saw her eyes harden and narrow and the tip of the spear swing in his direction. It made him shrink an inch or two down into the hole. He wasn't used to seeing other humans in this area. You just never knew if they were friendly or on a war footing. In a split second he had decided this could be either type of meeting, certainly not love at first sight! He noted she was well equipped in warm furs and carried a pouch and back pack of some sort. A stone axe was pushed through a leather belt around her waist. But at least he thought he saw a smile on her face as she came close.
She looked down at him. A dirty man in a hole. She didn't seem impressed. She spoke. "What are you doing?" He thought he would tell her he was digging for coloured jewels, but realised that probably wouldn't work on her. "I'm digging a pit trap, " he replied. Again, she looked unimpressed and he had to agree his efforts had been rather feeble so far. "Oh we don't do that anymore. We keep animals and breed them. And then we can just kill one when we need food". He thought about this for a moment. "Oh! And where are your people? Who are your clan?"
"We are the Pēcsǣtan, the Peak Dwellers of these lands". Yes, he had already noticed her accent was more northern, more gutteral. "Where are your men?", he ventured, curious as to why a female hunted alone. "We have no use for men in our tribe. They're useless!"
Standing below her, down in the hole, he felt at a disadvantage, it's true. A thought struck him, and a faint grin formed on his face. "Well how do you keep the tribe going: you know children without men?"
Well she wasn't stupid, "Ah yes. We have that sorted. We have our ways!!"
Hmmm. Really! Anyhow, he had had enough and he hauled himself out of the hole, mud dripping from him (photo opportunity for Jo Evans). It was a little forward, and she clearly had no interest in men, but he dared, "Do you want to come up to my place?" as he waved a hand up to the hump of rock jutting out into the gorge above. Her eyes followed his gesture and she noticed the dark hole of the cave entrance high above the track they were on, down on the flood plain
"Up there?" she said. "Can't I just jump in your pit and let you capture me that way rather than make me climb all the way up there and then tie me up in your cave?"
"Well it's dry and warm and I might cook you something nice....." he let his offer drift away. "You could do worse for the night"
That thought seemed to seal it for her, and off she bounded ahead of him up the steep gorge side as she started to ask...."Do you live on your own? Is it your man cave?" So predictable, he thought.
The cave was huge. And she had never seen a fire before. Thankfully he had heaped some logs on it before he had gone off to dig his trap. He showed her, and explained how it worked. She loved it, and sat close to its warmth as she raved how she was going to start making fires back in the Peak's community. He also showed her how to cook (ha, that was a first!) as he placed a ready prepared rabbit on the fire. he had done it stuffed with wild thyme, artichokes and mushrooms he had gathered down the valley. A crushed paste of horseradish and mustard had her licking her fingers as she bit into the flesh. Yummm, tasty, but she explained she had to stick to a special diet of dried shit she carried in a pouch and she switched to nibbling at that as he spat rabbit bones into the embers of the fire. Uncouth, yup, but tough, this was his pad. His rules.
There was a spare bed higher up in the back of the cave which he had made with dried bracken and wool and hair he had gathered in the hills where it had been shed by grazing animals. He gave her a candle he had made and watched as she took off to sleep as he settled below his own furs. His eyes were just closing when suddenly he heard a great howl. IT was the old grey wolf up on the promontory high above the cave. It must have unsettled her for the woman shouted down from her lofty sleeping place, "Your dog's barking again!"
Soon, however, with a belly full of sweet roast rabbit flesh he slept and dreamt well, only opening his eyes when the sun of a dazzling day was shining across the face of the cave. As he got up and stretched he saw the woman had made and set the fire. And she had tidied up the mess he had left before he went to sleep. And then, with a heavy heart, he realised she had gone too. Damn!
I went to Thor's cave this morning. The approach to it was horrible with deep slippery mud making it treacherous. And the worn smooth sloping limestone rocks at the cave entrance were coated in a line layer of slippery mud. It made it so hard to get in, and an unpleasant place inside. But it is quite amazing, so tall and roomy. Definitely a place I want to explore properly on a return visit when the ground is dry. I took this shot, standing as far forward as I could without getting further on the slippery slope which could easily have you tumble out the cave front if you lost your footing. In America someone would bolt a chain up the side so that people had something to hold on to.