Mammoth Companions And Sun-Wheels

[madwriter]

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 10/5 AND 10/6/11

New Words: 3300 (1800 / 1500) on Chapter 1 ("Those Who Came First") Part 1 ("The Skystone Hunter") of Arizona. Nakuq finds himself the unlikely companion of an ostracized mammoth, meets up with someone he thought got eaten by a sabertooth, and watches the holy woman stand at the center of a sun-wheel singing a prayer. I also included the first made-up song of the book, such as the kind that my Shenandoah novels were full of.

Total Words: 8900. Getting a little sprawling already, but I'm telling myself in the first draft this is OK, since the book will be so big that I'll likely need to get it edited and have it sell as an e-book anyway. This may or may not be true, but it helps stifle the internal censor (somewhat).

Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for work.

Book Year: 8944 B.C.

Mammalian Assistance: None either day--they were all hanging out in the open windows.

Exercise: Walks around the neighborhood with Tucker the Big Dog around the neighborhood both days; walking down to campus both days. Weezie still seems disinclined to let anyone besides Laurie walk her.

Stimulants: Being able to have my forest-side Writing Room window open because it's warm outside.

Today's Opening Passage(s):

Yesterday: He ran for the San Pedro. His tracker’s senses told him that his hunters were not far behind and he was nearly blind with panic and grief, but some insistent part of his mind remembered that putting the mountain at his back would lead him toward the river. It was a miles-long trek through the valley, with some woodlands offering cover—and more protection that that, because he was being hunted by men who knew well how to follow the swaths that showed the paths of mammoths and bison, but much less well the tiny signs of a small creature’s passage.

Nakuq became that small creature. His arms wouldn’t let him climb trees, but he could hide in brush, and when woods parted with wide grasslands he could hide there as well. But the men were used to running for hours at a time; Nakuq was not. He knew he was close to the San Pedro, but the hunters were closer.

(Yes, at least for working purposes I'm using modern names in place of the unknown ones of prehistoric times.)

Today: That same night Nakuq remembered how he had lost the large skystone the Santa Cruz River gave him, and he thought it would be wise to offer an apology. “I’ll be back,” he told the curious Left Tusk, took his bone knife, and walked purposefully out of the tiny valley.

(To dancinghorse:Your finds are already making it into the book, albeit some are altered a bit. The "bone knife" is carved from the tooth of a fossil mosasaur.)

Darling Du Jour: The wheel consisted of a small circle in the center, surrounded by the much vaster one that covered the plateau. From the central wheel were seven lines—sun rays, Salu explained—reaching out for the larger circle, which was the sky. The spaces made between the rays each represented the moon, the stars, and the handful of untwinkling stars—the planets, though Nakuq did not know the difference between planets and stars, only that the untwinkling bodies in the sky also moved differently.

She ordered them to lay her in the center circle. But once they released her she cast off the bison robe to reveal a gaunt, bony body that still managed to come to its feet and lift its arms to the sky. In a full voice louder and clearer than Nakuq had ever heard from her, she tilted her head back towards the sun and sang,

“You, the Golden Sun who births the light of the sky,
You, the Golden Sun who draws rain from the land,
You, the Golden Sun who sings the grain from the dirt,
Golden-Rayed one, we are insects in your hair
Yet you feed us, you warm us and the animals,
You hold back the ice that once invaded the land—
You who open every door of the sky and every corner of the land,
We are forever your children.
I ask your blessing once more upon all those of the Real Place!”

The last line startled Nakuq because he knew it meant blessing even those who had killed his family. But Genngha gave him no chance to protest. She locked him with a fierce look and opened one hand towards him.

He understood at once and handed her all the skystones in his pouch. She proceeded to lay a few in each space, with the largest number by far in the center, a gift to the sun.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Michener; Follett.