Free The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Page B

stones and studied her dreams, she had looked into the campfire smoke and tracked the flight of sparks, and altogether they had revealed a terrible truth that left no doubt in Alawa’s mind.
    For the survival of the clan, the children must die.

    By afternoon the fog cleared, as they had known it would, allowing the refugees a view of unfamiliar woodland and sandy river bank before the sun dipped to the horizon and robbed them of light.
    They stopped to rest. While Keeka and other young mothers settled down to breast-feed and adolescent girls went to draw water, Laliari opened the last of their date reserves and distributed them among the group. The dates had been gathered days before, at a small palm grove on the river. With everyone throwing stones and rocks at the clusters of chewy fruit high overhead, they had reaped a rich harvest, feasting on the spot and then filling their baskets to carry on their backs.
    While the others ate, Alawa separated herself from the group to find a partially sunny spot for the reading of her magic stones. At the same time, Bellek, stooped and nearsighted, scrutinized every twig and branch, every shrub and blade of grass to determine whether this was a lucky place to stay. So far, he had seen little good magic here.
    Sixty-five thousand years in the past it had not occurred to a man named Lion that his people could alter their circumstances. But it had occurred to a girl named Tall One and it was her actions that had led to the survival of her race. This was her legacy to her descendants, to know that they need not be at the mercy of their environment. However, down through the millennia, as humans had multiplied and expanded the boundaries of their world, Tall One’s descendents had grown extreme in their new knowledge of change and control, for now they tried constantly to manage every microscopic aspect of their environment through the appeasing and honoring of ghosts. They had to be always on the alert in order to keep their world in balance. The slightest misstep could upset the spirits and bring bad luck upon the people. If they crossed a stream they would first say, “Spirit in this stream, we wish to pass in peace.” When they killed an animal, they asked its forgiveness. They were forever “reading” their surroundings. Whereas their ancestors of sixty-five millennia earlier had paid no heed to a smoking volcano, Laliari and her family read omens in the slightest spark from an ember. Which was why Alawa, as she interpreted the toss of her magic stones, wondered what they had done wrong at the Reed Sea to cause it to swallow up the hunters. Of course they hadn’t known it was going to be a sea, so how could they have spoken the appropriate words? They hadn’t even known its name so how could they have invoked its spirit? But surely there had been signs to read—there were always signs. What had they missed that would have prevented the catastrophe?
    And, she thought darkly as she gathered up her stones, signs that could have prevented the catastrophe yet to come. For once again the collection of pebbles and small rocks that had been handed down through countless generations, all the way back to the very first Keeper of the Gazelle Horns, told the same message: the children were going to have to die.
    She peered through the trees at the tragic collection of women and children. They were weary from lack of sleep. Nightmares plagued them, horrific dreams that Alawa believed were the result of the dead not having had a silent-sitting. If the silent-sitting had been performed, the unhappy ghosts would not now be haunting the dreams of the living.
    Her own daughter, running, an invader close on her heels, grabbing her flying hair, pulling her off her feet, slamming her down onto her back, his club coming down again and again .
    At first it had only been a few invaders and Doron and the hunters had been able to drive them off. But then more strangers had come, having heard of the