The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

through the air and hit one of the ducks, causing it to plummet. The youth splashed out into the shallow water and retrieved the dead bird.
    Tall One gasped.
    The stranger stopped. He turned in her direction and peered intently at the wall of grasses until Tall One, inexplicably emboldened, stepped out.
    She felt bold because she was wearing the powerful water-stone on a grass string around her neck. It lay between her breasts like a giant drop of water, its cloudy center, formed three million years ago when cosmic diamond-dust had melded with earth quartz, shimmering like a heart.
    She and the stranger regarded each other warily.
    His appearance was slightly different from that of the Family: his nose a different shape, his jaw stronger, his eyes an intriguing moss color. But his hair, like that of Tall One’s family, was long and tangled and matted with red mud, but he had decorated it with bits of shell and stone, which Tall One thought very fetching. Most intriguing about him was the collection of ostrich eggs that hung about his waist on a belt of woven reeds. The eggs had holes in them and the holes were plugged with mud.
    Although their languages were dissimilar, the young male was able to explain that his name was Thorn and that he had come from another family across the plain, in a valley Tall One had never seen. Through gestures and sounds, he told Tall One how he had come to be named Thorn.
    As he hopped around howling in mock pain, mimicking his accident as he massaged his buttocks where many thorns had imbedded themselves, Tall One quickly grasped that he had gotten his name when he had fallen into a thorn bush. She laughed hysterically, and when he was finished, pleased by her laughter, he held out the dead bird to her.
    She grew somber. A memory suddenly darkened her mind: long ago, before Lion was the leader, before the leader named River even, when Tall One had been very small, two strangers coming into the camp. They had come from over the ridge, where the Family had never gone. All were wary at first, and then the new males had been accepted into the group. But then something had happened—a fight. Tall One remembered the blood, and the Family’s leader lying dismembered in the grass. One of the two strangers had taken his place and the Family followed him after that.
    Was this stranger going to kill Lion and become the new leader?
    While she watched him in silent curiosity, Thorn caught a few more ducks with his sling and rocks, and together they took them back to Tall One’s camp.
    The Family shouted with delight over the fowl, for they hadn’t tasted flesh in days, and then they turned their curiosity to the newcomer. Children peered shyly from behind their mothers’ legs while older girls eyed him boldly. Honey-Finder reached down and tickled Thorn’s genitals, but he jumped back, laughing, his eyes on Tall One. When Lion gestured to the ostrich eggs around the stranger’s waist, Thorn untied one and offered it to him. Lion puzzled over the plugged hole, figured it out, then dipped his finger in the hole and was stunned to find water inside instead of yolk. Thorn demonstrated by up-ending the egg and letting water dribble into his mouth. Then he gave the egg to Lion to drink. The Family was astounded. What sort of bird laid eggs with water inside? But Tall One understood: Thorn had put the water in the empty eggshells. From there she drew an even more startling conclusion, one that she had no words for and was only a struggling idea in her mind: Thorn carried water with him against future thirst .
    They threw the ducks onto the fire, singeing off the feathers and partially cooking the flesh, and the Family enjoyed a feast that night, ending it by merrily throwing bones at one another. Old Mother happily sucked on duck marrow and gulped down the fresh water from the ostrich eggs. All the females in the group eyed the new young male, whose antics and strength aroused them. And even the males, for a