This is from a collection of short stories, Tales of the Realm.  

Miracle

Ten thousand years ago, maybe more.

A bleak fire reflected little warmth from the walls of the shallow cave. The leader of the family looked around with a deep feeling and knowledge of an ending. The clan had reached a point where resources had dried up. Frozen up rather, as all the water in the region became ice.

The daylight became shorter and shorter, as always this time of year, and now they sat in the long night slowly dying. The fathers held the mothers who held the children. The leader had no real use for numbers. In later days they would be numbered twenty and one, but by tomorrow three of the children and the old woman would have left them. The rest would follow soon.

The oldest son stood and, with a glance at the tribal leader for tacit permission, gathered the last of the dry firewood. He was good with fire, she noted, but even he needed fuel to bring the warmth and light.

Banking the flames slightly, he reached in to the hot ashes and embers and gingerly pulled round, water tumbled stones out of the center of the fire. Quickly he walked around the family circle, picking up now cool stones and dropping freshly heated ones in the midst of the rough animal skin blankets covering the little ones. He took the cold stones and carefully arranged them in the center of the fire, stoking it back to a higher flame.

The fire maker squatted at the edge of the warmth for a moment, gazing through the flames at his children. The clan leader knew that in different times he would have woken his eldest son and taught him the techniques of winter warming. Now he stared at the still forms of his family. His mate looked back with little light in her tired eyes.

Firemaker stood and walked over to where the leader sat near the mouth of the cave. He ran his hand through her rough, ruddy hair in affection. She could smell the burnt hair of his arms and could picture him smoking slightly, his palms rough and leathery from working with the hot materials for so long. With his other hand he pushed a warm stone wrapped in leather inside of her robes. She welcomed the warmth and the touch. Many lunar cycles passed since his father had gone away to hunt. They both knew that he was not to return. They both had felt his last thoughts. Now she knew that they might be sharing each others’ last thoughts as well.

Only one sat closer to the edge of life and light than they did, the Old Mother. It was for her they had stayed so long. She had been weak at the start of the season and they traveled slowly, too slowly as it turned out. Still, leaving her behind was not an option. She was the one who could hear.

All along she resisted the idea of leaving the area. The climate change did not deter her. She felt that if they left the area, they would lose the voices of the earth. Reluctantly now, the leader and her son wondered together if they had trusted the old one for too long. Together they looked at her diminutive form huddled against the frozen air. Together they noted that all they could see of her was the physical form. By this time tomorrow she would have passed to the earth and become one with the voices. Firemaker turned and looked at the tribal family and realized that Old Mother would precede three of her youngest descendants by only a day or two. It was no real comfort to know that his daughter would be greeted by the Old Mother.

A practical thought nudged him. The ground was too solid to bury the dead. A grim humor overtook the thought as he realized that they would all be following the Old Mother soon. Whoever would be the last one would have to bury themselves. He snorted a rough laugh and stared at the corner, empty now of the fire’s fuel.

No fire and no food and no water and the longest, coldest night that the old ones could recall. Sadness swept the thoughts from his mind. He approached the Old Mother quietly and gently slipped another heating stone into her blankets. He noticed the stiffness of the outer skins. They were frozen. The Old Mother did not resist nor acknowledge his presence. At this proximity he could sense her thoughts, hear her calling out to the earth. He turned away. What could the earth do for them now?

The clan slowly drifted in and out of sleep, the cold sapping their strength steadily. Try as she might, the clan leader began to loose her watchfulness. In truth, she thought, there is nothing to watch for; it is too cold for any predator to be out tonight and the creatures had all long since roamed south, following the herds for food. Her eyes slowly closed.

Firemaker gathered the sleeping children and moved them closer to the diminishing fire. The adults gathered around them and lay down on the frozen stone floor, wrapped as tightly as they could in the blankets and cloaks, huddling together, one last time. Firemaker laid the last of the wood in an intricate pattern to help the flames last a bit longer into the night. He lay down, back to the mouth of the cave, front to his family. He did not have a word for miracle, but the concept was clear as he drifted off to the sound of the wind.

Somewhere in the night, when the wind quieted and the embers began to cool, when the night was darkest and the cold crescent moon began to set, the Old Mother stood up. It was not easy, for she was weak and the frozen skins were a solid barrier that she had to struggle through. Dimly she noted the cool heating stone fall from her lap, a last gift from a good child. He should have given it to one the young ones, she thought.

Now, free from the pile of rough skins, she began to pull at the ties of her robes, dropping the heavy leathers away from her thin form. Finally she stood naked in the night, the long hair on her arms and legs more grey than red and giving scant protection against the cold. This would not take long, she thought. Cold was not a worry to her at this point.

The frozen air made it difficult to draw a breath. She began her incantations silently, her skinny feet wrapped in worn leather shuffling in the hard snows. The dance had been wilder in days past, the song loud and joyous. Now she barely swayed from side to side and you would have to be close indeed to her nearly toothless mouth to hear any sound at all.

During these moments, time is not measured by the movement of the earth and moon. The Old Mother soon felt the power of the original mother grow and swell, flowing through her physical nature and strengthening the life that dwelt within the body. In the morning, when the tribe would find her body, they would marvel at the range of movements that her footprints would show them. The trackers would wonder at the height of her leaps as they noted the depths of her landing steps.

Now, from inside the cavern, one lone child emerged. This one had long sat in silence near the Old Mother. With her young eyes she noted and observed all the moves of the sacred dance and listened carefully to the tones of the songs. Now she began moving with the Old Mother, at first copying the dance then, slowly at first, improvising new steps and new notes until her dance became her own. The old woman slowed and stopped now, watching as the child stepped into her role.

The dance flowed out from her freely and she felt the warmth of her own body grow and connect. Her senses grew in those moments and she felt first, then scented, and then heard, and finally saw a figure approach them from below.

From out of the night a great bearded giant approached, shaped like the members of the tribe, but much larger. Clad in skins from the great mammoths, his head covered by a hood made of from massive stag, antlers still intact, and wearing belts and pouches from the elk and deer and wolf and bear and other creatures from the lands and seas, he approached the mouth of the cave. The child stopped dancing and looked up in wonder.

From across the giant’s massive back he slung a huge, heavy pack to the icy ground, a bundle of long branches tied to the outside. These he delivered first, reaching far into the cooling cavern, stealthily stretching across the family and into the corner.

Next he set four smaller sacks on the ground. The giant turned and looked at the Old Mother. Without hesitation, she entered the circle of the family. The child Dancer was aware of a vaguely dreamlike quality to the Old Mother’s movements. It seemed Old Mother did not appear to be quite so old. Four children she lifted, one by one, and carried to the entrance of the cave, setting each next to one of the four sacks. The children lay still and quiet.

Old Mother looked back into the cavern. With her eyes she touched each member of her family one last time. With her hand she touched the Dancer’s face. Gazing into each others eyes they communed in a way higher than words. Old Mother turned and stepped lightly next to the giant. She looked into his eyes. He smiled at Old Mother. Without words he nodded in reply.

He gave one more gift. Impossibly, he pulled one large log, nearly an entire tree actually, from his sack. Despite his great size, he struggled to maneuver it using both of his huge hands and all of his might.

In the dark, Dancer was unsure of what she actually saw next. It appeared to her that a small creature, emerging from somewhere inside the giant’s robes, blew fire onto the end of the log! With a bit of effort the giant bent down and set the flaming log at the entrance of the cave. Almost instantly the cave grew warm and comfortable.

In the morning, the four children woke up near the warming fire of the giant’s log. The four sacks had vanished, but the Dancer knew that each had received a gift from within each of the giant’s bags. There were many things the Dancer now knew. It would be many years before she could express these things. For now she sat wrapped in the warm robes of the Old Mother outside the cave watching the sun rise. Her mother and her father moved quickly to gather her up and brought her back into the cave. In truth, she would never really be in the cave again.

It took some time before the tribal leader completely trusted the visions of her niece. In the end, the Dancer guided them safely through and to greener and more fertile lands. In her lifetime, the tribe never did find the land that the Dancer knew waited for them, but she learned the words she needed to tell the tales. She and her siblings and her cousins wove the stories that led their children’s children’s children on and on in search of what they knew must exist, a green and pleasant land of life and growth and magic.

The Dancer stopped telling the tale of the night the giant came. At least she stopped insisting the tale was true. She learned the ability to give lessons from within the tale, lessons of hope and family and gifts and sharing, lessons of laughter and song and celebrations in the mornings.

There would be those that would corrupt the tales for their own personal gain, but the tales would remain and spread and adapt.

The tribe met up with others, some that they knew and some that they joined with and in this way they remained and spread and adapted. The Old Mother would come to the Dancer and her daughters in dreams. She always appeared like the last time that the Dancer had seen her.

The giant had looked around the land in the night. He had taken a mighty breath and blown upwards to the clouded sky. He had cast his gaze down to the tiny, bare figure of the Old Mother. Gently laying his hand at her back, he scooped her up to his chest. The Dancer watched as the years seemed to fade away from Old Mother’s form. Dancer smiled and Old Mother smiled back.

With a wink and a touch at the side of his nose the giant turned and quickly disappeared in the night. Outside the cave, the Dancer looked upward. The clouds were parting and the sky filled with starlight. She stood watching for a long time outside of time. That first night she learned the position of the stars. She sensed the life all around and below the icy earth, waiting patiently to return to the surface.

She never saw the giant again, but occasionally she thought she could smell the scent of the hair of his beard singeing slightly as he set the burning tree at the opening of their home. That tree burned until the sun returned to the land. The embers stayed warm and flames continued to dance in the night months past the long winter and well into the spring. Firemaker took the coals of that fire with him and for many decades thereafter the tribe carried the magic of that night.

In the end they all passed from the earth, they and their children’s children’s children. The gifts given to the four that night were passed on and on and exist within children to this day.