Page 37 of Caveman Alien's Touch

“Of course,” I say seriously. “But nobody else. I wonder, who was the man who was standing by the thorn bushes? He gave me a friendly warning.”

“Oh, that was tribesman Bruk’az. I heard you simply jumped over that obstacle.”

“It seemed the right way to pass it. I wanted to thank him, but I can do that tomorrow.”

“Of course. I shall tell him to expect you.” The man bows and withdraws.

“Tribes are strange,” Bronwen mutters when we start climbing the stairs. “Everything is honor to them.”

“We’re not too concerned with honor in our clan,” I tell her. “There, it’s more important to be nice and to do your duty.”

We follow the stairs about halfway up the Mount, and then we go off the main stairs and continue on a narrower one.

“I not like this,” Bronwen says and clings to the red rock, taking one sideways step at a time. “So high up!”

The stairs here are narrower than the main one, and there’s no handhold. It doesn’t bother me much, but if someone were to fall down from here, that would be certain death.

I go out to the outer edge of the stairs to shield Bronwen from the height. “Now you can’t see the drop.”

She focuses on the part of the stairs where we’re going. “Don’t do that, please. I worry you fall!”

I do a little dance on the steps, the way she showed us last night, stomping and spinning around. “But I won’t fall!”

She giggles and keeps going. “If you fall and die, I will be angry. You not like it.”

I run lightly up the stairs and back down. “Still I haven’t fallen.”

She smiles. “Well, just… not.”

I notice she walks easier now, looking less tense.

We get to the end of the stairs that have been carved into the rock. A rope ladder hangs down, and Bronwen grabs hold of it. “I not like this part. Hold the rope, please.”

I grab hold of the rope, noting it’s not as nice as the ones we make in the clan. “I’ll get you a new ladder. This one is frayed.”

Bronwen starts climbing it, holding on to the rope as firmly as she can, making her knuckles whiten. Even in the dark, the view from underneath her is very fine.

She climbs all the way up, crawls into a cave, and then sticks her head out. “Come up.”

I quickly climb the rope ladder while it creaks loudly under my weight, holding onto the torch with one hand. “This is dangerous.”

“I think it supposed to be,” Bronwen says when I awkwardly crawl into the cave. “So nobody surprise me at night.”

“Good point,” I concede and look around the dark space. The cave is tribesman sized, and it looks roomy enough. There are furs and skins on the floor, as well as small useful items like pots and stone tools. There’s a wooden spoon and a mat woven from grass. A half-finished basket takes up one corner, and close to the opening there’s a small fire pit which doesn’t seem to have been in use. The firewood for it lies finely stacked by one rocky wall.

I arrange some pieces of wood in the fire ring and put the lit torch into it.

“Nice,” I tell Bronwen as I sit down cross-legged. “You can see the dark jungle from here. But it’s a different side of the jungle than the other cave, high up.”

“It’s nice here in the morning,” Bronwen chirps and gets comfortable beside me. “I mostly just sleep here before I go back up to the top.”

“To your friends.” I nod. “Your little clan.”

“For years, it was a clan,” she says thoughtfully. “We lived under the ground. Alba and Astrid and I. And Cora, until she… left.”

I put my arm behind her back, barely touching. “I’ve heard of how you came to Xren. “And how you were found by the Borok tribe. But Brak didn’t know much about the rest.”

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