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eBook Category: Young Adult
eBook Description: A perilous trading journey across pre-historic Europe could lead to fortune--or disaster! Two young explorers and their mentors test themselves against man and nature. Crossing seas, trekking mountains, braving rivers, they risk everything to trade for exotic goods and to master their minds in the face of danger. What happens when cannibals find you in the trackless wild? How do you get a pack full of treasure through the Alps? And if you make it home, how have you changed, and why does it matter? Find out by taking a Spirit Walk into the weird and mystical world that came before our own.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works, Published: http://www.fictionworks.com, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2004

2 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [553 KB], eReader (PDB) [194 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [178 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [159 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [165 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [205 KB], hiebook (KML) [412 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [212 KB], iSilo (PDB) [147 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [184 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [224 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [244 KB]
Words: 58668
Reading time: 167-234 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

3,500 BCE. The west coast of the Adriatic Sea

We hid in the birch trees, crouched low to the ground, our breath coming in long plumes of early spring vapor. We'd left before dawn and so far our luck was holding. Just downwind of us a bull red deer groggily rubbed its antlers against an oak. Knot and Dogen, our guides and teachers, watched the animal patiently. My friend Traj and I crouched a bit behind, watching them watch. Knot tried to figure out how to kill the animal. Dogen wondered if this was the proper animal to kill, certain that if he could determine that, the animal would offer itself to him.

The deer seemed lost in the pleasure of his scratching. I'd seen bulls go at each other like demons for no other reason than to feel their antlers, the sort of pleasurable pain you pursue when you chew the last flesh off a new tooth. It looked to me like I could take out the animal with a clean throw. I had my spear thrower--a magical device Dogen, my special mentor, made for me--hooked around a nice four-foot spear I'd made myself. I'd flung my aurouch hide cape behind my shoulder the moment I saw the animal, so my arm was free.

But the men waited.

Knot looked at Dogen and, using sign language, said he was going to go to the right to get clear of the weeds, then take a shot at its neck. Dogen should follow with a shot through its ribs. I looked ahead. There was a little blind of hemp between the red deer and us, but it didn't seem to me that throwing through it would be a problem. I would have to ask about this later.

Knot motioned to Traj to follow him. Silently, padding on their sharkskin boots lined with hay and an inner sock of rabbit's fur, they walked fifteen paces to the left. I watched the deer, my spear now raised.

The deer's itching concentration suddenly evaporated. He looked up at the tree first, sensing something. Dogen seemed to rise up at that exact moment, too, and I felt he had decided that, yes, this deer was for us to take back to the village. I heard no sound but suddenly Dogen's spear flew off his spear thrower with magnificent, deadly force. Yet Knot's hit the deer first, slicing through his neck. Dogen's hit right between two ribs, burrowing down to the stricken animal's lungs.

The beautiful beast looked up at the oak tree again, and one last time off into the forest, probably to the rest of his family, before falling to the ground like a sack of rocks.

When we got to him he wasn't even breathing. Only men are allowed to hunt because only men can bring down an animal like this. As boys Traj and I spent much time hunting birds and squirrels and rabbits and the like. We were not allowed to come home until we had accounted for every spear we launched, stone we threw, and knife we pitched. To injure an animal, even a sparrow, and leave it to bleed to death in the wild is an unthinkable taboo. We had spent hours, sometimes days, looking for a rabbit we had cut with a glancing spear or an otter whose foot we had broken with a stone. We found every one.

But an injured deer can run miles at top speed before falling into a ravine and dying there. There were legends of men who had spent their lives looking for injured deer and aurouchs, trying to preserve their honor. Surely, that was why Knot would not throw through the hemp. Why risk it? If he couldn't walk fifteen paces over and kill it with a clean blow, then it wasn't a good set-up. Dogen would say it wasn't the right time for that animal.

Traj and I got to do the honors at the carcass. First, we fed the dead deer some grain and poured water down its throat, singing its song, thanking it, and wishing its spirit well. Then we used our hatchets to hack open its body, throat to anus. All four of us smeared a little blood on our forehead cosmos tattoos. Lowering our cupped hands into its guts, we drank the sweet and salty warm blood. We tied off its intestine with bits of thong (thin strips of leather, like string) and dropped it aside, to clean last. We hungrily removed the Hunter's Prize, the liver, with our long flint knives. This we cut into four huge steaks and, standing in a circle around our beloved fallen friend, ate it.

We squeezed clean the stomach and intestine and tossed the lungs on the pile of excrement, a gift for the insects and scavengers. We tied a hemp rope around its tail and hoisted it up into the air, letting the last of the blood and bile drain out. As this deer's rack wasn't impressive enough for a full costume, we hacked off the head and horns, and tossed them in the abdominal cavity, to make it easier to carry. Once the legs were bound to a good bough, we lifted him up onto our shoulders and began our hike home.