Author’s Note
This story begins with a band of travelers from
the Iberian Peninsula voyaging to
The climate in the northern hemisphere at that
time of the last ice age was arctic with the ice sheet as far south as the
northern part of Portugal in the eastern Atlantic and Delaware in the western
Atlantic region.
We don’t know whether the Solutreans had boats,
but there is no reason to doubt that they could have. Emerson Greenman
discovered various types of boats painted in red and black pigment in Spanish
caves dating to the Pleistocene period. Likewise, we don’t know that they
traveled to
Studies of the Ojibwa genetic material revealed
that about twenty-five percent of the mitochondrial DNA had a
characteristically European lineage signature. Although the scientists
conducting these studies first assumed that the unexpected European lineage
came about from recent (colonial expansion period or later) European women
marrying into the Ojibwa tribe, additional testing revealed that the lineage
dated back 15,000 years—putting it squarely in the Solutrean time period.
Further, the earliest Native Americans (called
Paleo-Indians) had a stone-age culture that is characterized by a specific and
unique stone projectile called
Finally, archaeologists have found remains of
humans dating thousands of years before the assumed Bering land bridge arrival
period—some as far away as the southern part of
Although the theory that Solutreans reached
Chapter 1
18,000 Years before Present
A ragged band of survivors struggled through the
surf and onto the beach. The oarsmen pulled the light boats high up onto the
shore and then collapsed onto the fine white sand, soaking up the warmth stored
there.
Two months earlier, eighty-seven members of the
Mananni clan, led by Fein, their headman, left their old-world homeland in four
boats. After weeks coursing westward along the edge of the vast arctic ice
sheet, a summer storm sent by the storm-god Dinn drove them southwest before a
black wall of torrential rain. The howling wind blew the rain straight at their
backs, filling their light, skin-covered craft nearly faster than they could
bail out the water. Huge waves, amplified by the storm, had propelled them
towards the shore like so much flotsam.
Fein felt as fatigued as the rest of the band, but
he attended to his duties. Three boats had made it to shore; the fourth
had become separated from the others during the storm, and Fein knew there was
little hope for survivors. His eldest son commanded that boat, and it contained
sixteen others including his son’s wife and the infant son she had borne during
the voyage. Thank Manan the sea-god that his other two sons had brought their
boats safely ashore.
The headman, standing nearly six feet tall—several
inches taller than most of the other men—looked at his followers sprawled on
the sand and counted their number. Fifty-seven survivors looked to Fein for
deliverance from this storm and deliverance of his promised land of plenty.
Fein’s robust clan members shared the same dark brown hair and stocky build of
most of the inhabitants of their land. They varied in age from infants and
toddlers to men and women in their late twenties. The latter could not hope for
much more than ten more years of life in the mortal world.
The storm continued to howl, and Fein knew that
without shelter his band could not survive. In spite of their seal skin
clothing, they were wet and exhausted from their ordeal and would succumb to
the effects of exposure without shelter.
After the oarsmen had rested for a few moments,
Fein summoned them and gave them their instructions. Each boat had eight oarsmen.
Half that number could easily carry one boat, once the passengers and cargo had
been removed. Working in two teams, one group of oarsmen emptied a boat and
carried the cargo higher up onto the bank. The other team flipped a boat over
and carried the upturned craft up the bank, setting it down carefully into the
sand with its bow facing into the wind. Then, using their hands, the men dug a
tunnel through the sand to make an opening under the boat’s gunwale. As soon as
they completed the tunnel, the other exhausted travelers crawled under the
upturned boat and collapsed again in that makeshift shelter, savoring the tangy
odors of the shore and nestling into the comforting sand. Even the young
children had no energy to cavort in the security under the boat. They crawled
to their mothers and snuggled against them, dropping quickly to sleep.
Fein and his men repeated that process until all
three boats lay side by side, upside down, facing the torrent. Some survivors
didn’t have the strength to walk up the beach and crawl to safety under a boat.
The oarsmen carried them the short distance so they could join the others in
the relative comfort of the boat shelters. Their stores of dried fish and seal
meat had nearly run out, but they had sufficient supplies for everyone to last
a day or two.
Although they couldn’t risk lighting a fire, even
a seal-oil fire under the boats—they knew the spirit of the fire would take
their breath away in that closed space—they remained comfortable because of the
body heat trapped under the boats. In spite of the howling wind, nearly
every person under those three boats soon fell into a deep sleep.
Fein couldn’t sleep. He had instructed the oarsmen
to dig the tunnel entrances into the boats on the lee-side to protect them from
drifting sand, but he worried that the wind would change direction during the
night and their tunnels would be closed. He knew that people had died in sealed
caves—he didn’t know why, but he knew that always there must be an opening for
the spirit of the wind to enter.
He lay awake listening to the wind and the rain
drumming on the hide of the boat. Fein mourned the loss of his son as well as
the other clan members who went down with their boat in the storm. He believed
that no craft built could have survived that tempest without Manan’s
protection. Somehow, Manan must have selected that one boat as a sacrifice to
appease Dinn, the storm god.
As he lay there he thought about how well those
simple boats had withstood all they had encountered. Back in their homeland,
they built smaller craft to fish along the coast. Those boats seldom exceeded
the length of three men lying in a row. Fein had difficulty when he first
discussed his idea of a voyage across the sea to the Otherworld. Everyone knew
that the Otherworld could be reached across the sea, but no one they knew had
ever attempted to travel that far.
Their choices for the voyage consisted of two
possibilities: they could row west along the vast ice sheet, hunting the
abundant sea creatures and animals that lived there; or they could take their
chances by rowing south along the coast and hope for another route across the
open sea. The choice seemed obvious. No one had attempted a sea crossing in
open water to the south. They would stick to what they knew, coasting along the
ice sheet and living, as they had for generations, off of sea birds, seals, and
fish inhabiting that arctic region. In a storm, or if a boat became damaged,
they could set up camp on the ice sheet. They often did this on shorter hunting
expeditions. Why shouldn’t they be able to continue along the ice sheet all the
way to the other side of the great sea? So they chose to follow the edge of the
ice sheet.
Fein knew they would need larger boats to carry
all his clan to the Otherworld. The boats would be the biggest they had ever
built—not that it would be much more difficult. They had plenty of solid timber
for the frame. The most work would fall to the women to dry, stretch, scrape
and stitch many more seal hides together to cover the larger boats. As it
turned out, it had taken Fein’s clan nearly six moons to build the boats—three
times as long as he had anticipated. Their delayed departure meant that they
arrived at the Otherworld during the annual storm season at the end of the warm
period.
Fein wondered if his son would still be alive if
he had postponed their departure until the next season. But he knew that the
longer they remained in their old settlement, the more likely the marauders
would have returned. After three seasons of their depredations, Fein’s clan
could not survive another savage attack by the followers of Bran—the raven
clan. The marauders had chosen an appropriate totem; the raven always brought
death and destruction. During their last raid, Fein had received a serious wound
from a spear thrust into his shoulder, and several men of the band had died in
the attack. The raven clan withdrew from the raid with nearly all of the
Mananni clan’s food stores and three of their young women.
The boat frames had been built of strong and resilient
yew that could be bent into the arced shape of the hull without cracking.
Joints were tied with seal sinews that dried to an incredibly hard bond. The
wood would break before the dried sinew let go. Over the wooden framework, they
stretched the seal-hide covering as taut as they could draw it. More sinew
fastened the hide to the frame. Where the hide came in contact with the frame,
they placed additional seal skin layers, knowing that those spots would wear
more quickly as the sea caused the hide to flex against the frame. The women
sewed the seams in the hide-covering so tightly that little water could seep
through. To further waterproof the hull, they daubed seal tallow onto the
seams. By the time the women had completed their job, their already sturdy
fingers were so callused in places that they had little or no sense of touch.
The finished boats, twice as long as their usual
craft, floated so high on the water that the oarsmen could barely control them
in the lightest breeze. But Fein knew that when the passengers and cargo went
aboard, the boats would wallow deeper in the water, making them less
susceptible to the wind and more controllable. In spite of his confidence, the
rest of the clan remained unconvinced until Fein took eight oarsmen, his three
sons, and five huge stones aboard for ballast. With one of the boats properly
loaded, the oarsmen soon demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction that the boats
would serve them well on their voyage across the sea.
Fein’s confidence had proven justified during the
entire voyage until the last few days. During their voyage along the ice sheet,
they had enjoyed relatively good weather. The seas had rolled gently under the
light boats and the oarsmen had maintained them on their course. They had spent
most nights on the ice sheet sheltered under their boats. Some particularly
calm days when the moon rose fat in the sky, they rowed through the night
nearly doubling their daily distance. Whales sounded alongside the little fleet
and porpoises came so close they interfered with the rowers oars. Of the more
sinister fiends believed to inhabit the great sea, the Mananni happily saw
nothing; however, the women continued to talk about such things and the men
told them they were silly, refusing to give voice to their own fears. The
children enjoyed the adventure of the voyage and the talk of sea monsters
merely added to their delight.
Fish and seals abounded throughout the voyage
causing many to question the need to spend time in camp drying the surplus over
their fires. But Fein cautioned them that no one could know what Manan or Dinn
might throw at them. They needed to keep some dried fish and meat for just such
an emergency that had beset them and driven them onto this warm Otherworld
shore.
Three days earlier, as they reached the juncture
of the ice sheet and the unfrozen shore, the sky grew dark to the south and
Fein’s damaged shoulder had begun to ache. He sensed that Dinn had something in
store for them. The next day, the seas rolled under the boats more quickly and
the boats teetered on the top of the cresting waves before plunging down into
the troughs. When that happened, the oarsmen could not row efficiently because
at times they were lifted clear of the water by the pitching boat. Fein had to
make the difficult decision of whether to draw the boats up onto the ice sheet
and take shelter there or to take the boats well away from the jagged edge of
the ice to avoid being driven into the ice by the huge waves. He chose to take
the boats further out into the sea, putting the ice sheet that could be a
refuge or a peril well behind them.
The storm hit. They saw it racing towards them
with terrific speed, the rain making an imposing curtain wall that they would
have to penetrate. They were caught in an unanticipated combination of wind
from the northeast behind them pushing them along with the sea waves towards
the rapidly approaching wall of rain. Soon they had all they could do to keep
the boats afloat, the passengers bailing furiously to counter the flood of
rain, and the oarsmen trying desperately to keep the boats from broaching in
the troughs and rolling over.
That’s what happened to Fein’s eldest son’s boat.
They took a huge wave broadside that rolled them over. Those who did not
have a firm hold fell overboard and quickly disappeared into the roiling seas,
their shouts drowned by the howling wind. The brave oarsmen shifted their
weight to the high side, and the boat slowly righted itself,
but the next wave crashed over it, engulfing everything in a crushing mass of
water. Fein lost sight of his son’s boat and knew no one could have done
anything for them. Each of the remaining boat crews focused on their own
survival—what else could they do?
In spite of himself, Fein succumbed to sleep. When
he awoke hours later, the wind didn’t wake him nor did the rain. He awoke to
the eerie silence left in the wake of the storm that had veered out into the
wide sea.
Chapter 2
Five Years before Present
Kelly Saunders slammed her hand onto the steering
wheel. Her damn 1975 Pinto had died again. And
this time it had picked the tip end of nowhere to quit. She waited a few
minutes and tried to start it again. When she turned the key, all she heard was
a clicking sound—not an encouraging sign.
Sitting on this deserted back road, Kelly wondered
about the wisdom of turning down Rick’s offer to go with her to the Pamunkey
Reservation. She had argued that a doctoral candidate in anthropology should be
able to drive herself to interview a few Native Americans without a bodyguard.
She knew Rick only wanted to help, but, damn it, she could take care of
herself. And he needed to go to
As she sat there listening to the sounds from the
woods around her, confidence seeped away and the woods closed in. She was ten
miles from anything remotely like civilization. The reservation where she had
conducted her interviews was too far to walk back to for help. Her best bet,
Route 30, would take her nearly an hour to reach on foot, and already the
frogs’ chirping and croaking told her that the sun would be down well before
she reached the highway. And even there, she would have to walk another ten
miles or so to get to
She thought about sleeping in the car overnight
and then walking out in the morning. But she figured the longer she stayed
where she was the worse she would panic. In the end, it probably made more
sense to start walking now and hope for the best. She grabbed her backpack with
her purse and her interview notes and opened the door. Better take a
flashlight, she thought; so she reached into the glove compartment and
found the little light among the maps, fast-food ketchup packets, salt, and
other debris that Rick always teased her about. She tried the light. It gave an
amber glow—not an encouraging sign. Maybe it will be brighter when it’s
really dark outside, she thought.
She stepped out of the car and slammed the door
harder than necessary, slipped on her backpack, and began walking up Route 632.
In this part of
She began to pant and realized she needed to slow
down to a pace she could sustain for the few hours it would take her to get to
civilization. She forced herself to settle into a brisk but sustainable walking
pace. Sweat trickled down her forehead and stung her eyes. She wiped it off
with the arm of her shirt. Still no sign of human life out
here in the wilds of
The first time she and Rick traveled up that way,
they could smell the sour odor of the plant miles before they crossed the
bridge into the town. When they stopped at Hardee’s for a burger, they asked
the clerk what the smell was. “What smell?” he answered. Later, Rick said that
should be the
The
longer she walked, the more spooked she became. Although she tried not to look
away from the road, her eyes continually strayed to the ditch, to the woods, up
into the spiky arms of the trees silhouetted against the darkening sky. Each
time a rabbit or deer would jump in the underbrush, the sound would raise the
hair on the back of her neck, and her stomach would tighten. Kelly told herself
to calm down; the woods were no more threatening at night than during the
day—that was according to her analytical, scientific mind. But the primitive
part of her brain kept sending other, more frightening signals.