Author’s Note

This story begins with a band of travelers from the Iberian Peninsula voyaging to North America 18,000 years before present. At that time in Western Europe, a culture called the Solutreans lived there and they had a highly developed, stone-age technology. The Solutrean culture takes its name from the village of le Solutré in the Sâone valley in France.

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. Maryland and Virginia had a sub-arctic climate.

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 America, but recent archaeological finds and DNA testing indicate that early Europeans may have contributed to the Native American gene pool.

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 Clovis points. It should be pointed out that, although this Paleolithic tool received its name from Clovis, New Mexico, a larger number of Clovis points and a wider variety of Clovis types have been found in the eastern United States subsequent to the first discovery in the west.  There are no related artifacts found in Siberia where early man in America supposedly came from via the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago. On the other hand, Solutrean projectiles appear to be precursors to the Clovis design and were made in the same unique way.

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 South America—indicating humans arrived by some other route and means. In addition to human remains, cooking hearths have been carbon dated to times thousands of years before the Bering land bridge opened.

Although the theory that Solutreans reached North America by following the edge of the ice sheet west has not been conclusively proven, a growing number of scientists now give the theory credence. That theory sparked this story.

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 Charlottesville for an archaeology conference, so in the end, she convinced him to go to his meeting and let her do her work on her own. She turned the key again—no joy.

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 West Point where she could find a garage.

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 Virginia, she knew that when the road had a number in the six hundreds it would be barely wide enough for two cars to pass, would snake back and forth like a theme park ride and have water filled ditches right next to the pavement. She was so far out in the boonies that she couldn’t even hear a car. She heard only the chirping of the frogs and the occasional startling sound of something crashing in the underbrush in the woods as she walked quickly along 632.

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 King William County. No wonder they let the Pamunkey Indians have this land for their reservation; this area between the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers was an isolated and, in places, swampy wilderness—what English settler would want it? West Point, where the two rivers join to form the York River, is the only modernized town in this area—and that’s going some to call West Point modernized. At least it has a couple of gas stations and a few places to get a hamburger. The thing that keeps it going is the paper mill.

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 West Point town motto: “What smell?” Every time they caught a whiff of the paper mill when the wind blew strongly from that direction they would smile at the private joke. She wished Rick were with her now. He’s probably drinking a beer in the hotel bar, fat, dumb and happy, while I’m marching through this frigging swamp.