White-Hands

11500 BC, alpha timeline

-o-

Fina handed Kurt an extra fur as they left the medicine hut, a big brown skin probably meant for a blanket. "Keep the scarf too, for now," she said. "You can get your own later."

Seeing White Bear village had been a bit of a shock for Kurt. They used peat as both building material and fuel, and only had flint and bone for tools. There were spears like Fina's with wooden hafts, but apparently the wood was hard to get, because nothing else was made of it. He'd known from talking to Fina that he wouldn't see cloth, but he was surprised at the other things that were missing - wheels, for example, and pottery. What was more, there were less than two hundred people here, and Fina said this was the whole tribe, one of only three, and she'd never heard of other people in the world. Kurt hadn't known people still lived like this. The wild suspicion he and Zeo had dismissed out on the plains was tickling the back of his head and refusing to go away.

"What troubles you?" Fina asked.

Kurt could hardly say her home was a stinking hovel. "It's very different here," he said diplomatically. His hands curled, itching to build something, to fix this.

She nodded. "This is the meeting hut," she said. "You should meet the Chief." This hut was larger than the others, and there were several people inside, mostly skinny, solemn little kids. In the center was a big pile of smoldering peat, keeping the large space warm. There was a small hole in the ceiling to let the smoke out, but a good deal of it stayed in. Everyone was still wrapped in furs in here; it was only warm inside compared to outside.

Kurt noticed some tall, narrow skins hanging on the walls. He studied one near the door. There were marks on it, faded pictures, and… writing? He wiped his glasses and looked again. Definitely writing. The script was pretty strange, and it had faded badly, but he could make it out. "'The three…'" He shook his head. The next mark was a pictogram, and he didn't know what it meant.

"You can read?" Fina said. "It is a rare skill."

"Not where I come from," Kurt said, "though our letters are pretty different. Most people wouldn't be able to read this."

"I read that mark as 'Wise Men,'" Fina said. "I think it is a lost word that was a title long ago."

"'The three Wise Men,'" Kurt read, "'who had all knowledge, and guided the people.' This is a history! The pictures seem to tell half of it, but a real written history!"

Fina nodded. "It is, and the tale it tells is very old, from before the tribes." Kurt walked along the wall, looking at each skin. There were several that seemed about as old as the first, then they seemed to taper off. Then suddenly he came across one that was barely faded at all.

"Hey, a new one. 'The Black Albatross go over the sea.'" There were three more unfaded skins next to it. "A regular literary renaissance."

"These are my work. I learned some of the writing from the few who remembered it, and figured out the rest."

"A waste of time and good skins," someone said. Kurt and Fina turned. It was a very old man (which, around here, probably meant he was over fifty.) Like Fina, he dressed entirely in white fur, though he had more than her, piled over him so he looked fat.

"Knowledge is valuable," Fina said defensively. "Who was it that told the tribe what the comet was, that it meant more monsters but no other danger, that making offerings would not cause it to go away? It was not you, Adan-Chief."

"You speak of that too often," the Chief said. "You, ice-eyes. I am Adan Grey-Hill, White Bear Chief."

Ice-eyes meant him, Kurt realized. The man was talking about his glasses. "Uh, I'm Kurt Liedermark."

"A strange name. Why are you here, Kurt-Stranger?"

"My friend and I were lost in the snow fields. Fina helped me."

The chief folded his arms over his impressive pile of furs. "Why should you have our skins, our food? It is a hard winter."

Fina's eyes narrowed. "All the people are as one, Adan-Chief," she said angrily. "That has been the way of the tribes since the sky fell."

"It is a foolish way. We do not have enough to give to strangers who are too stupid to find their way home."

"It is because of that way that we survived!" Fina said. "It is written in a story-skin that. . ."

"You concern yourself too much with what is written," Chief Adan growled. "You concern yourself too much with the past. I think you wish to revive the Sky-Demons, Fina White-Hands. Fina-Witch." A nervous murmuring filled the hut. Kurt realized everyone was listening in. Fina looked around too, and clenched her fists. "I do not think the White Bear tribe needs your words," the chief finished.

"Then I will go back to the medicine hut," Fina hissed. "I used many supplies to heal your niece's cough, Adan-Chief, and I need to make more. Come, Kurt." She all but dragged him out of the hut.

"Whoa," Kurt said. "That was intense."

"Much of what he said was for the ears listening in, so they would not listen to me in council. But Adan Grey-Hill does not like me. I would be shaman, except he refused to call me Fina-Shaman, and soon the whole tribe stopped." She sighed, and grabbed Kurt's shoulder. "I only mentioned the medicine hut to anger Adan-Chief. Zeo should sleep now. My hut will do." Kurt nodded and followed her. It was starting to snow; one big flake landed on Kurt's hand and melted.

"The things he called you," Kurt said, awkwardly avoiding the word "witch." "Is it because you want to learn magic?"

"You worked that out?" Fina dropped her eyes. "I suppose it wasn't hard. Yes, I have been trying to learn magic. The tribes' life is hard, and I think if I knew magic we would be warmer, better fed. You've seen the beginnings of it, the spirit medicine; that is why I am called White-Hands. It is not true spell-casting, but the people do not know the difference, and they are afraid I am somehow a Sky Demon."

Kurt snorted. "What's that, some old legend?"

"One that also appears in the story-skins," Fina said sternly. Kurt's contempt became embarrassment, and he blushed. "They were a race that lived in castles floating in the sky, and had powerful magic," she explained, as they climbed under the beaded skins that served her hut for a door. "But they were evil. They imprisoned the three Wise Men, and enslaved people to do their work, and left the others to freeze and starve when their magic gave them more than they could ever need." The way Fina said it, withholding their magic was far worse than slavery or wrongful imprisonment. Kurt remembered that creed of hers, all the people are as one.

"It was colder then, or so the story-skins seem to say," Fina went on. "It snowed for most of the year, perhaps all. The people only survived because of secret help from the Wise Men. So it was, until the sky fell. All the castles of the Sky Demons broke and burned and fell into the sea, and the people were free." Fina shrugged. Kurt blinked, startled at how he'd been drawn in to even that short story. "There is a great tale, an epic, which tells all that, but I think it has changed with the years. I have told you the parts that appear in the story-skins."

"It's a good story," Kurt said, "but. . ." He stopped. People with evil magic living in castles in the sky while those without huddled through an ice age below? "Come to think of it, I've heard that story before. I think. . ." He couldn't actually say it. After all, he still wasn't sure, and how could he claim to have traveled nearly thirteen thousand years back in time unless he was sure?

"You think our peoples remember the same events?" Fina nodded. "That makes sense. People far from each other would have seen the sky falling."

"I, uh, I'd like to hear the long version of the story. The one your people passed down."

Fina grinned at him. "I'd like to hear the making of your strange tools. I know you don't know everything, but I think what you do know would help the tribe as much as magic would."

Kurt hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't know everything - from these people's perspective, he did - but that most of the knowledge wouldn't do any good. He could tell them how to make gunpowder, but what use would it be without metal to make a gun with? And if he really was in the past, boosting the tribes' technology would change history, which might not be a good idea.

But this place was pitiful. He knew how to make a loom, a potter's wheel, a plow, and teach the White Bear tribe to make them, too, if he could get some wood. Like Fina said, even that much would be a huge help. Maybe then those kids in the meeting hut would be laughing next winter, instead of sitting around hungry.

"Okay, let's start simple. Do you know what a 'wheel' is?"

-o-

Zeo woke up. The peat stink, the rough furs, and the sore knee were just as they'd been when he'd dropped off. He heard someone sniffling in the corner. He looked up drowsily. It was the green-haired kid, the one who'd watched the healing ritual. "What's wrong, kid?" he asked.

"I'm lonely," the boy muttered. "I miss my big brother."

"Aww. Well, you can hang around here for a while. It's not like I have anywhere to go." Zeo gestured at his bad leg. He noticed the red stone knife sitting on a wooden box next to the boy. Fina or Kurt had wiped most of his blood off it, but he could still see some dark stains on the polished blade. That bar from the stained glass window was leaning against the wall nearby.

"Okay," the boy said. "I'm glad you didn't freeze to death, then."

"Gee, thanks," Zeo snorted. "Hey, wait, I know your voice. You were the one crying on the snow plains. Kurt thought you were the wind."

A grin lit up the kid's face. "Really? I always wanted to be the wind."

Zeo smiled. "No, I mean he thought I was only imagining you."

"The wind isn't imaginary," the kid giggled. "Humans are so silly."

Zeo realized he wasn't surprised. Kurt and Fina had never seen or heard the boy, even when he'd been standing right in the hut with them. "You're a spirit, aren't you?" That wouldn't have been his first guess back home, he'd have said "Mystic" or something. But lying in Fina's hut, in Fina's world, his mind caught on to Fina's words.

He nodded. "My name's Mune."

"I'm Zeo. Good to meet you."

"Will you help me find my big brother?"

"I'll try, once I can walk again. Do you have any idea where he is?"

Mune shook his head sadly. "He isn't now at all, so I can't tell. It's lonely without him." Zeo shook his head, confused. Then he yawned. "Do you need to sleep again?" Mune asked.

"I won't be able to go right back to sleep. Dunno what else there is to do, though."

"Oh, that's easy," Mune said. He leaned over and blew across Zeo's eyes. He giggled as Zeo blinked, suddenly drowsy. "Nighty-night," he said, as Zeo faded back to sleep.

-o-

"Zeo? Zeo, are you awake?"

Zeo rolled over. "Five more min - ahh!" Turning had jostled his knee. "Okay, I'm up. What do you want, Kurt?" It was dark, except for Kurt's flashlight. The wind howled outside, and there was snow on Kurt's furs.

"I've been talking to Fina, and I figured out where we are. It's… it's not good news." Zeo sat up. Mune was nowhere to be seen. "This is the past, Zeo. It's the tag-end of the last ice age, maybe a few hundred years after Zeal fell."

Several things came together in his head. Magic in Medina, and in Guardia Castle, where no human had had magic for hundreds of years. A knife of red stone. Mune. "They were time travelers. The guys who attacked the castle, they were from the past."

"I guess," Kurt said. "One of them didn't use magic, he could be from the future."

Zeo pointed. "That's from the past, for sure."

Kurt looked at the knife, and then did a double take as he realized what it was. "Crap! That's the Masamune!Or the pre-Masamune, Melchior's dreamstone knife. That can't be here! It needs to get stuck into the Mammon Machine, five hundred years ago!" He buried his face in his hands. "And I shot it in half!"

Zeo licked his lips. All his parents' stories were racing through his head, all the fantastic adventures which he'd loved and envied but never quite believed. "And then it needs to get turned into a sword so it can be used in the Middle Ages. . . this isn't good, Kurt. This could change everything."

"Do - do you feel okay, Zeo?"

"Uh, my knee hurts…"

"But you're still here, you haven't vanished. It means your parents didn't die or anything, trying to storm Magus' castle without Frog and the Masamune." Zeo went white. He hadn't thought of that. "Oh, man," Kurt muttered, "no wonder the thief was so ticked when he saw that thing. He must have recognized it. This. . . would they have ever beaten Lavos without it?"

Zeo slumped back on his bedding. Then he started chuckling. "I promised Mune I'd help him find his big brother."

Kurt stared for several seconds. When he figured it out, he laughed even harder. "Well, we damn well better! And put them back together somehow, and get them where they need to be, and… but how, Zeo? We don't even have a Gate Key. How do we even get home?"

Zeo hesitated. "Dad'll come for us. As soon as he sees the gate in the courtroom he'll get the Gate Key and follow us through."

"I hope so," Kurt said. "With just what's in my satchel, and this place's tech base, I could probably make a Gate Key that would work most of the time - in a year or two. And was there even a gate where we landed?"

"Uh. . . I dunno. I wasn't really looking around."

"I didn't see one. I think I'd have noticed. So maybe there won't be anything for the King to follow us through."

"Don't talk like that. He'll find a way, he always does. That, or we will." Kurt nodded dubiously, and yawned. "You should go to bed; I guess it's late."

"Actually, I think I'm sleeping here," Kurt said. "It's that or Fina's bed."

"I'll trade with you," Zeo offered promptly, wiggling his eyebrows in a way he obviously thought was lascivious.

Kurt whacked him on the top of the head playfully. "Doofus. You can't even get up, much less…" Zeo whacked him back before he could finish. "Then don't start with the dirty jokes, Your Highness. You're no good at it."

"Whatever, peasant. Go to sleep and don't bother me, then."

Kurt slipped into the pile of furs. It was big enough that he could cover himself completely with no danger of jostling Zeo. "Don't call me peasant."

"Don't call me Highness."

Soon they were asleep.