GENESIS (Tales of the Lesser Gods Book 1) Read online

  Tales of the Lesser Gods

  Book 1

  Genesis

  Boyd Craven Jr

  Also by Boyd Craven Jr

  TALES OF THE LESSER GODS series

  GENESIS (Book 1)

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  The characters and circumstances in this story are a product of the author’s imagination, and represent no real person, living or dead. Any real public places or names are used only to build atmosphere for the reader’s mind.

  Copyright © 2016

  Boyd Craven, Jr.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this story may be reproduced in any way without prior written consent of the author.

  CHAPTER 1: NICHOLAS

  Thankfully, the young woman had quit screaming, and was beginning to calm down from her terrifying ordeal. The adrenaline levels in her bloodstream were dropping quickly now, and the pain would begin soon. Her thoughts were confused, and in need of some sort of explanation for what had just happened to her. Most importantly though, I needed for her to hold still while I stopped her from bleeding, and healed her wounds. To accomplish that, I took control of her mind, and quite forcefully compelled her body to sleep.

  “Be still as you sleep,” my mind told hers, as my lips sealed themselves gently over the worst gash on the right side her throat. “You will live. In fact, you'll be as good as new when I’m finished, but the process is going to take all night. Listen to my mind with yours, as I share some memories about myself, to help you understand what I am. Though they may sound incredible to you, they will all be true, I promise.”

  In another portion of my mind, I could see the tiny puncture in her jugular vein that sprayed a fine red mist of her blood into my mouth with every beat of her heart. As the tip of my tongue carefully sought out and wet the damaged area with my saliva, the hole immediately sealed, leaving the vein stronger than it had ever been. Despite a major loss of blood, the threat to her life was ended. The monster had made a real mess of her face and throat though.

  Incredibly, the taste of her blood had brought another set of ancient memories flooding through yet another compartment of my brain, even as I shared different memories with her. I purposely paused, to breathe in deeply the scent of her skin, before beginning the task of exploring and mending each of her many lesser wounds. There was no doubt; this girl tasted and smelled exactly as I remember Gaia.

  I took the time now to arrange her body on the couch, so that she would be comfortable if she were awake, cradling her head in my hand, and supporting her shoulders with my right arm. To all the world, were they able to see, it would appear that two lovers were locked in a heated embrace. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Though in all of my years I had never done this, something demanded that I go slowly and proceed carefully, healing each wound a little at a time, from the deepest spot outward. They needed to be perfect. As I alternated mending, and waiting for results, my story spilled from my head to hers.

  “For many, many thousands of years I loyally guarded, guided, and trained the greatest livestock project of the goddess Gaia; the human herd. She developed you humans as the preferred source of healing blood for herself and her lesser gods. She made you an intelligent species, capable of reason and resembling her own natural form, to physically care for her Earth. She gave you dominion over all of the plants, animals and birds upon it, creating an immensely complex food chain, with you at the top, so far as you knew.

  “My appointment, as her right hand, after she had entrusted me with most of the powers and attributes of the gods, was complete dominion and authority over all humans. I walked beside her among you for nearly a thousand years, myself sometimes visible to you, but never her. During that time, she taught me everything there was to know about you, and shared with me much knowledge that would one day benefit your kind greatly. She became my very life, my love, my reason for living, and my sole source of joy and wonder. And then one day she left me, to do it all over again somewhere else in the universe. Suddenly, I felt forsaken in a cruel world, doing what I had been chosen to do, among an ever increasing horde of humans, but no longer enjoying it. My existence became one of sorrow and indifference.

  “Now, all of these millennia later, I am convinced that what she told me is true. She is not coming back…

  “I used to think that she loved me as much as I loved her, and therefore couldn’t possibly stay away forever. I was wrong. Now, having accepted the absurdity of my circumstance, I toy with the idea of making myself known to you humans again. I have just now decided to begin that with you; by sharing my recollection of true human history, as seen by my own eyes over my vast lifetime.”

  The girl slept deeply, her face an emotionless mask as I related all of this to her telepathically. I could almost swear though, that as I told her I’d decided to share my story with her, that a faint but sweet smile crept across her lips. I continued.

  “I grew up towards the end of what you would know as the Middle Paleolithic Era, in a great valley between two of the Tatra Mountains, just about directly on top of the border that now separates Poland and Slovakia. Our territory lay just above a cold nameless lake filled by the waters of temporarily receding glaciation. Simply put, I was born during one of the many warming periods of the current Ice Age. We knew very little of our past, as there was not any written language, and oral tradition was yet in its infancy. We had no idea that our valley had relatively recently been beneath hundreds of feet of ice, nor dreamt that it soon would be again. We were just there, existing day to day, enjoying warm days and full bellies when we could.

  “Our winter camp was high upon the mountainside, inside the largest and deepest of the many caves in our territory. Our people were a light olive-skinned hunter-gatherer breed of Homo sapiens known today as Cro-Magnon. Though often cruel, life wasn’t overly complicated back then. Winters were extremely cold and harsh, completely unforgiving of the weak, sick or ill prepared. For a short season each year, snow covered everything in a layer deeper than a man, in the valley. During that season, there was no food. It was a season of starvation and great suffering. We used dried animal hides as curtains, to block out the cold winds and to cover ourselves in small family groups, deep inside our cave. The strongest and healthiest of our men went outside when they could, or when they had to, to look for a frozen animal of any kind to drag back for the tribe to eat, or for a dry piece of wood for the fire. Often, if the weather changed suddenly for the worse, they never returned. Winter was the season of death.

  “Winter changed to summer suddenly when it was finished. Sometimes within a week, sometimes taking a few weeks. Spring and fall as you know them, didn’t really exist. Summer was a season of plenty. Summer was what we lived for. Summer was spent down the mountain at the lakeside, living in what you call tents. Those were created by simply covering a lean-to frame of wooden poles with our winter hides. Summer was a warm season, but not really a hot one. Summer was easily bearable when naked. Back then, we had no silly ideas that running about naked in front of others was embarrassing or wrong. We simply dressed (or not) for comfort.

  “We shared our lake with two other tribes of people. Nearest to us was a tribe of slightly smaller, brown-skinned people who were also Cro-Magnon, but obviously a different breed. We called them the little people. Across the lake on the cold side, where the land was more shadowed, lived a huge tribe of dark brown and black skinned Homo neanderthalensis, known today as Neanderthals, that we called the big people.

  “Our tribe consisted of only three family groups, and a group of young unma
rried men. We referred to ourselves, perhaps a bit arrogantly looking back, as the lake people. We thought of ourselves, as I suppose most races do, as the normal ones.

  “I was the youngest male child, of nine children born to two fathers and three mothers in our family group. The other two family groups in our tribe were comprised of uncles and aunts, somehow all related to us by blood. There simply weren’t enough people at that time, to be too picky about mates. It was forbidden to us however, to take one’s own sister as a mate, or to lie on her. We couldn’t remember why, but we knew it was the rule. We had very few rules. We had no concept of sin, but we knew what we should and shouldn’t do. We should help all people, even those not of our tribe to survive. We should share whatever we had more of than we could eat, since we had not yet learned about food storage. We should not take anything away from anyone in our tribe, or even the other tribes, unless it was necessary for us to survive. We should not kill any person, except to defend ourself or our family group. That was about it.

  “My real name, given to me by my mother, was Na. I was taller than most of the lake people by the time I approached adulthood. I had straw colored straight hair on my head, very little body hair, blue eyes, and lighter-than-average olive skin. My brothers all considered me a weakling. They were all around 5’6” I would guess, going from memory, because they were all about a half a head shorter than me, with brown eyes and dark hair. They were more heavily muscled, and I was thin. They all had deep baritone voices, while mine was a light soprano. Because I was ‘the weakling’, I was most often left with our mothers and sisters when our fathers and the older boys went to hunt. We used rawhide sacks, roughly sewn from animal hides to gather fruit, berries, edible greens, flowers, seeds and roots from all over our territory, and the edge of the water. We gathered crawfish, clams, frogs and any bird eggs we found. We used sharpened sticks with fire hardened points to poke at things and to turn over fallen pieces of wood to find grubs and worms, which we later toasted until crisp along with grasshoppers and other insects we caught, in a stone bowl heated at the edge of the cooking fire.

  “Occasionally, while we were out gathering food, I could hear a woman’s voice inside my head, telling me where the best food could be found, and what to avoid. She told me which plants could be eaten to help cure sickness, and which to use to apply to wounds in order to prevent infection. In those times, death was everywhere. The average life expectancy was thirty years, but many, possibly even most people died before that, from sickness or infection.

  “When I first told my family group about the voice in my head, they laughed at me, and made fun of me. Eventually though, after abusing me greatly, they all began to respect what the voice told me, because it had saved or profited every one of their lives at one time or another. Suddenly, our fathers and brothers asked me to go with them when they hunted, but being the prideful youngster, who was masterful at holding a grudge, I always declined. And I was a jealous lad. Terribly jealous. I wanted to be able to throw spears like my brothers, and use the spear throwers called the atlatl like our fathers, but I wasn’t strong enough. I desperately wanted a flint blade that all of the adults and all of my brothers carried, but I wasn’t allowed. That may have been just because I was too young, but it may also have been because I heard a voice in my head that told me to do things. Whichever it was, it made me furious. When I was teased about it, I became very emotional and violent. The older I got, the more often I heard the voice in my head. It became commonplace to me, and on good days, I guess I thought that everyone heard the voice.

  CHAPTER 2: NICHOLAS

  “One particularly warm sunny day, during the summer that should have promoted me to the rank of hunter and adult, while I was just getting ready to leave the camp at the lake with my mothers and sisters for the day to gather food, the voice spoke in my head more loudly and firmly than ever before.

  ‘Listen to me Na! Stop what you are doing and listen carefully. Do not question what I am about to tell you, and do not let the others of your tribe question it either, or death shall surely take them. A war party of the evil ones, as you call them, is descending upon this camp from higher up on the mountain. They quietly watched earlier, as the men of your tribe took their weapons and left to hunt meat. They come now, with their own weapons, to rape and kill your women, and to take the children away with them as slaves or for food. You will not be able to defeat them with only your pointed sticks. You must quickly gather all of the remaining people of your tribe, and run as fast as you can to the camp of the big people, screaming for help the whole way! They will protect you. Do it now!’

  “Based on what I know now, I believe that the evil ones were some of the straggling remains of the Homo erectus breed. They were a beastly people with no spoken language. Also one that practiced cannibalism.”

  ‘My people! My people!’ I had yelled as loudly as I could. ‘The evil ones descend upon us from higher up the mountain, meaning to kill us! Everyone must stop what they are doing. Leave everything behind. Everything. Help the elders, pick up the babies, and follow me to the camp of the big people for protection. We run! Now!’

  “As usual, most of the adults laughed at me, ignoring the boy who heard a voice in his head. When one of the other family’s mothers told me to be quiet and quit trying to cause trouble, I simply snatched up her baby, turned, and ran towards the camp of the big people as told, calling out loudly for help. Everyone, because of that, chased me. I wasn’t the fastest of runners back then, so in a short time, one of my sisters caught up to me. I kept running, even though I felt like I would fall at any step from exhaustion.”

  ‘What are you doing Na, stealing another family’s baby?’ Seli, my oldest sister had asked as we ran.

  “Stealing a child was a serious crime, which could get me killed at worst, or exiled at best.”

  ‘The woman in my head told me to do whatever it takes to get everyone running this way for protection. This was the only thing I could think of!’

  “Right then we heard the anguished screams of an elder woman who had fallen too far behind in the chase. They were immediately followed by the screams of others, and the sounds of fighting, as some of the elder men tried to protect her. We also heard the animalistic whoops of the evil ones. That erased all doubt from Seli’s mind.”

  ‘Give her to me,’ Seli cried, and ran as fast as she could towards the Neanderthals, screaming for help.

  “As we splashed our way through the shallow waters of the marsh that separated our camps, a large group of Neanderthal men rushed to meet us, armed with their heavy jabbing spears with fire hardened points. They could see the terror on our faces. Being out of breath, all we could do was point behind us and cry out, ‘Evil ones!’

  “With a loud chorus of war cries, that brought even more of their men running, the Neanderthal men raced towards the sounds of battle. The Neanderthal were huge compared to us. Not in height, but in build. Their legs were somewhat shorter, their arms longer, their torsos longer, their chests much bigger and broader. And they had muscle! They were as strong as any three of our men. Huge, powerful leg muscles developed from dragging giant slabs of meat over long distances back to their camp. Huge arms developed by repeated jabbing, hacking, twisting, tearing and lifting. They looked fierce! They were fairly covered in dark reddish body hair on their backs and sides.

  “As we arrived at their camp exhausted from the run, we were received by many of their women, who took the baby from Seli and guided us all into a big tent, which was guarded by many armed young men. As others arrived, they joined us in there to collapse into a heap, crying with worry over what we had heard behind us.”

  ‘You have done well Na,’ the voice in my head said. ‘An elder man and an elder woman from another family were slain, but the evil ones in turn were all slain by the warriors of the big people. Many of them. None of the big people’s warriors were killed. You and your people are to stay here and rest, until your fathers and brothers come for you.’r />
  “The praise made me feel good, but the fear of the consequences for stealing that baby left me trembling. Soon the tent flap opened, and in came the mother I had snatched the baby from, limping on her lame foot. I hadn’t even noticed! She could not run anyhow. She was joined with her babe, and after she calmed down a bit, she approached me with tears in her eyes, and kissed me on the face. She put her head onto my shoulder in submission, hugged me tightly, and thanked me over and over for saving her baby!

  “We were given water from skins, and offered food to eat while we recovered from our ordeal. The Neanderthals proved to be very kind neighbors. Soon, their warriors returned, covered in dried blood and gore. They were followed closely by our fathers and brothers, who had heard the battle in the distance and raced back to camp, only to find us all gone! They had learned from the warriors that we were all safe except two, and with joyful hearts had followed them here to collect us.

  “When we were all outside of the tent, hugging the gore crusted warriors to show our appreciation, their leader asked loudly, ‘How was it that you were warned that they approached? Did someone see them coming down the mountain?’

  “My sister Seli stepped forward and said, ‘My little brother Na was told by a woman’s voice in his head that they approached, and meant us harm. The voice told him to do whatever it took to get us all running this way for protection, and he did exactly as he was told!’

  “At first I felt good that my sister spoke proudly of me, but then I worried that they would all laugh at me about the voice, like my brothers do. They didn’t. Instead, they grew quiet. A very old Neanderthal woman walked all around me slowly, in a complete circle, her head moving up and down, looking me over very carefully. Seeming satisfied of whatever she looked for, after a moment, she declared loudly that our tribe had been warned by Earth Mother speaking to me!