The Great Flood Read online

  Contents

  The Flash of a Firefly

  The Breath of a Stag

  The Rainbow after the Rain

  Higher Ground

  Sticks and Stones

  Ruined House

  The Dream Trees

  Fact File

  You Try

  Terry Deary’s Stone Age Tales

  Terry Deary’s Saxon Tales

  1

  The Flash of a Firefly

  9,500 years ago, as the Ice Age is ending

  Jay loved to hear the stories her grandfather told. When darkness fell they sat around the fire and watched the golden flames glow bright. Jay’s father, Mor, chipped away at a flint and turned dull stones into bright, sharp blades. Her mother, Sorrel, sat and used a bone needle to sew skins into shoes and clothes.

  ‘Tell me a story, Grandfather,’ Jay begged. ‘Tell me about the days of old.’

  The old man’s eyes shone in the fire-glow. He didn’t move much these days. He had fallen and broken a leg. It hadn’t healed well. His son, Mor, said the family would look after him. They would hunt and gather food. Now that Jay was old enough she could help.

  ‘He won’t be with us long,’ Mor had muttered to Jay early that day while they were out hunting for deer in the woods to the north.

  Grandfather had always been there. Jay thought he would be there for ever more. Her father didn’t talk much. But that day he had told his daughter the secrets of life as his own grandfather had told him. He shook his head. ‘Life is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a stag in the winter. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and vanishes in the sunset. The Great Spirit, the Earth Mother, puts us here for a little while then takes us back again.’

  The hunting that day had been long and hard. On the morning’s journey they came to the stream that they used to walk across with ease. Each time they came back it seemed wider and deeper. Now it was a river, up to Jay’s waist.

  They crossed it. The girl knew it would be hard to drag a deer back that way if they were lucky enough to catch one. But the woods were empty that day. ‘Where are they?’ Jay moaned as they climbed the hill of trees.

  When they came out at the top they looked across to the mountains. A year ago the purple hills had been topped with snow. Now they were a rich green. Tiny shapes raced over the grass slopes. ‘Deer,’ Mor said.

  ‘Why are they running?’ his daughter asked. He didn’t answer – instead he just pointed his spear to the west side of the mountain. A swarm of humans chased after the deer. Then another group appeared at the east slope of the mountain to catch the deer the other hunters had driven towards them.

  The deer were trapped between the two bands of hunters. The animals turned and ran down the mountainside and charged into the valley towards Mor and Jay. ‘Behind the tree,’ Mor ordered. ‘We are on a deer trail. They’ll come this way. We’ll eat for a week or two.’

  He passed a stone-tipped spear to his daughter and took his own to hide behind a tree. ‘Hurry, girl,’ he said.

  But Jay was watching the two groups of hunters on the mountain. She thought they would speed down the hillside after the herd. They didn’t. The hunters ran into one another and each band started to fight the other. Spears jabbed and knives stabbed. Arms waved and fists flew.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Jay gasped.

  Her father looked across and said quietly, ‘It is war, child.’

  ‘But why?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they don’t have enough food in the mountains for two tribes. Maybe they think they will eat better if they drive the other tribe away.’

  It looked as if the tribe from the west was pushing the one from the east backwards. But Jay couldn’t stay to watch. Her father dragged her behind a twisted oak tree. The pounding of the hooves of deer was growing closer. The beat was growing slower as the animals stopped running. They thought they were safe from the spears of the bands of hunters.

  And so the herd wandered in front of the oak tree where Mor was hiding and made an easy kill for him and his daughter.

  It was hard work getting the beast back to their house – the river seemed more swollen than ever. But they ate well that night.

  2

  The Breath of a Stag

  Sorrel used one of Mor’s stone blades to scrape the last of the flesh off the deerskin. When it had dried, she would make them new shoes. Mor roasted the meat over the fire. As he worked, he told Grandfather about the hunt, the war and the rising of the river.

  The old man had a strip of leather. He placed a round beach-pebble in it, swung it and sent the pebble flying into the trunk of a twisted tree. Time after time he used the leather sling to fire the pebble. He never missed.

  Jay pleaded, ‘Tell me a story, Grandfather. Tell me about the days of old.’

  The old man looked into the fire for a long time. ‘The tale I have to tell is one you’ve never heard before,’ he said at last. ‘Mor’s story of the rising river reminds me of a story as old as time. A story my grandfather told me before he vanished like the breath of a stag in winter.’

  ‘How did your grandfather hear it?’ the girl asked, sitting on the floor and hugging her knees.

  The old man’s eyes shone gold in the light from the fire. ‘His grandfather told him, and so it goes until the very start of time.’

  ‘What was the start of time?’ Jay asked.

  ‘When the Great Spirit, the Earth Mother, was alone in all of the stars.’

  ‘You’ve told me that story, Grandfather,’ Jay said gently. ‘She found this Earth and saw it was good. With land and seas and rivers and rocks. She made grass and trees and flowers and bees to make the flowers grow. But that wasn’t enough. So she made the first man and the first woman. And then she made the animals for us to hunt, and the berry trees for us to gather fruits and nuts. You’ve told me that story.’

  The old man gave a half-smile. ‘But I haven’t told you the story of the Evil Spirit that walked among the people and made them wicked.’

  ‘No,’ she gasped. She shivered. She was afraid. At the same time, she wanted to hear more. ‘What did the wicked people do?’

  ‘They killed animals when they weren’t hungry, until there were no more animals left to kill,’ her grandfather said with the sadness of a weeping swan. ‘They chopped down trees to build their houses until there were no more trees to cut. They killed birds that laid the eggs so there were no more birds or eggs to eat.’

  ‘But our grandfathers cut down trees to build this house,’ she argued. ‘Great trunks stood in a circle of deep holes. The trunks leaned inwards so they met at the top. Then the spaces between the trunks were filled with twigs woven into a wall. And the space between the twigs was filled with mud gathered from the river and baked dry in the suns of a hundred summers.’

  ‘No,’ the old man told her. ‘Our grandfathers’ grandfathers went into the forests and brought back the trees that had fallen in storms or died of old age... their spirits gone like the shadows of the grass at sunset.’

  Jay was restless and went on, ‘But we still kill animals to eat.’

  ‘We kill the males,’ her father put in. ‘We leave the females to be mothers to new young deer each year.’

  ‘Females are more precious than males,’ Jay’s mother laughed.

  ‘They are,’ the girl agreed.

  ‘What else did the wicked people do?’ she asked.

  ‘They had killed so much there wasn’t enough to feed them all. So then they started to kill each other. The weak were killed so the strong could have more food.’

  Jay’s eyes grew wide, ‘That’s what Mor said about the fighting hunters today. He called it war.’

  Grandfather nodd
ed slowly and sadly. ‘The Evil Spirit has visited them,’ he said.

  ‘Will it visit us?’ Jay gasped, looking towards the leather flap that made the door. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It is invisible... like the Earth Mother. Or it can take any shape it wants. It can be ugly as a toad or as beautiful as a snow goose. You may never see the shape of the Evil Spirit... but you can see his work.’

  ‘The wars,’ Sorrel said.

  ‘The wars... and the Great Flood,’ Grandfather said.

  ‘What Great Flood?’ Jay asked.

  ‘That is the story I was about to tell you. If you sit and listen you will hear the story. It is the oldest story in the world.’

  And so he began.

  3

  The Rainbow after the Rain

  This was the story Grandfather told...

  The Great Spirit, the Earth Mother, sees and hears everything. She never forgets. She will reward the good and punish the wicked.

  There came a time when the Evil Spirit swarmed over the Earth like a great sickness. The people killed animals when they weren’t hungry. They tore down trees when they could have gathered driftwood on the shores. They grew greedy when they saw other people with forests full of fruits and berries, valleys with herds of animals and fields of tall corn.

  The greedy people wanted the rich lands, so they used their spears and knives to drive the rich people away. The humans had created war.

  The Evil Spirit saw this and was glad. It was all part of his plan, wasn’t it? ‘Ooooh, I do love a bit of pain and misery,’ he said.

  The Great Spirit saw all this and she was sad. ‘You make something lovely and someone has to come along and spoil it,’ she wailed. When she stopped wailing she decided she had to do something about it. The Great Spirit couldn’t destroy the Evil Spirit... because it was just a spirit and more slippery than a snail’s slime trail.

  The Great Spirit had another idea. She saw there was just one good family left on Earth, the family of Noh, who lived on the shores of a great sea. ‘Ah, I have another idea,’ she said to herself.

  One day Noh was walking in a wood, seeking nuts and berries with his wife, Aye. And a breeze came. And the breeze moved the trees. The branches creaked and the leaves rattled. And Aye knew the sounds of the trees were like a great and whispering voice.

  She stopped and pulled Noh’s coat to make him stop too. Aye listened and the swooshing, swishing, rustling voice spoke to them. It said, ‘I put humans on Earth to look after it for me.’

  And Aye said, ‘Could you speak up a bit, Earth Mother? Noh is getting old, deaf and daft. Well, to be honest he’s always been a bit daft. Now he’s deaf as well.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Noh grumbled.

  The crunches and creaks grew louder. ‘The humans I made are destroying my Earth. Now I shall destroy them.’

  Noh was sad and Aye wept. ‘Oh, woe,’ Noh cried. ‘I’m only five hundred years old. Hardly any age. And poor Aye is even younger – just four hundred and fifty.’

  Aye prodded him with a sharp elbow. ‘No, Noh. Don’t go telling people my age... and anyway I’m not a day over three hundred.’

  The human couple knew the Great Spirit was whispering the truth. ‘Noh and Aye, you are good people,’ she went on. ‘You and your children shall live. What you must do is build a wooden boat. It must be large enough to take your family and all the living animals you can catch.’

  ‘They won’t like that,’ Noh muttered.

  Aye folded her arms. She was the best woman on Earth... but she often grew cross. She usually grew cross with bone-needles that broke, children that screamed... and... just about everything that Noh did. Not to mention just about everything that Noh said. But let’s not mention that. Aye was a good woman. She wasn’t perfect. No one is... and Noh wasn’t.

  The Great Spirit went on, ‘When I send the floods, you shall sail over the world for ten days and then the waters shall sink and the Evil will have been washed away.’

  ‘Is there no other way?’ Noh sighed.

  ‘No, Noh, no other way,’ the Great Spirit replied.

  The breeze blew stronger and stronger until it became a gale. And the gale blew down some old dead trees. And Noh’s family dragged them back to their home and built a boat. This boat was as long as a summer’s day and as wide as a whale.

  Aye and some of the children went out with nets and hunted every animal they could find – some for food and some to be saved to sail the watery world. The Great Spirit made the animals easy for them to catch. But the unicorns were stubborn. They ran off and hid in the woods, and were ever after only seen in dreams.

  The Earth Mother wept rain for forty days and forty nights. Noh’s Ark sailed the seas and they were saved. The sun came out and a rainbow soared over the muddy land. ‘What’s that?’ Aye cried, staring at the coloured band.

  ‘It’s my promise to you that I will never destroy the humans again,’ the Great Spirit said.

  ‘It’s a very pretty promise,’ Aye said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a scarf that colour.’

  The Evil Spirit was annoyed his wicked plans had been defeated. He went off to his home beneath the Earth and sulked. The world – for a while – was a happy place. And all the creatures were happy. (Except for the ones Noh’s family had eaten. And the unicorns, of course.)

  Grandfather finished his story – the oldest story in the world.

  4

  Higher Ground

  Jay nodded slowly. ‘We’ve seen a war again today, Grandfather. The Great Spirit must be angry.’

  The old man sighed. ‘And she won’t save us a second time.’

  Sorrel looked up sharply. ‘You said the river is almost too wide to cross today. And yesterday the lake waters almost reached our door.’

  Grandfather said, ‘We haven’t had forty days of rain.’

  ‘So where is the water coming from?’ Jay asked.

  The man scratched his grey beard. ‘When I was a child the mountain snows came all the way down to the edge of the lake. Now there is hardly any snow on the mountaintops. The ice is melting and the water is filling the rivers and seas.’

  Sorrel asked, ‘Should we start to build a boat?’

  The old man smiled. ‘Easier to move to higher ground.’

  And the next day, when they awoke, the water was lapping at their door again. In a week, it was trickling into the house. Mor looked across to the mountains. ‘Higher ground,’ he said. ‘Time to move out.’ That night they slept on the edge of the woods.

  The next day the tide had washed in so far that a fish was stranded on the floor of the house. They shared it for breakfast.

  They gathered the few things they owned; their hunting weapons and winter clothes that they could use as bed-covers. Sorrel packed her healing herbs and they turned sadly away from the house that had always been their home.

  ‘What are you taking, Grandfather?’ Jay asked.

  ‘I’m not going,’ the old man said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My legs are old and stiff. I’d slow you down.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Jay moaned.

  ‘I’ll sleep in the woods. I’ll soon build a little shelter there. I’ll catch fish and pick berries. The Great Spirit may speak to me like she did to Noh and Aye,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘When winter comes, you’ll die, you old fool,’ Sorrel said angrily.

  Grandfather smiled. ‘The Great Spirit, the Earth Mother, puts us here for a little while then takes us back again.’

  The family argued as the sun rose in the clear sky. ‘We have to go,’ Mor said, ‘The wind is rising and the waters will be coming in again. We won’t be able to cross the river.’

  They hugged the old man then turned and walked away.

  By mid-day they had crossed the river, walked through the cool forest and were on the lower slopes of the mountain. Mor used a deer’s antler to dig into a soft, grassy spot they had chosen for a new home. Jay and Sorrel dragged wood from the fo
rest and by sunset they had the frame for a new house in place.

  They slept on the grass but Jay was dazzled by the moon, and restless. She worried about her grandfather and looked back down the foothills to the star-washed sea. She dozed a little and then woke with the sun.

  All the long summer day the family gathered branches to cover the house. Then they mixed earth with water from the mountain stream to make mud. When it was too dark to work, they sank, exhausted, inside the half-finished house. Jay slept.

  ‘At sunrise, I hunt for deer,’ Mor said.

  But at sunrise Mor was not the hunter. Mor was the hunted.

  5

  Sticks and Stones

  The day was calm and a breeze blew down the mountain and over the sea. That was why the deer didn’t scent Jay and her family. The animals wandered down the slope, cropping at the sweet summer grass.

  Sorrel had been lifting Jay to the top of the house to slap more mud in place, while Mor was trimming the shaft of his spear to make sure it would fly straight. At the sight of the deer wandering towards them, all three fell silent. Jay was lowered gently onto the grass and knelt there, trying not to move, barely breathing.

  Catching a deer now would feed them for ten days or more. They would bury a little in the ground as a gift to the Earth Mother to thank her. But first they had to catch it. Mor slowly lifted the spear and crept along the deer trail until he came to a boulder.

  He waited there as still as the rock itself. The sun was burning high and Jay had to edge her way into the shade of the house. She could see Mor and she could see the deer drifting closer. The animals found a patch of lush grass twenty paces from Mor’s hiding place and seemed to stop there while the sun-shadows snail-moved over the land.

  A fine stag raised its head and sniffed, then shook its antlers before it walked forward. Mor looked across at the house. Jay raised a hand and spread five fingers – Mor gave a tiny nod to show he understood; the stag was just five paces from the hiding hunter.