BEGINNINGS : Where A Life Begins ------ I. GENESIS & RESURRECTION

Chapter Ten

PART 3..................................PALAEOLITHIC VENGEANCE 

        Altamira, Cantabrian Mountains, North Coast of Spain,  circa 10,000 BC 

                     Map of Cantabrian Mountains (omitted in Wattpad edition) 

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                                                                             TEN 

 After the brutal incident at the border, several hours passed in a waking dream for Maria. Still shocked and bloodied, she had fought through her grief and despair to try to remember the details of her safe-house destination and to communicate them surreptitiously to her rescuers on the bridge. With the increasing exodus of refugees from Spain, it was usual for there to be sympathizers allied with different social and political groups waiting on the French side of the border crossing; to contact new arrivals. That day was no exception and the Basque independence contact pressed in close to Maria, identifying himself with the usual words and signs. 

After a brief exchange in euskara, Maria gave the address of a safe house on the outskirts of Bayonne, and though it was still some distance away, she was passed over to other sympathizers of the Basque cause and taken there as quickly as possible. 

It was in a large stone house on a leafy suburban street that she now found herself. The distraught and pregnant young woman had been greeted kindly by a short, slim old lady with a tanned face, much wrinkled by exposure to the sun. The old lady called herself Jeanne and she was dressed humbly in a peasant's work clothes. She whispered that she was a friend and helped Maria to a room at the back of the building where she could rest. 

Maria was trembling and sweating profusely. Her tiny son, pale and cold, wrapped now in a blood-stained blanket, was still in her arms. His life force was long gone; forever. 

Maria had been brought up in the Catholic faith and although she had remained quite religious, she rarely entered a church these days especially as they were almost always under covert surveillance by the fascists. She believed her son's innocent soul was now in heaven with her own parents and the little boy's father, her cherished Alberto. It was precious little comfort but it was all she had, apart from the child-to-be waiting quietly in her belly. 

The unborn one, unseen and a little neglected of late, passed those numbing hours in a different manner; a manner that Maria could have not even imagined. Though she lay motionless in her mother's womb, her excited little mind raced. 

Back on the bridge she could not herself see what was happening but had sensed the presence of extreme danger, heard the muffled sounds of violence and perceived an ancient image of the cruel mouth and cold eyes just like those now residing in the visage of the young Guardia officer. It was an image passed down through time and it gave her a shock that she had not been prepared for. Moments later, the unborn one felt her heartbeat slow and subside as her mind leapt back almost a dozen millennia. 

                                                                                       § 

                                               End of the Upper Palaeolithic Era, 10,000 BC; North Coast of Spain 

She was elsewhere yet in a strangely familiar place that much later, her mother would know as the nearby Cantabrian Mountains on the sunset edge of the Basque country, at the eastern end of the north coast of Spain. She sat there on her haunches at the entrance to a cave on a rocky hillside, strenuously rubbing the edge of a sharp angular stone against another flat, dense granity one. There were hills in the distance behind which the sun would soon dip in a fierce glow of gold and orange, opening a door to the many fearful sounds and other uncertainties of the night. But for the moment, the warming rays of the late afternoon sun shone through to her place at the cave's entrance. She could feel the agreeable sensation on her shoulders, although her matted reddish-brown hair was impenetrable to its warmth. There had been rain earlier in the day. Lots of it and the fresh smells of abundant springtime vegetation were everywhere.