- Caroline -

Gods, he has a nice smile. So strong and manly and confident, with just a hint of boyish shyness. And I don’t blame him for that at all. I’m the first woman he’s ever seen, and he’s still finding his way around me.

That playtime we had at the pond was good for both of us. It brought us closer, and now his smile is a little wider and less tight than before.

I think mine probably is too. It feels that way. I like smiling at him. And I haven’t smiled that much these past few months on this nightmare of a planet. So it feels good.

It also feels good to rest my eyes on his broad back and muscled legs.

He still walks in front and scouts for danger at all times. So do I, but only so I can alert him if something happens. I don’t have anything to defend us with. Those throwing stars are more dangerous to me than to any other creature. When we get back to his construction site, I’ll pick up my spear for the walk back to the cave.

The thought of leaving him and returning to my old life and the girls makes me sigh internally. Our situation is pretty grim. Our only hope is that Bune will somehow provide us with a way home. It’s not much of a hope.

Around Xark’on, I don’t have to think about that. Shit, his tree house is amazing. When I was up there, the ordinary problems didn’t concern me.

He’s amazing too. I’m starting to understand what made the other girls marry their cavemen the first chance they got. To me, each of them seem primitive and strong and quiet. But if this is the way they act when alone with their woman, then I’ll have to change my opinion of them.

Or maybe Xark’on is the only one.

We finally come to the ridge, and there’s his construction site down in the valley.

“Any sign of the dragon?” I whisper.

“The dragon?”

“The monster. Troga.”

We stand still for a minute just staring down in the valley and the glassy trench before he answers. “No. She rarely comes here. Only you attracted her.”

Yeah, that’s not a great thought. “You think so?”

He starts walking down the ridge. “I do.”

I hesitate. I don’t want to attract that thing again. Maybe I should just go home.

I walk up the ridge to where I was spying from. The raptor is gone, so it probably wasn’t injured that badly if it could limp away. Or maybe the other creatures in this jungle have eaten it.

My spear is still right where I dropped it. I pick it up, and feeling its weight in my hand and seeing the sharpness of the irox tooth at the end of it doesn’t make me feel safer at all. That bubble of security around Xark’on isn’t around me anymore, and it makes me jittery.

Xark’on’s found his sledgehammer down there, and he’s starting work on his mysterious project. It’s got something to do with digging a hole. A very large hole. I assumed it would be the foundation for something, but seeing it now, I think it might just be a hole.

Is he making a pool?

Miles away from his house? A man who couldn’t swim until this morning? Okay, cavemen are aliens. I suppose they can do weird things. But not this weird.

No, I don’t think it’s a pool. Is it a basement for a new house? A gigantic well? Storage for something?

Well, it’s Xark’on’s secret, and now he’s digging in the dirt with his bare hands. Not a shovel in sight. Just his tripod with the pulley that multiplies his already huge strength. That’s fine for lifting rocks but not much else. Heck, he eats stew with twigs for cutlery. He may well never have seen a spoon.

I’ll take my chances with the dragon in that trench. It if appears again, I’ll run up here. I just have to talk to Xark’on and give him a tip. Or maybe two.

He gives me a sideways glance when I come up to him. “I thought Caroline would go home to tribe.”

“And I will. But look at this.” I squat down where he’s cleared the vegetation from the ground and use my fingertip to draw the outline of a shovel in the clay. “See this?”

“A hammer.”

“No. A shovel. Okay... So, this is seen from the side. This wider part is flat. The rest is the shaft, and it’s long and round. Like your—” I almost point to his crotch. “Um, like the shaft of your hammer,” I quickly catch myself. “But thicker. Like my arm.”

“And?”

“And. With a shovel, you can dig easier. Like this.” I start 'digging' with an invisible shovel to show him how it’s done. “See? You can stay mostly upright, and then you can throw the dirt far away. It’ll be much faster. The shovel can take much more dirt each time than you can in your hands.”

He scratches his chin. “It looks like one big hand. Stiff and flat.”

“Yes! One big hand that has room for a lot of dirt. The blade should be iron.”

I have a sudden flashback to our summer cabin in Norway and my dad many years ago trying to dig a drainage trench around it so the water wouldn’t seep into the foundation. “Oh, and the tip should be pointy. Like this.” I steeple my fingers to show him what I mean. “And the top of the blade should be flat. I mean the part nearest you. Flat so that you can step on it and drive it further into the ground. I actually think that’s one of the points with a shovel.”

“Iron is hard to get.”

“Yes. I know. But you have a hammer that I’ve only seen you use once. And it can’t be that useful to you for this digging stuff. That head is all iron, right? Shave off four pounds of it and turn it into a shovel.”

He takes his sledgehammer from his belt and looks at it as if he sees it for the first time. The head is just a huge block of iron, and it seems unnecessarily large to me. He could probably get enough iron from that to make a shovel and a cooking stove and a decent-sized car without it getting significantly smaller. “This was my father’s hammer.”

“Ah. And I see you have another one too?”

He takes out the smaller hammer he left his tree house with today. It’s about half the size of the big one. “I do.”

“And do you need two hammers for this project?”

He scratches his head. “No.”

“If you change your mind about the shovel, you can always turn the whole thing into a hammer again Or an ax. Or a stove for your treehouse.”

He frowns at me, but there’s a little smile playing on his lips. “Caroline has many ideas.”

And of course that vague praise from this spectacular man has me blushing. “Sometimes. I try not to make a habit of it.” Oh, for fuck’s sake. What’s that supposed to mean?

“I have been worried about the time this would take,” Xark’on admits. “Will your shovel make me more effective?”

“Yes. A lot more. That alone will probably halve the time needed. Or cut it even more. Actually—”

I cut myself off as I take a moment to think. I’m about to offer to help him with this. And I don’t even know what it is. If he’s building some kind of stone age weapon of mass destruction then I’m out.

“Actually,” I continue, “I think I could give you more ideas about how to do this faster. But I must know what it is that you’re making.”

“It’s a trap,” he says without hesitation, making me think he really wants my help. “Troga has been terrorizing my tribe. I want to trap her and kill her. And this is where it will happen.”