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Many times over the past days—weeks?—I considered that maybe I had lost my mind. However, the reality of my surroundings, the constant hunger gnawing inside me, as well as many little details—like how crisp and fresh the air was, how the forest smelled different from any forest I had ever been to, the strange almost otherworldly shrieks disrupting the quiet during the day and at night —led me to believe that whatever had happened to me was, unfortunately, very, very real.
As impossible as it was, somehow I had traveled back in time or into another dimension. Not to a time when other humans roamed the planet, mind you, at least not humans in the Homo sapiens kind of way. I might run into a Neanderthal or Homo erectus or the Homo habilis I was supposed to give a speech about, but there would be no kilt-wearing hot Highlander for me.
I was on my own.
It took me a few days to come to terms with this—or at least as close to it as possible, because how was one supposed to come to terms with this?
The first day had been the hardest. After thebirdchased me into the forest, I sat propped against a tree for hours, fearing I would die of a heart attack—not just from the exertion butbecause of thebird. Which wasn’t really a bird at all, but a flying reptile. Reciting names all too familiar to me like Pteranodon, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, and Nyctosaurus gracilis actually calmed me some.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get a close enough look at the creature that nearly ate me to figure out which one it had been—not that it really mattered to me in that state of mind—as I leaned against the largest tree trunk I had ever seen in Europe, and regarded the strange flora around me. Much lusher, greener, and more fragrant than the vegetation I was used to.
A loud sniffing-snorting sound made me tense up. Rustling on the forest floor announced a large creature coming my way, and I stood with a start, hitting my head against an overhanging branch. I barely suppressed a scream when a giant armadillo moved by me. And when I say giant, I meangiantas in the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A moving, armored, freaking tank.
Glyptodonrushed through my head, identifying the creature I knew only from artifacts and the movieIce Age.Stu, I remembered.His name is Stu in that movie. In the movie, though, he had been portrayed as being a lot smaller than this monster.
Thankfully, it didn’t even look at me as it lumbered by. But that, combined with the flying reptile that had chased me, left me to conclude that I had either lost my mind, or had somehow been propelled through time into the Paleolithic period. Or—and that was a third possibility I didn’t really like to contemplate—I had been transported into another dimension or universe altogether. If that was the case, then all bets were off.
So I clung to the explanation that I had traveled through time, because that, somehow, gave me more peace of mind than the other possibilities. And when I saypeace of mind, I’m using that as a relative, very loose term, because my mind was anything but peaceful. But, from then on, I tried to occupy it more with howto stay alive than with what had happened to me, since it seemed counterproductive. I was here, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Lucky for me, compartmentalizing was one of my strong suits, no matter how much that ability would be tested in the coming days. Like when my bare feet became red, swollen, and blistered from walking barefoot all the time, and I worried about infections. Infections that could kill me without access to antibiotics.
Or when I worried about stuffing berries into my mouth because I didn’t know if they were poisonous or not. It didn’t matter that they reminded me of blackberries, because berries from tens of thousands of years ago, even if they were blackberries, might still have held different digestive values than the ones I picked from a supermarket instead of a bush.
Or when I drank water from the creek I found after I finished the can of soda and bottle of water I brought with me.
Or when I heard a wolf howl in the middle of the night—correction, adire wolf, which was much bigger than an ordinary wolf—and, let’s face it, whatever it was could kill me easily.
Or… Or… Or…
That was just it. Where I was now, everything and anything could kill me at any time. Mostly, I was able to keep all these thoughts at bay. But at night, after I sat down to rest, my mind blew up on me. I cried and railed against God and the universe for doing to me whatever it was they did.
The questionwhytortured me as much as the desire to simply go home, until exhaustion eventually dragged me to sleep and let me forget my misery for a little while. Until the first rays of the sun woke me, to face another trying day spent in the company of hunger and desperation.
On bleeding feet, I made my way aimlessly through the forest without any idea where I was going or why, but the simpleact of moving kept me from spending another day crying while slumped against a tree as I had the first and second day.
After five days, I lost count, and no matter how much I tried to concentrate, I couldn’t figure out how many days it had been since I drank a coffee or ate a decent meal.
My pants completely falling off my hips one morning warned me of the weight I was losing, but I refused to think of what would happen once I ran out of my plentiful fat reserves.
One morning, I noticed that I had been steadily walking towardmycave in the Jura Mountains without even realizing it. I only noticed it when I entered a small clearing and saw how close the mountains suddenly were. With some clarity of mind, I stopped to truly contemplate what I was doing. My unconscious mind had led me toward something familiar, a place that should be the least changed from everything else.
It also bore dangers though; from giant cave bears, to cave lions, and other critters that might have called the cave system their home over the last millions of years.
Besides the obvious predators calling the caves their home, there was also the fact that I had discovered bones in them, humanoid bones. And even if I didn’t run into the Homo habilis—how freaky would that be?—whose bones I had discovered, other humanoids like Neanderthals or Homo erectus could have called the place their home. I had already mourned and given up the idea of running into a sexy Highlander, but the idea of living like Ayla fromClan of the Cave Beardidn’t sit right with me either.
On the other hand, if whoever lived there didn’t kill me, they would probably feed me.And rape you, my mind added. Which ended up being a very heated discussion between my stomach, brain, and body. One argued that, given a choice between rape and starving to death, I should probably give in, whereas the other recoiled from the put-out-or-get-out idea. This train ofthought was why I decided to break for the rest of the day. My feet hurt, my head pounded from lack of sleep, water, and food, and I was mentally and physically exhausted.
I pushed moss and leaves into a pile that I would use as a bed, and collected dried branches and leaves to light a fire. The only other practical thing besides food inside my bag was a lighter. Gabriel was a chain smoker and, good fiancée that I had been, I always carried a lighter for him. Even after a year following our separation, it had still remained at the bottom of my purse, probably saving my life now. Contemplating what I would do once the lighter ran out of fluid was one more thing I put on the back burner and refused to ponder about. Chances were I would be dead long before the lighter gave up.
The fire would burn out after I fell asleep, and I worried less about starting a forest fire and perishing in that than falling asleep in the stark darkness that would surround me without it.
The next morning, I woke stiff, hungry, and weak. I was just about to put the fire out with a large branch when a rustling noise made all the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
A pungent smell permeated the air, saturated my nostrils, and nearly made me gag. Slowly I rose, keeping a tight grip on the branch as I pushed it into the fire while I tried to calm my erratically beating heart. Palpitations had tormented me the last two days, and I knew they came from lack of nutrition and announced I was running out of time, but now my heart picked up speed as adrenaline flooded my body.
A primal urge to turn and run overcame me just as my mind placed the smell. Cat. Large cat. As in a tiger or lion—or in my situation, I realized, saber-toothed cat or cave lion—even larger and more ferocious than their very dangerous descendants.
I held up the now thankfully burning branch as a large animal entered my line of vision. The sight of the saber-toothed cat was so frightening that I let out the most blood-curling scream of mylife. This wasn’t ahoney there’s a spider in the bathroomkind of cry, this one came straight from the bottom of my soul because instinctively I knew this animal would kill me. I didn’t stand a chance against this giant creature. Not without a bazooka. Going by the animal’s shoulder height, it was over four feet tall and probably six feet long. When I noticed its sharp fangs were the length of my hand, if not longer, I screamed again.
