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between her breasts. She lifted it up and held it in the flat of her hand like an egg, and as she turned her back on the fiery mountain, she saw that the narrow end of the blue stone pointed directly ahead, toward the east, and at its diamond-crystal heart she saw a river and the promise of water.
    Raising an arm, she pointed toward the west where the sky was filled with black volcanic smoke and she cried, “Bad! We die!” Then she lifted her other arm and pointed to the clear sky in the east. “There! We go!” Her voice was strong and rang out over the rumbling noise. The Family exchanged nervous glances and she could see by their posture that many wanted to go with her. But they were still afraid of Lion.
    “We go,” she said more firmly, pointing.
    Lion turned toward the smoking volcano in a gesture of defiance and fearlessness, and as he began to walk, others followed after him— Hungry, Lump, and Scorpion.
    Tall One spat contemptuously on the ground again, then she took a last look at Thorn, his poor battered body already disappearing beneath a fine coating of ash. She looked at the others—Baby, Nostril, Fire-Maker, Fishbone—and when she saw that they were staying with her, she turned her back on the lethal cloud filling the western sky and took her first decisive step eastward, back the way they had come.
    They didn’t pause to look back at Lion and his small group heading resolutely westward, but stayed close to Tall One whose long stride nearly outpaced them. Along the way they stopped to collect ostrich eggs and fill them with fresh water, and when they found food, Tall One instructed her companions not to eat everything but to carry seeds and nuts with them, against future need.
    As they trekked eastward, the ground continued to rumble, and finally the mountain exploded. Tall One and her group turned to see an enormous black cloud rapidly spreading across the sky, blotting out the sun and engulfing the west in a doomsday inferno. It was to be the final eruption of a volcano that would, on a far future day, be called Kilimanjaro. And it smothered in an instant Lion and his stubborn little band of followers.
    Interim
    Filled with sadness over the death of the young male who had so charmed her, and with the resolution never to forget him, Tall One turned her back on the garden that had once been her world and, armed with the water-stone, and believing that her power to lead her people came from this rather than from within herself, continued to take her Family eastward where, as she had predicted, they found freshwater. She paused long enough to give birth to her first child, not knowing that he was the progeny of the young male named Thorn. Then they moved on until finally they reached a seashore bountiful with shellfish and, when they dug into the ground, freshwater wells. They found here also a new kind of tree that provided food, water, and shade: the coconut palm that grew in abundance. Here the Family stayed for another thousand years until they grew too populous for the local food supply and had to splinter again. Some headed southward along the coast to settle southern Africa, but the majority moved northward following the shorelines of lands that would someday be called Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt. They stopped for generations, populating a place, and then moved on, always in search of new food sources and untouched territory. And with them went the blue stone, handed down from generation to generation.
    As the millennia passed, the descendants of Tall One spread their seed along rivers and valleys, over mountains and forests, braving new territory that was far away from their origins, learning to build shelters or to live in caves, creating words and ways to communicate, developing new tools and weapons and hunting techniques. As language skills improved, so did social organization, which enabled the creation of planned hunting parties. Humans evolved from scavengers to predators. Thinking was born and