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The Chronicles of Amon

  Book 2.

  Sea of Marmara

  Wayne Williams

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  work of this author.

  Copyright 2015 Wayne Williams. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this book are products of the authors imagination or are represented fictitiously. The Sea Of Marmara

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  Amon, the first human on earth, grows from infancy to adulthood under the care and tutelage of his simian parents and his mentor Evander, a man from another world.

  Amon is introduced to an advanced space-faring culture (the Kalephians) and learns the ways of truth and integrity.

  He becomes leader of the first tribe of humans, who migrate out of central Africa (the “cradle of civilization”), and begin populating the planet.

  Against Amon’s advice, his friend Sef and his simian father separate from the human tribe and return to the jungle. Sef’s simian father founds a race of aberrant man/apes called the Tal (Neanderthal), who threaten to destroy the human race.

  Chapter 1.

  Finally the weather was about to break. He could feel it. Moving his face out from beneath the covers, he sniffed the chill morning air. It was still very cold, but today it smelled different. The cold bite was still there, but it wasn’t as sharp.

  Slowly and quietly Amon slipped out from under the covers, careful not to awaken Mahrohm. He rose to his hands and knees, feeling along the dirt floor, making his way toward the entrance in the darkness.

  The night before, he had laid his heavy parka next to the pile of furs that was his bed. But in the excitement before they slept, he had kicked it out of the way. Now he had to fumble around nearly naked, clad only in a light deer hide loincloth.

  “She is so young; younger than. . . .” he thought to himself as his fingers found the heavy parka and the rest of his clothing. He had built the shelter close to the ground, presenting the smallest possible profile to the wind. It was much too short for him to stand upright, so he drug his clothing along beside him as he crawled, feeling his way toward the entrance. There he found his heavy, fur-lined boots, right where he had left them. He stood up carefully, bending at the waist, trying to keep his balance.

  Careful though he was, his head bumped the ceiling, pulling out a few hairs in the process. The sudden tweak of pain sent a shiver down his bare back. He teetered precariously on one foot and then the other, guiding his loose-fitting trousers into position, securing them around his waist. Then, bending carefully, he pulled a tunic-like upper garment over his head. It was made from a plain, flat piece of hide with a slit cut in the center for his head. The boots were last. They weren’t boots in the real sense, but fur-covered hides which had been molded and stitched together with sinew to conform loosely to the shape of his feet. He wrapped thin strips of hide loosely around each one.

  It was too cumbersome tying them properly in the darkness, so he pushed the door to the shelter aside (it too was of animal hide) and stepped carefully through the opening.

  Slipping quietly out of the shelter, he stood up and immediately began to shiver. Quickly, he put the parka on and pulled it close around him, tying it closed with the coarse braided belt she had made for him.

  “She . . .” A cloud of mist surrounded his head as he exhaled, remembering. The mist quickly dissipated in the wind. The memories of his first mate began flooding in. The day she had given him the belt, that was the day she had told him she was with child.

  Grief swelled up inside him as he remembered. The pain was too intense. This time the tears that came weren’t caused by the cold. Though it had been long ago, his grief was still intense. He forced himself to think of other things. His thoughts turned to his father and mother, now both gone.

  “Has it been so long?” he thought to himself. “It seems that many moons have come and gone since those times. Yet the anguish I feel seems as if it were only yesterday.” He remembered . . . the scent of his mother’s breast as he suckled, the smell of the smoke from his father’s funeral pyre . . . the comforting feel of his brother’s hand on his shoulder. Once again he forced those painful memories back, back into the recesses of his consciousness. “I will remember, but I will not regret.” Deliberately he brought his thoughts back to the present.

  “I will no longer call myself by my father’s name. I will honor and cherish him always, he and my mother. But hearing his name pains me almost beyond endurance.

  “From this day forward I will say my name differently. Amon (Ah-moon) in remembrance of the passage of time which the moon marks as it travels across the heavens, causing my memories to be less distinct, more bearable.”

  Somehow this change in identity made him feel better, more able to cope with the reality of the present.

  “Today it will be best to build the fire outside,” he thought. “The wind is not as strong this morning.”

  He reached back for the clumps of tinder he had piled just inside the door the previous night. Frost clung to the brush that still remained above the snow. It was all too wet to use as kindling. Amon knew this and was prepared, though he had never experienced snow before in his life.

  “Strange,” he thought. “How Evander knows what things to teach me, even before the knowledge is needed.”

  The morning was quiet, except for the rustling pine needles high above, where the wind still blew steadily. Down lower, what few trees that hadn’t been smothered by the snow rattled nakedly as the dissipated wind made its way down through the gangly bows.

  Today the wind would not increase with the coming of the sun, as it had done for the past several days. He knew this would be so. He couldn’t explain how he knew. The feeling was just there. It just seemed to be a part of him. He assumed it was because he had lived so long that he had just become accustomed to the changes in the weather. Amon was twenty years old.