Elizabeth and the Vampire's Cabin(24)

"The Neanderthals were barely able to speak. They weren't a stupid people mind you. They had larger brains than modern humans. I don't have a typical Neanderthal skull, but you can see that my own head is quite large. My father's head had a low forehead with thick brow ridges, and his skin pulled back tightly across the long, flat crown of his skull. At the back of that skull, like all Neanderthals, was a bun. The bun I'm talking about is not a hair bun. It's actually the shape of the skull. In the lower, back part of the head, the skull formed a bun shape on Neanderthals. This attached to the short, powerful neck that supported their gigantic heads. I don't have this kind of head or neck, and my head is quite human except for the thick brow ridges I inherited, but my point is that they had huge, elongated heads, with a shape that could accommodate a massive brain. And their brains worked. I can attest to that. These were not big, damaged brains, in large, brutish bodies. My father was smarter than me or any human in my tribe.

"Unfortunately, Neanderthals weren't able to do much more than grunt, blurt out a name, or mangle a small simple sentence. Most of their communication was through signing to each other with their hands or using facial expressions. My father could say my name, which was Ayro, and his own, which was Raka, but he had trouble even forming a simple sentence. That was why our names were so short. The names were purposely no more than a syllable or two with the Neanderthals. They couldn't manage anything more complicated than that. My mother's name, Maressano, had to be shortened to Marno. I grew up bilingual as a result. I could sign Neanderthal and speak Cro-Magnon. And I never got the impression that my parents had any trouble understanding each other's languages. In fact, I sometimes wondered if their differences were what caused them to mate. My father loved the sound of my mother's singing and the melodious sound of human language. And she loved to watch him gently sign his affection to her with graceful hand movements. When my father moved his hands, I used to think it was like watching a graceful animal leaping across the savannah or a bird swooping and diving in the sky. Now, I think it was like watching someone do ballet with their hands instead of their feet. It was a complex language, and there was nothing primitive about it.

"I think this difference of communication is what separated Neanderthals from modern humans the most, and I think this is why they tended to live in their tribe and the modern humans in theirs (with my father being a rare exception). I have no clue how my parents met or were even able to become mates in her tribe. All I know is that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon's didn't live far from each other. I don't know exactly where I lived. If I had to guess, I would say an island off the coast of Europe, but that's all I could tell you. My father was the only Neanderthal on my island. But not far down the way was another island, and we called this the Black Island because of its black sand. Our island was simply called Home. The Black Island was inhabited almost fully by Neanderthals, but they had some Cro-Magnon mates amongst them. They had quite a few half Neanderthal children as well. Males from our island had regular contact with other males from their island. That wasn't because we were visiting their island or they were visiting ours. We had strong boundaries back then. It was because we would often see them on the sea and hunt the same schools of predatory sea creatures. Back then, as in today, sailors were afraid of being eaten by sharks if they fell into the sea and we hunted them aggressively. We would also see them on the mainland, which our islands were not far from. We could sail to the mainland within an hour by canoe as could the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals and us hunted many animals separately, but it wasn't unusual for our two groups to team up and take down large game on the mainland. Especially if it was a mammoth. Mammoths were prized game. Their bones could build many huts, and their furs kept us warm. We were living in an Ice Age, and I've read that Neanderthals are possibly the first group of humans to be regularly clothed. I would believe that. No one could survive the cold without thick furs and strong fires kindling in our individual hearths.

"But disease began to sweep the landscape. We began to hear talk of bloodthirsty Neanderthals suddenly lashing out at other Neanderthals or modern humans on hunting expeditions. They had become vampires, but we didn't know what that was. It wasn't unusual for new, mysterious diseases to pop up and even wipe out a whole tribe. But this was different. This disease wasn't weakening them. It made them stronger, more bloodthirsty, and it seemed they couldn't be killed. People were worried and a frightened people can often become a violent people. The Neanderthals began to turn on each other in terror. The uninfected ones tried to ostracize or wipe out the ones that had changed into vampires. But the ones that were no longer Neanderthals, but vampires, wiped them out instead. No one knew how the disease was transmitted at first, but before long we found it was through blood and sex. It was like AIDS. The Neanderthals first got it in a very complicated way, too convoluted to go into right now, but they spread it to each other easily. Cro-Magnons, however, were less affected. They either never changed after exposure or they didn't change as much as the Neanderthals. They became half vampires. And there was limited intermingling between the two species, so that cut down on the number of infected Cro-Magnons. We didn't think of each other as different species back then, but modern science has shown that we were very genetically different. This difference meant that the vampire disease had a different presentation in humans. But then...maybe we should have known we weren't quite the same. We knew even back then that procreation was reduced when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons mated. Children either didn't come or they were sterile or sickly. Sometimes both. Interbreeding in large numbers was discouraged and was only done to establish relations with another tribe. I don't know how my father was able to produce me. I promise I was as healthy as a horse. My only issue is that I was most likely sterile. I mated with many Cro-Magnons, and no child even remotely resembling me was ever produced.