The Weight of the Blade
After the elephant herd departed, the grassland was left behind with nothing but people with vacant faces and a single young elephant, its body gone cold.
The first to move was none other than me.
"Pretty Eyes…?"
As I slowly approached, High Bird stared at me with a puzzled expression.
I said nothing to him and kept walking.
The place where I stopped was right in front of the juvenile elephant's corpse.
Young as it was, the thing was easily twice the size of my body. But from the wound on its flank, the sickly-sweet stench of decay seeped out unmistakably.
I grabbed the spear embedded in its side without hesitation.
The spear was driven diagonally, from below upward.
From its position alone, it didn't look like a clean kill.
Thunk.
Postmortem rigor was already setting in. The skin and muscle clung stubbornly to the blade. But when I put some force behind it, the flesh tore away whole, dragging along with the spear.
'How far had the infection progressed…'
No matter how young it was, the muscle was harder than anything a human could match. And with my child's strength, tearing it free was no easy task.
But the fact that the flesh pulled away in one piece meant there was only one explanation.
The tissue at that site had rotted from the inside out.
I looked at the mess of raw, shredded meat clinging to the tip of the spear and closed my eyes.
The blade's edge.
There, a stone tool made from what looked like obsidian was fastened tight with black adhesive and sinew.
This was what I had taught them.
What I had taught for my own convenience.
And what I had spread to give people a better way of living.
But that knowledge.
It had created this.
It had been only a few days.
But in those few days, thousands had starved and trembled with fear. This young elephant must have endured for days with the spear still lodged in its body. The wound would have festered. Its body would have burned with fever. And the herd would not have left its side.
This baby had probably been terrified the entire time.
Not even understanding what had happened to it.
'Tch… Why did I…'
I wasn't angry only because my knowledge had been used to attack a young elephant. What I was truly angry about was this.
Even after doing all that, I hadn't been able to finish the job. I hadn't ended the child's life properly.
And so the unnecessary suffering multiplied.
The herd, unable to abandon their dying young, had been shackled to this grassland. And as a result, countless people had been trapped in hunger and terror.
"If you're going to hunt, you should finish the job."
My sharp mutter made the people who had crept up on us shiver.
And among them, one man nodded his head. It was none other than Black Foot, the leader of the Black Foot group.
"That's right. Hunting is taking the life of your prey, and that in itself carries weight. But to just leave it like this… If you stabbed it, you should have followed through."
That's how we hunt.
Whether we throw stones or spears, if we succeed on the first try, good. If we fail, we follow the target until it's done for. That is our way of hunting.
The moment I heard those words, something in my chest sank even heavier.
That's right.
These people understood.
The weight of killing.
That hunting wasn't simply about thrusting a spear and taking the meat.
The flint blade I had taught them. The adhesive I had taught them. The binding methods I had taught them.
They had taken all of it, but they had never learned the most important part.
"Pretty Eyes…"
High Bird approached me carefully.
His eyes moved back and forth between the rotting flesh on the blade's tip and my face.
"This… Pretty Eyes… not wrong…"
"…No."
I shook my head slowly.
"It's not entirely my fault. But I'm responsible."
The moment those words left my mouth, every eye in the crowd fixed on me. I had no idea how well the concept of responsibility would carry in this age. But the people who looked at my face would at least have known one thing.
I wasn't smiling.
"I thought that if I made good tools, good things would follow."
Tools that cut meat more easily. Tools that stripped hides more easily. Tools that carved wood more easily.
People would eat less, get hurt less, and live a little more comfortably.
That's all I had thought.
But tools are held in human hands. And human hands don't always move in the direction you want.
"A spear can kill an animal, but it can also prolong its suffering."
I drove the blade tip into the ground.
Thud.
The obsidian edge, caked with rotting flesh and clotted blood, sank into the dirt.
"So you have to learn. Not just how to make them, but how to use them."
Black Foot looked at me for a long moment. His face held no displeasure, no rebuttal.
Instead, there was something like old exhaustion. The face of someone who had hunted far too many times. A expression only the one who has killed can wear.
He was old. Which meant, I imagined, he had probably witnessed scenes like this far more often than I had.
"You're right."
He said it quietly.
"Killing a young one isn't wrong. Killing a weak one isn't wrong either. If you're hungry, you do what you have to. But leaving it to suffer… that's wrong."
The words were cold to the point of being strange.
And strange to the point of being right.
I looked down at the young elephant.
Its great ears no longer moved. Its long trunk lay drooping in the dust.
Just moments ago, the mother and herd had threatened us wildly, desperate to protect this child.
Now all that remained was silence.
"…Let's eat."
My small words made High Bird flinch.
"We… really going to… eat it…?"
"Yes. That's the proper thing to do. A courtesy to the life that died because of us."
As I pulled out my stone knife and moved toward the juvenile elephant, Black Foot spoke.
"Don't eat around the wound. It won't taste good, and it'll make you sick."
I glanced at him and nodded.
"Help me. How do I start?"
I had only ever dismembered rabbits and small game, and back in my past life, antelope and crocodiles. An animal the size of an elephant was an entirely different problem.
Black Foot looked down at the young elephant for a moment, then slowly reached out and touched the hide.
"Thunder-stompers have thick hides. Plenty of fat underneath. Don't scratch the surface. You have to push deep and split it long."
He drew his own stone knife.
A well-sharpened flake about two finger-lengths long, similar to what I had made.
Black Foot drew a short line across the elephant's hide with the tip of his blade.
"Here. To here. Cut it long. It's still a young one, so about a finger's width."
I nodded silently and drew a breath.
The stench of decay. The smell of blood. The dry-grass scent of the plains.
All of it flooded into my lungs at once.
I adjusted my grip on the knife.
A good tool.
What I had believed so firmly.
What it killed and what it saved all came down to the hand holding it. And right now, that hand was mine.
I brought the blade tip to the elephant's thick hide.
I paused.
Then I pressed gently.
Thuck.
The stone edge sank into the hide.
No matter how young it was, an elephant is an elephant.
There was no way to carry all that bulk in one trip. We divided the meat and bones, and made several journeys to bring everything back to Arti.
By the time we arrived, a crowd had already gathered at the clearing.
Their faces were a mixture of hunger and unease. And soon, their eyes locked onto the slabs of meat draped over our shoulders.
I said nothing and set the meat down in one corner of the clearing.
Thud.
The heavy slab hit the ground, the sound echoing across the space.
I drew a slow breath, then spoke to the crowd.
"The Thunder-stompers have left."
For a moment.
Arti went silent, as if the whole place had stopped breathing.
And then, the next instant.
"""WOOOOAAAAH!!""
The cheering erupted.
The people who had been worn down by hunger. The ones who had cowered in fear. The mothers clutching their children. The men who hadn't slept, gripping their spears through the night.
They all shouted at once.
The joy of still being alive. The relief that food was at hand. The liberation of no longer being chased by the Thunder-stompers.
All those emotions crashed over the clearing like a massive wave.
But I didn't smile.
I couldn't.
Clang.
I tossed something I'd been holding into the center of the clearing.
Sudden and uncharacteristically loud, the dull sound cut through everything.
It pierced through the cheering and rang out clear. What lay on the ground was nothing less than the spear still caked with rotting flesh and blood.
"Someone attacked the young Thunder-stomper. And left this behind."
A few people swallowed hard. Some glanced at each other. Some still had no idea what was wrong with it.
I took each of those expressions in with my eyes.
"I'm not saying hunting is wrong."
My voice wasn't loud. But it carried strangely far.
"If you're hungry, you hunt. Because you have to live. You can kill the young. You can kill the weak. Because if we don't eat, we die too."
No one spoke.
"But."
I pushed the spear with my foot, rotating it so everyone could see.
The black stone blade tangled with putrid flesh. Dried blood. Yellowish pus congealed around the wound.
Several people wrinkled their faces at the sight.
"If you stabbed it, you should have finished the job."
Some hunters bowed their heads at those words.
"If you couldn't kill it, you should have followed. If you lost it, you should have gone back to find it. But someone left this spear behind and ran."
This time, the mothers holding children looked at the spear.
"The young Thunder-stomper suffered for days because of this. Its mother couldn't abandon the dying calf. So it stayed on the grassland. And because of that, we all went hungry."
Only then did the people's faces stiffen.
Where the joy had been, unease and realization settled in.
They knew it too. In an age with no laws, no institutions, not even a trace of civilization.
But these people knew.
That hunting has rules. That killing carries responsibility all the way to the end. That leaving suffering unchecked isn't just a failure — it's a sin that endangers the entire group.
I looked down at the spear lying on the ground.
"I don't know who made this spear."
A ripple passed through the crowd.
"Now, spears like this aren't just one or two. Everyone has learned the flaking technique, the adhesive, the binding methods."
I looked up.
"So I'll say it once. There will be no next time."
The crowd went silent.
"If you hunt, finish it. If you can't kill, follow through. If you lose it, go back and find it."
I paused, then added quietly.
"Don't cause unnecessary suffering. That is the rule of the hunter."
After saying that, I headed toward the pile of bones I had brought back with the meat.
Smoothly scraped clean of flesh, the bones lay arranged neatly. On the flank of the skeleton, a clear wound mark remained.
I claimed all of these bones for myself.
The price for taking less meat.
Elephant bones were rare, and at first, some people objected. But for some reason, Black Foot spoke up on my behalf, and I was able to take them without much trouble.
"But Pretty Eyes… what are you going to do with these?"
High Bird asked.
I gently ran my fingers over the two skulls still faintly streaked with blood, then slowly opened my mouth.
"I'm going to bury them."
"Bury them? Why?"
"Because it feels like I should."
High Bird looked at me with an expression that clearly didn't understand.
"If you're not going to eat them or use them… why did you go to all the trouble of bringing them back?"
"Because I'm not going to eat them."
I answered quietly.
This was evidence.
Evidence that because of me, this young life had died. Evidence that we had divided and eaten the meat from its death. Evidence showing what the tools I had made could become in someone else's hands.
I stroked the bones again.
The skull. A tusk barely emerging beneath the gums — the young ivory, still not fully grown.
The torso. Even at this young age, the ribs were already large and solid. The pelvis and leg bones beneath. And the long spine running the length of the body.
I looked at everything within sight, one by one.
Then my gaze stopped in one place.
The rib bones.
The curved bones, lined up neatly like wooden dowels arranged in a row.
And something about their shape felt familiar.
"Where have I seen these before…?"
I reached out unconsciously.
With my fingertip, I lightly tapped one of the ribs, stretched out like a xylophone.
Ding.
The sound was clearer and sharper than I had expected.
I froze.
And in that moment, a faint sound from the depths of my memory surfaced.
I was certain.
I had heard this sound before.