The Cleft by Doris Lessing Page A

waited for them. The Monsters were taken to the boys by the eagles, and now the deer did not feed them, the boys fetched Clefts. And all this went on, we do not know for how long. The laments of the boys that their numbers were falling ceased: for whatever reason, baby boys were born.
    So, how long? Who knows, now?

And now this chronicler has a difficulty and it is to do with time, again: but much longer time than the complaint just above.
    We Romans have measured, charted, taken possession of time, so that it would be impossible for us to say, ‘And then it came to pass’… for we would have the year, the month, the day off pat, we are a defining people, but then all we know of events is what was said of them by the appointed Memories, the repeaters, who spoke to those who spoke again, again, what had been agreed long ago should be remembered.
    This historian has no means of knowing how long the Clefts’ story took to evolve. Astre and Maire, whenfirst mentioned, were young Clefts, like the others, and then they thought of themselves as females, when the occurrence of the males made them have to compare and match, but for most of the records they were best known as figures from the ancient past. Their prominence in the tales, both male and female, the fact that it was Maire who gave birth to the First One, meant that their words were heard and then recorded. But soon they were not young females, but founders of families, clans, tribes – and at some point, ages later, evolved into goddesses. We know them under various names, but one is always associated with the star that is the patron of love and female witchery, and the other is an aspect of the moon. Their statues are in every town, village, glade, crossroads. Smiling, beneficent, queens in their own right, Artemis and Diana and Venus, and the rest, they are the most powerful intercessors between us and the heavens; we love them, we know they love us. But travellers may say that only a short horseback ride away, or a few days’ walking, there are goddesses who are cruel and vengeful.
    How long did it take for Astre and Maire to become more than themselves? We have no idea.
    But one thing is certain: that once, very long ago, there was a real young woman who might have been called Maire, and then others, who were the first mothers of our race, carrying in their wombs the babes who were both Cleft and Other, both stuff of the very early people who, it is now thought, came out of thesea – and the new people, who brought restlessness and curiosity with them.
    The girls who went to the valley and returned pregnant sat in the mouths of the caves and guarded their children, who were so different from the others. They walked early, talked early, and had to be watched every minute. Their mothers looked down at the rest of the tribe on the rocks, knew that their children had a double heritage, and noted the infants of the old kind were passive, easy, seldom cried, staying where they were set down; they were active only when they were put into the water, where they swam about and were fearless.
    When the new mothers wanted to swim, they went all together, carrying their infants, and chose pools not used by the rest of the Clefts, who had split into two parts, one always watching what the other was doing.
    Something else happened, which is hardly mentioned in the old chronicles. It was taken for granted, and that means fire must have been there for a long time.
    In the valley a fire burned always, not far from the log, and it was kept alive, with special attendants. Soon fires were burning outside the caves. These fires appearing are one reason to question the possible timescales that have been suggested.
    No fires at all – neither on the shore nor in the valley – and then, always, fires. When fire first appeared that must have been as much of a shock as the new babies that seem to have come from nowhere.
    Why, suddenly, fire? Certainly for many