FOODFIC: Please Welcome Wolfgang Pie, Author of Tusk

How cool is it to have a blog about food our characters eat? I love food! Thanks for having me on this fun blog. I love your originality. My name is Wolfgang Pie. I write fiction for young readers. Below is an excerpt from Tusk, an Ice Age tale about a brother and sister who lost their parents in a bear attack. Yikes! Gotta watch out for bears and sabre tooth tigers back then. So what did humans eat back in prehistoric times? Well, they hunted a lot and gathered a lot. We have it easy now. What about the cold winters when food was scarce? Our ancestors stored up food for the winter. What a chore cooking was back then. I’m doing good to click my stove to On. Not only did they have to start a fire but they had to kill their own meat and pick their own fruits and vegetables. And their pottery and utensils were crude objects. Well what on earth would two lonely Ice Age kids cook on their first night without their parents? Let’s find out.

“Tell me again about my name,” Flint says as she hands me another piece of reindeer meat on a stick. My mouth waters as I bite into the warm meat, thankful I can chew before telling her the same story I’ve told a million times.

“Well?” She elbows me.

I swallow and sigh. “This is good, Flint. Mawk taught you well.”

She smiles as she chews and I feel my heart swell. Life feels so precious now. I can’t lose my sister. I know already that I’ll die for her if I have to. I also realize how very much I love her and have taken her for granted. Now she is my world and I’m hers.

“Tell me.”

“When you were a baby, nearing your first winter of your life, you found some flint arrows. Mawk screamed when she saw you playing with something so sharp. Pawk kept his arrows high on a shelf but I’d been learning to carve sharper points and had forgotten to put my arrows up. For that, I received three lashings with the horse tail whip.”

Flint roars with laughter at this part of the story. I know it’ll last awhile so I take another bite and roll my eyes. But whatever keeps her laughing. I’ll tell the story another million times if it keeps her mind off our dead parents. Her laugh finally subsides to short giggles so I continue.

“To Mawk’s amazement, you begin to draw with one arrow in each hand. Pawk grabbed her arm and stopped her from taking the arrows when he noticed you were drawing sketches of the moon.”

“I was a very smart baby.”

“Pawk thought so.”

“And you don’t?” Flint kicks some dust at me.

“I don’t really think you were drawing the moon.”

“Then what was I drawing?”

“Circles.”

“Circles?”

“Just circles.”

Flint throws down her meat stick and crosses her arms, glaring at me in a way that makes me see Mawk in her features. And not in a good way, either. Mawk could be tough. The toughest mother I’ve ever met.

“You never told me that part. Why are you being so mean? You think I was a stupid baby and all that talk from Pawk about me having a special connection to the heavens is wrong?”

Her eyes fill with tears and I feel like the worst brother ever. “No. I do think you’re connected to the spirit world. I know I am and you’re my sister so it’s only natural that you would be too.”

She sniffs and her nose wrinkles up like it did when she was a baby, reminding me that she’s still so young. “Go on.”

“From then on, Pawk let you play with flint arrows and as punishment, I had to watch you and make sure you didn’t cut yourself. It was then that they decided to name you Flint since it was the first object you noticed.”

Flint claps like she always does at the end of the story and sticks another piece of raw meat onto her stick, waving it over the fire. “Now I’ll tell yours.”

“You don’t have to. I know how I got my name.”

“Then let’s tell spirit stories.”

“No. You get too scared and won’t sleep tonight.”

“Okay, then I’m telling your name story.”

“What’s for dessert?”

“Auroch milk and snow. Here.” She passes me the covered stone bowl with the frosty dish and I help myself to dessert.

          Thanks for stopping by and sharing

           some food for thought, Wolfgang!

               You can find Wolfgang at:

          http://wolfgangpie.blogspot.com

                        And Tusk at:

           Amazon            Barnes & Noble