by Jean M. Auel
“This one has mint, she said, showing Mamut one, “and this one has rose hips.”
“How do you know? You haven’t opened them, or smelled them.”
“I know because mint has a cord made from the stringy bark of a certain bush, and there are two knots on one end of the cord. The cord on the packet of rose hips is from the long hair of a horse tail, and it has three knots in a row, close together,” Ayla said. “I can smell difference, too—if I don’t have a cold, but some very strong medicine has little smell. It is mixed with strong-smelling leaves of plant with little medicine, so wrong medicine will not be used. Different cord, different knots, different smell, sometimes different packet. They are reminders, right?”
“Clever … very clever,” Mamut said. “Yes, they are reminders. But you have to remember the cords and the knots for each one, don’t you? Still, it’s a good way to make sure you are using the proper medicine.”
Ayla’s eyes were open, but she lay still and didn’t move. It was dark except for the dim nightlight of banked fires. Jondalar was just climbing into bed, trying to make as little disturbance as possible as he moved around her. She had thought of moving to the inside once, but decided against it. She didn’t want to make it easy for him to slip quietly in and out of bed. He rolled up in his separate furs and lay on his side, facing the wall, unmoving. She knew he did not go to sleep quickly, and she ached to reach over and touch him, but she’d been rebuffed before and didn’t want to chance it again. It had hurt when he said he was tired or pretended to be asleep, or did not respond to her.
Jondalar waited until the sound of her breathing indicated that she had finally fallen off to sleep. Then he quietly rolled over, got up on an elbow and filled his eyes with the sight of her. Her tousled hair was strewn across the furs, and one arm was flung outside the covers, baring a breast. A warmth emanated from her and a faint woman-scent. He could feel himself shaking with wanting to touch her, but he felt certain she wouldn’t want him bothering her when she was sleeping. After his confused and angry reaction to her night with Ranec, he feared she didn’t want him any more. Lately, every time they accidentally brushed together, she flinched back. Several times he’d considered moving to a different bed, even a different hearth, but as difficult as it was to sleep beside her, it would be far worse to sleep away from her.
A wispy tendril of hair lay across her face and moved with each breath she took. He reached over and gently moved it aside, then carefully lowered himself back down to the bed, and allowed himself to relax. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of her breathing.
Ayla awoke with the feeling that someone was looking at her. The fires were built up and daylight was coming in through the partially uncovered fireplace hole. She turned her head to see Ranec’s dark intense eyes quietly watching her from the Fox Hearth. She smiled sleepily at him, and was rewarded with a big, delighted smile. She was sure the place beside her would be empty, but she reached across the piled-up furs just to make sure. Then she pushed back her covers and sat up. She knew Ranec would wait until she was up and dressed before coming into the Mammoth Hearth to visit.
It had made her uncomfortable when she first became aware that he watched her all the time. In a way, it was flattering and she knew there was no malice in his attention, but within the Clan, it was considered discourteous to stare across the boundary stones into another family’s living area. There had been no more real privacy in the cave of the clan than there was in the earthlodge of the Mamutoi, but Ranec’s attention felt like a mild intrusion upon her privacy—such as it was—and accentuated an undercurrent of tension she felt. Someone was always around. It had been no different when she lived with the clan, but these were people whose ways she had not grown up with. The differences were often subtle, but in the close proximity of the earthlodge, they were heightened, or she was more sensitive to them. Occasionally, she wished she could get away. After three years of loneliness in the valley, she never imagined the time would come when she would wish to be alone, but there were times when she longed for the solitude, and the freedom, of loneliness.
Ayla hurried through her usual morning routine, eating only a few bites from the food left over from the night before. The open smoke holes usually meant it was clear outside, and she decided to go out with the horses. When she pushed aside the drape that led to the annex, she saw Jondalar and Danug with the horses, and paused to reconsider.
Tending to the needs of the horses, either inside the annex, or when the weather allowed, outside, gave her some respite from people when she wanted a moment to herself, but Jondalar also seemed to like to spend time with them. When she saw him with them, she often stayed away because he left them to her whenever she joined them, with mumbled comments about not wanting to interfere in her time with her horses. She wanted to allow him time with the animals. Not only did they provide a connection between her and Jondalar, their mutual care of the horses required communication, however reserved. His desire to be with them and sensitivity toward them made her think that he might need their companionship even more than she did.
Ayla went on into the horse hearth. Perhaps with Danug there, Jondalar wouldn’t be so quick to leave. As she approached them, he was already backing away, but she rushed to say something that would keep him engaged in conversation.
“Have you thought, yet, about how you are going to teach Racer, Jondalar?” Ayla asked. She smiled a greeting at Danug.
“Teach him what?” Jondalar asked, a little disconcerted by her question.
“Teach him to let you ride him.”
He had been thinking about it. In fact, he had just been making a comment to Danug, in what he hoped was a casual way. He didn’t want to betray his increasingly strong desire to ride the animal. Particularly when he felt thwarted by his inability to deal with Ayla’s apparent attraction to Ranec, he imagined himself galloping across the steppes on the back of the brown stallion, as free as the wind, but he wasn’t sure if he still should be. Perhaps she would want Ranec to ride Whinney’s colt, now.
“I have thought about it, but I didn’t know if … how to begin, ‘ Jondalar said.
“I think you should keep doing what we started in the valley. Get him used to things on his back. Get him used to carrying loads. I’m not sure how to teach him to go where you want him to go. He will follow on a rope, but I don’t know how he can follow a rope when you are on his back,” Ayla said, talking fast, making suggestions on the spur of the moment, trying to keep him involved.
Danug watched her, then Jondalar, wishing he could say or do something that would suddenly make everything right, not only between them, but for everyone. An awkward moment of silence settled uneasily around them when Ayla stopped speaking. Danug rushed to fill the gap.
“Maybe he could hold the rope from behind, while he’s sitting on the horse’s back, instead of holding Racer’s mane,” the young man said.
Suddenly, as though someone had struck a piece of flint with iron pyrite in the dark lodge, Jondalar could visualize exactly what Danug had said. Instead of backing away, looking as though he was ready to sprint off at the first opportunity, Jondalar closed his eyes and wrinkled his forehead in concentration. “You know, that might work, Danug!” he said. Caught up in his excitement about an idea that might be a solution to a problem he had been worrying about, he forgot for a moment his uncertainty about his future. “Perhaps I could fasten something to his halter and hold it from behind. A strong cord … or a thin leather strap … two of them, maybe.”
“I have some narrow thongs,” Ayla said, noticing that he seemed less strained. She was pleased about his continuing interest in training the young stallion, and curious how it might work. “I will get them for you. They are inside.”
Jondalar followed her through the inner arch into the Mammoth Hearth. Then stopped suddenly as she went to the storage platform to get the thong. Ranec was talking to Deegie and Tronie, and turned to flash his winning smile at Ayla. Jondalar fel
t his stomach churn, closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He started edging back toward the opening. Ayla turned to give him a narrow roll of flexible leather.
“This is lashing, it is strong,” she said, giving it to him. “I made it last winter.” She looked up into the troubled blue eyes that revealed the pain, the confusion, and the indecision that tormented him. “Before you came to my valley, Jondalar. Before the Spirit of the Great Cave Lion chose you, and led you there.”
He took the roll and hurried out. He couldn’t stay. Whenever the carver came to the Mammoth Hearth, he had to leave. He couldn’t be nearby when the dark man and Ayla were together, which was more often recently. He had watched from a distance when the younger people gathered in the larger space of the ceremonial area to spread out their work, share ideas and skills. He heard them practice music and sing, listened to their jokes and laughter. And every time he heard Ayla’s laughter coupled with Ranec’s, he winced.
Jondalar put the roll of lashing down near the young animal’s halter, took his parka from the peg in the annex, and went outside, smiling bleakly at Danug on his way. He slipped it over his head, pulled the hood tight around his face, and stuffed his hands in the mittens dangling from the sleeves, then walked up to the steppes.
The strong wind blowing a gray rack across the sky was no more than normal for the season, and the sun shining intermittently between the high broken clouds seemed to have little effect on the temperature that remained well below freezing. The snow cover was scant, and the dry air crackled and stole moisture from his lungs in clouds of steam with each breath. He would not be out long, but the cold calmed him with its insistent demand to put survival ahead of every other consideration. He didn’t know why he reacted so strongly to Ranec. Part of it, without doubt, was his fear of losing Ayla to him, and part was visualizing them together in his imagination, but there was also a nagging guilt about his own hesitation in accepting her fully and without reservation. Part of him believed Ranec deserved her more than he did. But one thing at least seemed certain. Ayla wanted him and not Ranec to try to learn to ride Racer.
Danug watched Jondalar start up the slope, then let the drape fall back, and walked slowly back inside. Racer neighed and tossed his head as the young man walked past, and Danug looked at the horse and smiled. Nearly everyone seemed to enjoy the animals now, patting and talking to them, though not with Ayla’s familiarity. It seemed so natural to have horses in an annex of the lodge. How easy it was to forget the wonder and the amazement he had felt the first time he had seen them. He passed through the second archway, and saw Ayla standing beside her bed platform. He paused, then joined her.
“He’s taking a walk on the steppes,” he said to Ayla. “It’s not a good idea to go out alone when it’s cold and windy, but it’s not as bad out as it can be sometimes.”
“Are you trying to tell me he will be all right, Danug?” Ayla smiled at him, and he felt foolish for a moment. Of course Jondalar would be all right. He had traveled far, he could take care of himself. “Thank you,” she said, “for your help, and for wanting to help,” reaching over and touching his hand. Her hand was cool, Dut her touch warm, and he felt it with that special intensity she aroused in him, but on a deeper level, he felt that she had offered something more, her friendship.
“Maybe I’ll go out and check some snares I set,” he said.
“Try it this way, Ayla,” Deegie said.
Deftly, she poked a hole near the edge of the leather with a small bone, a hard, tough bone from the leg of an arctic fox which had a natural sharp point, that had been made even sharper with sandstone. Then she laid a fine piece of sinew thread over the hole, and with the point of the sewing awl, pushed it through the hole. She grabbed it with her fingers from the back side of the leather and pulled the sinew through. At a corresponding place on another piece of leather which she was sewing to the first piece, she made another hole and repeated the process.
Ayla took the practice pieces of leather back. Using a square of tough mammoth skin as a thimble, she pushed the sharp arctic fox bone through the leather, making a small perforation. Then she tried to lay the thin sinew over the hole and push it through, but she couldn’t seem to master the technique, and again felt thoroughly frustrated.
“I don’t think I’ll ever learn this, Deegie!” she wailed.
“You just have to practice, Ayla. I’ve been doing this since I was a girl. Of course it’s easy for me, but you’ll get it, if you keep trying. It’s the same idea as cutting a little slit with a flint point and pulling leather lashing through to make working clothes, and you can do that just fine.”
“But it is much harder to do with fine sinew and tiny holes. I can’t get the sinew to go through. I feel so clumsy! I don’t know how Tronie can sew on beads and quills like she does,” Ayla said, looking at Fralie, who was rolling a long thin cylinder of ivory in the groove of a block of sandstone. “I was hoping she would show me, so I could decorate the white tunic after I made it, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to make it the way I want.”
“You will, Ayla. I don’t think there is anything you can’t do if you really want to,” Tronie said.
“Except sing!” Deegie said.
Everyone laughed, including Ayla. Though her speaking voice was low-pitched and pleasant, singing was not one of her gifts. She could maintain a limited range of tones sufficient for the lulling monotony of a chant, and she did have an ear for music. She knew when she was off and she could whistle a melody, but any facility of voice was beyond her. The virtuosity of someone like Barzec was sheer wonder. She could listen to him all day, if he would consent to sing so long. Fralie, too, had a fine, clear, high, sweet voice, which Ayla loved to hear. In fact, most members of the Lion Camp could sing, but not Ayla.
Jokes were made about her singing and her voice, which included comments about her accent, though it was more speech mannerism than accent. She laughed as much as anyone. She couldn’t sing and she knew it, and if they joked about her voice, many people had also, individually, praised her speech. They took it as a compliment that she had become so fluent in their language, so fast, and the joking about her singing made her feel that she belonged.
Everyone had some trait or characteristic that the others poked fun at: Talut’s size, Ranec’s color, Tulie’s strength. Only Frebec took offense, so they joked about that behind his back, in sign language. The Lion Camp had also become fluent, without even thinking about it, in a modified version of the language of the Clan. As a result, Ayla wasn’t the only one feeling the warmth of acceptance. Rydag, too, was included in the fun.
Ayla glanced toward him. He was sitting on a mat with Hartal on his lap, keeping the active baby occupied with a pile of bones, mostly deer vertebrae, so he wouldn’t go crawling after his mother and scatter the beads she was helping Fralie make. Rydag was good with the babies. He had the patience to play with them and entertain them as long as they wished.
He smiled at her. “You not only one cannot sing, Ayla,” he signed.
She smiled back. No, she thought, she was not the only one who could not sing. Rydag could not sing. Or talk. Or run and play. Or even live out a full life. In spite of her medicine, she didn’t know how long he would live. He could die that day, or he could survive several years. She could only love him each day that he lived, and hope she could love him the next.
“Hartal cannot sing, either!” he signaled, and laughed with his odd guttural laugh.
Ayla chuckled, shaking her head with bemused delight. He had known what she was thinking, and made a joke about it that was clever, and funny.
Nezzie stood near the fireplace and watched them. Maybe you do not sing, Rydag, but you can talk now, she thought. He was stringing several vertebrae on a heavy cord through the spinal cord hole, and rattling them together for the baby. Without the hand-signal words, and the increased awareness they had brought of Rydag’s intelligence and understanding, he would never have been allowed the responsibility of
tending Hartal so his mother could work, not even right beside her. What a difference Ayla had brought to Rydag’s life. This winter, no one questioned his essential humanity, except Frebec, and Nezzie was sure that was more out of stubbornness than belief.
Ayla continued to struggle with the awl and sinew. If she could only get the Tine threads of sinew to go into the hole and out the other side. She tried to do it the way Deegie had shown her, but it was a knack that came from years of experience, and she was a long way from that. She dropped the practice pieces in her lap in frustration, and began watching the others making ivory beads.
A sharp blow to a mammoth tusk at the proper angle caused a fairly thin, curved section to flake off. Grooves were cut in the large flake with chisellike burins by etching a line and retracing it several times until the long pieces broke off. They were shaved and whittled into rough cylinders with scrapers and knives that peeled off long curled slivers, then they were rubbed smooth with sandstone kept wet to be more abrasive. Sharp flint blades, given a sawtooth edge and hafted to a long handle, were used to saw the ivory cylinders into small sections, and then the edges of them were smoothed.
The final step was to make a hole in the center, to string them on a cord, or to sew them to a garment. It was done with a special tool. Flint, carefully shaped into a long thin point by a skilled toolmaker, was inserted into the end of a long narrow rod, perfectly straight and smooth. The point of the hand drill was centered on a small, thick disc of ivory and then, similar to the process of making fire, the rod was rotated back and forth between the palms while exerting downward pressure, until a hole was bored through.
Ayla watched Tronie twirl the rod between her palms, concentrating on making the hole just right. It occurred to her that they were going to a lot of work to make something that had no apparent use. Beads were no help in the securing or preparing of food, and they did not make the clothing, to which they were attached, more useful. But she began to understand why the beads had such value. The Lion Camp could never have afforded such an investment of time and effort without the security of warmth and comfort, and the assurance of adequate food. Only a cooperative, well-organized group could plan and store enough necessities ahead to assure the leisure to make beads. Therefore, the more beads they wore, the more it showed that the Lion Camp was a flourishing, desirable place to live, and the more respect and status they could command from the other Camps.
