The Clan of the Cave Bear

by Jean M. Auel

  She brought her sibling his food, and tea for both of them. They sat quietly together, a comfortable, affectionate warmth between them. When Creb finished, they were the only ones still awake.

  “The hunters will go out in the morning,” Creb said. “If they make a good kill, the ceremony will be the next day. You will be prepared?”

  “I checked the bag, there are enough roots. I will be ready,” Iza motioned, holding up a small pouch. It was different from the others. The leather had been dyed a deep brownish red, with fine-powdered red ochre mixed into the bear fat that had been used to cure the cave bear skin it was made from. No other woman had anything colored the sacred red, although everyone in the clan carried a piece of red ochre in their amulets. It was the holiest relic Iza possessed. “I will purify myself in the morning.”

  Again Creb grunted. It was the usual noncommittal comment used by men when responding to a woman. It carried only enough meaning to indicate the woman had been understood, without acknowledging too much significance in what she said. They remained quiet for a while, then Creb put his small tea bowl down and looked at his sibling.

  “Mog-ur will provide for you and the girl, and your child if it is a girl. You will share my fire in the new cave, Iza,” he said, then reached for his staff to help himself up and hobbled to his sleeping place.

  Iza had started to get up but sat back down, thunderstruck by his announcement. It was the last thing she expected. With her mate gone, she knew some other man would have to provide for her. She had tried to put thoughts of her fate out of her mind—it made no difference how she felt, Brun would not consult her—but she couldn’t help thinking about it sometimes. Of the possible options, some didn’t appeal to her and the rest she thought were unlikely.

  There was Droog; since Goov’s mother had been killed in the earthquake, he was alone now. Iza respected Droog. He was the best maker of tools in the clan. Any of them could chip flakes from a flint boulder to make a rough hand-axe or scraper, but Droog had a real talent for it. He could preshape the stone so that the flakes he knapped off would have the size and shape he wanted. His knives, scrapers, all his tools, were highly prized. If the choice were hers, of all the men in the clan, Iza would choose Droog. He had been good to the acolyte’s mother. There had been a genuine fondness in their relationship.

  It was more likely, though, Iza knew, that Aga would be given to him. Aga was younger, and already the mother of two children. Her son, Vorn, would soon need a hunter to be responsible for his training, and the baby, Ona, needed a man to provide for her until she grew up and mated herself. The toolmaker would probably be willing to take her mother, Aba, too. The old woman needed a place as well as her daughter. Taking on all those responsibilities would make quite a change in the life of the quiet, orderly toolmaker. Aga could be a little difficult at times, and she didn’t have the understanding Goov’s mother had had, but Goov would be setting up his own hearth soon, and Droog needed a woman.

  Goov as a mate for her was entirely out of the question. He was too young, just barely a man, and hadn’t even mated for the first time. Brun would never give him an old woman, and Iza would feel more like his mother than his mate.

  Iza had thought about living with Grod and Uka, and the man who had been mated to Grod’s mother, Zoug. Grod was a stiff, laconic man, but never cruel, and his loyalty to Brun was beyond question. She wouldn’t have minded living with Grod, even though she’d be second woman. But Uka was Ebra’s sister and had never quite forgiven Iza her status that had usurped her sibling’s place. And since the death of her son—when he had not yet even moved to his own hearth—Uka was grieving and withdrawn. Not even Ovra, her daughter, was able to soften the woman’s pain. There is too much unhappiness at that hearth, Iza had thought.

  She had hardly considered Crug’s fire. Ika, his mate and the mother of Borg, was an open, friendly young woman. That was just the trouble, they were both so young, and Iza had never gotten along very well with Dorv, the old man who had been the mate of Ika’s mother, who shared their fire.

  That left Brun, and she could not even be second woman at his hearth; he was her sibling. Not that it mattered, she had her own status. At least she wasn’t like the poor old woman who had finally found her way to the world of the spirits during the earthquake. She had come from another clan, her mate had died long before, she never had any children, and had been traded off from fire to fire, always a burden; a woman with no status, no value.

  But the possibility of sharing a hearth with Creb, of his providing for her hadn’t even entered her mind. There was no one in the clan of whom she was fonder, man or woman. He even likes Ayla, she thought, I’m sure of it. It’s a perfect arrangement—unless I have a boy. A boy needs to live with a man who can train him to be a hunter, and Creb can’t hunt.

  I could take the medicine to make me lose it, she thought for a moment. Then I could be sure I wouldn’t have a boy. She patted her stomach and shook her head. No, it’s too late, there could be problems. She realized she wanted the baby, and despite her age, her pregnancy had progressed without difficulty. The chances were good that the child would be normal and healthy, and children were too precious to give up lightly. I will ask my totem again to make the baby a girl. He knows I’ve wanted a girl all along. I promised I’d take care of myself so the baby he allowed to start would be healthy, if only he’d make it a girl.

  Iza knew women of her years could have problems, and she ate foods and medicines that were helpful to pregnant women. Though never a mother, the medicine woman knew more about pregnancy, delivery, and nursing than most women. She had helped deliver all the youngsters in the clan and she dispensed her knowledge with her medication freely to the women. But there was some magic, passed down from mother to daughter, that was so secret, Iza would have died before revealing it, especially to a man. Any man who found out about it would never permit its use.

  The secret had been kept only because no one, man or woman, asked a medicine woman about her magic. The custom of avoiding direct queries was so long-standing, it had become tradition, almost law. She could share her knowledge if someone indicated an interest, but Iza never discussed her special magic because if a man had thought to ask, she could not have refused to answer—no woman could refuse to answer a man—and it was impossible for people of the Clan to lie. Their form of communication, dependent for subtle nuance on barely perceptible changes in expressions, gestures, and postures, made any attempt immediately detectable. They didn’t even have a concept for it; the closest they could come to untruth was to refrain from speaking, and that was usually discerned, though often allowed.

  Iza never mentioned the magic she had learned from her mother, but she had been using it. The magic prevented conception, prevented the spirit of a man’s totem from entering her mouth to start a child. It never occurred to the man who had been her mate to ask her why she had not conceived a child. He assumed her totem was too strong for a woman. He often told her so and bemoaned the fact to the other men as the reason his totem’s essence was not able to overcome hers. Iza used the plants to prevent conception because she wanted to shame her mate. She wanted the clan, and him, to think the impregnating element of his totem was too weak to break down the defenses of hers, even though he beat her.

  The beatings were given, supposedly, to force her totem into submission, but Iza knew he enjoyed it. At first, she hoped her mate would give her to some other man if she produced no children. She hated the strutting braggart even before she was given to him, and when she found out who her mate was to be, she could do nothing but cling to her mother in desperation. Her mother could offer only consolation; she had no more say in the matter than her daughter. But her mate did not give her away. Iza was medicine woman, the highest-ranked woman in the Clan, and it gave him a feeling of manliness to have control over her. When the strength of his totem, and his manhood, was in question because his mate produced no offspring, the physical power he had over her compensated for
it.

  Though the beatings were allowed in the hope that they would result in a child, Iza sensed that Brun disapproved. She was sure if Brun had been leader at the time, she would not have been given to that particular man. A man did not prove his manhood, in Brun’s opinion, by overcoming women. Women had no alternative but to submit. It was unworthy of a man to pit himself against a lesser adversary or to allow his emotions to be provoked by a woman. It was a man’s duty to command women, to maintain discipline, to hunt and provide, to control his emotions, and to show no sign of pain when he was suffering. A woman might be cuffed if she was lazy or disrespectful, but not in anger and not with joy, only to discipline. Though some men struck women more often than others, few men made a habit of it. Only Iza’s mate had made it a regular practice.

  After Creb joined their fire, her mate was even more reluctant to give her away. Iza was not only medicine woman, she was the woman who cooked for Mog-ur. If Iza left his fire, Mog-ur would too. Her mate had imagined that the rest of the clan thought he was learning secrets from the great magician. In truth, Creb was never more than properly polite in all the time they shared the same hearth and hardly deigned to notice the man on many occasions. Especially, Iza was sure, when Creb noticed a particularly colorful bruise.

  For all the beatings, Iza continued to make use of her herbal magic. Yet, when she found herself pregnant, she resigned herself to her fate. Some spirit had finally overcome both her totem and her magic. Perhaps it was his; but, Iza thought, if the vital principle of his totem had finally prevailed, why had the spirit deserted him when the cave collapsed? She held out one last hope. She wished for a daughter, a girl to detract from his newly gained esteem, and a girl to carry on her line of medicine women, though she had been ready to end the line with herself rather than have a child while she lived with her mate. If she gave birth to a son, her mate would have been fully vindicated; a girl would still leave something to be desired. Now Iza wanted a girl even more—not to deny her dead mate’s posthumous prestige, but to allow her to live with Creb.

  Iza put her medicine bag away and crawled into her fur beside the peacefully sleeping child. Ayla must be lucky, Iza thought. There’s the new cave, and she is going to be allowed to stay with me, and we are going to share Creb’s fire. Maybe her luck will bring me a daughter, too. Iza put her arm around Ayla and snuggled close to her warm little body.

  After breakfast the next morning, Iza beckoned to the child and headed upstream. As they walked beside the water, the medicine woman looked for certain plants. After a few moments, Iza saw a clearing on the other side and crossed over. Growing on the open ground were several plants, about a foot high with dull green leaves attached to long stalks tipped with spikes of small, densely packed, green flowers. Iza dug up the red-rooted pigweed and headed for a marshy area beside sluggish backwater and found scouring-rush horsetail ferns and, farther upstream, soaproot. Ayla, following her, watched with interest, wishing she could communicate with the woman. Her head was full of questions she couldn’t ask.

  They went back to the campsite and Ayla watched her fill a tightly woven basket with water and add the stalky ferns and hot rocks from the fire. Ayla squatted beside the woman while Iza cut a circular piece with a sharp flake of stone out of the cloak she had used to carry the girl. Though soft and pliable, the fat-cured leather was tough, but the stone knife cut it with ease. With another stone tool, chipped to a point, Iza pierced several holes around the edge of the circle. Then she twisted tough stringy bark from a low-growing shrub into a cord and threaded it through the holes and pulled it tight to make a pouch. With a quick flick of her knife, one made by Droog and a tool Iza treasured, she cut off a piece of the long thong that held her wrap closed, first measuring it around Ayla’s neck. The entire process took only a few moments.

  When the water in the cooking basket was bubbling, Iza gathered up the other plants she had collected, along with the watertight wicker bowl, and went back to the stream. They walked along the bank until they came to a place where it eased into the water in a gradual slope. Finding a round stone she could hold easily in her hand, Iza pounded the soaproot with water in a saucerlike depression of a large flattish rock near the stream. The root sudsed into a rich, saponin-filled lather. Taking stone tools and other small items from the folds, Iza unwound the thong and removed her wrap. She slipped her amulet over her head and carefully placed it on top.

  Ayla was delighted when Iza took her hand and led her into the stream. She loved the water. But after a thorough wetting, the woman picked her up, sat her on the rock, and lathered her from head to foot, including her stringy, matted hair. After dunking her in the cool water, the woman made a motion and squeezed her eyes shut. Ayla didn’t understand the motion, but when she mimicked the woman, Iza nodded, and she understood the woman wanted her to close her eyes. The child felt her head being bent forward, then the warm liquid from the bowl of ferns poured over her. Her head had been itching and Iza had noticed tiny crawling vermin. The woman massaged in the lice-killing liquid extracted from the horsetail fern. After a second rinsing in the cold stream, Iza crushed the pigweed root together with its leaves and lathered it into her hair. A final dunking followed, then Iza performed the same ablutions on herself while the child played in the water.

  While they were sitting on the bank letting the sun dry them, Iza peeled the bark off a twig with her teeth and used it to pull snarls out of their hair as it dried. She was astonished at the fine, silky softness of Ayla’s near-white hair. Certainly unusual, Iza thought, but rather nice. It’s really her best feature. She looked at the child without making it obvious. Though suntanned, the child was still lighter than she, and Iza thought the skinny, pale little girl with her light eyes was amazingly unattractive. Unusual looking people; there’s no doubt they are human, but so ugly. Poor child. How will she ever find a mate?

  If she doesn’t mate, how will she ever have any status? She could be like the old woman who died in the earthquake, Iza thought. If she were my real daughter, then she’d have her own status too. I wonder if I could teach her some healing magic? That would give her some value. If I have a girl, I could train them both; and if I have a boy, there won’t be another woman to carry on my line. The clan will need a new medicine woman someday. If Ayla knew the magic, they might accept her—some man might even be willing to mate her. She’s going to be accepted into the clan; why can’t she be my daughter? Iza already thought of the girl as hers, and her musings planted the germ of an idea.

  She looked up, noticed the sun was much higher, and realized it was getting late. I must finish her amulet and then prepare to make the drink from the root, Iza said to herself, suddenly remembering her responsibilities.

  “Ayla,” she called to the child who had wandered toward the stream again. The girl came running. Looking at her leg, Iza saw the water had softened the scabs, but it was healing well. Hurrying back into her wrap, Iza led the child toward the ridge, stopping first to get her digging stick and the small pouch she had made. She had noticed a ditch of red soil just on the other side of it, near the place they had stopped before Ayla showed them the cave. When they reached it, she poked with her stick until several small chunks of red ochre broke loose. Picking up a few small pieces, she held them out to Ayla. The girl looked at them, not sure what was expected, then tentatively touched one. Iza took the small lump, put it in the pouch, and tucked the pouch in a fold. Before turning to go back, Iza looked out over the view and saw small figures moving across the plains below. The hunters had left early in the morning.

  Many ages before, men and women, far more primitive than Brun and his five hunters, learned to compete for game with four-legged predators by watching and copying their methods. They saw, for example, how wolves, working together, could bring down prey many times larger and more powerful than themselves. Over time, using tools and weapons rather than claws and fangs, they learned that by cooperating, they, too, could hunt the large beasts that shared their envi
ronment. It prodded them along their evolutionary journey.

  With a need for silence so as not to warn the game they were stalking, they developed hunting signals that evolved into the more elaborate hand signals and gestures used to communicate other needs and desires. Warning cries changed in pitch and tone to include greater informational content. Though the branch of the tree of man that led to the people of the Clan did not include sufficiently developed vocal mechanisms to evolve a full verbal language, it did not impair their ability to hunt.

  The six men started out at first light. From their vantage point near the ridge, they watched the sun, sending its beams ahead as scouts, creep tentatively over the edge of the earth, then blazon forth in full command of the day. Toward the northeast, a vast cloud of soft loess dust shrouded an undulating mass of shaggy brown movement accented by curving black spikes; a broad trail of trampled earth, entirely devoid of vegetation, followed the slowly moving herd of bison defacing the golden green plains. No longer slowed by women and children, the hunters covered the distance to the steppes quickly.

  Leaving the foothills behind, they fell into a ground-eating dogtrot, approaching the herd downwind. As they drew close, they crouched low in the tall grass watching the huge beasts. Gigantic humpbacked shoulders, tapering to narrow flanks behind, supported massive woolly heads bearing enormous black horns that spanned well over a yard in mature animals. The rangy, sweaty smell of the close-packed multitude assaulted their nostrils and the earth vibrated with the movement of thousands of hooves.