The Clan of the Cave Bear

by Jean M. Auel

  As though in answer to Broud’s silent plea, the magician lifted his arm and stared up at the crescent moon. Then with smooth-flowing motions, he began an impassioned appeal. But his audience was not the mesmerized watching clan. His eloquence was directed to the ethereal, though no less real, world of the spirits—and his motions were eloquent. Using every subtle trick of posture, every nuance of gesture, the one-armed man had overcome his handicap to his own language. He was more expressive with his single arm than most men were with two. By the time he was through, the clan knew they were surrounded by the essence of their protective totems and a host of other unknown spirits, and Broud’s chill became a shiver.

  Then quickly, with a suddenness that brought a gasp to a few lips, the magician whipped out a sharp stone knife from a fold of his wrap and held it high over his head. He brought the sharp tool down swiftly, plunging it toward Broud’s chest. In a movement that was under absolute control, Mog-ur stopped short of fatal penetration. Instead, with quick strokes, he carved two lines into the young man’s flesh, both curved in the same direction and joined in a point like the great curved horn of a rhinoceros.

  Broud closed his eyes but didn’t flinch as the knife pierced his skin. Blood welled to the surface and overflowed, spilling down his chest in red rivulets. Goov appeared at the magician’s side holding a bowl of salve made from the rendered fat of the bison mixed with antiseptic ashes from the wood of an ash tree. Mog-ur smeared the black grease into the wound, stopping the flowing blood and assuring that a black scar would form. The mark announced to all who saw him that Broud was a man; a man forever under the protection of the Spirit of the formidable, unpredictable Woolly Rhinoceros.

  The young man returned to his place, acutely conscious of the attention focused on him and thoroughly enjoying it, now that the worst was over. He was sure his bravery and hunting skill, his evocative performance during the dance, his unflinching acceptance of his totem mark, would be the subject of animated talk of both men and women for a long time. He thought it might become a legend, a story repeated many times during the long cold winters that confined the clan to the cave, and retold at Clan Gatherings. If it wasn’t for me this cave wouldn’t be ours, he said to himself. If I hadn’t killed the bison, we wouldn’t be having a ceremony, we’d still be looking for a cave. Broud had begun to feel the new cave and the whole eventful occasion were entirely due to him.

  Ayla watched the ritual with fear and fascination, unable to suppress a shudder as the fearsome, hulking man stabbed Broud and drew blood. She hung back as Iza led her toward the frightening, bear-cloaked magician, wondering what he would do to her. Aga with Ona in her arms and Ika carrying Borg were also approaching Mog-ur. Ayla was glad when both women lined up in front of Iza and herself.

  Goov now held a tightly woven basket dyed red from the many times it had been used to hold the sacred red ochre, ground to a fine powder and heated together with animal fat to make a richly colored paste. Mog-ur looked over the heads of the women standing in front of him at the sliver of moon overhead. He made gestures in the unspoken formal language, asking the spirits to gather close and observe the youngsters whose protective totems were to be revealed. Then, dipping a finger into the red paste, he drew a spiral on the hip of the male child, like the corkscrew tail of the wild pig. A low, gruff murmur rose from the clan as they made gestures commenting on the appropriateness of the totem.

  “Spirit of Boar, the boy, Borg, is delivered into your protection,” the magician’s hand signals stated as he slipped a small pouch attached to a thong over the baby’s head.

  Ika bowed her head in acquiescence and the motion carried overtones that she was pleased. It was a strong, respectable spirit and she felt the inherent rightness of the totem for her son. Then she stepped aside.

  The magician called upon the spirits again and, reaching into the red basket held by Goov, he drew a circle on Ona’s arm with the paste.

  “Spirit of Owl,” his gestures proclaimed, “the girl, Ona, is delivered into your protection.” Then Mog-ur put the amulet her mother had made around the infant’s neck. Once more there was an undercurrent of grunts as hands flashed in comment on the strong totem that protected the girl. Aga was happy. Her daughter was well protected and it meant the man she mated could not have a weak totem. She only hoped it wouldn’t make it too difficult for her to have children.

  The group strained forward with interest as Aga moved aside and Iza reached down to lift Ayla in her arms. The girl was no longer frightened. She realized, now that she was closer, that the imposing figure with the red-stained face was none other than Creb. There was a glow of warmth in his eye when he looked at her.

  To the clan’s surprise, the magician’s gestures were different when he called upon the spirits to attend this ritual. They were the gestures he used when he named a newborn child seven days after its birth. The strange girl was not only going to have her totem revealed, she was going to be adopted by the clan! Dipping his finger into the paste, Mog-ur drew a line from the middle of her forehead, the place on people of the Clan where the boney ridges overhanging their eyes met, to the tip of her small nose.

  “The child’s name is Ayla,” he said, pronouncing her name slowly and carefully so both the clan and the spirits would understand.

  Iza turned to face the watching people. Ayla’s adoption was as much a surprise to her as it was to the rest, and the girl could feel her rapidly beating heart. This must mean she is my daughter, my first child, she thought. Only a mother holds the infant when it is named and recognized as a member of the clan. Has it been seven days since I found her? I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask Creb, but I think it has. She must be my daughter; who else can be her mother now?

  Each person filed past Iza holding the five-year-old girl in her arms like a baby, and each repeated her name with varying degrees of accuracy. Then Iza turned back to face the magician. He looked up and called upon the spirits to gather once more. The clan waited expectantly. Mog-ur was aware of their eager attention and used it to his advantage. With slow deliberate movements, drawing out the moment to sustain the suspense, he scooped out a bit of the oily red paste and then painted one line directly over one of the healing claw marks on Ayla’s leg.

  What can that mean? What totem is that? The watching clan was mystified. The holy man dipped into the red basket again and painted a second line over the next mark. The girl felt Iza begin to shake. None of the others moved, not a breath could be heard. With the third line, Brun, with an angry scowl, tried to catch Mog-ur’s eye, but the magician evaded the look. When the fourth line was drawn, the clan knew, but they did not want to believe. It was, after all, the wrong leg. Mog-ur turned his head and looked straight at Brun as he made the final gesture.

  “Spirit of Cave Lion, the girl, Ayla, is delivered into your protection.”

  The formalized movement removed the last shred of doubt. As Mog-ur put the amulet around her neck, hands flew in shocked surprise. Could it really be true? Could a girl’s totem be one of the strongest of male totems? The Cave Lion?

  Creb’s stare into the angry eyes of his brother was firm and uncompromising. For a moment, they were locked in a silent battle of wills. But Mog-ur knew that the logic of a Cave Lion totem for the girl was implacable no matter how illogical it seemed for a female to have the protection of so powerful a spirit. Mog-ur had only emphasized what the Cave Lion himself had done. Brun had never questioned the revelations of his crippled brother before, but for some reason he felt tricked by the magician. He didn’t like it, but he had to admit he had never seen a totem so obviously corroborated. He was the first to look away, but he wasn’t happy.

  The idea of taking the strange child into the clan had been difficult enough, but this totem of hers was too much. It was irregular, unconventional; Brun didn’t like anomalies in his well-ordered clan. He clamped his jaw shut with determination. There would be no further deviations. If the girl was to be a member of his clan, she would conform, Cave
Lion or no Cave Lion.

  Iza was stunned. Still holding the child in her arms, she lowered her head in acceptance. If Mog-ur decreed it, it must be so. She knew Ayla’s totem was strong, but a Cave Lion? The thought made her apprehensive; a female with the mightiest of cats for a totem? Now Iza was sure the girl would never mate. It reinforced her decision to teach Ayla healing magic so she would have some status of her own. Creb had named her, recognized her, and revealed her totem while the medicine woman held her. If that didn’t make the girl her daughter, what did? Birth itself was no guarantee of acceptance. Iza suddenly remembered that if everything continued to go well, she would find herself standing in front of the magician again, before long, with a baby in her arms. She, who had been childless for so long, would soon have two.

  The clan was in an uproar, amazement in their gestures and voices. Self-consciously, Iza returned to her place amid the astonished glances of both women and men. They tried not to stare at her and the girl—it was discourteous to stare—but one man was more than staring.

  The look of hatred in Broud’s eyes as he glowered at the small girl frightened Iza. She tried to place herself between the two, to shield Ayla from the proud young man’s malevolent glare. Broud could see he wasn’t the center of attention; no one was talking about him anymore. Forgotten was his mighty deed that assured the cave was an acceptable home, forgotten was his marvelous dance and his stoic courage when Mog-ur carved his totem mark into his chest. The astringent, antiseptic ointment hurt worse than the cut—it still stung—but was anyone noticing how bravely he bore the pain?

  No one was noticing him at all. The rites of passage for boys becoming men occurred with ordinary regularity, even for those destined to be leader. They didn’t compare with the wonder and unexpectedness of Mog-ur’s unprecedented revelation about the strange girl. Broud saw people recalling that she had been led to the cave first. They were saying that the ugly girl found their new home! So what if her totem is the Cave Lion, Broud thought petulantly. Did she kill the bison? This was supposed to be his night, he was supposed to be the center of attention, he was supposed to be the object of the clan’s admiration and awe, but Ayla had stolen his thunder.

  He glowered at the strange girl, but when he noticed Iza running toward the camp beside the stream, his attention was drawn back to Mog-ur. Soon, very soon, he would be allowed to participate in the secret rituals with the men. He didn’t know what to expect; all he’d ever been told was that he would learn for the first time what memories really were. It was the final step that would make him a man.

  Beside the fireplace near the stream, Iza quickly removed her wrap and picked up a wooden bowl and red bag of dried roots she had set out. Stopping first to fill the bowl with water, she returned to the huge bonfire, soaring to brighter heights with the additional wood Grod added.

  Iza’s wrap had covered up part of the reason for her long absences earlier in the day. When the medicine woman stepped in front of the magician again, she was completely naked except for her amulet and the streaks of red painted on her body. A large circle accented the fullness of her stomach. Both breasts were circled, too, with a streak drawn from the top of each over her shoulders and joining in a V at the small of her back. Red circles enclosed both cheeks of her buttocks. The enigmatic symbols, whose meaning was known only to Mog-ur, were for her protection as well as the men’s. It was dangerous to have a woman involved in religious rituals but for this she was necessary.

  Iza was standing close to Mog-ur, close enough to see beads of perspiration on his face from standing in front of the hot fire in his heavy bearskin. At an imperceptible signal from him, she held the bowl up and turned to face the clan. It was an ancient bowl, preserved for generations for use only during these special occasions. Some ancestral medicine woman had long and carefully chipped out the center and shaped the outside of a section of the trunk of a tree, then even longer lovingly rubbed the bowl smooth with gritty sand and a round stone. A final smoothing with the abrasive stalks of the scouring-rush fern gave it a silky polished finish. The bowl was coated on the inside with a whitish patina from repeated use as the container for the ceremonial drink.

  Iza put the dried roots in her mouth and chewed them slowly, careful not to swallow any saliva as her large teeth and strong jaws began to break down the tough fibers. Finally she spat the masticated pulp into the bowl of water and stirred the fluid until it turned a milky white. Only the medicine women of Iza’s line knew the secret of the potent root. The plant was relatively rare though not unknown, but the fresh root showed little evidence of its narcotic qualities. The root had been dried, aged for at least two years; and when hanging to dry, it had been suspended root-down rather than top-down as was customary for most herbs. Though only a medicine woman was allowed to make the drink, by long-standing tradition only men were allowed to drink it.

  There was an ancient legend, passed down from mother to daughter along with the esoteric instructions for concentrating the effective component of the plant into the root, that at one time, long ago, only women used the potent drug. The ceremony and rituals associated with its use were stolen by the men, and women were forbidden to use it, but the men could not steal the secret of its preparation. The medicine women who knew it were so reluctant to share the secret with anyone except their own offspring that it had been lost to all but the woman who could claim a direct, unbroken line of descent into the depths of antiquity. Even now, the drink was never given without receiving something of like kind and value in return.

  When the drink was ready, Iza nodded her head and Goov stepped forward with a bowl of datura tea prepared the way he usually did for the men, but this time for the women. With dignified formality, the bowls were exchanged, then Mog-ur led the way as the men retreated into the small cave.

  After they left, Iza took the datura around to each of the women. The medicine woman often used the same drug as an anesthetic, painkiller, or soporific, and she had a different preparation of the datura plant ready as a sedative for the children. The women could relax completely only if they knew their youngsters would not come seeking attention and yet would be safe. On the rare occasions when women allowed themselves the luxury of a ceremony, Iza made sure the children would be safe in the arms of sleep.

  Before long, the women began putting their drowsy children to bed, then returned to the fire. After tucking Ayla into her fur, Iza went to the overturned bowl Dorv had used during the hunt dance and began beating out a slow, steady rhythm, altering the tone by beating on the top with the stick, then closer to the rim.

  At first, the women sat unmoving. They were too accustomed to guarding their actions in the presence of men. But gradually, as the effects of the drug began to be felt, and with the knowledge that the men were out of sight, some of the women began to move to the stately rhythm. Ebra was the first to jump up. She danced with intricate steps in a circle around Iza, and as the medicine woman increased the tempo, it stirred the senses of more of the women. Soon they all joined the leader’s mate.

  As the rhythm became faster and more complex, the normally docile women threw off their wraps and danced with movements that were unrestrained and frankly erotic. They didn’t notice when Iza stopped and joined them herself; they were too involved with dancing to their own internal rhythms. Their pent-up emotions, so repressed in everyday life, were released in the uninhibited motion. Tensions drained in a catharsis of freedom, a catharsis that allowed them to accept their restricted existence. In a whirling, jumping, stomping frenzy, the women danced until, near dawn, they dropped, exhausted, and slept where they fell.

  With the first light of the new day, the men started leaving the cave. Stepping over the bodies of prostrate women, they found their sleeping places and soon drifted into dreamless slumber. The men’s catharsis came from the emotional tension of the hunt. Their ceremony had a different dimension—more restrained, turned inward, much older, but no less exciting.

  As the sun broke over the r
idge to the east, Creb hobbled out of the cave and surveyed the scene littered with bodies. He had, on one rare occasion, watched the women’s celebration out of curiosity. With a deep inner sense, the wise old magician understood their need for release. He knew the men always wondered what they did that left them in such a state of exhaustion, but Mog-ur never enlightened them. The men would have been as shocked by the women’s unrestrained abandon as the women would by their stoic mates’ fervent supplications to the invisible spirits that shared their existence.

  Mog-ur had wondered, occasionally, if he could direct the minds of women back to the beginnings. Their memories were different, but they had the same ability to recall ancient knowledge. Did they have racial memories? Could they join a ceremony with the men? Mog-ur wondered, but he would never chance the ire of the spirits by attempting to find out. It would destroy the clan if a woman were included in such sacred ceremonies.

  Creb shuffled to the campsite and eased himself down on his sleeping fur. He saw the disarray of fine blonde hair on Iza’s fur, and it set him to thinking about the events that had occurred since he had barely stumbled out in time before the old cave collapsed. How had the strange child charmed her way into his heart so quickly? He was disturbed by the undercurrent of bad feeling from Brun about her, and he hadn’t missed Broud’s evil looks in her direction. The dissension in the close-knit group marred the ceremony and left him a bit uneasy.

  Broud will not let it rest, Creb thought. The Woolly Rhinoceros is a suitable totem for our future leader. Broud can be brave, but he’s headstrong and too full of pride. One moment he’s calm and rational, even gentle and kind. Then the next, for some insignificant reason, he can charge with fury in a blind rage. I hope he doesn’t turn on the girl.

  Don’t be stupid, he chided himself. The son of Brun’s mate isn’t going to let himself get upset over a girl. He’s going to be leader; and besides, Brun would disapprove. Broud is a man now, he will learn to control his temper.