The Clan of the Cave Bear

by Jean M. Auel

  Creb was conscious of the mild spat at Brun’s hearth, just as he was aware of all the people in the cave. Most of the time, like background noise, it was filtered out of his consciousness, but anything that involved Ayla sharpened his attention. He knew it had taken deliberate effort and supremely malignant intent for Broud to overcome the conditioning of his entire life and stare directly into the confines of another man’s hearth. Broud feels too much animosity toward the child, Creb thought. For her sake, it is time to teach her some manners.

  “Ayla!” Creb commanded sharply. She jumped at the tone in his voice. “Not look other people!” he signaled. She was puzzled.

  “Why not look?” she queried.

  “Not look, not stare; people not like,” he tried to explain, aware that Broud was watching out of the corner of his eye, not even bothering to hide his gloating pleasure at the strong scolding the girl was receiving from Mog-ur. She is favored too much by the magician anyway, Broud thought. If she lived here, I’d show her soon enough how a female is supposed to behave.

  “Want learn talk,” Ayla motioned, still puzzled and a little hurt.

  Creb knew full well why she had been watching, but she had to learn sometime. Perhaps it would ease Broud’s hatred of her if he saw she was being rebuked for staring at them.

  “Ayla not stare,” Creb motioned with a severe look. “Bad. Ayla not talk back when man talks. Bad. Ayla not look at people at their hearths. Bad. Bad. Understand?”

  Creb was harsh. He wanted to make his point. He noticed Broud get up and return to the fireplace at Brun’s call, obviously in a better mood.

  Ayla was crushed. Creb had never been harsh with her. She thought he was pleased that she was learning their language; now he told her she was bad for watching people and trying to learn more. Confused and hurt, tears welled up, filled her eyes, and overflowed down her cheeks.

  “Iza!” Creb called, concerned. “Come here! There’s something wrong with Ayla’s eyes.” The eyes of Clan people watered only when something got in them or if they had colds or suffered from eye disease. He had never seen eyes overflowing with tears of unhappiness. Iza came running up.

  “Look at that! Her eyes are watering. Maybe a spark got into one. You’d better take a look at them,” he insisted.

  Iza was worried, too. Lifting Ayla’s eyelids, she peered closely into the child’s eyes. “Eye hurt?” she asked. The medicine woman could see no sign of inflammation. Nothing appeared to be wrong with her eyes, they were just watering.

  “No, not hurt,” Ayla sniffled. She couldn’t understand their concern about her eyes, but it made her realize they cared about her even if Creb did say she was bad. “Why Creb mad, Iza?” she sobbed.

  “Must learn, Ayla,” Iza explained, looking at the girl seriously. “Not polite to stare. Not polite to look at other man’s fire, see what other people say at fire. Ayla must learn, when man talk, woman look down, like this,” Iza demonstrated. “When man talk, woman do. No ask. Only little ones stare. Babies. Ayla big. Make people angry at Ayla.”

  “Creb angry? Not care for me?” she asked, bursting out in fresh tears.

  Iza was still mystified by the child’s watering eyes, but she sensed the girl’s confusion. “Creb care for Ayla. Iza, too. Creb teach Ayla. More to learn than talk. Must learn Clan ways,” the woman said, taking the girl in her arms. She held her gently while Ayla cried her hurt, then wiped the girl’s wet swollen eyes with a soft skin and looked into them again to satisfy herself they were all right.

  “What’s wrong with her eyes?” Creb asked. “Is she sick?”

  “She thought you didn’t like her. She thought you were mad at her. It must have given her a sickness. Maybe light eyes like hers are weak, but I can’t find anything wrong and she says they don’t hurt. I think her eyes watered with sadness, Creb,” Iza explained.

  “Sadness? She was so sad because she thought I didn’t like her, it made her sick? Made her eyes water?”

  The astounded man could hardly believe it, and it filled him with mixed emotions. Was she sickly? She seemed healthy, but no one ever got sick because they thought he didn’t like them. No one, except Iza, had ever cared for him in that way. People feared him, held him in awe, respected him, but no one had ever wanted him to like them so much their eyes watered. Maybe Iza is right, maybe her eyes are weak, but her sight is fine. Somehow I must let her know it is for her own good that she learns to behave properly. If she doesn’t learn the ways of the Clan, Brun will turn her out. It is still within his power. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like her. I do like her, he admitted to himself; strange as she is, I like her very much.

  Ayla shuffled slowly toward the crippled old man, nervously looking down at her feet. She stood in front of him, then looked up with sad round eyes, still wet with tears.

  “I not stare anymore,” she gestured. “Creb not mad?”

  “No,” he signaled, “I’m not mad, Ayla. But you belong to the clan now, you belong to me. You must learn the language, but you must learn Clan ways, too. Understand?”

  “I belong Creb? Creb care for me?” she asked.

  “Yes, I like you, Ayla.”

  The girl broke into a smile, reached out and hugged him, then crawled into the lap of the disfigured, misshapen man and snuggled close.

  Creb had always had an interest in children. In his function as Mog-ur, he seldom revealed a child’s totem that wasn’t immediately understood by the child’s mother as appropriate. The clan attributed Mog-ur’s skill to his magical powers, but his real skill lay in his powers of perceptive observation. He was aware of children from the day they were born and often saw women and men alike cuddling and comforting them. But the old cripple never knew the joy of cradling a child in his own arms.

  The little girl, worn out by her emotions, had fallen asleep. She felt secure with the fearsome magician. He had replaced in her heart a man she no longer remembered except in some unconscious corner. As Creb looked at the peaceful, trusting face of the strange girl in his lap, he felt a deep love flowering in his soul for her. He couldn’t have loved her more if she were his own.

  “Iza,” the man called out softly. The woman took the sleeping child from Creb, but not before he hugged her to him for a moment.

  “Her illness has made her tired,” he said after the woman laid her down. “Make sure she rests tomorrow and you’d better examine her eyes again in the morning.”

  “Yes, Creb,” she nodded. Iza loved her crippled sibling; she knew more than anyone the gentle soul that lived beneath the grim exterior. It made her happy that he had found someone to love, someone who loved him, too, and it made her feelings for the girl stronger.

  Not since she was a little girl herself could Iza remember being so happy. Only her nagging fear that the child she was carrying would be male marred her joy. A son born to her would have to be raised by a hunter. She was Brun’s sibling; their mother had been the mate of the leader before him. If something happened to Broud, or if the woman he mated produced no male offspring, the leadership of the clan would fall to her son, if she had one. Brun would be forced to give her and the baby to one of the hunters, or take her in himself. Every day she asked her totem to make her unborn baby a girl, but she couldn’t rid herself of her worry.

  As the summer progressed, with Creb’s gentle patience and Ayla’s eager willingness, the girl began to understand not only the language but the customs of her adopted people. Learning to avert her eyes to allow the people of the Clan the only privacy possible to them was only the first of many hard lessons. Much more difficult was learning to curb her natural curiosity and impetuous enthusiasm to conform to the customary docility of females.

  Creb and Iza were learning, too. They discovered that when Ayla made a certain grimace, pulling back her lips and showing her teeth, often accompanied by peculiar aspirating sounds, it meant she was happy, not hostile. They never completely overcame their anxiety at the strange weakness of her eyes that made them water when she w
as sad. Iza decided the weakness was peculiar to light-colored eyes and wondered if the trait was normal for the Others or if only Ayla’s eyes watered. To be safe, Iza flushed her eyes with the clear fluid from the bluish white plant that grew deep in shaded woods. The corpselike plant derived nourishment from decaying wood and vegetable matter since it lacked chlorophyll, and its waxy-looking surface turned black when touched. But Iza knew of no better remedy for sore or inflamed eyes than the cool liquid that oozed from its broken stem and applied the treatment whenever the child cried.

  She didn’t cry often. Though tears quickly brought her attention, Ayla tried hard to control them. Not only were they disturbing to the two people she loved, but to the rest of the clan it was a sign of her differentness, and she wanted to fit in and be accepted. The clan was learning to accept her, but they were still wary and suspicious of her peculiarities.

  Ayla was getting to know the clan and accept them, too. Though the men were curious about her, it was beneath their dignity to show too much interest in a female child no matter how unusual, and she ignored them as much as they ignored her. Brun showed more interest than the rest, but he frightened her. He was stern and not open to advances the way Creb was. She couldn’t know that to the rest of the clan, Mog-ur appeared far more aloof and forbidding than Brun, and they were amazed at the closeness that developed between the awesome magician and the strange little girl. The one she especially disliked was the young man who shared Brun’s fire. Broud always looked mean when he looked at her.

  It was the women she became familiar with first. She spent more time with them. Except when she was within the boundaries of Creb’s hearthstones, or when the medicine woman took her along when she went to gather the plants unique to her own uses, she and Iza were usually with the female members of the clan. In the beginning, Ayla just followed Iza around and watched while they skinned animals, cured hides, stretched thongs cut in one spiral piece from a single hide, wove baskets, mats, or nets, gouged bowls out of logs, gathered wild foods, prepared meals, preserved meat and plant food for winter, and responded to the wishes of any man who called upon them to perform a service. But as they saw the girl’s willingness to learn, they not only helped her with the language, they began to teach her those useful skills.

  She was not as strong as Clan women or children—her thinner frame couldn’t support the powerful musculature of the heavy-boned clan—but she was surprisingly dexterous and limber. The heavy tasks were difficult for her, but for a child, she did well weaving baskets or cutting out thongs of uniform widths. She quickly developed a warm relationship with Ika, whose friendly nature made her easy to like. The woman let Ayla carry Borg around when she saw the girl’s interest in the baby. Ovra was reserved, but she and Uka were especially kind to her. Their own grief at the loss of the young man in the cave-in made both sibling and mother sensitive to the child’s loss of her family. But Ayla had no playmates.

  Her first flush of friendship with Oga cooled after the ceremony. Oga was torn between Ayla and Broud. The newcomer, although younger, was someone with whom she could have shared her girlish thoughts, and she felt empathetic toward the young orphan since she shared the same fate, but Broud’s feelings about her were obvious. Oga reluctantly chose to avoid Ayla in deference to the man she hoped to mate. Except when they worked together, they seldom associated, and after Ayla’s attempts at friendship were rebuffed several times, the girl withdrew and made no further efforts to socialize.

  Ayla didn’t like playing with Vorn. Though a year her junior, his idea of playing usually involved ordering her around in conscious imitation of adult male behavior toward adult females, which Ayla still found hard to accept. When she rebelled, it brought down the wrath of both men and women upon her, especially from Aga, Vorn’s mother. She was proud that her son was learning to behave “just like a man,” and she was no less aware of Broud’s resentment of Ayla than the rest. Someday Broud would be leader, and if her son remained in his favor, he might be selected as second-in-command. Aga used every opportunity to increase her son’s stature, to the point of picking on the girl when Broud was near. If she noticed Ayla and Vorn together when Broud was around, she quickly called her son away.

  Ayla’s ability to communicate improved rapidly, especially with the help of the women. But it was by her own observation that she learned one particular symbol. She still watched people—she hadn’t learned to close her mind to those around her—though she was less obvious about it.

  One afternoon she watched Ika playing with Borg. Ika made a gesture to her son and repeated it several times. When the baby’s random hand movements seemed to imitate the gesture, she called the other women’s attention to it and praised her son. Later, Ayla saw Vorn run up to Aga and greet her with the same gesture. Even Ovra made the motion when beginning a conversation with Uka.

  That evening she shyly approached Iza, and when the woman looked up, Ayla made the hand signal. Iza’s eyes flew open.

  “Creb,” she said. “When did you teach her to call me mother?”

  “I didn’t teach her that, Iza,” Creb responded. “She must have learned it herself.”

  Iza turned back to the girl. “Did you learn that yourself?” she asked.

  “Yes, mother,” Ayla gestured, making the symbol again. She wasn’t exactly sure what the hand signal meant, but she had an idea. She knew it was used by children to the women who cared for them. Though her mind had blocked out memories of her own mother, her heart had not forgotten. Iza had replaced that woman whom Ayla had loved and lost.

  The woman who had been childless for so long felt a surge of emotion. “My daughter,” Iza said with a rare spontaneous hug. “My child. I knew she was my daughter from the first, Creb. Didn’t I tell you? She was given to me; the spirits meant for her to be mine, I’m sure of it.”

  Creb didn’t argue with her. Perhaps she was right.

  After that evening, the child’s nightmares decreased, though she still had them occasionally. Two dreams recurred most frequently. One was of hiding in a small cramped cave trying to get out of the way of a huge, sharp claw. The other was more vague and more disturbing. There was a sensation of the earth moving, a deep rolling rumble, and an infinitely painful sense of loss. She cried out in her strange language, used less and less, when she awoke and clung to Iza. When she first came to them, she lapsed into her own tongue sometimes without realizing it, but as she learned to communicate more in the way of the Clan, it only came out in her dreams. After a time, it even left her dreams, but she never woke from the haunting nightmare of crumbling earth without a feeling of desolation.

  The short hot summer passed and the light morning frosts of autumn brought a nip to the air and a brilliant splash of scarlet and amber to the verdant forest. A few early snows, sluiced away by heavy seasonal rains that stripped branches of their colorful cloaks, hinted at the coming cold. Later, when only a few tenacious leaves still clung to the bare branches of trees and shrubs, a brief interlude of bright sunshine brought a last reminder of summer heat before the harsh winds and bitter cold closed down most outside activities.

  The clan was out, savoring the sun. On the broad front exposure of the cave the women were winnowing grain harvested from the grassy steppes below. A brisk wind kicked up an extravagance of dry leaves, lending a semblance of life to the whirling vestiges of summer’s fullness. Taking advantage of the gusty air, the women tossed up the grain from wide shallow baskets, letting the wind carry away the chaff before they caught the heavier seeds.

  Iza was leaning over behind Ayla, her hands over the girl’s as she held the basket, showing her how to fling the grain high in the air without throwing it out with the husks and bits of straw.

  Ayla was conscious of Iza’s hard, protruding stomach against her back and felt the strong contraction that made the woman stop suddenly. Shortly afterward, Iza left the group and went into the cave, followed by Ebra and Uka. The girl shot an apprehensive glance at the knot of men who had stop
ped their conversation and followed the women with their eyes, expecting them to reprimand the three women for leaving while there was still work to be done. But the men were inexplicably permissive. Ayla decided to chance their displeasure and followed after the women.

  In the cave, Iza was resting on her sleeping fur with Ebra and Uka on either side of her. Why is Iza lying down in the middle of the day? Ayla thought. Is she sick? Iza saw the girl’s worried look and made a gesture of reassurance, but it didn’t ease Ayla’s concern. It grew when she saw her adopted mother’s strained expression at the next contraction.

  Ebra and Uka talked with Iza about ordinary things, all the food that was stored, the change in the weather. But Ayla had learned enough to pick up their concern from the expressions and posture of the women. Something was wrong, she was sure. Ayla decided nothing would make her leave Iza until she found out what it was, and she sat down near her feet to wait.

  Toward evening, Ika walked over with Borg on her hip, then Aga brought her daughter, Ona, and both women sat and visited while they nursed, adding their moral support. Ovra and Oga were full of concern, and curiosity, when they crowded around Iza’s bed. Though Uka’s daughter was not mated yet, she was a woman, and Ovra knew she could bring forth life now. Oga would soon become a woman, and they were both intensely interested in the process Iza was going through.

  When Vorn saw Aba go over and sit beside her daughter, he wanted to know why all the women were at Mog-ur’s fire. He wandered over and crawled on Aga’s lap beside his sibling to see what was going on, but Ona was still nursing, so the old woman picked up the boy and held him on her lap. He couldn’t see anything of great interest, just the medicine woman resting, so he wandered off again.