by Jean M. Auel
“Aarghhh!” Brun cried as the scalding liquid poured over him. He was dancing around, gritting his teeth at the pain. Every head turned and every breath was held. The silence was broken by Broud.
“Oga! You stupid, clumsy woman!” he gesticulated to cover up his embarrassment that it was his mate who had done such a thing.
“Ayla, go help him, I can’t leave now,” Iza signaled.
Broud advanced toward his mate with his fists doubled, ready to punish her.
“No, Broud,” Brun gestured, putting out his hand to stop the young man. The hot grease from the soup still clung to him and he struggled not to show the pain he felt. “She couldn’t help it. Beating her will do no good.” Oga was crumpled in a heap at Broud’s feet, shaking with humiliation and fear.
Ayla was apprehensive. She had never treated the leader of the clan, and regarded him with inordinate fear. She raced toward Creb’s hearth, grabbed a wooden bowl, then raced to the mouth of the cave. She scooped up a mound of snow and went to the hearth of the leader, dropping to the ground in front of him.
“Iza sent me, she cannot leave Ovra now. Will the leader allow this girl to help him?” she asked when Brun acknowledged her.
Brun nodded. He harbored doubts about Ayla becoming the clan’s medicine woman, but under the circumstances he had little choice but to allow her to treat him. Nervously, she applied the cooling snow to the angry red burn, feeling Brun’s hard muscles relax as the snow eased the pain. She ran back, found the dried horsemint, and added hot water to the leaves. After they softened, she put snow in the bowl to cool it quickly and returned to her patient. With her hand she applied the soothing medication, feeling more tension leave the leader’s rock-hard muscular body as she worked. Brun breathed a little easier. The burn still hurt, but it was far more bearable. He nodded his approval, and the girl relaxed a little.
She does seem to be learning Iza’s magic, Brun thought. And she’s learning to behave well, as a woman should; perhaps all she needed was a little maturity. If anything happens to Iza before Uba grows up, we will be without a medicine woman. Perhaps Iza is wise to train her.
Not long afterward, Ebra came and told her mate that Ovra’s son was stillborn. Brun nodded and glanced in her direction, shaking his head. And a boy, too, he thought. She must be heartbroken, everyone knows how much she wanted this baby. I hope she’ll have an easier time getting pregnant again. Who would think a Beaver totem could fight so hard? Though the leader felt a great pity for the young woman, he said nothing, for no one would mention the tragedy. But Ovra understood Brun’s reason for coming to Goov’s hearth a few days later to tell her she should take as long as she wanted to recuperate from her “illness.” Though the men often congregated at Brun’s fire, the leader seldom visited the other men’s hearths, and very rarely talked to the women if he did. Ovra was grateful for his concern, but nothing could ease her pain.
Iza insisted that Ayla continue to treat Brun, and as the scald healed, the clan accepted her even more. Ayla felt easier around the leader afterward. He was, after all, only human.
12
As the long winter ended, the tempo of the clan’s life increased to match the pace of life quickening within the rich earth. The cold season enforced not a true hibernation, but an alteration in metabolic rates brought about by reduced activities. In winter they were more sluggish, slept more, ate more, causing an insulating layer of subcutaneous fat to develop as protection against the cold. With a rise in temperature, the trend was reversed, making the clan restless and eager to be out and moving.
The process was assisted by Iza’s spring tonic, compounded of triticum roots, collected early in spring from the coarse grass that resembled rye, dried woodruff leaves, and iron-rich yellow dock root powder, administered universally to young and old alike by the clan’s medicine woman. With new vigor, the clan burst out of the cave ready to begin a new cycle of seasons.
The third winter in the cave had not been too hard on them. The only death was Ovra’s stillborn child, and that didn’t count because it had never been named and accepted. Iza, no longer drained by the demands of nursing a hungry baby, had weathered it well. Creb had suffered no more than usual. Both Aga and Ika were pregnant again, and since both women had given birth successfully before, the clan looked forward to its increase. The first greens, shoots, and buds were gathered and an early hunt planned to provide fresh meat for a spring feast to honor the spirits that awakened new life and to give thanks to the spirits of the clan’s protective totems for seeing them through another winter.
Ayla felt she had special reason to give thanks to her totem. The winter had been both trying and exciting. She grew to hate Broud even more intensely, but she learned she could cope with him. He had thrown his worst at her and she learned to take it in stride. There was a limit beyond which even Broud could not go. Learning more of Iza’s healing magic helped; she loved it. The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn. She found she was as eager to search out the medicinal plants for their own uses—now that she understood them better—as to use plant gathering as a means of escape. As long as the bitter winds and icy blizzards blew, she waited patiently. But with the first hints of change, restless anticipation set in. She looked forward to this spring more than any spring she could remember. It was time to learn to hunt.
As soon as the weather allowed, Ayla took to the woods and fields. She stopped hiding her sling in the small cave near her practice meadow. She kept it with her, tucked into a fold of her wrap or beneath a layer of leaves in her collecting basket. Teaching herself to hunt was not easy. Animals were quick and elusive, and moving targets far more difficult to hit than stationary ones. The women always made noise when they were out gathering, to scare off any lurking animals, and it was a hard habit to break. Many times she became angry with herself for warning an animal of her approach when she caught a glimpse of one darting for cover. But she was determined, and with practice she learned.
Through trial and error she learned to track and began to understand and apply the bits of hunting lore gleaned from the men. Her eye was already trained to pick up small details that differentiated plants, and it took only an extension to learn to define the meaning in the telltale droppings of an animal, a faint print in the dust, a bent blade of grass or a broken twig. She learned to distinguish the spoor of different animals, became familiar with their habits and habitats. Though she didn’t overlook the herbivorous species, she concentrated on the carnivores, her chosen prey.
She watched to see which way the men went when they left to go hunting. But it was not Brun and his hunters that gave her the most concern. More often than not they chose the steppes as their hunting ground, and she didn’t dare try to hunt the open plains with no cover. It was the two older men she worried about most. She had seen Zoug and Dorv occasionally when she was foraging for Iza in the past. They were the ones she was most likely to find hunting the same terrain as herself. She had to be constantly on her guard to avoid them. Even starting out in the opposite direction was no guarantee they wouldn’t double back and catch her with a sling in her hands.
But as she learned to move silently, she sometimes followed them to watch and learn. She was especially careful then. It was more dangerous for her to track the trackers than the objects of their pursuit. It was good training, however. She learned to move noiselessly as much from following the men as from trailing an animal, and could melt into a shadow if one happened to glance her way.
As Ayla gained skill tracking, learned to move with stealth, trained her eye to discern a shape within its camouflaged cover, there were times when she was sure she could have hit a small animal. Though she was tempted, if it was not carnivorous she passed it by without trying. She had made her decision to hunt only predators, and her totem sanctioned only those. Spring buds became blossoms and leafed out the trees, blossoms fell and fruits swelled from their hearts, hanging half-grown and green, and still Ayla had not killed her first animal.
“Get out! Shoo! Scat!”
Ayla started out of the cave to see what the commotion was about. Several women were waving their arms and chasing after a short, squat, shaggy animal. The wolverine headed toward the cave but veered aside with a snarl when it saw Ayla. It dodged between the women’s legs and escaped with a strip of meat in its jaws.
“That sneaky glutton! I just put that meat out to dry,” Oga gesticulated in angry frustration. “I hardly turned my back. He’s been hanging around here all summer, getting braver every day. I wish Zoug would get him! It’s a good thing you were just coming out, Ayla. He almost ran into the cave. Think what a stink he would have left if he’d gotten cornered in there!”
“I think your he is a she, Oga, and probably has a nest somewhere nearby. I’d guess she has several hungry babies that must be getting pretty big by now.”
“That’s all we need! A bunch of them.” Angry words punctuated her gestures. “Zoug and Dorv took Vorn with them early this morning. I wish they’d gone hunting for that wolverine instead of hamsters and ptarmigan down below. Gluttons are good for nothing!”
“They’re good for something, Oga. Their fur doesn’t frost up from your breath in winter. Their pelts make good hats and hoods.”
“I wish that one were a pelt!”
Ayla started back to the hearth. There was really nothing she had to do then, and Iza did say she was running low on a few things. Ayla decided to go out and find the wolverine’s nest. She smiled to herself and quickened her step, and shortly afterward left the cave with her basket, heading into the forest not far from the place where the animal had gone.
Scanning the ground, she spied the print of a claw with long sharp nails in the dust; a little farther on, a bent stem. Ayla started trailing the creature. In a few moments, she heard scuttling sounds, surprisingly close to the cave. She moved ahead softly, hardly disturbing a leaf, and caught sight of the wolverine with four half-grown young, snarling and bickering over the strip of stolen meat. Carefully, she withdrew her sling from a fold of her wrap and fitted a stone into the bulging pocket.
She waited, watching for a chance at a clean shot. A stray shift in the wind brought a strange scent to the wily glutton. She looked up, sniffing the air, alerted to possible danger. It was the moment Ayla was waiting for. Quickly, even as the animal caught the movement, she hurled the stone. The wolverine slumped to the ground as the four young bounded off, startled by the bouncing rock.
She stepped out of the concealing brush and stooped to examine the scavenger. The bearlike weasel was about three feet long from its nose to the tip of its bushy tail, with coarse, long, blackish brown fur. Wolverines were intrepid, scrappy scavengers, fierce enough to drive away predators larger than themselves from their kills, fearless enough to steal drying meat or anything portable they could carry off, and wily enough to break into storage caches. They had musk glands that left behind a skunklike odor and were a bane to the clan even worse than the hyena, who was as much predator as scavenger and didn’t depend for his survival on the kills of others.
The stone from Ayla’s sling had landed above the eye, just where she aimed. This is one wolverine that won’t steal from us anymore, Ayla thought, filled with a glow of satisfaction that verged on exultation. It was her first kill. I think I’ll give the pelt to Oga, she thought, reaching for her knife to skin the animal. Won’t she be glad to know it won’t bother us anymore. The girl stopped.
What am I thinking of? I can’t give Olga this pelt. I can’t give it to anyone, I can’t even keep it. I’m not supposed to hunt. If anyone found out I killed this wolverine, I don’t know what they’d do. Ayla sat down beside the dead glutton, pulling her fingers through its long coarse coat. Her elation was gone.
She had made her first kill. Maybe it wasn’t a great bison killed with a heavy sharp spear, but it was more than Vorn’s porcupine. There would be no celebration marking her entrance into the ranks of the hunters, no feast held in her honor, not even the looks of praise and congratulations Vorn received when he proudly showed off his small game. If she returned to the cave with the wolverine, all she could expect would be shocked looks and severe punishment. It mattered little that she wanted to help the clan or that she was able to hunt and showed promise of doing well. Women did not hunt, women did not kill animals. Men did.
She heaved a sigh. I knew it, I knew it all along, she said to herself. Even before I started to hunt, before I ever picked up that sling, I knew I wasn’t supposed to. The bravest of the young gluttons came out of its hiding place, tentatively sniffing at the dead animal. Those young ones are going to give us as much trouble as their mother, Ayla thought. They’re close enough to full grown that a couple of them will survive. I’d better get rid of this carcass. If I drag it far away, the young will probably follow her scent. Ayla got up and began to haul the dead wolverine by its tail deeper into the woods. Then she started looking for plants to gather.
The wolverine was only the first of the smaller predators and scavengers to fall to her sling. Martens, minks, ferrets, otters, weasels, badgers, ermines, foxes, and the small, gray-and-black tabby-striped wildcats became fair game for her swift stones. She didn’t realize it, but Ayla’s decision to hunt predators had one important effect. It speeded up her learning process and honed her skill far more than hunting the gentler herbivorous animals would have. Carnivores were faster, more crafty, more intelligent, and more dangerous.
She quickly surpassed Vorn with her chosen weapon. It wasn’t only that he tended to look upon the sling as an old man’s weapon and lacked the determination to master it, it was more difficult for him. He didn’t have her physical build with its free-swinging arm movement better adapted to throwing. Her full leverage and practiced hand-and-eye coordination gave her speed, force, and accuracy. She no longer compared herself with Vorn; in her mind it was Zoug whose ability she challenged, and the girl was fast approaching the old hunter’s skill. Too fast. She was getting overconfident.
Summer was nearing its end with its full charge of crackling heat and a bumper crop of lightning-singed thunderstorms. The day was hot, unbearably hot. Not the hint of a breeze stirred the still air. The previous evening’s storm, with its fantastic displays of arcing flashes illuminating the mountain crests and with hail the size of small stones, had sent the clan scurrying into the cave. The damp forest, normally cool from the shade of the trees, was humid and stifling. Flies and mosquitoes droned interminably around the slimy ooze of the drying creek’s backwater, trapped by lowered water levels into stagnant ponds and algae-coated puddles.
Ayla was following the spoor of a red fox, moving silently through the woods near the edge of a small glade. She was hot and sweaty, not especially interested in the fox, and thinking about giving it up and going back to the cave to take a swim in the stream. Walking across the seldom-exposed rocky bed, she stopped for a drink where the creek still ran freely between two large boulders that forced the meandering trickle into an ankle-deep pool.
She stood up and, as she looked straight ahead, caught her breath in her throat. Ayla stared apprehensively at the distinctive head and tufted ears of a lynx crouched on the rock just in front of her. He was eyeing her warily, his short tail whipping back and forth.
Smaller than most large felines, the long-bodied, short-legged Pardel lynx, like his northern cousin of later years, was capable of fifteen-foot standing leaps. He subsisted mainly on hares, rabbits, large squirrels, and other rodents, but could bring down a small deer if he felt so inclined; and an eight-year-old girl was easily within his range. But it was hot, and humans were not his normal prey. He would probably have let the girl go on her way.
Ayla’s first tingle of fear was replaced by a chill of excitement as she watched the unmoving cat watching her. Didn’t Zoug tell Vorn a lynx could be killed with a sling? He said not to try for anything larger, but he did say a stone from a sling could kill a wolf or hyena or lynx. I remember him saying lynx, she thought. She had not hun
ted the medium-sized predators, but she wanted to be the best sling-hunter in the clan. If Zoug could kill a lynx, she could kill a lynx, and here, right in front of her, was the perfect target. On impulse, she decided the time had come for larger game.
She reached slowly into the fold of her short summer wrap, never taking her eyes off the cat, and felt for her largest stone. Her palms were sweaty, but she gripped the two ends of the leather strap together tighter while she put the stone in the pocket. Then, quickly, before she lost her nerve, she aimed for a spot just between his eyes and flung the stone. But the lynx caught the motion as she raised her arm. He turned his head as she hurled. The rock grazed the side of his head, causing a sharp pain at the point-blank range, but little more.
Before Ayla could think of reaching for another stone, she saw the cat’s muscles bunch under him. It was with sheer reflex that she threw herself to the side as the annoyed lynx leaped for his attacker. She landed in the mud near the creek and her hand fell on a stout driftwood branch, churned clean of leaves and twigs by its journey downstream, water-logged and heavy. Ayla clutched it and rolled over just as the angry lynx with fangs bared pounced again. Swinging wildly, with all the strength fear poured into her, she struck a solid blow, knocking his head aside. The stunned lynx rolled over, crouched for a moment shaking his head, then moved silently into the forest. He’d had enough hurting blows to his head.
Ayla was shaking as she sat up, breathing hard. Her knees felt like water when she went to retrieve her sling and she had to sit down again. Zoug had never imagined that anyone would attempt to hunt a dangerous predator with just a sling, with no other hunter or even another weapon as backup. But Ayla hardly ever missed her targets anymore, she had become too sure of her skill, she didn’t think about what might happen if she missed. She was in such a state of shock as she walked back to the cave, she almost forgot to get her collecting basket from the place she had hidden it before deciding to track the fox.