by Jean M. Auel
“I would have suggested we set up our own tents, if we decided to stay,” Tulie said. “It’s hard enough for them without having strangers in their midst all the time, and they aren’t even Mamutoi. Sungaea are … different.”
Ayla was awakened in the morning by the sound of voices not too far from the tent. She quickly got up, dressed, and looked out. Several people were digging a long, narrow trench. Tronie and Fralie were outside, sitting near a fire nursing their babies. Ayla smiled and joined them. The smell of sage tea rose from a steaming cooking basket. She scooped out a cup and sat with the two women, sipping the hot liquid.
“Are they going to bury them today?” Fralie asked.
“I think so,” Ayla said. “I don’t think Talut wanted to ask outright, but I got that impression. I can’t understand their language, though I can catch a few words now and then.”
“They must be digging the grave. I wonder why they are making it so long?” Tronie said.
“I don’t know, but I’m glad we’ll be leaving soon. I know it’s right for us to stay, but I don’t like burials,” Fralie said.
“No one does,” Ayla said. “I wish we could have gotten here a few days earlier.”
“You don’t know if you could have done anything for those children anyway,” Fralie said.
“I feel so sorry for the mother,” Tronie commented. “It would be hard enough to lose one child, but to lose two at the same time … I don’t know if I could stand it.” She cuddled Hartal to her, but it only made the toddler squirm to get away.
“Yes. It is hard to lose a child,” Ayla said. Her voice was so grim it made Fralie look, and wonder. Ayla put her cup down and got up. “I saw some wormwood growing nearby. The root makes a very strong medicine. I don’t often use it, but I want to make something to calm and relax the mother, and it needs to be strong.”
The Lion Camp observed or peripherally participated in various activities and ceremonies during the day, but toward evening the atmosphere changed, became charged with an intensity that caught up even the visitors. The heightened emotions evoked genuine cries of sorrow and grief from the Mamutoi when the two children were solemnly carried out of a lodge on hammocklike biers, and brought around to each person for a final farewell.
As the people who were carrying the stretchers slowly walked by the mourning visitors, Ayla noticed that the children had been clothed in beautifully made and elegantly decorated finery, as though dressed for an important festival. She could not help but be impressed and intrigued. Pieces of variously dyed and naturally colored leathers and furs had been carefully stitched together into intricate” geometric patterns in making the tunics and long trousers, outlined and highlighted by solid areas that were filled in with thousands of small ivory beads. A stray thought passed through her mind. Had all the work been done using only a sharp awl? Maybe someone would appreciate the small, sharp-pointed, ivory shaft with the hole in the end.
She also noticed headbands and belts, and across the shoulders of the girl, a cape with fascinating designs that were worked into a material which appeared to have been constructed out of strands of the underwool shed by the passing woolly beasts. She wanted to touch it, examine it closely, and learn how it had been made, but it would not have been appropriate. Ranec, standing beside her, noticed it, too, and commented on the intricate pattern of right-angled spirals. Ayla hoped that before they left, she could find out more about how it was made, perhaps in exchange for one of her ivory points with a hole.
Both children were also adorned with jewelry made of shells, animal canines, bone; the boy even had a large, unusual stone which had been pierced to wear as a pendant. Unlike the adults whose hair was in disarray and covered with ashes, their hair was neatly combed and arranged in elaborate styles—the boy in braids, the girl with large buns on both sides of her head.
Ayla could not dispel the feeling that the children were only sleeping and would wake up any moment. They looked too young, too healthy, with their round-cheeked, unlined faces, to be gone, to have passed into the realm of the spirits. She felt a shudder pass through her, and involuntarily glanced toward Rydag. She caught Nezzie’s eye and looked away.
Finally the bodies of the children were brought to the long, narrow trench. They were lowered into it and placed head to head. A woman with a peculiar headdress and a long beaded tunic stood up and began a keening, high-pitched chant that sent shivers through everyone. She wore many necklaces and pendants around her neck that jangled and clicked when she moved, and several loose ivory bracelets around her arms, consisting of several separate half-inch-wide bands. Ayla realized they were similar to the ones some of the Mamutoi used.
A deep reverberating drumbeat sounded with the familiar tone of a mammoth skull drum. Keening and chanting, the woman began to weave and sway, rising up on her toes and lifting her feet, sometimes facing different directions, but staying in one place. As she danced, she waved her arms about sharply and rhythmically, causing her bracelets to rattle. Ayla had met her, and though they had not been able to converse, she felt drawn to her. Mamut had explained that she was not a medicine woman as Ayla was, but one who could communicate with the spirit world. She was the Sungaea counterpart of Mamut—or Creb, Ayla realized with a jolt. It was still difficult for her to conceive of a woman mog-ur.
The man and woman with red faces sprinkled powdered red ochre over the children, making Ayla think of the red ochre salve that Creb had rubbed on Iza’s body. Several other things were ceremoniously added to the grave: shafts of mammoth tusk that had been straightened, spears, flint knives and daggers, carvings of a mammoth, a bison, and a horse—not as well made as Ranec’s, Ayla thought. She was surprised to see a long ivory staff, decorated with a circular, spoked, wheellike carving to which feathers and other objects were attached, laid beside each child. When the people of the settlement joined in the wailing, keening song of the woman, Ayla quietly leaned forward and whispered to Mamut, “Those staffs look like Talut’s. Are they Speaking Staffs?”
“Yes, they are. The Sungaea are related to the Mamutoi, more closely than some people want to admit,” Mamut said. “There are some differences, but this burial ceremony is very much like ours.”
“Why would they put Speaking Staffs in a grave with children?”
“They are given those things which they will need when they wake up in the spirit world. As the daughter and son of the headwoman, they are a sister and brother who were destined to become co-leaders, if not in this lifetime, then the next,” Mamut explained. “It is necessary to show their rank so they do not lose status there.”
Ayla watched for a while, then, when they started to put the dirt back in, she spoke to Mamut again.
“Why are they buried like that, head to head?”
“They are brother and sister,” he said, as though the rest was self-explanatory. Then he saw her puzzled expression and continued, “It can be a long, difficult, and confusing Journey to the spirit world, especially for those who are so young. They need to be able to communicate, to help and comfort each other, but it is an abomination to the Mother for a brother and sister to share Pleasures. If they wake up side by side, they may forget they are brother and sister, and couple by mistake, thinking they were sleeping together because they were meant to be joined. Head to head, they can encourage each other on the Journey, and still not be confused about their relationship when they reach the other place.”
Ayla nodded. It seemed logical, but as she watched the grave beings filled in, she fervently wished they had gotten there a few days sooner. Maybe she couldn’t have helped, but she could have tried.
Talut stopped at the edge of a small waterway, looked upstream and then downstream, then consulted the marked piece of ivory he held in his hand. He checked the position of the sun, studied some cloud formations in the north, and sniffed the wind. Finally he examined the area nearby.
“We camp here for the night,” he said, shrugging off his haversack and packframe. He walk
ed toward his sister as she was deciding where the primary tent would be placed, so the adjoining ones that utilized part of the same structural supports would have plenty of level ground. “Tulie, what would you say to stopping to do a little trading? I was looking at these maps Ludeg made. It didn’t occur to me at first, but seeing where we are, look,” he said, showing her two different pieces of ivory with marks scratched on them, “here’s the map showing the way to Wolf Camp, the new location of the Summer Meeting, and here’s the quick one he made showing the way to the Sungaea Camp. From here, it wouldn’t be much out of our way to visit Mammoth Camp.”
“You mean Musk-Ox Camp,” Tulie said, with annoyed disdain. “It was presumptuous of them to rename their Camp. Everyone has a Mammoth Hearth, but no one should name a Camp for the mammoth. Aren’t we all Mammoth Hunters?”
“But Camps are always named after the headman’s hearth, and their new headman is their Mamut. Besides, that doesn’t mean we can’t trade with them—if they are not gone for the summer. You know they are related to Amber Camp, and they always have some amber to trade,” Talut said, knowing his sister’s weakness for the warm, gold-hued stones of petrified resin. “Wymez says they have access to good flint, too. We have plenty of reindeer hides, not to mention some nice furs.”
“I don’t know how a man can establish a hearth when he doesn’t even have a woman, but I just said they were presumptuous. We can still trade with them. Of course we should stop, Talut.” The headwoman’s expression changed to an enigmatic smile. “Yes, by all means. I think it would be interesting for the ‘Mammoth’ Camp to meet our Mammoth Hearth.”
“Good. We’d better leave early, then,” Talut said, but he regarded her with puzzlement, and shook his head wondering what his clever and astute sister was thinking.
When the Lion Camp reached a large sinuous river gouging a channel between steep banks of loess soil, similar to the setting near their lodge, Talut headed out to a promontory between ravines and carefully scanned the surrounding terrain. He saw deer and aurochs near the water on the floodplain below, grazing in a green meadow dotted with small trees. Some distance farther, he noticed a large pile of jumbled bones against a high bank where the river turned sharply. Tiny figures scuttled over the accumulation of dried bones, and he saw several of them carrying away pieces.
“They are still here,” he announced. “They must be building.”
The travelers trooped down a slope toward the Camp, situated on a broad terrace no more than fifteen feet above the level of the river, and if Ayla had been surprised at the lodge of the Lion Camp, she was astounded by the Mammoth Camp. Rather than a single large, sod-covered, semisubterranean longhouse that Ayla had likened to a cave or even a human-sized burrow, in this Camp several individual round lodges were clustered together on the terrace. They, too, were solid and sturdy under a thick layering of sod covered with clay, and patches of grass grew around the edges, but not on the top. They reminded Ayla of nothing so much as huge, bald, marmot mounds.
As they approached, she could understand why the tops were bare. Just as they did, the Mammoth Camp used the roofs of their dwellings as viewing platforms. Two of the lodges each supported a crowd of onlookers, and though the watchers had turned their attention to the visitors, that was not the reason they were up on the rounded roofs. When the Lion Camp passed around a lodge that blocked their view, Ayla saw the object of their interest, and was astonished.
Talut had been right. They were building. Ayla had overheard Tulie’s remarks about the name these people had chosen for themselves, but after seeing the lodge they were making, it seemed most appropriate. Though it might end up looking like all the others when it was completed, the way they used mammoth bones as structural supports seemed to capture a special quality of the animal. It was true that the Lion Camp had used mammoth bones in the supporting framework of their lodge, and had selected certain pieces and trimmed them to fit, but the bones used in this dwelling did more than support. They were selected and arranged so that the structure managed to convey the essence of the mammoth in a way that expressed the beliefs of the Mamutoi.
To create the design, they first brought up large numbers of the same skeletal parts of many mammoths from the bone pile below. They began with a circle, about sixteen feet across at the base, of mammoth skulls placed so that the solid surface of the foreheads faced inward. The opening was the familiar archway, constructed of two large curved tusks, anchored on each side in the socket of a mammoth skull, and joined at the top. Around the outside and halfway up was a circular wall made of, perhaps, a hundred mammoth mandibles, the V-shaped lower jaws, stacked with the pointed chins down one on top of another four deep.
The overall effect of these stacks of V’s placed side by side was the most impressive concept of the construction, and the most meaningful. Together they created a zigzag pattern, similar to the pattern used to symbolize water on the maps. And beyond that, as Ayla had learned from Mamut, the zigzag symbol for water was also the most profound symbol for the Great Mother, Creator of all Life. They represented the downward-pointing triangle of Her mound, the external expression of Her womb. Multiplied many times over, the symbol represented all life; not only water, but the birth waters of the Mother which had flooded the land and filled the seas and rivers when She gave birth to all life on earth. There could be no doubt that this would be the lodge of the Mammoth Hearth.
The circular wall was not completed, but they were working on the rest of the lodge, wedging in shoulder blades and pelvic bones and pieces of spine in a rhythmically symmetrical yet tightly fitted way. An open framework of wood inside provided additional support for the structure and it appeared that the roof would be constructed of mammoth tusks.
“This is the work of a true artist!” Ranec said, stepping closer and openly admiring their handiwork.
Ayla knew he would approve. She noticed Jondalar standing a little distance away holding Racer’s lead rope. She realized that he was no less impressed or appreciative of the inspired mind that had conceived of the idea. In fact the entire Lion Camp was at a loss for words. But as Tulie had suspected, the Mammoth Camp was just as astounded by their visitors—or rather, by the tame animals that traveled with them.
There was a period of mutual staring in wonder and amazement, and then a woman and man, both somewhat younger than the leaders of the Lion Camp, came forward to greet Tulie and Talut. The man had been hauling heavy mammoth bones up the slope—these were by no means temporary dwellings that would be carried from place to place, but a permanent settlement—and he was stripped to the waist and sweaty. His face was heavily tattooed and Ayla had to remind herself not to stare. He not only had a chevron pattern on his left cheek, like the Mamut of the Lion Camp, but a symmetrical arrangement of zigzags, triangles, and diamond shapes, and right-angle spirals in two colors, blue and red.
The woman had obviously been working, too, and was also bare from the waist up, but rather than pants, she wore a wrapped skirt that fell to just below her knees. She had no tattoos, but the side of her nose was pierced and she wore a labret made of a small piece of carved and polished amber through the hole.
“Tulie, Talut, what a surprise! We were not expecting you, but in the name of the Mother, we welcome the Lion Camp,” the woman said.
“In the name of Mut, we thank you for your welcome, Avarie,” Tulie said. “We did not mean to come at an inconvenient time.”
“We were nearby, Vincavec,” Talut added, “and could not pass without stopping.”
“It is never inconvenient for the Lion Camp to visit,” the man said, “but how do you happen to be nearby? This is not on the way to Wolf Camp for you.”
“The runner that came to tell us that the Meeting place had been changed stopped off at a Sungaea Camp as he was making his stops and told us they were very sick. We have a new member, a Healer, Ayla of the Mammoth Hearth,” Talut said, beckoning her forward, “and she wanted to go and see if she could help. We have just c
ome from there.”
“Yes, I know that Sungaea Camp,” Vincavec said, then turned to Ayla. For a moment she felt his eyes bore into her. She hesitated for a moment, still not entirely used to returning the direct look of a stranger, but she sensed this was not a moment for shyness, or the modesty of a Clan woman, and returned his intense gaze. Suddenly he laughed, and his pale gray eyes gleamed with approval, and a look that appreciated her womanliness. She noticed then that he was a striking, attractive man, not because he was handsome or for any particular feature, although the tattoos did make him stand out, but because of a quality of strength of will and intelligence. He looked up at Mamut sitting on Whinney.
“So you’re still with us, old man,” he said, obviously pleased, then added with a knowing smile, “and still coming up with surprises. Since when have you become a Caller? Or do we need another name? Two horses and a wolf traveling with the Lion Camp? This is more than a Gift of Calling.”
“Another name might be appropriate, Vincavec, but it is not my gift. The animals answer to Ayla.”
“Ayla? It seems the old Mamut has found himself a worthy daughter.” Vincavec looked her over again, with obvious interest. He didn’t notice Ranec glower, but Jondalar did. He understood the feeling, and for the first time, felt a strange sort of kinship with the carver.
“Enough standing here talking,” Avarie said. “We have plenty of time for that. The travelers must be tired, and hungry. You must let me arrange a meal for you, and a place to rest.”
“We can see that you are making a new lodge, Avarie. You don’t need to go to trouble for us. A place to set up tents will be enough,” Tulie said. “Later, we would be pleased to share a meal with you, and perhaps show you some fine reindeer skins and furs we happen to have with us.”