by Jean M. Auel
“I hope Wolf’s not too tired to run back after running all the way here,” Ayla said.
“If he gets tired, he can ride double with you on Whinney,” Jondalar said, sitting on Racer, trying to keep the nervous stallion calm.
“That’s right. I’m not thinking,” Ayla said.
“Take care of her, Jondalar,” Ranec said. “When she’s worried about someone else, she forgets to take care of herself. I want her to be well for our Matrimonial.”
“I’ll take care of her, Ranec. Don’t worry, you will have a well and healthy woman to bring to your hearth,” Jondalar replied.
Ayla looked from one to the other. More was being said than the words.
They traveled steadily until midday, then stopped to rest and lunch on traveling food. Ayla was so deeply worried about Rydag she would have preferred to keep on going, but the horses needed the rest. She wondered if he had sent Wolf for her himself. It seemed likely. Anyone else would send a person. Only Rydag would reason that Wolf was smart enough to understand the message and follow her trail to find her. But he wouldn’t do it, unless it was very important.
The disturbance to the southeast frightened her. The great column spewing into the sky had stopped, but the cloud was still there, spreading out. The fear of strange earth convulsions was so basic to her, and so deep, that she was in a mild state of shock. Only her overriding fear for Rydag forced her to stay in control of herself.
But with all her fears, Ayla was strongly conscious of Jondalar. She had almost forgotten how happy it made her feel to be with him. She had dreamed of riding with him on Whinney and Racer, just the two of them together, with Wolf loping alongside. While they rested, she watched him, but surreptitiously, with a Clan woman’s ability to efface herself, to see without being seen. Just looking at him gave her a feeling of warmth and a desire to be closer, but her recent insight into his unexplainable behavior, and her embarrassment over pushing herself on him when she wasn’t wanted, made her reluctant to show her interest. If he didn’t want her, she didn’t want him, or at least, she wasn’t going to let him know that she did.
Jondalar was watching her, too, wanting to find a way to talk to her, to tell her how much he loved her, to try to win her back. But she seemed to be avoiding him, he couldn’t catch her eye. He knew how upset she was about Rydag—he feared the worst himself—and didn’t want to intrude on her. He wasn’t sure it was the right time to bring up his personal feelings, and after all this time, he didn’t quite know how to begin. Riding back, he had wild visions of not even stopping at Wolf Camp, of continuing on with her, maybe all the way back to his home. But he knew that was impossible. Rydag needed her, and she was Promised to Ranec. They were going to join. Why should she want to go with him?
They didn’t rest long. As soon as Ayla thought the horses were rested enough, they started riding again. But they traveled only a short time when they saw someone coming. He hailed from a distance, and when they got closer, they saw it was Ludeg, the messenger who had brought them the new location of the Summer Meeting.
“Ayla! You’re the one I am looking for. Nezzie sent me to get you. I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Rydag is very sick,” Ludeg said. Then he looked around. “Where is everyone else?”
“They are coming. We came on ahead as soon as we found out,” Ayla said.
“But how could you find out? I’m the only runner that was sent,” Ludeg asked.
“No,” Jondalar said. “You’re the only human runner that was sent, but wolves can run faster.”
Suddenly Ludeg noticed the young wolf. “He didn’t go hunting with you, how did Wolf get here?”
“I think Rydag sent him,” Ayla said. “He found us on the other side of the bog.”
“It’s a good thing, too,” Jondalar added. “You might have missed the hunters. They’ve decided to go around the bog on the way back. It’s easier when you’re heavily loaded to stay on dry ground.”
“So they found mammoth. Good, that will make everyone happy,” Ludeg said, then he looked at Ayla. “I think you’d better hurry. It’s lucky you’re this close.”
Ayla felt the blood drain from her face.
“Would you like a ride back, Ludeg?” Jondalar asked, before they hurried away. “We can ride double.”
“No. You need to go ahead. You’ve already saved me a long trip. I don’t mind the walk back.”
Ayla raced Whinney all the way back to the Summer Meeting. She was off the horse and in the tent before anyone knew she was back.
“Ayla! You’re here! You made it in time. I was afraid he would be gone before you got here,” Nezzie said. “Ludeg must have traveled fast.”
“It wasn’t Ludeg who found us. It was Wolf,” Ayla said, throwing off her outerwear and rushing to Rydag’s bed.
She had to close her eyes to overcome the shock for a moment. The set of his jaw and the lines of strain told her more than any words that he was in pain, terrible pain. He was pale, but dark hollows circled his eyes, and his cheekbones and brow ridges protruded in sharp angles. Every breath was an effort and caused more pain. She looked up at Nezzie, who was standing beside the bed.
“What happened, Nezzie?” She fought to hold back tears, for his sake.
“I wish I knew. He was fine, then all of a sudden he got this pain. I tried to do everything you told me, gave him the medicine. Nothing helped,” Nezzie said.
Ayla felt a faint touch on her arm. “I glad you come,” the boy signed.
Where had she seen that before? That struggle to make signs with a body too weak to move? Iza. That’s how she was when she died. Ayla had just returned from a long trek then, and a long stay at the Clan Gathering. But she just went to hunt mammoth this time. They weren’t gone very long. What happened to Rydag? How did he get so sick so fast? Had it been coming up on him slowly all along?
“You sent Wolf, didn’t you?” Ayla asked.
“I know he find,” the boy motioned. “Wolf smart.”
Rydag closed his eyes then, and Ayla had to turn her head aside, and close her eyes. It hurt to see the way he labored to breathe, to see his pain.
“When did you last have your medicine?” Ayla asked, when he opened his eyes and she could look at him.
Rydag shook his head slightly. “Not help. Nothing help.”
“What do you mean, nothing will help? You’re not a medicine woman. How do you know? I’m the one who knows that,” Ayla said, trying to sound firm and positive.
He shook his head slightly again. “I know.”
“Well, I’m going to examine you, but first, I’m going to get you some medicine,” Ayla said, but it was more that she was afraid she would break down right there. He touched her hand as she started to leave.
“Not go.” He closed his eyes again, and she watched him struggle for one more tortured breath, and then another, powerless to do anything. “Wolf here?” he finally signed.
Ayla whistled, and whoever it was outside that had been trying to keep Wolf from going in the tent, suddenly found it impossible. He was there, jumping up on the boy’s bed, trying to lick his face. Rydag smiled. It was almost more than Ayla could stand, that smile on a Clan face that was so uniquely Rydag. The rambunctious young animal could be too much. Ayla motioned him down.
“I send Wolf. Want Ayla,” Rydag motioned again. “I want …”He didn’t seem to know the word in signs.
“What is it you want, Rydag?” Ayla encouraged.
“He tried to tell me,” Nezzie said. “But I couldn’t understand him. I hope you can. It seems so important to him.”
Rydag closed his eyes and wrinkled his brow, and Ayla had the feeling he was trying to remember something.
“Durc lucky. He … belongs. Ayla, I want … mog-ur.”
He was trying so hard, and it was taking so much out of him, but all Ayla could do was try to understand. “Mog-ur?” The sign was silent. “You mean a man of the spirit world?” Ayla said, aloud.
Rydag nodded, encourag
ed. But the expression on Nezzie’s face was unfathomable. “Is that what he’s been trying to say?” the woman asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Ayla said. “Does that help?”
Nezzie nodded, a short, clipped nod of anger. “I know what he wants. He doesn’t want to be an animal, he wants to go to the spirit world. He wants to be buried … like a person.”
Rydag was nodding now, agreeing.
“Of course,” Ayla said. “He is a person.” She looked perplexed.
“No. He’s not. He was never numbered among the Mamutoi. They wouldn’t accept him. They said he was an animal,” Nezzie said.
“You mean he cannot have a burial? He cannot walk the spirit world? Who says he can’t?” Ayla’s eyes blazed with fury.
“The Mammoth Hearth,” Nezzie said. “They won’t allow it.”
“Well, am I not the daughter of the Mammoth Hearth? I will allow it!” Ayla stated.
“It won’t do any good. Mamut would, too. The Mammoth Hearth has to agree, and they won’t agree,” Nezzie said.
Rydag had been listening, hopeful, but now his hope was dimming. Ayla saw his expression, his disappointment, and was more angry than she had ever been.
“The Mammoth Hearth doesn’t have to agree. They are not the ones who decide if someone is human or not. Rydag is a person. He is no more an animal than my son is. The Mammoth Hearth can keep their burial. He doesn’t need it. When the time comes, I will do it, the Clan way, the way I did it for Creb, the Mog-ur. Rydag will walk the world of the spirits, Mammoth Hearth or no!”
Nezzie glanced at the boy. He seemed more relaxed now. No, she decided. At peace. The strain, the tension, he had been showing was gone. He touched Ayla’s arm.
“I am not animal,” he signed.
He seemed about to say something else. Ayla waited. Then suddenly she realized there was no sound, no struggle to take one more tortured breath. He was not in pain any more.
But Ayla was. She looked up and saw Jondalar. He had been there all along, and his face was as racked with grief as hers, or Nezzie’s. Suddenly all three of them were clinging together, trying to find solace in each other.
Then another showed his grief. From the floor beneath Rydag’s bed, a low whine rose in a furry throat, then yips that extended and deepened and soared into Wolf’s first full, ringing howl. When his breath ran out, he began again, crying out his loss in the sonorous, eerie, spine-tingling, unmistakable tones of wolfsong. People gathered at the entrance of the tent to look, but were hesitant to enter. Even the three who were awash in their own sorrow paused to listen and wonder. Jondalar thought to himself that animal or human, no one could ask for a more poignant or awesome elegy.
After the first racking tears of grief were spent, Ayla sat beside the small thin body, unmoving, but her tears had not stopped. She stared into space, silently remembering her life with the Clan, and her son, and the first time she saw Rydag. She loved Rydag. He had come to mean as much to her as Durc and, in a certain way, stood in for him. Even though her son had been taken from her, Rydag had given her an opportunity to know more about him, to learn how he might be growing and maturing, how he might look, how he might think. When she smiled at Rydag’s gentle humor, or was pleased at his perceptiveness and intelligence, she could imagine that Durc had the same kind of understanding. Now Rydag was gone, and her tenuous link to Durc was gone. Her grief was for both.
Nezzie’s grief was not less, but the needs of the living were important, too. Rugie climbed up on her lap, hurt and confused that her playmate, and friend, and brother, couldn’t play any more, couldn’t even make words with his hands. Danug was stretched out full-length on his bed, his head buried under a cover, sobbing, and someone had to go and tell Latie.
“Ayla? Ayla,” Nezzie finally said. “What do we have to do to bury him in the Clan way? We need to start getting him ready.”
It took Ayla a moment to comprehend that someone was talking to her. She frowned, and focused on Nezzie. “What?”
“We have to get him ready for burial. What do we have to do? I don’t know anything about Clan burials.”
No, none of the Mamutoi did, she thought. Especially the Mammoth Hearth. But she did. She thought about the Clan burials she had seen and considered what should be done for Rydag. Before he can be buried in the Clan way, he has to be Clan. That means he has to be named, and he needs an amulet with a piece of red ochre in it. Suddenly, Ayla got up and rushed out.
Jondalar went after her. “Where are you going?”
“If Rydag is going to be Clan, I have to make him an amulet,” she said.
Ayla stalked through the encampment, obviously angry, marching past the Camp of the Mammoth Hearth without even a glance, and straight to the flint-workers’ area. Jondalar followed behind. He had some idea what she was up to. She asked for a flint nodule, which no one was ready to refuse her. Then she looked around and found a hammerstone, and cleared herself a place to work.
As she began to preshape the flint in the Clan way, and the Mamutoi flint knappers realized what she was doing, they were eager to watch, and crowded as close as they dared. No one wanted to raise her ire even more, but this was a rare opportunity. Jondalar had tried to explain the Clan techniques once, after Ayla’s background became generally known, but his training was different. He didn’t have the necessary control using their methods. Even when he succeeded, they thought it was his own skill, not the unusual process.
Ayla decided to make two separate tools, a sharp knife and a pointed awl, and bring them both back to Cattail Camp to make the amulet. She managed to make a serviceable knife, but she was so full of grief and anger, her hands shook. The first time she tried to make the more difficult narrow, sharp point, she shattered it, and then noticed that many people were watching her, which made her nervous. She felt that the Mamutoi flint workers were judging the Clan way of making tools, and she was not representing them well, and then was angry that she should even care. The second time she tried, she broke it, too. Her frustration brought angry tears, which she kept trying to wipe away. Suddenly, Jondalar was kneeling in front of her.
“Is this what you want, Ayla?” he asked, holding up the piercing tool she had made for the special Spring Festival ceremony.
“That’s a Clan tool! Where did you get … that’s the one I made!” she said.
“I know. I went back and got it that day. I hope you don’t mind.”
She was surprised, puzzled, and strangely pleased. “No, I don’t mind. I’m glad you did, but why?”
“I wanted … to study it,” he replied. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say he wanted it to remember her by, to tell her he thought he would be leaving without her. He didn’t want to leave without her.
She took her tools back to Cattail Camp, and asked Nezzie for a piece of soft leather. After she got it, the woman watched her make the simple, gathered pouch.
“They look a little more crude, but those tools really work very well,” Nezzie remarked. “What is the pouch for?”
“It’s Rydag’s amulet, like the one I made for the Spring Festival. I have to put a piece of red ochre in it, and name him the way the Clan does. He should have a totem, too, to protect him on his way to the world of the spirits.” She paused, and wrinkled her brow. “I don’t know what Creb did to discover a person’s totem, but it was always right … maybe I can share my totem with Rydag. The Cave Lion is a powerful totem, difficult to live with sometimes, but he was tested many times. Rydag deserves a strong, protective totem.”
“Is there anything I can do? Does he need to be prepared? Dressed?” Nezzie asked.
“Yes, I’d like to help, too,” Latie said. She was standing at the entrance with Tulie.
“And so would I,” Mamut added.
Ayla looked up and saw almost the entire Lion Camp wanting to help and looking to her for direction. Only the hunters were missing. She was filled with a great warmth for these people who had taken in a strange orphaned child and accep
ted him as their own, and a righteous anger at the members of the Mammoth Hearth who would not even give him a burial.
“Well, first, someone can get some red ochre, crush it up, like Deegie does to color leather, and mix it in some rendered fat to make a salve. That has to be rubbed all over him. It should be Cave Bear fat, for a proper Clan burial. The Cave Bear is sacred to the Clan.”
“We don’t have Cave Bear fat,” Tornec said.
“There are not many Cave Bears around here,” Manuv added.
“Why not mammoth fat, Ayla?” Mamut suggested. “Rydag wasn’t just Clan. He was mixed. He was part Mamutoi, too, and the mammoth is sacred to us.”
“Yes, I think we could use that. He was Mamutoi, too. We shouldn’t forget that.”
“How about dressing him, Ayla?” Nezzie asked. “He’s never even worn the new clothes I made for him this year.”
Ayla frowned, then nodded agreement. “Why not? After he’s colored with red ochre, the way the Clan does, he could be dressed in his best clothes, like the Mamutoi do for burials. Yes, I think that’s a good idea, Nezzie.”
“I never would have guessed red ochre was a sacred color at their burials, too,” Frebec commented.
“I didn’t even think they buried their dead,” Crozie said.
“Obviously, the Mammoth Hearth didn’t either,” Tulie said. “They are going to be in for a surprise.”
Ayla asked Deegie for one of the wooden bowls she had given her as an adoption gift, made in the Clan style, and used it to mix the red ochre and mammoth fat into a colored salve. But it was Nezzie, Crozie, and Tulie, the three oldest women of Lion Camp, who rubbed it on him, and then dressed him. Ayla put aside a small dab of the oily red paste for later, and put a lump of the red iron ore into the pouch she had made.
“What about wrapping him?” Nezzie asked. “Shouldn’t he be wrapped, Ayla?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Ayla said.
“We use a hide or a fur, or something, to carry him out, and then it’s wrapped around him before he is laid in the grave,” Nezzie explained.