The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  When she saw Jondalar’s smiling face, she said, “That was exciting!”

  “It is pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” he said, helping her out.

  A crowd of people was waiting for her, but she was more interested in the place than the people. She felt a swaying movement under her feet when she stepped out of the basket onto wooden planks, and she realized they were floating on water. It was a sizable dock, large enough to hold several dwellings of a construction similar to the ones under the sandstone ledge, plus open areas. There was a fire nearby, built on a slab of sandstone and surrounded by rocks.

  Several of the interesting boats she had seen before, used by the people downstream—narrow and coming together in a sharp edge at the front and back—were tied to the floating construction. They were of various sizes, no two exactly the same, ranging from barely big enough to hold one person to long ones with several seats.

  As she turned to look around, she saw two very large boats that startled her. The prows extended up to become the heads of strange birds, and the boats were painted with various geometric markings, which together gave the impression of feathers. Extra eyes were painted near the water line. The largest craft had a canopy over the middle section. When she looked at Jondalar to exclaim her amazement, his eyes were closed and his forehead creased with anguish, and she knew the large boat must have had something to do with his brother.

  But neither of them had much time to pause or reconsider. They were moved along by the group, which was eager to show the visitor both their unusual craft and their boating expertise. Ayla noticed people scurrying up a ladderlike connection between the dock and the boat. When she was urged toward the foot of it, she understood that she was expected to do the same. Most of the people walked up the gangway, balancing easily even though the boat and the dock sometimes moved at cross-purposes, but Ayla was grateful for the hand Carlono extended to her.

  She sat between Markeno and Jondalar under the canopy that extended from one side to the other, on a bench that could easily have accommodated more. Other people sat on benches in front and back, several of them taking up very long-handled paddles. Before she knew it, they had cast off the ropes that held them to the dock and were in the middle of the river.

  Carlono’s sister Carolio, singing out from the front of the boat in a strong high voice, began a rhythmic chant that rose above the liquid melody of the Great Mother River. Ayla watched with fascination as the rowers pulled against the powerful current, intrigued by the way they rowed in unison to the beat of the song, and she was surprised at how swiftly and smoothly they were propelled upstream.

  At the bend in the river, the sides of the rocky gorge closed in. Between the soaring walls that reared out of the depths of the voluminous river, the sound of the water grew louder and more intense. Ayla could feel the air becoming cooler and damper, and her nostrils flared at the wet clear smell of the river and the living and dying of life within it, so different from the crisp dry aromas of the plains.

  Where the gorge widened out again, trees grew on both sides down to the edge of the water. “This is beginning to look familiar,” Jondalar said. “Isn’t that the boat-making place ahead? Are we going to stop there?”

  “Not this time. We’ll keep going and turn around at Half-Fish.”

  “Half-Fish?” Ayla said. “What is that?”

  A man sitting in front of her turned around and grinned. Ayla recalled that he was Carolio’s mate. “You should ask him,” he said, glancing at the man beside her. Ayla watched a red glow fill Jondalar’s face as he blushed with embarrassment. “It’s where he became half a Ramudoi man. Hasn’t he told you about it?” Several people laughed.

  “Why don’t you tell it, Barono?” Jondalar said. “I’m sure it won’t be the first time.”

  “Jondalar’s right about that,” Markeno said. “It’s one of Barono’s favorite stories. Carolio says she’s tired of hearing it, but everyone knows that he can’t stop telling a good story, no matter how many times he’s told it.”

  “Well, you must admit, it was funny, Jondalar,” Barono said. “But you should tell it.”

  Jondalar smiled in spite of himself. “To everyone else, maybe.” Ayla was looking at him with a puzzled smile. “I was just learning to handle small boats,” he began. “I had a harpoon—a spear for fish—with me, and started upriver, and then I noticed the sturgeon were on the move. I thought it might be my chance to get the first one, not thinking about how I would ever land a big fish like that alone, or what would happen in such a small boat.”

  “That fish gave him the ride of his life!” Barono said, unable to resist.

  “I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to spear one; I wasn’t used to a spear with a cord attached,” Jondalar continued. “I should have worried about what would happen if I did.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ayla said.

  “If you are hunting on land and spear something, like a deer, even if you just wound it, and the spear falls out, you can trail it,” Carlono explained. “You can’t follow a fish in water. A harpoon has barbs that face backward and a strong cord attached, so once you spear a fish, the point with the cord stays in it so it doesn’t get lost in the water. The other end of the cord can be fastened to the boat.”

  “The sturgeon he speared pulled him upstream, boat and all,” Barono interrupted again. “We were on the shore back there, and we saw him going past, hanging on to the cord that was tied to the boat. I never saw anyone going so fast in my life. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. Jondalar thought he hooked the fish, but the fish had hooked him instead!”

  Ayla was smiling along with everyone else.

  “By the time the fish finally lost enough blood and died, I was pretty far upstream,” Jondalar continued. “The boat was almost swamped, and I ended up swimming to the shore. In the confusion, the boat went downstream but the fish ended up in a backwater next to the land. I pulled it up on the shore. By then I was pretty cold, but I’d lost my knife and couldn’t find any dry wood or anything to make fire. Suddenly a flathead … a Clan … youngster appeared.”

  Ayla’s eyes opened with surprise. The story had taken on a new meaning.

  “He led me to his fire. There was an older woman at his camp and I was shivering so much that she gave me a wolfskin. After I warmed up, we went back to the river. The fl … the youngster wanted half the fish and I was glad to let him have it. He cut the sturgeon in half, longways, and took his half with him. Everybody who saw me go by came looking for me, and just about then they found me. Even if they laugh about it, I was more than happy to see them.”

  “It’s still hard to believe that only one flathead carried off half that fish by himself. I remember it took three or four men to move the half fish he left behind,” Markeno said. “That was a big sturgeon.”

  “Men of the Clan are strong,” Ayla said, “but I didn’t know there were any Clan people in this region. I thought they were all on the peninsula.”

  “There used to be quite a few on the other side of the river,” Barono said.

  “What happened to them?” Ayla asked.

  The people in the boat were suddenly embarrassed, looking down and away. Finally Markeno said, “After Doraldo died, Dolando got a lot of people together and … went after them. After a while, most of them … were gone … I guess they went away.”

  “Show that to me again,” Roshario said, wishing she could try it with her own hands. Ayla had put the birchbark cast on her arm that morning. Though it was not quite dry, the strong, lightweight material was already rigid enough to hold the arm securely, and Roshario was enjoying the greater mobility it allowed her, but Ayla did not want her to attempt to use the hand yet.

  They were sitting with Tholie out in the sun amidst several soft chamois hides. Ayla had her sewing case out and was showing them the thread-puller she had developed with the help of the Lion Camp.

  “First you have to cut holes with an awl into both pieces of the leather you wan
t to sew together,” Ayla said.

  “The way we always do,” Tholie said.

  “But you use this to pull the thread through the holes. The thread goes through this tiny hole at the back end, then when you put the point into the cuts in the leather, it pulls the thread with it through both pieces that you want to join together.” A thought occurred to Ayla as she was demonstrating the ivory needle. If it was sharp enough, I wonder if the thread-puller could make the hole, too? Leather can be tough, though.

  “Let me see it,” Tholie said. “How do you get the thread through the hole?”

  “Like this, see?” Ayla said, showing her, then gave it back. Tholie tried a few stitches.

  “This is so easy!” she said. “You could almost do it with one hand.”

  Roshario, watching closely, thought Tholie might be right. Though she couldn’t use her broken arm, if she could use her hand just to hold the pieces together, with a thread-puller like that, she might be able to sew with her good hand. “I never saw anything like that. Whatever made you think of it?” Roshario asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ayla said. “It was just an idea I had when I was having trouble trying to sew something, but a lot of people helped. I think the hardest part was making a drill out of flint small enough to make the tiny hole at the end. Jondalar and Wymez worked on that.”

  “Wymez is Lion Camp’s flint knapper,” Tholie explained to Roshario. “I understand he is very good.”

  “I know Jondalar is,” Roshario said. “He worked out so many improvements on the tools we use to make boats that everyone was raving about him. Just little things, but it made a big difference. He was teaching Darvo before he left. Jondalar’s good at teaching youngsters. Maybe he’ll be able to show him more.”

  “Jondalar said he learned much from Wymez,” Ayla said.

  “That may be, but you both seem to be good at thinking up better ways to do things,” Tholie said. “This thread-puller of yours is going to make sewing a lot easier. Even when you know how, it’s always hard to push a thread through holes with an awl, and that spear-thrower of Jondalar’s has everyone excited. When you showed how good you are with it, you made people think that anyone could do it, though I don’t think it’s as easy as you made it seem. I think you must have practiced more than a little.”

  Jondalar and Ayla had demonstrated the spear-thrower. It took a great deal of skill and patience to get close enough to a chamois to make a kill, and when the Shamudoi hunters saw how far a spear could be thrown with it, they were eager to try it on the elusive mountain antelopes. Several of the Ramudoi sturgeon hunters were so enthusiastic about it that they decided to adapt a harpoon to it, to see how it would work. In the discussion, Jondalar brought up his idea of a spear in two parts, with a long back shaft fletched with two or three feathers, and a smaller detachable front end tipped with a point. The potential was immediately understood, and several approaches were tried by both groups over the next few days.

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the far end of the field. The three women looked up and saw several people hauling up the supply basket. Some youngsters were running toward them.

  “They caught one! They caught one with the harpoon-thrower!” Darvalo shouted as he approached the women. “And it’s a female!”

  “Let’s go see!” Tholie said.

  “You go ahead. I’ll catch up as soon as I put my thread-puller away.”

  “I’ll wait for you, Ayla,” Roshario said.

  By the time they joined the others, the first part of the sturgeon had been unloaded and the basket sent down again. It was a huge fish, too much to bring up at one time, but the best part had gone up first: nearly two hundred pounds of tiny black sturgeon eggs. It seemed propitious that the large female was the result of the first sturgeon hunt with the new weapon developed from Jondalar’s spear-thrower.

  Fish-drying racks were brought out to the end of the field, and most of the people there were beginning to cut the great fish into small pieces. The great mass of caviar, however, was brought back to the living area. It was Roshario’s responsibility to oversee its distribution. She asked Ayla and Tholie to help her, and she dished out some for all of them to taste.

  “I haven’t eaten this in years!” Ayla said, taking another bite. “It’s always best when it’s fresh from the fish, and there’s so much.”

  “And a good thing, too, or we wouldn’t get to eat much of it,” Tholie said.

  “Why not?” Ayla asked.

  “Because sturgeon roe is one of the things we use to make the chamois skin so soft,” Tholie said. “Most of it is used for that.”

  “I’d like to see how you make that skin so soft sometime,” Ayla said. “I have always liked to work with leather and furs. When I lived with the Lion Camp, I learned how to color skins and made a really red one, and Crozie showed me how to make white leather. I like your yellow color, too.”

  “I’m surprised Crozie was willing to show you,” Tholie said. She looked significantly at Roshario. “I thought white leather was a secret of the Crane Hearth.”

  “She didn’t say it was a secret. She said her mother taught her, and her daughter wasn’t too interested in working leather. She seemed pleased to pass the knowledge on to someone.”

  “Well, since you were both members of Lion Camp, you were the same as family,” Tholie said, though she was quite surprised. “I don’t think she would have shown an outsider, anymore than we would. The Sharamudoi method of treating chamois is a secret. Our skins are admired and have a high trade value. If everyone knew how to make them, they would not be as valuable, so we don’t share it,” Tholie said.

  Ayla nodded, but her disappointment showed. “Well, it is nice, and the yellow is so bright and pretty.”

  “The yellow comes from bog myrtle, but we don’t use it for its color. That just happens. Bog myrtle helps to keep the hides soft even after they get wet,” Roshario volunteered. She paused, then added, “If you stayed here, Ayla, we could teach you to make yellow chamois skin.”

  “Stayed? How long?”

  “As long as you want; as long as you live, Ayla,” Roshario said, giving her an earnest look. “Jondalar is kin; we think of him as one of us. It wouldn’t take much for him to become Sharamudoi. He has even helped to make a boat already. You said you weren’t mated yet. I’m sure we could find someone willing to cross-couple with you, and then you could be mated here. I know you would be welcome among us. Ever since our old Shamud died, we’ve needed a healer.”

  “We would be willing to cross-couple,” Tholie said. Although Roshario’s offer was spontaneous, it seemed entirely appropriate the moment she mentioned it. “I’d have to talk to Markeno, but I’m sure he’d agree. After Jetamio and Thonolan, it’s been hard to find another couple we wanted to join with. Thonolan’s brother would be perfect. Markeno has always liked Jondalar, and I would enjoy sharing a dwelling with another Mamutoi woman.” She smiled at Ayla. “And Shamio would love having her ‘Wuffie’ around all the time.”

  The offer caught Ayla by surprise. When she fully grasped the meaning, she was overwhelmed. She felt tears begin to sting. “Roshario, I don’t know what to say. It has felt like home here since I first came. Tholie, I would love to share with you …” The tears overflowed.

  The two Sharamudoi women felt the contagion of tears and blinked them back, smiling at each other as though they had conspired in a wonderful plan.

  “As soon as Markeno and Jondalar come back, we’ll tell them,” Tholie said. “Markeno will be so relieved …”

  “I don’t know about Jondalar,” Ayla said. “I know he wanted to come here. He even gave up taking a shorter way just to see you, but I don’t know if he will want to stay. He says he wants to go back to his people.”

  “But we are his people,” Tholie said.

  “No, Tholie. Even though he was here as long as his brother, Jondalar is still Zelandonii. He could never quite let go of them. I thought that might have been why his feelings
for Serenio were not as strong,” Roshario said.

  “That was Darvalo’s mother?” Ayla asked.

  “Yes,” the older woman said, wondering how much Jondalar had told her about Serenio, “but since it’s obvious how he feels about you, maybe, after all this time, his ties to his own people are weaker. Haven’t you traveled enough? Why should you make such a long Journey when you can have a home right here?”

  “Besides, it’s time for Markeno and me to choose a cross-couple … before winter, and before … I didn’t tell you, but the Mother has blessed me again … and we should join before this one comes.”

  “I thought as much. That’s wonderful, Tholie,” Ayla said. Then her eyes unfocused in a dreamy look. “Maybe, someday, I’ll have a baby to cuddle …”

  “If we are cross-mates, the one I’m carrying would be yours, too, Ayla. And it would be nice to know there was someone around who could help, just in case … although I didn’t have any trouble at all birthing Shamio.”

  Ayla thought that she would like to have a baby of her own someday, Jondalar’s baby, but what if she couldn’t? She had been careful to drink her morning tea every day, and she had not gotten pregnant, but what if it wasn’t the tea? What if she just wasn’t able to make a baby start? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that Tholie’s children would be hers and Jondalar’s? It was true, too, that the area nearby was so much like the region around the cave of Brun’s clan, that it felt like home. The people were nice … although she wasn’t sure of Dolando. Would he really want her to stay? And she wasn’t sure about the horses. It was nice to be able to let them rest, but would there be enough feed to last the winter? And was there a big enough place to ran?