by Jean M. Auel
They walked to a small grassy dell with a creek running through it that was off around the side. Wolf came with them. After he tied Racer’s lead securely, Jondalar started back. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“I’ll stay with Whinney a little longer,” she said.
“Why don’t I go carry our things in, then?”
“Yes, go ahead.” He seemed eager to get back, not that she blamed him. She signaled the wolf to stay with her. Everything was new to him, too. They all needed some time to settle in, except for Jondalar. When she returned she looked for him and found him deep in conversation with Joplaya. She hesitated to interrupt.
“Ayla,” he said, when he noticed her. “I was telling Joplaya about Wymez. Later, will you show her the spear point he gave you?”
She nodded. Jondalar turned back to Joplaya. “Wait until you see it. The Mamutoi are excellent mammoth hunters, they tip their spears with flint instead of bone. It pierces thick hides better, especially if the blades are thin. Wymez developed a new technique. The point is bifacially knapped, but not like a crude axehead. He heats the stone—that makes the difference. Finer, thinner flakes sheer off. He can make a point that is longer than my hand with a cross-section so thin and an edge so sharp, you won’t believe it.”
They were standing so close together their bodies were touching as Jondalar excitedly explained the details of the new technique, and their casual intimacy made Ayla uneasy. They had lived together during their adolescent years. What secrets had he told her? What joys and sorrows had they known together? What frustrations and triumphs had they shared as they both learned the difficult art of knapping flint? How much better did Joplaya know him than she did?
Before, they had both been strangers to the people they met on their Journey. Now, only she was a stranger.
He turned back to Ayla. “Why don’t I go and get that point? What basket was it in?” he asked, already on his way.
She told him and smiled nervously at the dark-haired woman after he left, but neither of them spoke. Jondalar was back almost instantly.
“Joplaya, I told Dalanar to come—I’ve been wanting to show him this point. Wait until you see it.”
He carefully opened the wrapped package and uncovered a beautifully made flint point just as Dalanar came up. At the sight of the fine spear point, Dalanar took it from Jondalar and examined it closely.
“It’s a masterwork! I have never seen such fine craftsmanship,” Dalanar exclaimed. “Look at this, Joplaya. It’s bifacially worked, but very thin, small flakes are removed. Think of the control, the concentration it must have taken. The feel of this flint is different, and the sheen. It seems almost … oily. Where did you get this? Do they have a different kind of flint in the east?”
“No, it’s a new process, developed by a Mamutoi man named Wymez. He’s the only knapper I’ve ever met who compares with you, Dalanar. He heats the stone. That’s what gives it the sheen, and the feel, but even better, after it’s heated, you can remove those fine flakes,” Jondalar was explaining with great animation.
Ayla found herself watching him.
“They almost chip off by themselves—that’s what gives you the control. I’ll show you how he does it. I’m not as good as he is—I need to work on perfecting my technique—but you’ll see what I mean. I want to get some good flint while we’re here. With the horses, we can carry more weight, and I’d like to bring some Lanzadonii stone home with me.”
“This is your home, too, Jondalar,” Dalanar said quietly. “But, yes, we can go to the mine tomorrow and quarry some fresh stone. I’d like to see how this is done, but is this really a spear point? It looks so thin, and graceful, it almost seems too fragile to hunt with.”
“They use these spear points for hunting mammoth. It does break more easily, but the sharp flint pierces the thick hide better than a bone point and will slide in between ribs,” Jondalar said. “I have something else to show you, too. I developed it when I was recovering from the cave lion mauling, in Ayla’s valley. It’s a spear-thrower. With it, a spear will fly twice as far. Wait until you see how it works!”
“I think they want us to come and eat, Jondalar,” Dalanar said, noticing people at the mouth of the cave, beckoning. “Everyone will want to hear your stories. Come inside where you can be comfortable and all can hear. You tease us with these animals that obey your wishes, and comments about cave lion maulings, spear-throwers, new stone-knapping techniques. What other adventures and marvels do you have to share?”
Jondalar laughed. “We haven’t even begun. Would you believe we have seen stones that make fire and stones that burn? Dwellings made out of the bones of mammoths, ivory points that pull thread, and huge rivercraft used to hunt fish so big, it would take five men your size, one on top of the other, to reach tip to tail.”
Ayla had never seen Jondalar so happy and relaxed, so free and unrestrained, and she realized how glad he was to be with his people.
He put an arm around both Ayla and Joplaya as they walked toward the cave. “Have you chosen a mate yet, Joplaya?” Jondalar asked. “I didn’t see anyone who seemed to have a claim on you.”
Joplaya laughed. “No, I’ve been waiting for you, Jondalar.”
“There you go, making a joke again,” Jondalar said, chuckling. He turned to explain to Ayla. “Close-cousins can’t mate, you know.”
“I have it all planned,” Joplaya continued, “I thought we’d run off together and start our own Cave, like Dalanar did. But, of course, we’d only allow flint knappers.” Her laugh seemed forced, and she looked only at Jondalar.
“See what I mean, Ayla?” Jondalar said, turning to her but giving Joplaya a squeeze. “Always joking. Joplaya is the worst tease.” Ayla wasn’t sure she understood the joke.
“Seriously, Joplaya, you must be promised anyway.”
“Echozar has asked, but I haven’t decided yet.”
“Echozar? I don’t think I know him. Is he Zelandonii?”
“He’s Lanzadonii. He joined us a few years ago. Dalanar saved his life, found him almost drowned. I think he’s still in the cave. He’s shy; you’ll understand why when you meet him. He looks … well, different. He doesn’t like meeting strangers, he says he doesn’t want to come with us to the Zelandonii Summer Meeting. But he’s sweet when you get to know him, and he’d do anything for Dalanar.”
“Are you going to the Summer Meeting this year? I hope so, at least for the Matrimonial. Ayla and I are going to be mated.” This time he gave Ayla a squeeze.
“I don’t know,” Joplaya said, looking at the ground. Then she looked at him. “I always knew you would never mate that Marona woman who was waiting for you the year you left, but I didn’t think you’d bring a woman back with you.”
Jondalar flushed at the mention of the woman he had promised to mate and left behind, and he didn’t notice Ayla stiffen as Joplaya hurried toward a man just coming out of the cave.
“Jondalar! That man!” He caught the startled tone in her voice and turned to look at her. She was ashen.
“What’s wrong, Ayla?”
“He looks like Durc! Or maybe the way my son will look when he grows up. Jondalar, that man is part Clan!”
Jondalar looked closer. It was true. The man Joplaya was urging toward them had the look of the Clan. But as they approached, Ayla noticed one striking difference between this man and the men of the Clan she knew. He was almost as tall as she.
When he neared, she made a motion with her hand. It was subtle, hardly noticeable to anyone else, but the man’s large brown eyes opened wide with surprise.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked, making the same gesture. His voice was deep, but clear and distinct. He had no problem speaking; a sure sign he was a mixture.
“I was raised by a clan. They found me when I was a little girl. I don’t remember any family before that.”
“A clan raised you? They cursed my mother because she gave birth to me,” he said bitterly. “What clan would raise
you?”
“I didn’t think her accent was Mamutoi,” Jerika interjected. Several people were standing around them.
Jondalar took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He had known from the beginning Ayla’s background would come out sooner or later. “When I met her, she couldn’t even talk, Jerika, at least not with words. But she saved my life after I was attacked by a cave lion. She was adopted by the Mamutoi into the Mammoth Hearth because she is so skilled in healing.”
“She is Mamut? One Who Serves the Mother? Where is her mark? I don’t see any tattoo on her cheek,” Jerika said.
“Ayla learned to heal from the woman who raised her, a medicine woman of the people she calls Clan—flatheads—but she’s as good as any zelandoni. The Mamut was only starting to train her to Serve the Mother before we left; she was never initiated. That’s why she has no mark,” Jondalar explained.
“I knew she was zelandoni. She has to be to control animals like that, but how could she learn healing from a flathead woman?” Dalanar exclaimed. “Before I met Echozar, I thought they were little more than animals. I understand from him that they can talk, in a way, and now you say they have healers. You should have told me, Echozar.”
“How would I know? I’m not a flathead!” Echozar spat the word out. “I only knew my mother, and Andovan.”
Ayla was surprised at the venom in his voice. “You said your mother was cursed? And yet she survived to raise you? She must have been a remarkable woman.”
Echozar looked directly into the gray-blue eyes of the tall blond woman. There was no hesitation, no drawing back to avoid staring at him. He felt strangely drawn to this woman he had never seen before, comfortable with her.
“She didn’t talk about it much,” Echozar said. “She was attacked by some men, who killed her mate when he tried to protect her. He was the brother of the leader of her clan, and she was blamed for his death. The leader said she brought bad luck. But later, when she learned she was expecting a child, he took her as a second woman. When I was born, he said it proved she was a bad-luck woman. She had not only killed her mate, she gave birth to a deformed baby. Then he cursed her, a death curse.” He was talking more openly to this woman than he normally did, and he was surprised at himself.
“I’m not sure what that means—a death curse,” Echozar continued. “She only told me once, and then she couldn’t finish. She said everyone turned away from her, as though they could not see her. They said she was dead, and even though she tried to make them look at her, it was like she wasn’t there, like she was dead. It must have been terrible.”
“It was,” Ayla said softly. “It’s hard to go on living if you don’t exist to the ones you love.” Her eyes misted with memory.
“My mother took me and left them to go and die, like she was supposed to, but Andovan found her. He was old even then, and living alone. He never did tell me why he left his Cave, it was something about a cruel leader …”
“Andovan …” Ayla interrupted. “Was he S’Armunai?”
“Yes, I think so,” Echozar said. “He didn’t talk about his people much.”
“We know about their cruel leader,” Jondalar said, grimly.
“Andovan took care of us,” Echozar continued. “He taught me to hunt. He learned to speak the sign language of the Clan from my mother, but she never could say more than a few words. I learned both, though it surprised her that I could make his word sounds. Andovan died a few years ago, and with him my mother’s will to live. The death curse finally took her.”
“What did you do then?” Jondalar asked.
“I lived alone.”
“That is not easy,” Ayla said.
“No, it’s not easy. I tried to find someone to live with. No clan would let me near them. They threw stones at me and said I was deformed and unlucky. No Cave would have anything to do with me, either. They said I was an abomination of mixed spirits, half-man and half-animal. After a while I got tired of trying. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. One day I jumped off a cliff into the river. The next thing I knew, Dalanar was looking at me. He took me to his Cave. Now I am Echozar of the Lanzadonii,” he finished proudly, glancing at the tall man he idolized.
Ayla thought of her son, grateful he had been accepted as a baby, and grateful there were people who loved him and wanted him when she had to leave him behind.
“Echozar, don’t hate your mother’s people,” she said. “It is not that they are bad, they are just so ancient that it’s hard for them to change. Their traditions go back so far, and they don’t understand new ways.”
“And they are people,” Jondalar said to Dalanar. “That’s one thing I’ve learned on this Journey. We met a couple just before we started over the glacier—that’s another story—but they’re planning meetings about the problems they’ve been having with some of us, especially some young Losadunai men. Someone has even approached them about trading.”
“Flatheads having meetings? Trading? This world is changing faster than I can understand,” Dalanar said. “Until I met Echozar, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“People may call them flatheads, and animals, but you know your mother was a brave woman, Echozar,” Ayla said, then held out her hands to him. “I know how it feels to have no people. Now I am Ayla of the Mamutoi. Will you welcome me, Echozar of the Lanzadonii?”
He took her hands and she felt them tremble. “You are welcome here, Ayla of the Mamutoi,” he said.
Jondalar stepped forward with his hands outstretched. “I greet you, Echozar of the Lanzadonii,” he said.
“I welcome you, Jondalar of the Zelandonii,” Echozar said, “but you don’t need to be welcomed here. I’ve heard about the son of Dalanar’s hearth. There’s no doubt you were born of his spirit. You are much like him.”
Jondalar grinned. “Everyone says so, but don’t you think his nose is a little bigger than mine?”
“I don’t. I think yours is bigger than mine,” Dalanar laughed, clapping the younger man’s shoulder. “Come inside. The food is getting cold.”
Ayla lingered a moment to talk to Echozar, and when she turned to go in, Joplaya detained her.
“I want to talk to Ayla, Echozar, but don’t go in yet. I want to talk to you, too,” she said. He walked away quickly to leave the two women alone, but not before Ayla saw the adoration in his eyes when he looked at Joplaya.
“Ayla, I …” Joplaya began. “I … think I know why Jondalar loves you. I want to say … I want to wish you both happiness.”
Ayla studied the dark-haired woman. She sensed a change in her, a drawing in, a feeling of grim finality. Suddenly Ayla knew why she had been so uneasy about the woman.
“Thank you, Joplaya. I love him very much; it would be hard to live without him. It would leave me with a great emptiness inside that would be very hard to bear.”
“Yes, very hard to bear,” Joplaya said, closing her eyes for a moment.
“Aren’t you going to come in and eat?” Jondalar said, coming back out of the cave.
“You go ahead, Ayla. There’s something I have to do first.”
44
Echozar glanced at the large piece of obsidian, then looked away. The ripples in the shiny black glass distorted his reflection, but nothing could change it, and he didn’t want to see himself today. He was dressed in a deerskin tunic, fringed with tufts of fur and decorated with beads made of hollow bird bones, dyed quills, and sharp animal teeth. He had never owned anything so fine. Joplaya had made it for him, for the ceremony that officially adopted him into the First Cave of the Lanzadonii.
As he walked into the main area of the cave, he felt the soft leather, smoothing it with reverence knowing her hands had made it. It almost hurt just to think about her. He had loved her from the first. It was she who had talked to him, listened to him, tried to draw him out. He would never have faced all those Zelandonii at the Summer Meeting that year if it hadn’t been for her, and when he saw how the men flocked around her, he wanted to die. It
had taken months to work up the courage to ask her: How could anyone who looked like him dare to dream of a woman like her? When she didn’t refuse, he nourished his hope. But she had put off giving him an answer for so long, he was sure it was her way of saying no.
Then, on the day Ayla and Jondalar arrived, when she asked him if he still wanted her, he couldn’t believe it. Wanted her! He had never wanted anything so much in his life. He waited for a time when he could talk to Dalanar alone. But the visitors were always with him. He didn’t want to bother them. And he was afraid to ask. Only the thought of losing his one chance for more happiness than he ever dreamed possible gave him the courage.
Then Dalanar said she was Jerika’s daughter and he’d have to talk it over with her, but all he had asked was did Joplaya agree, and did he love her. Did he love her? Did he love her? O Mother, did he love her!
Echozar took his place among the people waiting expectantly, and he felt his heart beat faster when he saw Dalanar get up and walk toward a hearth in the middle of the cave. A small wood sculpture of a well-rounded female was stuck in the ground in front of the hearth. The ample breasts, full stomach, and broad buttocks of the donii were accurately portrayed, but the head was little more than a knob with no features and the arms and legs were only suggested. Dalanar stood beside the hearth and faced the assembled group.
“First I want to announce that we are going to the Zelandonii Summer Meeting again this year,” Dalanar began, “and we invite any who want to join us to come. It’s a long trip for us, but I hope to persuade one of the younger zelandoni to return and make a home with us. We have no lanzadoni, and we need One Who Serves the Mother. We are growing, soon there will be a Second Cave, and someday the Lanzadonii will have their own Summer Meetings.
“There is another reason for going. Not only will the mating of Jondalar and Ayla be sanctified at the Matrimonial, we will have another reason to celebrate it this year, too.”
Dalanar picked up the wooden representation of the Great Earth Mother and nodded. Echozar was nervous, even though he knew this was only an announcement ceremony and much more casual than the elaborate Matrimonial would be, with its purifying rituals and taboos. When they both stood before him, Dalanar began.