The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  “Yes. I told him. He’s very pleased.”

  “He should be. Have you told anyone else?”

  “Only Marthona, and Proleva, and now you.”

  “If it’s not generally known, we can surprise everyone at your Matrimonial and announce your good news, if you like,” Zelandoni said. “There are special words that can be part of the ceremony if the woman is already Blessed.”

  “I think I would like that,” Ayla said. “I’ve stopped marking my moon times, since my bleeding has stopped, but I’m wondering if I should start marking days again, to keep track of them until my baby is born. Jondalar taught me how to use the counting words, but I don’t know how to count that far.”

  “Do you find the counting words difficult, Ayla?”

  “Oh, no. I like using counting words,” she said. “Jondalar surprised me the first time he used them, though. Just from the marks I made on my sticks every night, he knew how long I lived in the valley. He said it was easier because I cut an extra line above the marks on the days when my moon time started, so I would be prepared for it. I seemed to have more trouble hunting when I was bleeding. I think animals could smell me. After a while I noticed that my bleeding always came when the waning moon reached the same shape, so I didn’t have to make the marks, but I made them anyway. You can’t always see the moon if it’s stormy or cloudy.”

  Zelandoni thought she was getting accustomed to the surprises Ayla could come up with in such an offhand way, as though it were nothing. But making counting marks when she bled and then making the connection to moon phases was rather astonishing for someone to make by herself.

  “Would you like to learn more counting words, and different ways to use them, Ayla?” the woman said. “They can be used to know when seasons are ready to change, before the changes are apparent, for example, or to count the days until your baby is born.”

  “Yes, I would,” Ayla said, smiling broadly. “I learned how to make marks from Creb, although I think it made him nervous when I did it. Most women of the Clan, or men, for that matter, couldn’t count much past three. Creb could make counting marks because he was The Mog-ur, but he didn’t have words for counting.”

  “I’ll show you how to count larger numbers,” the First said. “I think it’s best that you are having your children now, when you are young. You may not want to worry about taking care of young children when you are older. There is no telling what you may decide to do.”

  “I’m not so young, Zelandoni. I can count nineteen years, if Iza was right about how many years I was when she found me,” Ayla said.

  “You certainly look younger than you are.” A fleeting frown crossed Zelandoni’s face. “But it shouldn’t matter. You have a head start,” she said almost to herself, and finished in her thoughts, She is already a skilled healer, she won’t have to learn that before becoming a Zelandoni.

  “A head start on what?” Ayla asked, puzzled.

  “Uh … you have a head start on your family, since life has already begun,” Zelandoni said. “But I hope you don’t have too many children. You’re in good health, but too many can drain a woman, age her more quickly.”

  Ayla got a strong impression that Zelandoni did not want her to know what she was thinking and quickly said something else because she wanted to keep from telling her. It was her right, Ayla thought. She could refrain from mentioning what she was thinking if she chose, but it did make her wonder.

  Twilight had settled by the time they approached the campfire, and it was already getting hard to see. When they arrived at the fire trench, people greeted them and offered them food. Ayla realized she was hungry; it had been a full and busy afternoon. Zelandoni ate with them and planned to sleep at the camp of the Ninth Cave that night, then immediately got into a discussion with Marthona and Joharran about the upcoming hunt and the Search the zelandonia would make. She mentioned that Ayla would be joining them, which they seemed to think was entirely appropriate, but it made Ayla feel uneasy. She did not want to become one of Those Who Served The Mother, but circumstances seemed to be pulling her in that direction and she wasn’t happy about it.

  “We should get there early. I need to arrange to set up some targets and step off the distances,” Jondalar said as they walked out of the lodge the next morning. He was holding the cup of mint tea Ayla had made for him and began chewing on the end of the wintergreen twig she had recently peeled, to prepare it for him to clean his teeth.

  “I want to check on Whinney and Racer first. I hardly saw them at all yesterday. Why don’t you go ahead and get things ready. I’ll keep Wolf with me and meet you later,” Ayla said.

  “Don’t take too long. People will be gathering early, and I’d really like you to show them what you can do. It’s one thing for me to cast a spear a long way, but when they see that a woman, using the spear-thrower, can fling a spear farther than any of the men, that will make them interested,” Jondalar said.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I want to brush them down, and check Racer’s eye. It seemed red, like he got something in it. I may want to treat it,” Ayla said.

  “Do you think he’s all right? Should I come with you?” he said, full of concern.

  “It didn’t look that bad. I’m sure he’s fine. I just want to check it. You go on, I won’t be long,” she said.

  Jondalar nodded as he scrubbed at his teeth, then swished out his mouth with the mint tea. He drank down the balance and smiled. “That always makes me feel better,” he said.

  “It does make your mouth feel clean, and wakes you up,” Ayla said. She had made his tea and prepared his twig nearly every morning since shortly after she met him, and had begun to follow his morning ritual. “I noticed it especially when I was sick in the morning.”

  “Are you still having morning sickness?” he asked.

  “No, not anymore, but I do notice that my stomach is getting bigger,” she said.

  He smiled. “I like your bigger stomach,” he said, then reached over and put an arm around her shoulders and the other hand on her belly. “I especially like what’s in it.”

  She smiled back. “I do, too,” she said.

  He kissed her with warmth and feeling. “The thing I miss most about traveling is that we could stop and share Pleasures whenever we felt like it. Now, it seems there is always something to do and it’s not as easy to stop and do what we want whenever we want.” He nuzzled her neck, felt the fullness of her breasts, and kissed her again. “Maybe I don’t have to get to the spear-throwing range so early,” he added with a huskiness in his voice.

  “Yes, you do,” she said with a laugh. “But if you want to stay …”

  “No, you are right, but I’m going to look for you later.”

  Jondalar headed for the main camp and Ayla went back into the lodge. When she came out, she was carrying her backpack, the one with the holders for spears and spear-thrower, into which she had packed a few things. She whistled for Wolf and headed upstream along the small creek. Both horses knew she was coming and had strained to come toward her as far as their lead ropes would allow. Ayla noticed that the ropes had gotten caught in some of the vegetation. Besides the long grass that had twisted itself around both leads, Whinney’s rope had an entire dry bush tangled in it, and Racer had pulled a living shrub out of the ground, roots and all. Maybe a surround would work better than those ropes, she thought.

  Ayla removed both their halters and lead ropes, and while she was at it, she checked Racer’s eye. It was a little red, but otherwise seemed fine. Racer and Wolf rubbed noses and then, so glad to be free of the restricting rope, Racer began running in a large circle, and Wolf chased after him. Ayla started brushing Whinney, and when she looked up, Racer was chasing Wolf. The next time she looked, Wolf was chasing Racer again. She stopped brushing for a while to watch them. As Wolf got close to Racer, the young stallion actually slowed down a bit until the wolf passed him and raced ahead. When they came full circle, Wolf slowed down and let Racer pass him.
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  At first, Ayla thought she was imagining that they were doing it on purpose, but as she continued to watch them, it soon became obvious that they were playing a game with each other, and enjoying it. Both young male animals, so full of life and energy, had discovered a way to run some of it off and have fun doing it. Ayla smiled and shook her head, wishing Jondalar were there to enjoy their antics with her, then went back to brushing the mare. Whinney, too, was beginning to show her pregnancy, but she appeared to be in good health.

  When Ayla finished with her horse, she saw that Racer was grazing quietly and Wolf was nowhere in sight. Off exploring, she thought. She whistled the particular tones that Jondalar had developed to call his horse. He looked up and started toward her. He had nearly reached her when another whistle sounded, repeating the exact tones. They both looked for the whistler. Ayla thought it must be Jondalar, back for some reason, but when she looked up she saw a boy coming in her direction.

  He was not familiar to her, and she wondered what he wanted and why he had imitated her particular whistle. When he neared, she thought he could count perhaps nine or ten years, then she noticed that one of his arms was somewhat stunted, shorter than the other, and hung a little awkwardly, as though he didn’t have full control of it. The boy reminded her of Creb, whose arm had been amputated at the elbow when he was a boy, and she warmed to him immediately.

  “Are you the one who whistled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you whistle like I did?” Ayla said.

  “I never heard a whistle like that. I wanted to see if I could do it,” he said.

  “You did,” she said. “Are you looking for someone?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m just looking. Someone told me there were horses here, but I didn’t know anyone had set up camp. He didn’t tell me that. Everyone else is by Middle Creek,” he said.

  “We just recently arrived. How long have you been here?”

  “I was born here.”

  “Oh, then you are of the Nineteenth Cave.”

  “Yes. Why do you talk funny?”

  “I was not born here. I come from far away. I used to be Ayla of the Lion Camp of the Mamutoi, now I am Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii,” she said, then stepped toward him, holding out both hands in the manner of a formal greeting.

  He became a little flustered because he could not reach out well with his partially paralyzed arm. Ayla stretched a bit for his crippled limb and took both hands in hers as though it were perfectly normal, but she noted that his hand was smaller and misshapen, and the little finger was fused to the one next to it. She held his hands for a moment and smiled.

  Then, as though he just remembered, the boy said, “I am Lanidar of the Nineteenth Cave of the Zelandonii.” He was about to let go, but added, “The Nineteenth Cave welcomes you to the Summer Meeting, Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii.”

  “You whistle very well. Your whistle was a very good copy of mine. Do you like to whistle?” she asked when she let go.

  “I guess so.”

  “Can I ask you not to make that whistle sound again?” she said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I use that sound to call the horse, this one, the stallion. If you whistle like that, I’m afraid he will think you are calling him and it will confuse him,” Ayla explained. “If you like to whistle, I can teach you other sounds to whistle.”

  “Like what?”

  Ayla looked around and noticed a chickadee perched on the limb of a nearby tree, singing the chick-a-dee-dee-dee sound that gave the bird its name. She listened for a moment, then repeated the sound. The boy looked startled, and the bird stopped singing for a moment, then started up again. Ayla repeated the sound. The black-capped bird sang again, looking around.

  “How do you do that?” the boy said.

  “I’ll teach you if you like. You could learn, you’re a good whistler,” she said.

  “Can you whistle like other birds, too?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Any one you want.”

  “How about a meadow lark?”

  Ayla closed her eyes for a moment, then whistled a series of tones that sounded exactly like a lark that had soared high into the sky and swooped down, making its glorious melody.

  “Can you really teach me to do that?” the boy asked, looking at her with wonder in his eyes.

  “If you really want to learn,” Ayla said.

  “How did you learn?”

  “I practiced. If you have patience, sometimes the bird will come to you when you whistle its song,” the woman replied. Ayla remembered when she lived alone in her valley and taught herself to whistle and imitate the sounds of birds. Once she started feeding them, there were several that always came at her call and ate out of her hand.

  “Can you whistle other things?” Lanidar asked, completely intrigued by the strange woman who talked funny and whistled so well.

  Ayla thought for a moment, then perhaps because the boy reminded her of Creb, she began to whistle an eerie melody that sounded like a flute playing. He had heard flutes many times, but he had never heard anything like it. The haunting music was totally unfamiliar to him. It was the sound of the flute played by the mog-ur at the Clan Gathering she had gone to with Brun’s clan when she still lived with them. Lanidar listened until she stopped.

  “I never heard whistling like that,” he said.

  “Did you like it?” she asked.

  “Yes, but it was a little scary, too. Like it came from a place far away,” Lanidar said.

  “It did,” Ayla said, then she smiled and pierced the air with a sharp, commanding trill. Before long, Wolf came bounding out of the long grass of the field.

  “It’s a wolf!” the boy screamed with fear.

  “It’s all right,” she said, holding Wolf close to her. “The wolf is my friend. I walked through the main camp with him yesterday. I thought you would know that he was here, along with the horses.”

  The boy calmed down, but still looked at Wolf with large round eyes full of apprehension.

  “I went with my mother to pick raspberries yesterday. Nobody even told me you were here. They just said there were some horses in the Upper Meadow,” Lanidar said. “Everybody was talking about some kind of spear-throwing thing some man wanted to show. I’m not good at throwing a spear, so I decided I’d look for the horses instead.”

  Ayla wondered if the omission was on purpose, if someone was trying to trick him the way Marona had tried to trick her. Then she realized that a boy of his age who went berry picking with his mother probably led a pretty lonely life. She got a sense that the boy with a crippled arm, who could not throw a spear, did not have many friends and that the other boys made fun of him and tried to trick him. But he did have one good arm. He could learn to throw a spear, especially using a spear-thrower.

  “Why aren’t you good at throwing a spear?” she asked.

  “Can’t you see?” he said, holding out his malformed arm and looking at it with loathing.

  “But you have another arm that is perfectly good,” she said.

  “Everybody always holds their extra spears with their other arm. Besides, nobody wanted to teach me. They said I could never hit a target, anyway,” the boy said.

  “What about the man of your hearth?” Ayla asked.

  “I live with my mother, and her mother. I guess there was a man of the hearth once, my mother pointed him out to me, but he left her a long time ago, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. He didn’t like it when I tried to visit him. He seemed embarrassed. Sometimes a man will come and live with us for a while, but none of them bother with me much,” the boy said.

  “Would you like to see a spear-thrower? I have one with me,” Ayla said.

  “Where did you get one?” Lanidar asked.

  “I know the man who made it. He’s the man I’m going to mate. I’ll
be going to help him show his spear-thrower as soon as I finish with the horses.”

  “I guess I could look at it,” the boy said.

  Her backpack was on the ground nearby. She got her spear-thrower and a couple of spears and walked back.

  “This is how it works,” she said, taking a spear and laying it on top of the strange-looking implement. She made sure the hole carved into the butt end of the spear was up against the small hook at the back of the narrow board with the groove down the middle, then put her fingers through the loops attached to the front end. She sighted down the field, then launched the spear.

  “That spear went a long way!” Lanidar said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man throw a spear that far.”

  “Probably not. That’s what makes the spear-thrower such a good hunting weapon. I think you could throw a spear with this. Come here, I’ll show you how to hold it.”

  Ayla could see that her spear-thrower was not made for someone of Lanidar’s size, but it was good enough to demonstrate the principle of leverage behind it. It was his right arm that was deformed, which had forced him to develop his left arm. Whether he would naturally have been left-handed if his right arm had developed properly didn’t matter. He was left-handed now, and he was strong on that side. She didn’t worry about aiming for the moment, but she showed him how to pull back and cast the spear. Then she set it up and let him do it. The spear flew high and wide, but quite far, and the grin on Lanidar’s face was ecstatic.

  “I threw that spear. Look how far it went!” he nearly shouted. “Can you actually hit something with it?”

  “If you practice,” she said, smiling. She looked around the field, but didn’t see anything. She turned to Wolf, who’d been lying on his belly with his head up, watching the whole thing. “Wolf, go find something for me,” she said, although the hand signal she gave him said more.

  He jumped up and raced into the meadow of full-grown grass turning from green to gold. Ayla followed behind slowly, and the boy walked behind her. Before long she saw movement of the grass ahead, then caught sight of a gray hare darting away from the wolf. She had the spear poised, watching carefully, and when she saw the direction it would likely bound the next time, she cast the small spear. It landed true, and when she reached it, the wolf was standing over it, looking up at her.