by Jean M. Auel
“I didn’t know anyone was in here, I don’t want to disturb you.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” Ayla said at the same time, then smiled. “I really am glad to see you, Brukeval. My torch died.”
“I noticed,” he said. “Why don’t I walk you out? That is, if you are ready to go.”
“I’ve been in here too long,” she said. “I’m cold. I’ll be glad to feel the sun. I should have paid attention.”
“It’s easy to get distracted in this cave. It’s so beautiful, and feels so … I don’t know, special,” he said, holding the light high between them as they started out.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“It must have been exciting for you to be the first one to see it. We’ve been on these slopes so many times, I couldn’t even say all the counting words, yet no one found it until you came,” Brukeval said.
“Just to see it is exciting, being the first one doesn’t matter. I think it must be just as exciting for anyone the first time they see it. Have you been here before?” Ayla asked.
“Yes. Everyone was talking about it, so before it got dark, I got a torch and came to see it. I didn’t have time to see much, the sun was going down. Just enough to make me decide to come back today,” Brukeval said.
“Well, I’m grateful you did,” Ayla said as they started up the slope of the entranceway. “I probably could have gotten out, a little light reaches back there, and Wolf would have helped me, but I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see your torch corning toward me.”
Brukeval looked down and noticed the wolf. “Yes, I’m sure he would have. I didn’t see him before. He’s special, too, isn’t he?”
“He is to me. Have you met him yet? There’s a kind of formal introduction that I do with him. He understands then that you are a friend,” Ayla said.
“I’d like to be your friend,” Brukeval said.
The way he said it made Ayla look at him, quickly, in her unobtrusive Clan woman way. She felt a chill and a sense of foreboding. There seemed to be more in his statement than a wish for friendship. She sensed a yearning for her and then decided she didn’t want to believe it. Why should Brukeval yearn for her? They hardly knew each other. She smiled at him, partly to cover her disquiet, as they walked out of the cave.
“Then let’s introduce you to Wolf,” she said.
She took Brukeval’s hand and went through the process of giving Wolf his scent in the context of her approval.
“I don’t think I ever told you how much I admired you that day you faced Marona down,” he said when she was through. “She can be a cruel and vicious woman. I know, I lived with her when I was growing up. We’re considered cousins, far cousins, but her mother was the closest relation to my mother after she died, who could nurse a baby, so she was stuck with me. She accepted the responsibility, but she didn’t like it.”
“I admit, I don’t care much for Marona,” Ayla said, “but some people think she may not be able to have children. If that is true, I feel sorry for her.”
“I’m not sure if she can’t, or just doesn’t want to. Some think she just makes sure that she loses it whenever she’s Blessed. She wouldn’t make a decent mother anyway. She doesn’t know how to think of anyone but herself,” Brukeval said. “Not like Lanoga. She’ll be a wonderful mother.”
“She already is,” Ayla said.
“And thanks to you, there’s a good chance Lorala will live,” he said. The way he was looking at her made Ayla uncomfortable again. She looked down and petted Wolf as a distraction.
“It’s the mothers who are nursing her, not me,” she said.
“But no one else bothered to find out that the baby wasn’t getting any milk, or cared enough to get help for Lorala. I’ve seen how you are with Lanoga. You treat her like she’s worth something.”
“Of course she’s worth something,” Ayla said. “She’s an admirable girl, and she’s going to be a wonderful woman.”
“Yes, she is, but she’s still part of the lowest-ranked family in the Ninth Cave,” Brukeval said. “I’d mate her and share my status with her, it doesn’t do me any good, anyway, but I doubt if she’d want me. I’m too old for her, and too … well … no woman wants me. I do hope she finds someone worthy of her.”
“So do I, Brukeval. But why do you think no woman wants you?” Ayla protested. “I understand you have a ranking in the Ninth Cave that is near the first, and Jondalar says that you are an excellent hunter who contributes a lot to the Cave. Jondalar thinks a lot of you, Brukeval. If I were a Zelandonii woman looking for a likely mate, and if I weren’t going to mate Jondalar, I would consider you. You have so much to offer.”
He watched her carefully, trying to make sure that she wasn’t saying those things just so she could twist them around in her next breath into a condescending sarcasm the way Marona used to do. But Ayla seemed sincere and her feelings genuine.
“Well, you’re not looking, I’m sorry to say,” Brukeval said, “but if you ever decide to start, let me know.” Then he smiled, trying to make it seem like a joke.
From the first moment he saw her, Brukeval knew she was the woman he had always dreamed of. The trouble was, she was going to mate Jondalar. What a lucky man, he thought, but then, he always was lucky. I hope he appreciates what he has, but if he doesn’t, I would. I’d take her in a heartbeat, if she would have me.
They looked up when they heard the sound of voices and saw several people coming from the direction of the camp of the Ninth Cave. The two tall men who looked so much alike were immediately identifiable. Ayla waved and smiled at Jondalar and Dalanar. They all recognized her and waved back. The two tall young women with them couldn’t have looked more different, and though they were considered cousins, it was far cousins, but they both had a close connection to Jondalar. The complex family ties of the Zelandonii had been explained to Ayla, and she thought about their relationships as she watched them approach.
Among the Zelandonii, only children of the same woman were called brothers and sisters; children of the same man’s hearth were considered cousins, not siblings. Folara and Jondalar were sister and brother because they shared the same mother, though the men of their hearths were different; Joplaya was his close cousin because although Dalanar was the man of the hearth to both of them, they had different mothers. But while a sibling relationship wasn’t acknowledged, it was understood. Close cousins, especially the ones also called hearth cousins, were too close to mate with each other.
The last person who was with them was Echozar, Joplaya’s Promised. He was as distinctive in his general shape and size as the tall men were, especially to Ayla. Joplaya and Echozar would be mated during the same Matrimonial as she and Jondalar, and couples who shared the same ceremony often developed strong friendships. She wished that could be true, but they lived far apart and it was not likely. As they got closer, Ayla noticed that Joplaya glanced at Jondalar now and then, and surprisingly, she didn’t mind. She felt an empathetic sorrow for her. She understood Joplaya’s melancholy. She, too, had once been Promised to the wrong man, but for Joplaya there would be no last-moment reprieve.
Close cousins were often raised together, or lived nearby and knew they were close kin and not available to be considered for mating. But when Jondalar went to live with the man of his hearth, after the fight in which he knocked out the two front teeth of the man now known as Madroman, he was already a teenager. The daughter of Dalanar’s hearth, Joplaya, was a little younger, but neither had known each other while they were growing up.
Dalanar was delighted to have both his hearth children together and wanted them to get to know each other. He decided that one way was to train them both in the art of flint-knapping, which would give them something in common to talk about. It was, in fact, a very good idea, but he didn’t know what effect the youngster who was so much like himself would have on Joplaya. She had always adored the man of her hearth, and when Jondalar came, it was all too easy to transfer that overpowering love
to her close cousin. Jerika saw it, but both Dalanar and Jondalar were unaware of it. Joplaya always couched her feelings about him in terms of jokes, and they, knowing that close cousins couldn’t mate, took it at face value and assumed that she was only teasing.
There were relatively few people in Dalanar’s Cave of Lanzadonii, and none that offered much to a beautiful and intelligent young woman. After Jondalar left on his Journey, Jerika urged Dalanar to take the Lanzadonii Cave to Zelandonii Summer Meetings occasionally. They both hoped that Joplaya would find someone, and a great many young men were interested in her, but she felt different and self-conscious because people stared at her. And she could find no one with whom she was as comfortable as she had been with her cousin Jondalar.
She knew that occasionally some cousins did mate—far cousins, to be sure—but she chose to forget that and fantasized that on his Journey Jondalar would decide that he loved her as she loved him. She knew the dream was unlikely, but she passionately hoped that someday he would come home and claim her as his one true love. Instead, he returned with Ayla. She was devastated, but she saw the love he felt for the foreign woman and knew that her dream was shattered.
The one man with whom she had developed some affinity was a new member of Dalanar’s Cave, a man who was also stared at wherever he went, Echozar, a man of mixed spirits. Joplaya was the one who helped him integrate into their Cave, made him understand that he was accepted by Dalanar and the Lanzadonii, and even helped him with his language skills. And she was the one who coaxed his story out of him.
His mother had been raped by a man of the Others, who also killed her mate. When she gave birth, she was cursed as a bad-luck woman because her mate had been killed and her son was deformed. She left her clan, ready to die, but was rescued by Andovan, an older man who had run away from a vicious leader of the S’Armunai. He had lived for a while with a Zelandonii Cave, but was not comfortable with people whose customs were so different from his own. He moved away and lived by himself until he found the Clan woman and her son. Together they raised him. Echozar learned the Clan language of signs from his mother, and spoken language from Andovan, though it was a mixture of his own language and the Zelandonii he had learned. But when he reached manhood, Andovan died. His mother couldn’t stand to live alone and succumbed to the death curse that had been imposed on her. She died shortly after Andovan, leaving Echozar alone.
The young man didn’t want to live alone. He tried to return to a clan, but they thought of him as deformed and refused to accept him. And though he could speak, he was rejected by the Caves as an abomination of mixed spirits. Out of desperation, he tried to kill himself, and woke up to Dalanar’s smiling face, who found him injured, but not dead, and brought him back to his Cave. The Lanzadonii took him in, and he idolized the tall man, but it was Joplaya that he loved.
She had been kind to him, talked to him, listened to him, even made him a beautiful decorated tunic for his adoption ceremony into the Lanzadonii. He loved her so much, it hurt to think about it, but he didn’t think he had a chance. He had struggled with himself for a long time to get up enough courage to ask if she would be his mate, and could hardly believe it when she finally accepted. It was after her hearth cousin Jondalar returned with Ayla, both of whom he liked immediately. They didn’t treat him as though he were different.
Wherever Echozar went, people stared at him. The combined characteristics that he inherited from the Clan and the Others were not the most appealing. In height, he was as tall as an average man of the Others, but he retained the powerful, barrel-chested physique, relatively short, bowed legs, and hairy body of the Clan. His neck was long and he could speak, he even had a slight chin, like the Others, though it receded, making it look weak. His prominent nose and heavy browridges with unruly eyebrows that crossed his forehead in a single line were entirely Clan. His forehead was not. It rose up as straight and high as any man of the Others.
The combination seemed outlandish to many people, as though he didn’t quite fit together, but not to Ayla. She had grown up with the Clan and had consequently adopted their standard of beauty. She had always thought of herself as big and ugly. She was too tall, and her face was too bland and fiat. Though she may have thought the look of the mixture was attractive, to everyone else Echozar was extraordinarily ugly, except for his eyes. Liquid dark at night and sparkling with highlights of hazel in the sun, his large, deep brown eyes were profoundly intense, acutely compelling, and highly intelligent, and when he looked at her, they revealed his love for Joplaya.
Though she did not love him, Joplaya did feel a kind of kinship with Echozar and a genuine respect. Though people stared at her because of her exotic beauty, it still made her feel different, and she hated it as much as he did. She also felt comfortable with him, she could talk to him. She decided if she couldn’t have the man she loved, she would mate the man who loved her, and she knew she would never find a man who loved her more than Echozar.
As the group from the camp drew near, Ayla noticed Brukeval become tense. He was staring at Echozar, and there was no friendliness in his expression. It made her aware of the similarities and the differences between them. In Echozar’s case, it was his mother who had given birth to a child that was mixed; with Brukeval, it was his grandmother. Echozar’s Clan characteristics were definitely more pronounced, but to her—and to everyone there—the mixture was obvious in both. Brukeval did, however, resemble the Others more than Echozar.
Though she was learning to appreciate what was pleasing to the Others, she still found the strong Clan features attractive. She had meant it when she told Brukeval that she couldn’t understand why he thought no woman would want him. She probably would consider him, if she weren’t mating Jondalar and if she were a Zelandonii woman. But she knew she wasn’t really a Zelandonii woman, at least not yet, and she personally wouldn’t consider Brukeval at all. While she thought he was handsome, and that he did have a lot to offer, there was something about him that disturbed her. The member of the Clan that he reminded her of most was Broud, and the way he was looking at Echozar right now explained why.
“Greetings, Brukeval,” Jondalar said, walking up to the man with a smile on his face. “I think you know Dalanar, the man of my hearth, but have you met my cousin Joplaya, and her Promised, Echozar?” Jondalar was prepared to do the formal introductions, and Echozar had raised his hands in readiness, but before he could begin, Brukeval interrupted.
“I have no desire to touch a flathead!” he said, putting his hands down to his sides, then he turned aside and stalked away.
Everyone was stunned. It was Folara who finally spoke.
“How could he be so rude!” she said. “I know he blames flatheads for his mother’s death—I guess I should say the Clan now—but that was unforgivable. I know mother taught Brukeval better manners than that, if no one else did. She would be appalled.”
“My mother may have been flathead or Clan. You can say it any way you want, but I am neither,” Echozar said. “I am Lanzadonii.”
“Yes, you are,” Joplaya said, reaching for his hand. “And soon we will be mated.”
“We know there is Clan in Brukeval’s lineage, too,” Dalanar said. “It’s obvious. If he can’t bear to touch someone with that background, how can he stand himself?”
“He can’t. That’s his problem,” Jondalar said. “Brukeval hates himself. He was teased a lot when he was young, other children used to call him a flathead, and he always denied it.”
“But he can’t change what he is no matter how much he denies it,” Ayla said.
No one had lowered their voices, and Brukeval had excellent hearing. He heard everything that was said. He had another characteristic of the Others that the Clan lacked, he cried tears, and as he walked away, tears filled his eyes. Even her, he said to himself after Ayla’s comment. I thought she was different. I thought she meant it when she said she would consider me if Jondalar were gone, but she thinks I’m a flat-head, too. She didn’t mea
n it. She would never consider me. The more he thought about it, the more angry he became. It’s not right for her to encourage a person when she doesn’t mean it. I am not a flathead, no matter what she says, no matter what any of them say. I am not a flathead!
It was dark, but the sky had already changed from black to inky blue, with a hint of gold outlining the hills on the eastern horizon, when the group from the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii and the First Cave of the Lanzadonii started from their camp. They used torches to make their way to the place where Jondalar had demonstrated the spear-thrower, and they were glad to see the bonfire burning in the middle of the open stretch of trampled ground that had once been a field of grass. Some hunters had already arrived. As the sky lightened, the cool morning mist rising from The River began filling the spaces between trees and brush on the periphery and mingling with the people standing around the fire.
The morning chorus of birds was in full throat, trilling, chirping, twittering, and calling over the low murmur of voices, highlighting the mood of anticipation. Holding Whinney’s halter rope, Ayla knelt down and put an arm around Wolf, then smiled at Jondalar, who was stroking Racer to keep him calm. She looked around in wonder; it was the largest hunting party she had ever seen. There were far too many people for her to count. She recalled that Zelandoni had offered to teach her how to use the words to count larger numbers, and she decided to ask her. She would like to be able to say how many people were there milling around.
Women who were about to mate did not usually participate in the pre-Matrimonial hunt, there were usually certain restrictions and various other activities planned for them. The First did a cursory run-through with her so she could be excused. This hunt was going to be a test of using horses, and trying out Jondalar’s spear-thrower, and they wanted her. Ayla was glad that she had been allowed to join the hunt, in spite of her upcoming Matrimonial. She had always enjoyed hunting. If she hadn’t learned to hunt when she lived alone in her valley, she might not have survived, and it had given her a certain sense of self-reliance.