The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

These were snug, sturdy structures, tight enough so that only in the older ones could light be seen through the cracks of the dried and warped wood. With the sandstone overhang to protect them from the worst elements of the weather, the dwellings were not maintained or caulked the way the boats were. They were lighted inside primarily by the stone-lined fireplace, or by opening the front.

The younger man looked in to see if his brother was still sleeping.

“Come on in,” Jondalar said, sniffling. He was sitting up on the fur-covered sleeping platform, with more furs piled around him and with a cup of something steaming in his hands.

“How’s your cold?” Thonolan asked, sitting on the edge of the platform.

“Cold’s worse, I’m better.”

“No one thought about your wet clo

thes, and that wind was really blowing down the river gorge by the time we got back.”

“I’m glad you found me.”

“Well, I’m really glad you’re feeling better” Thonolan seemed strangely at a loss for words. He fidgeted, got up and walked toward the opening, then walked back to his brother. “Is there anything I can get you?”

Jondalar shook his head and waited. Something was bothering his brother, and he was trying to get it out. He just needed time.

“Jondalar …” Thonolan started, then paused. “You’ve been living with Serenio and her son for a long time now.” For a moment, Jondalar thought he was going to make some reference to the unformalized status of the relationship, but he was wrong. “How does it feel to be man of your hearth?”

“You’re a mated man, a man of your hearth.”

“I know, but does it make any difference to have a child of your hearth? Jetamio’s been trying so hard to have a baby, and now … she lost another one, Jondalar.”

“I’m sorry …”

“I don’t care if she ever has a baby. I just don’t want to lose her,” Thonolan cried, his voice cracking. “I wish she’d stop trying.”

“I don’t think she has a choice. The Mother gives …”

“Then why won’t the Mother let her keep one!” Thonolan shouted, brushing past Serenio as he ran out.

“He told you about Jetamio … ?” Serenio asked. Jondalar nodded. “She held this one longer, but it was harder on her when she lost it. I’m glad she’s so happy with Thonolan. She deserves that much.”

“Will she be all right?”

“It’s not the first time a woman has lost a baby, Jondalar. Don’t worry about her—she’ll be fine. I see you found the tea. It’s peppermint, borage, and lavender, in case you were trying to guess. Shamud said it would help your cold. How are you feeling? I just came to see if you were awake yet.”

“I’m fine,” he said. He smiled and tried to look healthy.

“Then I think I’ll go back and sit with Jetamio.”

When she left, he put the cup aside and lay down again. His nose was stuffed and his head ached. He couldn’t exactly say what it was, but Serenio’s answer disturbed him. He didn’t want to think about it anymore—it gave him another ache deep in the pit of his stomach. It must be this cold, he thought.

16

Spring ripened into summer, and the fruits of the earth with it. As they matured, the young woman gathered them. It was habit more than need. She could have spared herself the effort. She already had abundance; there was food left over from the preceding year. But Ayla had no use for leisure time. She had no way to fill it.

Even with the additional activity of winter hunting, she hadn’t been able to keep herself busy enough, though she had cured the hide of nearly every animal they killed, sometimes making furs, other times dehairing to make leather. She had continued making baskets, mats, and carved bowls, and had accumulated enough tools, implements, and cave furnishings to satisfy a clan. She had looked forward to the summer’s food-gathering activities.

She had also looked forward to summer hunting and discovered that the method she had developed with Baby—with some adaptation to accommodate her lack of a horse—was still effective. The lion’s increasing skill made up the difference. If she had wished, she could have refrained from hunting. She not only had dried meat left over, but when Baby hunted alone successfully—which was more often the case than not—she didn’t hesitate to take a share of his kill. There was a unique relationship between the woman and the lion. She was mother, and therefore dominant; she was hunting partner, and therefore equal; and he was all she had to love.

Watching the wild lions, Ayla made some astute observations about their hunting habits, which Baby confirmed. Cave lions were nocturnal stalkers during the warm season, diurnal during the winter. Although he shed in spring, Baby still had a thick coat, and during the heat of a summer day, it was too hot to hunt. The energy expended during the chase made him too warm. Baby wanted nothing more than to sleep, preferably in the cool dark recesses of the cave. In winter, when winds howled off the northern glacier, nighttime temperatures dropped to a cold that could kill, despite a new heavy coat. Then, cave lions were happy to curl up in a windless cave. They were carnivores and adaptable. Thickness and coloration of coat could adapt with the climate, hunting habits with conditions, as long as there was sufficient prey.

She made one decision the morning after Whinney left, when she awoke and found Baby sleeping beside her with the carcass of a dappled fawn—the young of a giant deer. She would leave, there was no question in her mind about that, but not that summer. The young lion still needed her; he was too young to be left alone. No wild pride would accept him; the pride male would kill him. Until he was old enough to mate and start his own pride, he needed the security of her cave as much as she did.

Iza had told her to look for her own kind, to find her own mate, and she would, someday, continue her search. But she was relieved that she didn’t have to give up her freedom yet, for the company of people with unfamiliar ways. Though she wouldn’t admit it, she had a deeper reason. She didn’t want to leave until she was sure Whinney would not return. She missed the horse desperately. Whinney had been with her from the beginning, and Ayla loved her.

“Come on, you lazy thing,” Ayla said. “Let’s go for a walk and see if we can find anything to hunt. You didn’t go out last night.” She prodded the lion, then went out of the cave, signaling to him to follow. He lifted his head, made a huge yawn that exposed his sharp teeth, then got up and padded after her, reluctantly. Baby was no more hungry than she was, and would much rather have slept.

She had collected medicinal plants the day before, a task she enjoyed—and one filled with pleasant associations. During her young years with the Clan, gathering medicines for Iza had given her a chance to get away from the ever-watchful eyes that were so quick to disapprove of improper actions. It gave her a little breathing space to follow her natural inclinations. Later, she collected the plants for the joy of learning the medicine woman’s skills, and the knowledge was now part of her nature.

To her, the medicinal properties were so closely associated with each plant that she distinguished them as much by use as by appearance. The bunches of agrimony hanging head downward inside the warm dark cave were an infusion of the dried flowers and leaves useful for bruises and injuries to internal organs, as much as they were tall slender perennials with toothed leaves and tiny yellow flowers growing on tapering spikes.

Coltsfoot leaves, which resembled their name, spread out on woven drying racks, were asthma relief when smoke from the burning dried leaves was breathed, and a cough remedy with other ingredients in tea, and a pleasant seasoning for food. Bone mending and wound healing came to mind when she saw the large downy comfrey leaves beside the roots drying outside in the sun, and the colorful marigolds were healing for open wounds, ulcers, and skin sores. Chamomile was an aid to digestion and a mild wash for wounds, and the wild rose petals floating in a bowl of water in the sun were a fragrant astringent skin lotion.

She had gathered them to replace with fresh material herbs that had not been used. Though she had very little need for the full pharmacopoeia she maintained, she enjoyed it, and it kept her skills sharp. But with leaves, flowers, roots, and barks in various stages of preparation spread out everywhere, there was no point in gathering more—there was no room for them. She had nothing to do just then and she was bored.

She strolled down to the beach, then around the jutting wall and along the brush that bordered the stream, with the huge cave lion padding beside her. As he walked, he grunted the hnga, hnga sound that Ayla had learned was his normal speaking voice. Other lions made similar sounds, but each was distinctive, and she could recognize Baby’s voice from a long way off, just as she could identify his roar. It started deep in his chest with a series of grunts, then rose to a sonorous thunder at its full bass range that made her ears ring if she was

too close.

When she came to a boulder that was a usual resting place, she stopped—not really interested in hunting, but not sure what she wanted to do. Baby pushed against her, looking for attention. She scratched around his ears and deep in his mane. His coat was a shade darker than it had been in winter, though still beige, but his mane had grown in rufous, a deep rusty tan not far from the color of red ochre. He lifted his head so she could get under his chin, making a low rumbling growl of contentment. She reached to scratch the other side, then looked at him with new awareness. The level of his back reached just below her shoulder. He was nearly the height of Whinney but much more massive. She hadn’t realized he’d gotten so big.

The cave lion that roamed the steppes of that cold land broached by glaciers lived in an environment ideal for the style of hunting to which he was best suited. It was a continent of grassland crowded with a great abundance and variety of prey. Many of the animals were huge—bison and cattle half again as large as their later counterparts; giant deer with eleven-foot racks; woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. Conditions were favorable for at least one species of carnivore to develop to a size capable of hunting such large animals. The cave lion filled that niche, and filled it admirably. The lions of later generations were half the size, puny by comparison; the cave lion was the largest feline that ever lived.

Baby was a superior example of that supreme predator—huge, powerful, his coat sleek with youthful health and vigor—and totally complaisant under the delightful scratching of the young woman. She would have been defenseless had he chosen to attack, yet she didn’t think of him as dangerons; he was no more menacing than an overgrown kitten—and that was her defense.

Her control over him was unconscious, and he accepted it on those terms. Lifting and moving his head aside to show her where, Baby submitted to the sensuous ecstasy of her scratching, and she was enjoying it because he did. She stepped up on the boulder to reach over to his other side and was leaning over his back when another thought occurred to her. She didn’t even stop to consider it; she simply put her leg over and straddled his back as she had done so often with Whinney.