The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

“You saw a dirk-toothed tiger! I didn’t know they were real! One old man used to tell stories to the youngsters at Summer Meetings about seeing one when he was young, but not everyone believed him. You really saw one?” He was wishing he could have been with her.

She nodded and shivered, tightening her shoulders and shutting her eyes. “Make Whinney fright. Stalk. Sling make go. Whinney, I run.”

Jondalar’s eyes opened wide at her halting recitation of the incident. “You drove off a dirk-toothed tiger with your sling? Good Mother, Ayla!”

“Much meat. Tiger … not need Whinney. Sling make go.” She wanted to say more, to describe the incident, to express her fear, to share it with him, but she didn’t have the means. She was too tired to visualize the motions and then try to think how the words fit in.

No wonder she’s exhausted, Jondalar thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested checking the fire, but she did get two deer. That took nerve, though, facing down a dirk-toothed tiger. She is quite a woman.

Ayla looked at her hands, then headed down the path to the beach again. She took the torch which Jondalar had left stuck in the ground, carried it to the stream, and held it up to look around. Pulling up a stalk of pigweed, she crushed the leaves and roots in her hand, wet the mixture, and added a bit of sand. Then she scoured her hands, cleaned the travel grime off her face, and went back up.

Jondalar had started cooking rocks heating, and she was grateful. A cup of hot tea was just what she wanted. She had left food behind for him and hoped he wasn’t expecting her to cook. She couldn’t worry about meals now. She had two deer to skin and cut up into pieces for drying.

She had searched for animals that were not scorched, since she wanted the hides. But when she started to work, she remembered that she had planned to make some new sharp knives. Knives dulled with use—tiny spalls breaking off along the cutting edge. It was usually easier to make new ones and then turn the old into some other tool, such as a scraper.

The dull knife pushed her beyond her limit. She hacked at the hide while tears of weariness and defeat filled her eyes and spilled over.

“Ayla, what’s wrong?” Jondalar asked.

She only hacked more violently at the deer. She couldn’t explain. He took the dull knife out of her hand and pulled her up. “You’re tired. Why don’t you go lie down and rest for a while?”

She shook her head, though she desperately wanted to do as he said. “Skin deer, dry meat. No wait, hyena come.”

He didn’t bother to suggest they bring the deer in; she wasn’t thinking clearly. “I’ll watch it,” he said. “You need some rest. Go in and lie down, Ayla.”

Gratitude filled her. He would watch it! She hadn’t thought to ask him; she wasn’t used to having someone else to help. She stumbled into the cave, shaking with relief, and fell onto her furs. She wanted to tell Jondalar how grateful she was, and she felt tears rise again, knowing that her attempt would be ineffectual. She couldn’t talk!

Jondalar came in and went out of the cave several times during the night, occasionally standing and watching the sleeping woman, his brow furrowed with concern. She was restless, flailing her arms and mumbling unintelligibly in her dreams.

Ayla was walking through fog, crying for help. A tall woman, shrouded in mist, her face indistinct, held out her arms. “I said I’d be careful, Mother, but where did you go?” Ayla muttered. “Why didn’t you come when I called you. I called and called, but you never came. Where have you been? Mother? Mother! Don’t go away again! Stay here! Mother, wait for me! Don’t leave me!”

The vision of the tall woman faded, and the mists cleared. In her place stood another woman, stocky and short. Her strong muscular legs were slightly bowed with an outward curvature, but she walked straight and upright. Her nose was large and aquiline, with a high prominent bridge, and her jaw, jutting forward, was chinless. Her forehead was low and sloped back, but her head was very large, her neck short and thick. Heavy brow ridges shaded large brown intelligent eyes that were filled with love and sorrow.

She beckoned. “Iza!” Ayla cried out to her. “Iza, help me! Please help me!” But Iza only looked at her quizzically. “Iza, don’t you hear me? Why can’t you understand?”

“No one can understand you if you don’t talk properly,” said another voice. She saw a man using a staff to help him walk. He was old and lame. One arm had been amputated at the elbow. The left side of his face was hideously scarred, and his left eye was missing, but his good right eye held strength, wisdom, and compassion. “You must learn to talk, Ayla,” Creb said with his one-handed gestures, but she could hear him. He spoke with Jondalar’s voice.

“How can I talk? I can’t remember! Help me, Creb!”

“Your totem is the Cave Lion, Ayla,” the old Mog-ur said.

With a tawny flash, the feline sprang for the aurochs and wrestled the huge reddish brown wild cow to the ground bawling in terror. Ayla gasped, and the dirk-toothed tiger snarled at her, fangs and muzzle dripping blood. He came for her, his long sharp fangs growing longer, and sharper. She was in a tiny cave trying to squeeze herself into the solid rock at her back. A cave lion roared.

“No! No!” she cried.

A gigantic paw with claws outstretched reached in and raked her left thigh with four parallel gashes.

“No! No!” she called out. “I can’t! I can’t!” The mist swirled around her. “I can’t remember!”

The tall woman held out her arms. “I’ll help you …”

For an instant the mist cleared, and Ayla saw a face not unlike her own. An aching nausea shook her, and a sour stench of wetness and rot issued from a crack opening in the ground.

“Mother! Motherrr!”

“Ayla! Ayla! What’s wrong?” Jondalar shook her. He had been out on the ledge when he heard her scream in an unfamiliar language. He hobbled in faster than he thought he could move.

She sat up and he took her in his arms. “Oh, Jondalar! It was my dream, my nightmare,” she sobbed.

“It’s all right, Ayla. It’s all right now.”

“It was an earthquake. That’s what happened. She was killed in an earthquake.”

“Who was killed in an earthquake?”

“My mother. And Creb, too, later. Oh, Jondalar, I hate earthquakes!” She shuddered in his arms.

Jondalar took her by both shoulders and pushed her back so he could look at her. “Tell me about your dream, Ayla,” he said.

“I’ve had those dreams as long as I can remember—they always come back. In one, I am in a small cave, and a claw reaches in. I think that is how my totem marked me. The other I could never remember, but I always woke up shaking and sick Except this time. I saw her, Jondalar. I saw my mother!”

“Ayla, do you hear yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re talking, Ayla. You’re talking!”

Ayla had known how to speak once, and, though the language was not the same, she had learned the feel, the rhythm, the sense of spoken language. She had forgotten how to speak verbally because her survival depended upon another mode of communication, and because she wanted to forget the tragedy that had left her alone. Though it wasn’t a conscious effort, she had been hearing and memorizing more than the vocabulary of Jondalar’s language. The syntax, grammar, stress, were part of the sounds she heard when he spoke.

Like a child first learning to speak, she was born with the aptitude and the desire, and she needed only the constant exposure. But her motivation was stronger than a child’s, and her memory more developed. She learned faster. Though she could not reproduce some of his tones and inflections exactly, she had become a native speaker of his language.

“I am! I can! Jondalar, I can think in words!”

They both noticed then that he was holding her, and both became self-conscious about it. He let his arms drop.

“Is it morning already?” Ayla said, noticing the light streaming in through the cave opening and the smoke hole above it. She

threw back the covers. “I didn’t know I would sleep so long. Great Mother! I’ve got to start that meat drying.” She had picked up his epithets as well. He smiled. It was rather awe-inspiring to hear her suddenly speaking, but hearing his phrases coming out of her mouth, spoken with her unique accent, was funny.