The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

“What is the Gift of Pleasure?”

“That’s right! You’ve never known Pleasures, have you?” he said, amazed when he considered the idea. “No wonder you didn’t know when I … You’re a woman who’s been blessed with a child without ever having First Rites. Your Clan must be very unusual. Everyone I met on my Journey knew about the Mother and Her Gifts. The Gift of Pleasure is when a man and a woman feel they want each other, and give themselves to each other.”

“It is when a man is full and must relieve his needs with a woman, isn’t that right?” Ayla said. “It’s when he puts his organ in the place where babies come out. That is the Gift of Pleasure?”

“It’s that, but it’s much more.”

“Perhaps, but everyone told me I’d never have a baby because my totem was too strong. They were all surprised. He wasn’t deformed, either. He just looked a little like me, and a little like them. But it was only after Broud kept giving me the signal that I became pregnant. No one else wanted me—I’m too big and ugly. Even at the Clan Gathering there wasn’t a man who would take me, though I had Iza’s status when they accepted me as her daughter.”

Something about her story began to bother Jondalar, nagged at him, but floated just out of reach

“You said the medicine woman found you—what was her name? Iza? Where did she find you? Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know. Iza said I was born to the Others, other people like me. Like you, Jondalar. I don’t remember anything before I lived with the Clan—I didn’t even remember my mother’s face. You are the only man I’ve seen who looks like me.”

Jondalar was feeling an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach as he listened.

“I learned about a man of the Others from a woman at the Clan Gathering. It made me afraid of them, until I met you. She had a baby, a girl that resembled Durc so much, she could have been mine. Oda wanted to arrange a mating between her daughter and my son. They said her baby was deformed, too, but I think that man of the Others started her baby when he forced her to relieve his needs with him.”

“The man forced her?”

“And killed her first daughter, too. Oda was with two other women, and many of the Others came, but they didn’t give the signal. When one of them grabbed her, Oda’s first baby fell and hit her head on a rock.”

Suddenly Jondalar remembered the gang of young men from a Cave far to the west. He wanted to reject the conclusions he was beginning to draw. Yet, if one gang of young men would do it, why not another? “Ayla, you keep saying you are not like the Clan. How are they different?”

“They’re shorter—that’s why I was so surprised when you stood up. I’ve always been taller than everyone, including the men. That’s why they didn’t want me, I am too tall, and too ugly.”

“What else?” He didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to know.

“Their eyes are brown. Iza thought something was wrong with my eyes because they were the color of the sky. Durc has their eyes, and the … I don’t know how to say it, the big brows, but his forehead is like mine. Their heads are flatter …”

“Flatheads!” His lips pulled back in disgust. “Good Mother, Ayla! You’ve been living with those animals! You let one of their males …” He shuddered. “You gave birth to … an abomination of mixed spirits, half human and half animal!” As though he had touched something filthy, Jondalar backed away and jumped up. It was a reaction born of irrational prejudice, of harsh, unthinking assumptions, never questioned by most people he knew.

Ayla didn’t comprehend at first, and she looked at him with a puzzled frown. But his expression was filled with loathing, just as hers was when she thought of hyenas. Then his words took on meaning.

Animals! He was calling the people she loved animals! Stinking hyenas! Gentle loving Creb, who was nonetheless the most awesome and powerful holy man of the Clan—Creb was an animal? Iza, who had nursed her and mothered her, who taught her medicine—Iza was a stinking hyena? And Durc! Her son!

“What do you mean, animals?” Ayla cried, on her feet and facing him. She had never raised her voice in anger before and she surprised herself at the volume—and the venom. “Creb and Iza, animals? My son, half human? People of the Clan are not some kind of awful stinking hyenas.

“Would animals pick up a little girl who was hurt? Would they accept her as one of them? Would they take care of her? Raise her? Where do you think I learned to find food? Or cook it? Where do you think I learned healing? If it were not for those animals, I would not be alive today, and neither would you, Jondalar!

“You say the Clan are animals, and the Others are human? Well, remember this: The Clan saved a child of the Others, and the Others killed one of theirs. If I could make a choice between human and animal, I’d take the stinking hyenas!”

She stormed out of the cave and down the path, then whistled for Whinney.

24

Jondalar was dumbfounded. He followed her out and watched her from the ledge. She mounted the horse with a practiced leap and galloped down the valley. Ayla had always been so complaisant, had never showed anger. The contrast made her outburst all the more astounding.

He had always thought of himself as fair and open-minded about flatheads. He thought they should be left alone, not bothered or baited, and he would not have intentionally killed one. But his sensibilities had been grossly offended by the idea of a man using a flathead female for Pleasures. That one of their males should have used a human female the same way had exposed a deeply buried nerve. The woman would be defiled.

And he had been so eager for her. He thought of the vulgar stories told by sniggering boys and young men and felt a shrinking in his loins, as though he were already contaminated and his member would shrivel up and rot off. By some grace of the Great Earth Mother, he had been spared.

But worse, she had birthed an abomination, a whelp of malignant spirits who couldn’t even be discussed in decent company. The very existence of such issue was hotly denied by some, yet talk of them had persisted.

Ayla certainly had not denied it. She openly admitted it, stood there and defended the child … as vehemently as any mother would if her child had been maligned. She was insulted, angry that he had spoken of any of them in derogatory terms. Had she really been raised by a pack of flatheads?

He’d met a few flatheads on his Journey. He’d even questioned in his own mind whether they were animals. He recalled the incident with the young male and the older female. Come to think of it, hadn’t the youngster used a knife made on a heavy flake to cut the fish in half, just like the one Ayla used? And his dam wore a hide wrapped around her, as Ayla did. Ayla even had the same mannerisms, especially in the beginning; that tendency to look down, to efface herself so she wouldn’t be noticed. The furs on her bed, they had the same soft texture as the wolfskin they had given him. And her spear! That heavy primitive spear—wasn’t it like the spears carried by that pack of flatheads he and Thonolan had met coming off the glacier?

It was right there in front of him all the time, if he’d only looked. Why had he made up that story about her being One Who Serves the Mother testing herself to perfect her skills? She was as skilled as any healer, perhaps more. Had Ayla really learned her healing skill from a flathead?

He watched her riding off in the distance. She had been magnificent in her rage. He knew many women who raised their voices at the least provocation. Marona could be a shrill, contentious, foul-tempered shrew, he recalled, thinking about the woman to whom he had been promised. But there was a strength in someone so demanding that had appealed to him. He liked strong women. They were a challenge, and they could hold their own and not be so easily overwhelmed by his own passions on the rare occasions when they were expressed. He’d suspected there was a rock-hard core to Ayla in spite of her composure. Look at her on that horse, he thought. She is a remarkable, beautiful woman.

Suddenly, like a splash of icy water, he realized what he had done. The blood

drained from his face. She had saved his life, and he had drawn away from her as if she were filth! She had lavished care on him, and he had repaid her with vile disgust. He had called her child an abomination, a child she obviously loved. He was mortified by his insensitivity.

He ran back into the cave and threw himself on the bed. Her bed. He had been sleeping on the bed of a woman from whom he had just cringed in contempt.

“Oh, Doni!” he cried. “How could you let me do it? Why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you stop me?”

He buried his head under the furs. He hadn’t felt so wretched since he was young. He thought he was over that. He’d acted without thinking then, too. Would he never learn? Why hadn’t he exercised some discretion? He would be leaving soon; his leg was healed. Why couldn’t he have controlled himself until he left?