The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

Ayla shook her head. “Why is this a different word?”

“Mamutoi is a different language.”

“A different language? What language did you teach me?”

Jondalar had a sinking feeling. “I taught you my language—Zelandonii. I didn’t think …”

“Zelandonii—they live west?” Ayla felt uneasy.

“Well, yes, but far to the west. The Mamutoi live nearby.”

“Jondalar, you taught me a language spoken by people who live far away, but not one spoken by people who live nearby. Why?”

“I … didn’t think about it. I just taught you my language,” he said, suddenly feeling terrible. He hadn’t done anything right.

“And you are the only one who can speak it?”

He nodded. Her stomach churned. She thought he had been sent to teach her to speak, but she could only speak to him. “Jondalar, why didn’t you teach me the language everyone knows?”

“There is no language everyone knows.”

“I mean the one you use when you speak to your spirits, or maybe to your Great Mother.”

“We don’t have a language just for speaking to Her.”

“How do you talk to people who don’t know your language?”

“We learn each other’s. I know three languages, and a few words in some others.”

Ayla was shaking again. She thought she would be able to leave the valley and speak to the people she would meet. What was she going to do now? She got up, and he stood also. “I wanted to know all your words, Jondalar. I have to know how to speak. You must teach me. You must.”

“Ayla, I can’t teach you two more languages now. It takes time. I don’t even know them perfectly—it’s more than words …”

“We can start with words. We will have to start from the beginning. What is the word fire in Mamutoi?”

He told her and started to object again, but she kept on, one word after another in the order in which she had learned them in the Zelandonii language. After she had run through a long list, he stopped her again. “Ayla, what good does it do to say a lot of words. You can’t remember them all just like that.”

“I know my memory could be better. Tell me which words are wrong.”

She went back to the word fire and repeated all the words back to him in both languages. By the time she was through, he was staring at her in awe. He recalled that it had not been the words she had trouble with when she was learning Zelandonii, but the structure and concept of the language.

“How did you do that?”

“Did I miss any?”

“No, none at all!”

She smiled with relief. “When I was young, I was much worse. I had to go over everything so many times. I don’t know how Iza and Creb were so patient with me. I know some people thought I was not very intelligent. I am better now, but it has taken practice, and still everyone in the Clan remembers better than I do.”

“Everyone in your Clan can remember better than the demonstration you just gave me?”

“They don’t forget anything, but they are born knowing almost everything they need to know, so they don’t have much to learn. They only have to remember. They have … memories—I don’t know what else you would call them. When a child is growing up, he only has to be reminded—told once. Adults don’t have to be reminded anymore, they know how to remember. I didn’t have the Clan memories. That’s why Iza had to repeat everything until I could remember without mistake.”

Jondalar was stunned by her mnemonic skill, and he was finding it difficult to grasp the concept of Clan memories.

“Some people thought I could not be a medicine woman without Iza’s memories, but Iza said I would be good even though I couldn’t remember as well. She said I had other gifts that she didn’t quite understand, a way of knowing what was wrong, and of finding the best way to treat it. She taught me how to test new medicines, so I could find ways to use them without a memory of the plants.

“They have an ancient language, too. It has no sounds in it, only gestures. Everyone knows the Old Language, they use it for ceremonies and for addressing spirits, and also if they don’t understand another person’s ordinary language. I learned it, too.

“Because I had to learn everything, I made myself pay attention and concentrate so I would remember after only one ‘reminding,’ so people wouldn’t get so impatient with me.”

“Do I understand you right? These … Clan people all know their own language, and some kind of ancient language that is commonly understood. Everyone can talk … communicate with everyone else?”

“Everyone at the Clan Gathering could.”

“Are we talking about the same people? Flatheads?”

“If that is what you call the Clan. I told you how they look,” Ayla said, then looked down. “That’s when you said I was abomination.”

She remembered the icy stare that had drained the warmth from his eyes before, the shudder when he pulled away—the contempt. It had happened just when she was telling him about the Clan, when she thought they were understanding each other. He seemed to be having trouble accepting what she said. Suddenly she felt uneasy; she had been talking too comfortably. She walked quickly toward the fire, saw the ptarmigan where Jondalar had put them beside the eggs, and started plucking feathers, to be doing something.

Jondalar had watched her suspicion grow. He had hurt her too much and he’d never regain her trust, though for a while he had hoped. The contempt he felt now was for himself. He pi

cked up her furs and carried them back to her bed, then took the ones he had been using and moved them to a place on the other side of the fire.

Ayla put the birds down—she didn’t feel like plucking feathers—and hurried to her bed. She didn’t want him to see the water that filled her eyes.

Jondalar tried to arrange the furs around him in a comfortable way. Memories, she had said. Flatheads have some special kind of memories. And a language of signs that they all know? Was it possible? It was hard to believe, except for one thing: Ayla did not tell untruths.

Ayla had grown accustomed to quiet and solitude over the past years. The mere presence of another person, while relished, required some adjustment and accommodation, but the emotional upheavals of the day had left her drained and exhausted. She did not want to feel, or think about, or react to, the man who shared her cave. She only wanted to rest.

Yet sleep would not come. She had felt so confident of her ability to talk. She had put all her effort and concentration into it, and she felt cheated. Why did he teach her the language he grew up with? He was leaving. She would never see him again. She would have to leave the valley in spring and find some people who lived closer, and perhaps some other man.

But she didn’t want some other man. She wanted Jondalar, with his eyes, and his touch. She remembered how she had felt in the beginning. He was the first man of her people she had seen, and he stood for all of them in a generalized way. He wasn’t quite an individual. She didn’t know when he ceased being an example and became, uniquely, Jondalar. All she knew was that she missed the sound of his breathing and his warmth beside her. The emptiness of the place he had occupied was more than matched by the aching void she felt inside.

Sleep came no more easily to Jondalar. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable. His side, that had been next to her, felt cold, and his guilt stung. He couldn’t remember when he’d had a worse day, and he hadn’t even taught her the right language. When would she ever use Zelandonii? His people lived a year’s travel from this valley, and only that if no stops of any length were made.