The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

“You are … you are a good hunter, especially considering your weapon, but I think I can show you a way to make it easier, a better hunting weapon, if you’ll let me.”

Her annoyance evaporated. “You want to show me a better hunting weapon?”

“And an easier way to hunt—unless you’d rather not. It will take some practice …”

She shook her head with disbelief. “Clan women do not hunt, and no man wanted me to hunt—not even with a sling. Brun and Creb only allowed it to appease my totem. The Cave Lion is a powerful male totem, and he made them know it was his choice that I should hunt. They dared not defy him.” Suddenly she recalled a vivid scene. “They made a special ceremony.” She reached for the small scar in the hollow of her throat. “Creb drew my blood as sacrifice to the Ancient Ones so I could become the Woman Who Hunts.

“When I found this valley, the only weapon I knew was my sling. But a sling is not enough, so I made spears like the ones the men used, and I learned to hunt with them, the best I could. I never thought any man would want to show me a better way.” She stopped and looked down at her lap, suddenly overcome. “I would be most grateful, Jondalar. I cannot tell you how much.”

The wrinkles of tension on the man’s forehead smoothed out. He thought he glimpsed a tear glistening. Could it mean that much to her? And he was worried that she might take it wrong. Would he ever understand her? The more he learned about her, the less he seemed to know. She taught herself?

“I will need to make some special tools. And some bone, the deer legbones I found will work fine, but I’ll need to soak them. Do you have a container I can use to soak bones?”

“How big does it need to be? I have many containers,” she said, getting up.

“It can wait until you finish eating, Ayla.”

She didn’t feel like eating now; she was too excited. But he wasn’t through. She sat back down and picked at her food until he noticed she wasn’t eating.

“Do you want to go look at containers now?” he asked.

She leaped up and headed for the storage area, then went back for the stone lamp. It was dark in the back of the cave. She gave the lamp to Jondalar while she uncovered baskets, bowls, and birchbark containers that were stacked and nested within each other. He held the lamp high to shed more light and looked around. There was so much, far more than she could use.

“Did you make all this?”

“Yes,” she replied, sorting through the stacks.

“It must have taken days … moons … seasons. How long did it take?”

Ayla tried to think of a way to tell him. “Seasons, many seasons. Most were made during the cold seasons. I had nothing else to do. Are any of these the right size?”

He looked over the containers she had spread out and picked up several, more to examine the workmanship than to select one. It was hard to believe. No matter how skilled she was, or how fast she worked, the finely woven baskets and smoothly finished bowls had taken time to make. How long had she been here? Alone.

“This one will be fine,” he said, selecting a large trough-shaped wooden bowl with high sides. Ayla piled everything back neatly while he held the lamp. She could not have been much more than a girl when she arrived, he thought. She’s not very old—or is she? It was hard to judge. She had an ageless quality, a certain ingenuousness, that was at odds with her full, ripe woman’s body. She had given birth; she was every bit a woman. I wonder how old she is?

They walked down the path. Jondalar filled the bowl with water and inspected the legbones he had found in her midden. “This one has a crack I didn’t notice before,” he mentioned, showing her the bone before he discarded it. He placed the rest in the water. As they went back up to the cave, he tried to estimate Ayla’s age. She can’t be too young—she’s too skilled a healer. Yet can she be as old as I am?

“Ayla, how long have you been here?” he asked as they started into the cave, unable to contain his curiosity.

She halted, not sure how to respond, or if she could make him understand. Her counting sticks came to mind, but although Creb had shown her how to make the marks, she wasn’t supposed to know. Jondalar might disapprove. But he’s leaving, she thought.

She got out a bundle of the sticks she had marked every day, untied it and laid them out.

“What are these?” he asked.

“You want to know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know how to tell you, but since I found this valley I have cut a mark on a stick every night. I have been here as many nights as there are marks on my sticks.”

“Do you know how many marks there are?”

She remembered the frustration she had felt when she had tried to make some meaning of her marked sticks before. “As many as there are,” she said.

Jondalar picked up one of the sticks, intrigued. She did not know the counting words, but she had some sense of them. Not even everyone in his Cave could comprehend them. The powerful magic of their meaning was not given to everyone to know. Zelandoni had explained some to him. He didn’t know all the magic they contained, but he knew more than most who were not of the calling. Where had Ayla learned to mark the sticks? How could someone raised by flatheads have any understanding of counting words?

“How did you learn to do this?”

“Creb showed me. Long ago. When I was a little girl.”

“Creb—the man whose hearth you lived at? He knew what they meant? He wasn’t just making marks?”

“Creb was … Mog-ur … holy man. The clan looked to him to know the proper time for certain ceremonies, like naming days or Clan Gatherings. This was how he knew. I don’t think he believed I would understand—it is difficult even for mog-urs. He did it so I wouldn’t ask so many questions. Afterward, he told me not to mention it again. He caught me once, when I was older, marking the days of the moon’s cycle and was very angry.”

“This … Mog-ur.” Jondalar had difficulty with the pronunciation. “He was someone holy, sacred, like a zelandoni?”

“I don’t know. You say zelandoni when you mean healer. Mog-ur was not a healer. Iza knew the plants and herbs—she was medicine woman. Mog-ur knew spirits. He helped her by talking to them”

“A zelandoni can be a healer, or can have other Gifts. A zelandoni is someone who has answered the call to Serve the Mother. Some have no special Gifts, just a desire to Serve. They can talk to the Mother.”

“Creb had other gifts. He was most high, most powerful. He could … he did … I don’t know how to explain.”

Jondalar nodded. It was not always easy to explain a zelandoni’s Gifts either, but they were also the keepers of special knowledge. He looked back at the sticks. “What does this mean?” he asked, pointing to the extra marks.

Ayla blushed. “It’s … it is my … my womanhood,” she answered, groping for a way to explain.

Women of the Clan were supposed to avoid men during their menses, and men totally ignored them. Women suffered the partial ostracism—the woman’s curse—because men feared the mysterious life force that enabled a woman to bring forth life. It imbued the spirit of her totem with extraordinary strength which fought off the impregnating essences of the spirits of men’s totems. When a woman bled, it meant her totem had won and had wounded the essence of the male totem—had cast it out. No man wanted his totem spirit to be drawn into the battle at that time.

But Ayla had been faced with a dilemma shortly after she brought the man to the cave. She could not keep herself in strict isolation when her bleeding started, not when he was barely clinging to life and needed close attention. She had to ignore the stricture. Later, she tried to make her contact with him during those times as brief as possible, but she couldn’t avoid him when just two of them shared the cave. Nor could she attend only to women’s tasks then, as was the Clan practice. There were no other women to take her place. She had to hunt for the man, and cook for the man, and he wanted her to share meals with him.

All she c

ould do to maintain some semblance of womanly decorum was to avoid any reference to the subject, and take care of herself in private to keep the fact as inconspicuous as possible. How then could she answer his question?

But he accepted her statement with no apparent qualms or misgivings. She could detect no sign that he was disturbed at all.

“Most women keep some kind of record. Did Creb or Iza teach you to do that?” he asked.

Ayla bowed her head to hide her discomfiture. “No, I did it so I would know. I didn’t want to be away from the cave unprepared.”

His nod of understanding surprised her. “Women tell a story about the counting words,” he continued. “They say the moon, Lumi, is the lover of the Great Earth Mother. On the days when Doni bleeds, She will not share Pleasures with him. That makes him angry and hurts his pride. He turns away from Her and hides his light. But he cannot stay away for long. He gets lonely, misses Her warm full body, and peeks back to see Her. By then, Doni is upset, and will not look on him. But as he turns around and shines for Her in all his splendor, She cannot resist him. She opens Herself to him once more, and they are both happy.

“That is why many of Her festivals are held when the moon is full. Women say their phases match the Mother’s—they call their time of bleeding the moon time, and they can tell when to expect it by watching Lumi. They say Doni gave them the counting words so they would know even when the moon is hidden by clouds, but they are used in many important ways now.”

Though she was disconcerted to hear a man talk so casually about intimate female matters, Ayla was fascinated by the story. “Sometimes I watch the moon,” she said, “but I mark the stick, too. What are counting words?”

“They are … names for the marks on your sticks, for one thing, for other things too. They are used to say the number of … anything. They can say how many deer a scout has seen, or how many days away they are. If it is a large herd, such as bison in the fall, then a zelandoni must scout the herd, one who knows the special ways to use counting words.”

An undercurrent of anticipation stirred through the woman; she could almost understand what he meant. She felt on the edge of resolving questions whose answers had eluded her.