The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“I saw that skull,” she said, pointing to the decoration over the door, “and remembered when I was chosen, when the Cave Lion became my totem!”

“We are the Lion Camp,” Talut announced, with pride, though he had said it before. He didn’t understand them when they spoke Jondalar’s language, but he saw the interest they were showing in the Camp’s talisman.

“The cave lion holds strong meaning for Ayla,” Jondalar explained. “She says the spirit of the great cat guides and protects her.”

“Then you should be comfortable here,” Talut said, beaming a smile at her, feeling pleased.

She noticed Nezzie carrying Rydag and thought again of her son. “I think so,” she said.

Before they started in, the young woman stopped to examine the entrance arch, and smiled when she saw how its perfect symmetry had been achieved. It was simple, but she would not have thought of it. Two large mammoth tusks, from the same animal or at least animals of the same size, had been anchored firmly in the ground with the tips facing each other and joined together at the top of the arch in a sleeve made from a hollow short section of a mammoth leg bone.

A heavy curtain of mammoth hide covered the opening, which was high enough so that even Talut, moving the drape aside, could enter without ducking his head. The arch led to a roomy entrance area, with another symmetrical arch of mammoth tusks hung with leather directly across. They stepped down into a circular foyer whose thick walls curved up to a shallow domed ceiling.

As they walked through, Ayla noticed the side walls, which seemed to be a mosaic of mammoth bones, were lined with outer clothes hung on pegs and racks with storage containers and implements. Talut pulled back the inner drape, went on through and held it back for the guests.

Ayla stepped down again. Then stopped, and stared in amazement, overwhelmed by bewildering impressions of unknown objects, unfamiliar sights, and strong colors. Much of what she saw was incomprehensible to her and she grasped at that which she could make sense of.

The space they were in had a large fireplace near the center. A massive haunch of meat was cooking over it, spitted on a long pole. Each end was resting in a groove cut in the knee joint of an upright leg bone of a mammoth calf, sunk into the ground. A fork from a large branching antler of a deer had been fashioned into a crank and a boy was turning it. He was one of the children who had stayed to watch her and Whinney. Ayla recognized him and smiled. He grinned back.

She was surprised by the spaciousness of the neat and comfortable earthlodge, as her eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light indoors. The fireplace was only the first of a row of hearths extending down the middle of the longhouse, a dwelling that was over eighty feet in length and almost twenty feet wide.

Seven fires, Ayla counted to herself, pressing her fingers against her leg inconspicuously and thinking the counting words Jondalar had taught her.

It was warm inside, she realized. The fires warmed the interior of the semisubterranean dwelling more than fires usually warmed the caves she was accustomed to. It was quite warm, in fact, and she noticed several people farther back who were very lightly clad.

But it wasn’t any darker at t

he back. The ceiling was about the same height throughout, twelve feet or so, and had smoke holes above each fireplace that let in light as well. Mammoth bone rafters, hung with clothing, implements, and food, extended across, but the center section of the ceiling was made of many reindeer antlers entwined together.

Suddenly Ayla became aware of a smell that made her mouth water. It’s mammoth meat! she thought. She hadn’t tasted rich, tender mammoth meat since she left the cave of the Clan. There were other delicious cooking odors, too. Some familiar, some not, but they combined to remind her that she was hungry.

As they were led along a well-trodden passageway that ran down the middle of the longhouse next to several hearths, she noticed wide benches with furs piled on them, extending out from the walls. Some people were sitting on them, relaxing or talking. She felt them looking at her as she walked past. She saw more of the mammoth tusk archways along the sides, and wondered where they led, but she hesitated to ask.

It is like a cave, she thought, a large comfortable cave. But the arching tusks and large, long mammoth bones used as posts, supports, and walls made her realize it was not a cave that someone had found. It was one they had built!

The first area, in which the roast was cooking, was larger than the rest, and so was the fourth, where Talut led them. Several bare sleeping benches along the walls, apparently unused, showed how they were constructed.

When they had excavated the lower floor, wide platforms of dirt were left just below ground level along both sides and braced with strategically placed mammoth bones. More mammoth bones were placed across the top of the platforms, filled in with matted grass between the spaces, to raise and support pallets of soft leather stuffed with mammoth wool and other downy materials. With several layers of furs added, the dirt platforms became warm and comfortable beds or couches.

Jondalar wondered if the hearth to which they were led was unoccupied. It seemed bare, but for all its empty spaces, it had a lived-in feeling. Coals glowed in the fireplace, furs and skins were piled up on some of the benches, and dried herbs hung from racks.

“Visitors usually stay at the Mammoth Hearth,” Talut explained, “if Mamut doesn’t object. I will ask.”

“Of course they may stay, Talut.”

The voice came from an empty bench. Jondalar spun around and stared as one of the piles of furs moved. Then two eyes gleamed out of a face marked, high on the right cheek, with tattooed chevrons that fell into the seams and stitched across the wrinkles of incredible age. What he had thought was the fur of a winter animal turned out to be a white beard. Two long thin shanks unwound from a cross-legged position and dropped over the edge of the raised platform to the floor.

“Don’t look so surprised, man of the Zelandonii. The woman knew I was here,” the old man said in a strong voice that carried little hint of his advanced years.

“Did you, Ayla?” Jondalar asked, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Ayla and the old man were locked in the grip of each other’s eyes, staring as though they would see into each other’s soul. Then, the young woman dropped to the ground in front of the old Mamut, crossing her legs and bowing her head.

Jondalar was puzzled, and embarrassed. She was using the sign language which she had told him the people of the Clan used to communicate. That way of sitting was the posture of deference and respect a Clan woman assumed when she was asking permission to express herself. The only other time he’d seen her in that pose was when she was trying to tell him something very important, something she could not communicate in any other way; when the words he had taught her were not enough to tell him how she felt. He wondered how something could be expressed more clearly in a language in which gestures and actions were used more than words, but he had been more surprised to know those people communicated at all.

But he wished she hadn’t done that here. His face reddened at seeing her use flathead signals in public like that, and he wanted to rush to tell her to get up, before someone else saw her. The posture made him feel uncomfortable anyway, as though she were offering to him the reverence and homage that was due to Doni, the Great Earth Mother. He had thought of it as something private between them, personal, not something to show someone else. It was one thing to do that with him, when they were alone, but he wanted her to make a good impression on these people. He wanted them to like her. He didn’t want them to know her background.

The Mamut leveled a sharp look at him, then turned back to Ayla. He studied her for a moment, then leaned over and tapped her shoulder.

Ayla looked up and saw wise, gentle eyes in a face striated with fine creases and soft puckers. The tattoo under his right eye gave her a fleeting impression of a darkened eye socket and missing eye, and for a heartbeat she thought it was Creb. But the old holy man of the Clan who, with Iza, had raised her and cared for her, was dead, and so was Iza. Then who was this man that had evoked such strong feelings in her? Why was she sitting at his feet like a woman of the Clan? And how had he known the proper Clan response?