The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“I think before anyone else says anything, we ought to hear what Ayla has to say,” Talut said, as the drum stilled.

People leaned forward attentively, more than willing to listen to find out about the mysterious woman. Ayla wasn’t sure she wanted to say any more to these noisy, rude people, but she felt she had no choice. Then, lifting her chin a bit, she thought, if they wanted to hear it, she’d tell them, but she was leaving in the morning.

“I no … I do not remember young life,” Ayla began, “only earthquake, and cave lion who make scars on my leg. Iza tell me she find me by river … what is word, Mamut? Not awake?”

“Unconscious.”

“Iza find me by river, unconscious. I am close to age of Rydag, younger. Maybe five years. I am hurt on leg from cave lion claw. Iza is … medicine woman. She heal my leg. Creb … Creb is Mog-ur … like Mamut … holy man … knows spirit world. Creb teach me to speak Clan way. Iza and Creb … all Clan … they take care of me. I am not Clan, but they take care of me.”

Ayla was straining to recall everything Jondalar had told her about their language. She hadn’t liked Frebec’s comment that she couldn’t talk right, any more than the rest of what he said. She glanced at Jondalar. His forehead was furrowed. He wanted her to be careful of something. She wasn’t entirely sure of the reason for his concern, but perhaps it was not necessary to mention everything.

“I grow up with Clan, but leave … to find Others, like me. I am …” She stopped to think of the right counting word. “Fourteen years then. Iza tell me Others live north. I look long time, not find anyone. Then I find valley and stay, to make ready for winter. Kill horse for meat, then see small horse, her baby. I have no people. Young horse is like baby, I take care of young horse. Later, find young lion, hurt. Take lion, too, but he grow up, leave, find mate. I live in valley three years, alone. Then Jondalar come.”

Ayla stopped then. No one spoke. Her explanation, so simply told, with no embellishments, could only be true, yet it was difficult to believe. It posed more questions than it answered. Could she really have been taken in and raised by flatheads? Could they really talk, or at least communicate? Could they really be so humane, so human? And what about her? If she was raised by them, was she human?

In the silence that followed, Ayla watched Nezzie and the boy, and then remembered an incident early in her life with the Clan. Creb had been teaching her to communicate with hand signs, but there was one gesture she had learned herself. It was a signal shown often to babies, and always used by children to the women who took care of them, and she recalled how Iza had felt when she first made the signal to her.

Ayla leaned forward and said to Rydag, “I want show you word. Word you say with hands.”

He sat up, his eyes showing his interest, and excitement. He had understood, as he always did, every word that was said, and the talk about hand signs had caused vague stirrings within him. With everyone watching, she made a gesture, a purposeful movement with her hands. He made an attempt to copy her, frowned with puzzlement. Then, suddenly comprehension came to him from some deeply buried place, and it showed on his face. He corrected himself as Ayla smiled and nodded her head. Then he turned to Nezzie and made the gesture again. She looked at Ayla.

“He say to you, ‘mother,’ ” Ayla explained.

“Mother?” Nezzie said, then closed her eyes, blinking back tears, as she held close the child she had cared for since his birth. “Talut! Did you see that? Rydag just called me ‘mother.’ I never thought I’d ever see the day Rydag would call me ‘mother.’ ”

4

The mood of the Camp was subdued. No one knew what to say or what to think. Who were these strangers that had suddenly appeared in their midst? The man who claimed to come from someplace far to the west was easier to believe than the woman who said she had lived for three years in a valley nearby, and even more amazing, with a pack of flatheads before that. The woman’s story threatened a whole structure of comfortable beliefs, yet it was difficult to doubt her.

Nezzie had carried Rydag to his bed, with tears in her eyes, after he had signed his first silent word. Everyone else took it as a signal that the storytellings were over and moved to their own hearths. Ayla used the opportunity to slip away. Pulling her parka, a hooded outer fur tunic, over her head, she went outside.

Whinney recognized her and ni

ckered softly. Feeling her way in the dark, guided by the mare’s snorting and blowing, Ayla found the horse.

“Is everything all right, Whinney? Are you comfortable? And Racer? Probably no more than I am,” Ayla said, with thoughts as much as with the private language she used when she was with the horses. Whinney tossed her head, prancing delicately, then rested her head across the woman’s shoulder as Ayla wrapped her arms around the shaggy neck and laid her forehead against the horse who had been her only companion for so long. Racer crowded in close and all three clung together for a moment of respite from all the unfamiliar experiences of the day.

After Ayla assured herself that the horses were fine, she walked down to the edge of the river. It felt good to be out of the lodge, away from people. She took a deep breath. The night air was cold and dry. Sparks of static crackled through her hair as she pushed back her fur-lined hood, stretched her neck and looked up.

The new moon, avoiding the great companion that held it tethered, had turned its shining eye out upon the distant depths whose whirling lights tantalized with promises of boundless freedom, but offered only cosmic emptiness. High thin clouds cloaked the fainter stars, but only veiled the more determined with shimmering halos, and made the sooty black sky feel close and soft.

Ayla was in a turmoil, conflicting emotions pulling at her. These were the Others she had looked for. The kind she had been born to. She would have grown up with people like them, comfortable, at home, if it hadn’t been for the earthquake. Instead she had been raised by the Clan. She knew Clan customs, but the ways of her own people were strange. Yet if it hadn’t been for the Clan, she wouldn’t have grown up at all. She couldn’t go back to them, but she didn’t feel that she belonged here, either.

These people were so noisy, and disorderly. Iza would have said they had no manners. Like that Frebec man, speaking out of turn, without asking permission, and then everyone yelling and talking at once. She thought Talut was a leader, but even he had to shout to make himself heard. Brun would never have had to shout. The only time she ever heard him shout was to warn someone of impending danger. Everyone in the clan kept the leader at a certain level of awareness; Brun had only to signal, and within heartbeats, he would have had everyone’s attention.

She didn’t like the way these people talked about the Clan, either, calling them flatheads and animals. Couldn’t anyone see they were people, too? A little different, maybe, but people just the same. Nezzie knew it. In spite of what the rest said, she knew Rydag’s mother was a woman, and the child to whom she gave birth only a baby. He’s mixed, though, like my son, Ayla thought, and like Oda’s little girl at the Clan Gathering. How could Rydag’s mother have had a child of mixed spirits like that?

Spirits! Is it really spirits that makes babies? Does a man’s totem spirit overcome a woman’s and make a baby grow inside her, the way the Clan thinks? Does the Great Mother choose and combine the spirits of a man and a woman and then put them inside a woman, the way Jondalar and these people believe?

Why am I the only one who thinks it’s a man, not a spirit, that starts a baby growing inside a woman? A man, who does it with his organ … his manhood, Jondalar calls it. Why else would men and women come together like they do?

When Iza told me about the medicine, she said that it strengthened her totem and that’s what kept her from having a baby for so many years. Maybe it did, but I didn’t take it when I was living alone and no babies got started by themselves. It was only after Jondalar came that I even thought about looking for that golden thread plant and the antelope sage root again.…

After Jondalar showed me it didn’t have to hurt … after he showed me how wonderful it could be for a man and woman together …

I wonder what would happen if I stopped taking Iza’s secret medicine? Would I have a baby? Would I have Jondalar’s baby? If he put his manhood there, where babies come from?

The thought brought a flush of warmth to her face, and a tingling to her nipples. It’s too late today, she thought, I already took the medicine this morning, but what if I just made an ordinary tea tomorrow? Could I start Jondalar’s baby growing? We wouldn’t have to wait, though. We could try tonight.…