The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

Ayla listened, fascinated. She didn’t understand half of what Deegie said, and wasn’t sure if she believed she understood the other half.

“It is sad to leave mother, and people,” Ayla said. “But you have mate soon?”

“Oh, yes. Next summer. At the Summer Meeting. Mother finally got everything settled. She set such a high Bride Price I was afraid they’d never meet it, but they agreed. It’s so hard waiting, though. If only Branag didn’t have to leave now. But they’re expecting him. He promised he’d go back right away.…”

The two young women walked toward the entrance of the longhouse together, companionably, Deegie chatting and Ayla avidly listening.

It was cooler in the entrance foyer, but it wasn’t until she felt the blast of cold air when the drape at the front arch was pulled back that Ayla realized how much the temperature had dropped. The frigid wind whipped her hair back and tugged at the heavy mammoth hide entrance cover, billowing it out with a sudden gust. A light dusting of snow had fallen during the night. A sharp crosscurrent picked up the fine flakes, swirled them into pockets and hollows, then scooped out the wind-blasted crystals and flung them across the open space. Ayla’s face stung with a peppering of tiny hard pellets of ice.

Yet it had been warm inside, much warmer than a cave. She had put on her fur parka only to come out; she wouldn’t have needed extra clothing if she had stayed in. She heard Whinney neigh. The horse and the colt, still tied to his lead, were as far back as they could get from the people and their activities. Ayla started toward them, then turned back to smile at Deegie. The young woman smiled back, and went to find Branag.

The mare seemed relieved when Ayla neared, nickering and tossing her head in greeting. The woman removed Racer’s bridle, then walked with them down toward the river and around the bend. Whinney and Racer relaxed once the Camp was out of sight, and after some mutual affection, settled down to graze on the brittle dry grass.

Before starting back up Ayla stopped beside a bush. She untied the waist thong of her legged garment, but still was not sure what to do so the leggings wouldn’t get wet when she passed water. She’d had the same problem ever since she started wearing the clothes. She had made the outfit for herself during the summer, patterning it after the one she had made for Jondalar, which was copied from the clothing the lion had ripped. But she hadn’t worn it until they started on their trip of exploration. Jondalar had been so pleased to see her wearing clothes like his, rather than the comfortable leather wrap usually worn by women of the Clan, she decided to leave it behind. But she hadn’t discovered how to manage this basic necessity easily and she didn’t want to ask him. He was a man. How would he know what a woman needed to do?

She removed the close-fitting trousers, which required that she also remove her footwear—high-topped moccasins that wrapped around the lower pant legs—then spread her legs and bent over in her usual manner. Balancing on one foot to put the lower garment back on, she noticed the smoothly rolling river and changed her mind. Instead, she pulled her parka and tunic up over her head, took off her amulet from around her neck, and walked down the bank toward the water. The cleansing ritual should be completed, and she always did enjoy a morning swim.

She had planned to swish out her mouth, and rinse off her face and hands in the river. She didn’t know what means these people used to clean themselves. When it was necessary, if the woodpile was buried under ice and fuel was scarce, or if the wind was blowing hard through the cave, or if water was frozen so solid it was hard to break off enough even for drinking, she could do without washing, but she preferred to be clean. And in the back of her mind she was still thinking of the ritual, the completion of a purification ceremony after her first night in the cave—or the earthlodge—of the Others.

She looked out at the water. The current moved swiftly along the main channel, but ice in transparent sheets filmed puddles and the quieter backwaters of the river, and crusted white at the edge. A finger of the bank, sparsely covered with bleached and withered grass, stretched into the river forming a still pool between itself and the shore. A single birch tree, dwarfed to a shrub, grew on the spit of dirt.

Ayla walked toward the pool and stepped in, shattering the perfect pane of ice which glazed it. She gasped as the freezing water brought a hard shiver, and grabbed a skeletal limb of the small birch to steady herself, as she moved into the current. A sharp gust of freezing wind buffeted her bare skin, raising gooseflesh, and whipped her hair into her face. She clenched her chattering teeth and waded in deeper. When the water was nearly waist-high, she splashed icy water on her face, then with another quick indrawn breath of shock, stooped down and submerged up to her neck.

For all her gasps and shivers, she was used to cold water and, she thought, soon enough it would be impossible to bathe in the river at all. When she got out, she pushed the water off her body with her hands and dressed quickly. Tingling warmth replaced the numbing cold as she walked back up the slope from the river, making her feel renewed and invigorated, and she smiled as a tired sun momentarily bested the overcast sky.

As she approached the Camp she stopped at the edge of a trampled area near the longhouse and watched the several knots of people engaged in various occupations.

Jondalar was talking with Wymez and Danug, and she had no doubts as to the subject of the conversation of the three flint knappers. Not far from them four people were untying cords that had held a deer hide—now soft, flexible, nearly white leather—to a rectangular frame made of mammoth rib bones lashed together with thongs. Nearby, Deegie was vigorously poking and stretching a second hide, which was strung on a similar frame, with the smoothly blunted end of another rib bone. Ayla knew working the hide as it was drying was done to make the leather supple, but binding it to the mammoth bone frames was a new method of stretching leather. She was interested and noted the details of the process.

A series of small slits had been cut near the outside edge following the contour of the animal skin, then a cord was passed through each one, tied to the frame and pulled tight to stretch the hide taut. The frame was propped against the longhouse and could be turned around and worked from either side. Deegie was leaning with all her weight on the rib-bone staker, pushing the blunt end into the mounted hide until it seemed the long shaft would poke right through, but the strong flexible leather yielded without giving way.

A few others were busy with activities Ayla was not fam

iliar with, but the rest of the people were putting the skeletal remains of mammoths into pits that had been dug in the ground. Bones and ivory were scattered all over. She looked up as someone called out and saw Talut and Tulie coming toward the Camp bearing on their shoulders a large curved ivory tusk still attached to the skull of a mammoth. Most of the bones did not come from animals they had killed. Occasional finds on the steppes provided some, but the majority came from the piles of bones that accumulated at sharp turns in rivers, where raging waters had deposited the remains of animals.

Then Ayla noticed another person watching the Camp not far from her. She smiled as she went to join Rydag, but was startled to see him smile back. People of the Clan did not smile. An expression showing bared teeth usually denoted hostility on a face with Clan features, or extreme nervousness and fear. His grin seemed, for a moment, out of place. But the boy had not grown up with the Clan and had learned a friendlier meaning for the expression.

“Good morning, Rydag,” Ayla said, at the same time making the Clan greeting gesture with the slight variation that indicated a child was being addressed. Ayla noticed again the flicker of understanding at her hand signal. He remembers! she thought. He has the memories, I’m sure of it. He knows the signs, he would only have to be reminded. Not like me. I had to learn them.

She recalled Creb’s and Iza’s consternation when they discovered how difficult it was for her, compared with Clan youngsters, to remember anything. She had had to struggle to learn and memorize, while children of the Clan only had to be shown once. Some people had thought Ayla was rather stupid, but as she grew up she taught herself to memorize quickly so they wouldn’t lose patience with her.

But Jondalar had been astonished at her skill. Compared to others like herself, her trained memory was a wonder, and it enhanced her ability to learn. He was amazed at how easily she learned new languages, for example, almost without effort it seemed. But gaining that skill had not been easy, and though she had learned to memorize quickly, she never did fully comprehend what Clan memories were. None of the Others could; it was a basic difference between them.

With brains even larger than those who came after, the Clan had not so much less intelligence as a different kind of intelligence. They learned from memories that were in some ways similar to instinct but more conscious, and stored in the backs of their large brains at birth was everything their forebears knew. They didn’t need to learn the knowledge and skills necessary to live, they remembered them. As children, they needed only to be reminded of what they already knew to become accustomed to the process. As adults, they knew how to draw upon their stored memories.

They remembered easily, but anything new was grasped only with great effort. Once something new was learned—or a new concept understood, or a new belief accepted—they never forgot it and they passed it on to their progeny, but they learned, and changed, slowly. Iza had come to understand, if not comprehend, their difference when she was teaching Ayla the skills of a medicine woman. The strange girl child could not remember nearly as well as they, but she learned much more quickly.

Rydag said a word. Ayla did not understand him immediately. Then she recognized it. It was her name! Her name spoken in a way that had once been familiar, the way some people of the Clan had said it.

Like them, the child was not capable of a fully articulate speech; he could vocalize, but he could not make some of the important sounds that were necessary to reproduce the language of the people he lived with. They were the same sounds Ayla had difficulty with, from lack of practice. It was that limitation in the vocal apparatus of the Clan, and those that went before, that had led them to develop instead a rich and comprehensive language of hand signs and gestures to express the thoughts of their rich and comprehensive culture. Rydag understood the Others, the people he lived with; he understood the concept of language. He just couldn’t make himself understood to them.

Then the youngster made the gesture he had made to Nezzie the night before; he called Ayla “mother.” Ayla felt her heart beat faster. The last one who had made that sign to her was her son, and Rydag looked so much like Durc that for a moment she saw her son in him. She wanted to believe he was Durc, and she ached to pick him up and hold him in her arms, and say his name. She closed her eyes and repressed the urge to call out to him, shaking with the effort.

When she opened her eyes again, Rydag was watching her with a knowing, ancient, and yearning look, as though he understood her, and knew that she understood him. As much as she wished it, Rydag was not Durc. He was no more Durc than she was Deegie; he was himself. Under control again, she took a deep breath.

“Would you like more words? More hand signs, Rydag?” she asked.

He nodded, emphatically.