The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“You don’t care about Fralie! You didn’t even pay a decent Bride Price!” Crozie screeched.

“And you don’t care about anything but your status! I’m tired of hearing about her low Bride Price. I paid what you asked when no one else would.”

“What do you mean, no one else would? You begged me for her. You said you’d take care of her and her children. You said you’d welcome me to your hearth.…”

“Haven’t I? Haven’t I done that?” Frebec shouted.

“You call this making me welcome? When have you shown your respect? When have you honored me as a mother?”

“When have you shown me respect? Whatever I say, you argue about.”

“If you ever said something intelligent, no one would need to argue. Fralie deserves more. Look at her, full of the Mother’s blessing …”

“Mother, Frebec, please, stop fighting,” Fralie interjected. “I just want to rest.…”

She looked drawn and pale, and she worried Ayla. As the argument raged, the medicine woman in her could see how it distressed the pregnant woman. She got up and was drawn to the Hearth of the Crane.

“Can’t you see Fralie upset?” Ayla said when both the old woman and the man stopped just long enough for her to speak. “She need help. You not help. You make sick. Not good, this fighting, for pregnant woman. Make lose baby.”

Both Crozie and Frebec looked at her with surprise, but Crozie was quicker to recover.

“See, didn’t I tell you? You don’t care about Fralie. You don’t even want her to talk to this woman who knows something about it. If she loses the baby, it will be your fault!”

“What does she know about it!” Frebec sneered. “Raised by a bunch of dirty animals, what can she know about medicine? Then she brings animals here. She’s nothing but an animal herself. You’re right, I’m not going to let Fralie near this abomination. Who knows what evil spirits she has brought into this lodge? If Fralie loses the baby it will be her fault! Her and her Mother-damned flatheads!”

Ayla staggered back as though she had been dealt a physical blow. The force of the vituperative attack took her breath away and rendered the rest of the Camp speechless. In the stunned silence, she gasped a strangled, sobbing cry, turned and ran out through the lodge. Jondalar grabbed her parka, and his, and ran after her.

Ayla pushed through the heavy drape of the outer archway into the teeth of screaming wind. The ominous storm that had been threatening all day brought no rain or snow, but howled with fierce intensity beyond the thick walls of the earthlodge. With no barrier to check their savage blast, the difference in atmospheric pressures caused by the great walls of glacial ice to the north created winds of hurricane force across the vast open steppes.

She whistled for Whinney, and heard an answering neigh close by. Coming out of the dark on the lee side of the longhouse, the mare and her colt appeared.

“Ayla! You weren’t thinking of going for a ride in this windstorm, I hope,” Jondalar said, coming out of the lodge. “Here, I brought your parka. It’s cold out here. You must be freezing already.”

“Oh, Jondalar. I can’t stay here,” she cried.

“Put your parka on, Ayla,” he insisted, helping to pull it over her head. Then he took her in his arms. He had expected a scene such as the one Frebec had just made, much earlier. He knew it was bound to happen when she talked so openly about her background. “You can’t leave now. Not in this. Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” she sobbed. “Away from here.”

“What about Whinney? And Racer? This is no weather for them to be out in.”

Ayla clung to Jondalar without answering, but on another level of consciousness, she had noticed that the horses had sought shelter close to the earthlodge. It bothered her that she had no cave to offer them for protection from bad weather, as they were used to. And Jondalar was right. She couldn’t possibly leave on a night like this.

“I don’t want to stay here, Jondalar. As soon as it clears up, I want to go back to the valley.”

“If you want, Ayla. We’ll go back. After it clears. But now, let’s go back inside.”

12

“Look how much ice is clinging to their coats,” Ayla said, trying to brush away with her hand the icicles hanging in matted clumps to Whinney’s long shaggy hair. The mare snorted, raising a steaming cloud of warm vapor in the cold morning air, which was quickly dissipated by the sharp wind. The storm had let up, but the clouds overhead still looked ominous.

“But horses are always outside in winter. They don’t usually live in caves, Ayla,” Jondalar said, trying to sound reasonable.

“And many horses die in winter, even though they stay in sheltered places when the weather is bad. Whinney and Racer have always had a warm and dry place when they wanted one. They don’t live with a herd, they aren’t used to being out all the time. This is not a good place for them … and it’s not a good place for me. You said we could leave any time. I want to go back to the valley.”

“Ayla, haven’t we been made welcome here? Haven’t most people been kind and generous?”

“Yes, we were welcomed. The Mamutoi try to be generous to their guests, but we are only visitors here, and it’s time to leave.”