The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“Fralie, ankles swell much?” Ayla asked, somewhat hesitantly. Everyone sat up, waiting for Fralie’s reply, as though they all suddenly realized what had just occurred to Ayla. Even Crozie watched her daughter without saying a word.

Fralie looked down at her feet, seeming to examine her swollen ankles, considering. Then she looked up. “Yes. They’ve been swollen lately,” she said.

Nezzie breathed an audible sigh of relief, which everyone else felt.

“Still sick in morning?” Ayla asked, leaning forward.

“I wasn’t sick this long with the first two.”

“Fralie, will let me … look at you?”

Fralie looked around at the women. No one said a word. Nezzie smiled, and nodded at her, silently urging her to agree.

“All right,” Fralie said.

Ayla quickly got up, looked at her eyes, smelled her breath, felt her forehead. It was too dark to see much, and it was too hot in the sweatbath to judge fever. “Will lie down?” Ayla asked.

Everyone moved out of the way to make a place for Fralie to stretch out. Ayla felt, and listened, and examined with thoroughness and obvious knowledge, while everyone else watched with curiosity.

“Sick more than morning, I think,” Ayla said, when she was through. “I fix something, help make food not come up. Help feel better. Help swelling. Will take?”

“I don’t know,” Fralie said. “Frebec watches everything I eat. I think he’s worried about me, but he won’t admit to it. He’ll ask where it came from.”

Crozie was sitting, tight-lipped, obviously biting back words she wanted to say, fearing if she said them, Fralie might take Frebec’s side and refuse Ayla’s help. Nezzie and Tulie exchanged glances. It wasn’t like Crozie to exercise so much self-restraint.

Ayla nodded. “I think I know way,” she said.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to clean up and go out,” Deegie said. “How would a quick plunge in the snow feel right now, Ayla?”

“I think good. I am hot.”

17

Jondalar opened the drape that hung closed in front of the bed platform he shared with Ayla, and smiled. She was sitting crosslegged in the middle, naked, her skin pink and glowing, brushing her wet hair.

“I feel so good,” she said, smiling back. “Deegie said I would love it. Did you like the sweatbath?”

He climbed in beside her, letting the drape fall. His skin was pink and glowing, too, but he had finished dressing and had just combed his hair and tied it in a club at the back of his neck. The sweatbath had felt so refreshing he had even considered shaving, but just trimmed his beard instead.

“I always enjoy them,” he said. Then he couldn’t resist. He took her in his arms, kissed her, and began caressing her warm body. She responded willingly, giving herself up to his embrace, and he heard a soft moan when he bent to take a nipple in his mouth.

“Great Mother, woman, you are tempting,” he said as he pulled back. “But what will people say when they start arriving at the Mammoth Hearth for your adoption, and find us sharing Pleasures instead of being dressed and ready?”

“We could tell them to come back later,” she answered with a smile.

Jondalar laughed out loud. “I believe you would, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, you gave me your signal, didn’t you?” she said with a mischievous grin.

“My signal?”

“You remember. The signal a man gives a woman when he wants her? You said I’d always know, then you kissed me and touched me like that. Well, you just gave me your signal, and when a man gives her the signal, a woman of the Clan never refuses.”

“Is it really true she never refuses?” he asked, still not quite able to believe it.

“That’s what she is taught, Jondalar. That’s how a proper woman of the Clan behaves,” she answered, with a perfectly matter-of-fact seriousness.

“Hmmm, you mean the choice is mine? If I said let’s stay here and share Pleasures, you’d make everyone wait?” He was trying to be serious, but his eyes twinkled with delight at what he considered their private joke.