A wispy tendril of hair lay across her face and moved with each breath she took. He reached over and gently moved it aside, then carefully lowered himself back down to the bed, and allowed himself to relax. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of her breathing.
Ayla awoke with the feeling that someone was looking at her. The fires were built up and daylight was coming in through the partially uncovered fireplace hole. She turned her head to see Ranec’s dark intense eyes quietly watching her from the Fox Hearth. She smiled sleepily at him, and was rewarded with a big, delighted smile. She was sure the place beside her would be empty, but she reached across the piled-up furs just to make sure. Then she pushed back her covers and sat up. She knew Ranec would wait until she was up and dressed before coming into the Mammoth Hearth to visit.
It had made her uncomfortable when she first became aware that he watched her all the time. In a way, it was flattering and she knew there was no malice in his attention, but within the Clan, it was considered discourteous to stare across the boundary stones into another family’s living area. There had been no more real privacy in the cave of the clan than there was in the earthlodge of the Mamutoi, but Ranec’s attention felt like a mild intrusion upon her privacy—such as it was—and accentuated an undercurrent of tension she felt. Someone was always around. It had been no different when she lived with the clan, but these were people whose ways she had not grown up with. The differences were often subtle, but in the close proximity of the earthlodge, they were heightened, or she was more sensitive to them. Occasionally, she wished she could get away. After three years of loneliness in the valley, she never imagined the time would come when she would wish to be alone, but there were times when she longed for the solitude, and the freedom, of loneliness.
Ayla hurried through her usual morning routine, eating only a few bites from the food left over from the night before. The open smoke holes usually meant it was clear outside, and she decided to go out with the horses. When she pushed aside the drape that led to the annex, she saw Jondalar and Danug with the horses, and paused to reconsider.
Tending to the needs of the horses, either inside the annex, or when the weather allowed, outside, gave her some respite from people when she wanted a moment to herself, but Jondalar also seemed to like to spend time with them. When she saw him with them, she often stayed away because he left them to her whenever she joined them, with mumbled comments about not wanting to interfere in her time with her horses. She wanted to allow him time with the animals. Not only did they provide a connection between her and Jondalar, their mutual care of the horses required communication, however reserved. His desire to be with them and sensitivity toward them made her think that he might need their companionship even more than she did.
Ayla went on into the horse hearth. Perhaps with Danug there, Jondalar wouldn’t be so quick to leave. As she approached them, he was already backing away, but she rushed to say something that would keep him engaged in conversation.
“Have you thought, yet, about how you are going to teach Racer, Jondalar?” Ayla asked. She smiled a greeting at Danug.
“Teach him what?” Jondalar asked, a little disconcerted by her question.
“Teach him to let you ride him.”
He had been thinking about it. In fact, he had just been making a comment to Danug, in what he hoped was a casual way. He didn’t want to betray his increasingly strong desire to ride the animal. Particularly when he felt thwarted by his inability to deal with Ayla’s apparent attraction to Ranec, he imagined himself galloping across the steppes on the back of the brown stallion, as free as the wind, but he wasn’t sure if he still should be. Perhaps she would want Ranec to ride Whinney’s colt, now.
“I have thought about it, but I didn’t know if … how to begin, ‘ Jondalar said.
“I think you should keep doing what we started in the valley. Get him used to things on his back. Get him used to carrying loads. I’m not sure how to teach him to go where you want him to go. He will follow on a rope, but I don’t know how he can follow a rope when you are on his back,” Ayla said, talking fast, making suggestions on the spur of the moment, trying to keep him involved.
Danug watched her, then Jondalar, wishing he could say or do something that would suddenly make everything right, not only between them, but for everyone. An awkward moment of silence settled uneasily around them when Ayla stopped speaking. Danug rushed to fill the gap.
“Maybe he could hold the rope from behind, while he’s sitting on the horse’s back, instead of holding Racer’s mane,” the young man said.
Suddenly, as though someone had struck a piece of flint with iron pyrite in the dark lodge, Jondalar could visualize exactly what Danug had said. Instead of backing away, looking as though he was ready to sprint off at the first opportunity, Jondalar closed his eyes and wrinkled his forehead in concentration. “You know, that might work, Danug!” he said. Caught up in his excitement about an idea that might be a solution to a problem he had been worrying about, he forgot for a moment his uncertainty about his future. “Perhaps I could fasten something to his halter and hold it from behind. A strong cord … or a thin leather strap … two of them, maybe.”
“I have some narrow thongs,” Ayla said, noticing that he seemed less strained. She was pleased about his continuing interest in training the young stallion, and curious how it might work. “I will get them for you. They are inside.”
Jondalar followed her through the inner arch into the Mammoth Hearth. Then stopped suddenly as she went to the storage platform to get the thong. Ranec was talking to Deegie and Tronie, and turned to flash his winning smile at Ayla. Jondalar fel
t his stomach churn, closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He started edging back toward the opening. Ayla turned to give him a narrow roll of flexible leather.
“This is lashing, it is strong,” she said, giving it to him. “I made it last winter.” She looked up into the troubled blue eyes that revealed the pain, the confusion, and the indecision that tormented him. “Before you came to my valley, Jondalar. Before the Spirit of the Great Cave Lion chose you, and led you there.”
He took the roll and hurried out. He couldn’t stay. Whenever the carver came to the Mammoth Hearth, he had to leave. He couldn’t be nearby when the dark man and Ayla were together, which was more often recently. He had watched from a distance when the younger people gathered in the larger space of the ceremonial area to spread out their work, share ideas and skills. He heard them practice music and sing, listened to their jokes and laughter. And every time he heard Ayla’s laughter coupled with Ranec’s, he winced.
Jondalar put the roll of lashing down near the young animal’s halter, took his parka from the peg in the annex, and went outside, smiling bleakly at Danug on his way. He slipped it over his head, pulled the hood tight around his face, and stuffed his hands in the mittens dangling from the sleeves, then walked up to the steppes.
The strong wind blowing a gray rack across the sky was no more than normal for the season, and the sun shining intermittently between the high broken clouds seemed to have little effect on the temperature that remained well below freezing. The snow cover was scant, and the dry air crackled and stole moisture from his lungs in clouds of steam with each breath. He would not be out long, but the cold calmed him with its insistent demand to put survival ahead of every other consideration. He didn’t know why he reacted so strongly to Ranec. Part of it, without doubt, was his fear of losing Ayla to him, and part was visualizing them together in his imagination, but there was also a nagging guilt about his own hesitation in accepting her fully and without reservation. Part of him believed Ranec deserved her more than he did. But one thing at least seemed certain. Ayla wanted him and not Ranec to try to learn to ride Racer.
Danug watched Jondalar start up the slope, then let the drape fall back, and walked slowly back inside. Racer neighed and tossed his head as the young man walked past, and Danug looked at the horse and smiled. Nearly everyone seemed to enjoy the animals now, patting and talking to them, though not with Ayla’s familiarity. It seemed so natural to have horses in an annex of the lodge. How easy it was to forget the wonder and the amazement he had felt the first time he had seen them. He passed through the second archway, and saw Ayla standing beside her bed platform. He paused, then joined her.
“He’s taking a walk on the steppes,” he said to Ayla. “It’s not a good idea to go out alone when it’s cold and windy, but it’s not as bad out as it can be sometimes.”
“Are you trying to tell me he will be all right, Danug?” Ayla smiled at him, and he felt foolish for a moment. Of course Jondalar would be all right. He had traveled far, he could take care of himself. “Thank you,” she said, “for your help, and for wanting to help,” reaching over and touching his hand. Her hand was cool, Dut her touch warm, and he felt it with that special intensity she aroused in him, but on a deeper level, he felt that she had offered something more, her friendship.
“Maybe I’ll go out and check some snares I set,” he said.
“Try it this way, Ayla,” Deegie said.
Deftly, she poked a hole near the edge of the leather with a small bone, a hard, tough bone from the leg of an arctic fox which had a natural sharp point, that had been made even sharper with sandstone. Then she laid a fine piece of sinew thread over the hole, and with the point of the sewing awl, pushed it through the hole. She grabbed it with her fingers from the back side of the leather and pulled the sinew through. At a corresponding place on another piece of leather which she was sewing to the first piece, she made another hole and repeated the process.
Ayla took the practice pieces of leather back. Using a square of tough mammoth skin as a thimble, she pushed the sharp arctic fox bone through the leather, making a small perforation. Then she tried to lay the thin sinew over the hole and push it through, but she couldn’t seem to master the technique, and again felt thoroughly frustrated.
“I don’t think I’ll ever learn this, Deegie!” she wailed.