The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“You just have to practice, Ayla. I’ve been doing this since I was a girl. Of course it’s easy for me, but you’ll get it, if you keep trying. It’s the same idea as cutting a little slit with a flint point and pulling leather lashing through to make working clothes, and you can do that just fine.”

“But it is much harder to do with fine sinew and tiny holes. I can’t get the sinew to go through. I feel so clumsy! I don’t know how Tronie can sew on beads and quills like she does,” Ayla said, looking at Fralie, who was rolling a long thin cylinder of ivory in the groove of a block of sandstone. “I was hoping she would show me, so I could decorate the white tunic after I made it, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to make it the way I want.”

“You will, Ayla. I don’t think there is anything you can’t do if you really want to,” Tronie said.

“Except sing!” Deegie said.

Everyone laughed, including Ayla. Though her speaking voice was low-pitched and pleasant, singing was not one of her gifts. She could maintain a limited range of tones sufficient for the lulling monotony of a chant, and she did have an ear for music. She knew when she was off and she could whistle a melody, but any facility of voice was beyond her. The virtuosity of someone like Barzec was sheer wonder. She could listen to him all day, if he would consent to sing so long. Fralie, too, had a fine, clear, high, sweet voice, which Ayla loved to hear. In fact, most members of the Lion Camp could sing, but not Ayla.

Jokes were made about her singing and her voice, which included comments about her accent, though it was more speech mannerism than accent. She laughed as much as anyone. She couldn’t sing and she knew it, and if they joked about her voice, many people had also, individually, praised her speech. They took it as a compliment that she had become so fluent in their language, so fast, and the joking about her singing made her feel that she belonged.

Everyone had some trait or characteristic that the others poked fun at: Talut’s size, Ranec’s color, Tulie’s strength. Only Frebec took offense, so they joked about that behind his back, in sign language. The Lion Camp had also become fluent, without even thinking about it, in a modified version of the language of the Clan. As a result, Ayla wasn’t the only one feeling the warmth of acceptance. Rydag, too, was included in the fun.

Ayla glanced toward him. He was sitting on a mat with Hartal on his lap, keeping the active baby occupied with a pile of bones, mostly deer vertebrae, so he wouldn’t go crawling after his mother and scatter the beads she was helping Fralie make. Rydag was good with the babies. He had the patience to play with them and entertain them as long as they wished.

He smiled at her. “You not only one cannot sing, Ayla,” he signed.

She smiled back. No, she thought, she was not the only one who could not sing. Rydag could not sing. Or talk. Or run and play. Or even live out a full life. In spite of her medicine, she didn’t know how long he would live. He could die that day, or he could survive several years. She could only love him each day that he lived, and hope she could love him the next.

“Hartal cannot sing, either!” he signaled, and laughed with his odd guttural laugh.

Ayla chuckled, shaking her head with bemused delight. He had known what she was thinking, and made a joke about it that was clever, and funny.

Nezzie stood near the fireplace and watched them. Maybe you do not sing, Rydag, but you can talk now, she thought. He was stringing several vertebrae on a heavy cord through the spinal cord hole, and rattling them together for the baby. Without the hand-signal words, and the increased awareness they had brought of Rydag’s intelligence and understanding, he would never have been allowed the responsibility of

tending Hartal so his mother could work, not even right beside her. What a difference Ayla had brought to Rydag’s life. This winter, no one questioned his essential humanity, except Frebec, and Nezzie was sure that was more out of stubbornness than belief.

Ayla continued to struggle with the awl and sinew. If she could only get the Tine threads of sinew to go into the hole and out the other side. She tried to do it the way Deegie had shown her, but it was a knack that came from years of experience, and she was a long way from that. She dropped the practice pieces in her lap in frustration, and began watching the others making ivory beads.

A sharp blow to a mammoth tusk at the proper angle caused a fairly thin, curved section to flake off. Grooves were cut in the large flake with chisellike burins by etching a line and retracing it several times until the long pieces broke off. They were shaved and whittled into rough cylinders with scrapers and knives that peeled off long curled slivers, then they were rubbed smooth with sandstone kept wet to be more abrasive. Sharp flint blades, given a sawtooth edge and hafted to a long handle, were used to saw the ivory cylinders into small sections, and then the edges of them were smoothed.

The final step was to make a hole in the center, to string them on a cord, or to sew them to a garment. It was done with a special tool. Flint, carefully shaped into a long thin point by a skilled toolmaker, was inserted into the end of a long narrow rod, perfectly straight and smooth. The point of the hand drill was centered on a small, thick disc of ivory and then, similar to the process of making fire, the rod was rotated back and forth between the palms while exerting downward pressure, until a hole was bored through.

Ayla watched Tronie twirl the rod between her palms, concentrating on making the hole just right. It occurred to her that they were going to a lot of work to make something that had no apparent use. Beads were no help in the securing or preparing of food, and they did not make the clothing, to which they were attached, more useful. But she began to understand why the beads had such value. The Lion Camp could never have afforded such an investment of time and effort without the security of warmth and comfort, and the assurance of adequate food. Only a cooperative, well-organized group could plan and store enough necessities ahead to assure the leisure to make beads. Therefore, the more beads they wore, the more it showed that the Lion Camp was a flourishing, desirable place to live, and the more respect and status they could command from the other Camps.

She picked up the leather in her lap and the bone awl, and made the last hole she had made a little bigger, then she tried to poke the sinew through the hole with the awl. She got it through, and pulled it from the back, but it didn’t have the neat look of Deegie’s tight stitches. She glanced up again, discouraged, and watched Rydag thread a backbone segment on a rope through the natural hole of its spinal cord. He picked up another vertebra and poked the rather stiff rope through its hole.

Ayla took a deep breath, and picked up her work again. It wasn’t so hard forcing the point through the leather, she thought. She almost pushed the whole bone through the hole. If only she could attach the thread to it, she thought, it would be easy.…

She stopped and examined the small bone carefully. Then she looked at Rydag tying the ends of the rope together and shaking the backbone rattle for Hartal. She watched Tronie spinning the hand drill between her palms, then turned to look at Fralie smoothing an ivory cylinder in the groove in a small block of sandstone. Then she closed her eyes, recalling Jondalar making spear points out of bone in her valley the previous summer.…

She looked at the bone-sewing awl again. “Deegie!” she cried.

“What?” the young woman answered, startled.

“I think I know a way to do it!”

“Do what?”

“Get the sinew to go through the hole. Why not put a hole through the back end of a bone with a sharp point and then put the thread through the hole? Like Rydag put that rope through those backbones. Then, you can push it all the way through the leather and the thread will follow it. What do you think? Would it work?” Ayla asked.

Deegie closed her eyes for a moment, then took the awl from Ayla and looked it over. “It would have to be a very small hole.”

“The holes Tronie is making in those beads are small. Would it have to be much smaller?”

“This bone is very hard, and tough. It would not be easy to make a hole in it, and I don’t see a good place for a hole.”

“Couldn’t we make something out of mammoth tusk, or some other kind of bone? Jondalar makes long, narrow spear points out of bone, and smooths and sharpens them with sandstone, like Fralie is doing. Couldn’t we make something like a tiny spear point, and then drill a hole in the other end?” Ayla asked, tense with excitement.