The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“I think Nezzie has some hot tea, and I don’t think she’d mind if we had a cup.”

“She makes mint in the morning; I will just get something to add to it … something I like to drink in the morning. I think I will get my sling, too.”

Nezzie insisted that the two young women eat some hot cooked grains as well, and gave them slices of meat from her roast of the night before to take along. Talut wanted to know which way they planned to go, and the general location of Deegie’s snares. When they stepped outside the main entrance, the day had begun; the sun had risen above a bank of clouds on the horizon, and begun its journey across a clear sky. Ayla noticed the horses were already out. She didn’t blame them.

Deegie showed Ayla the quick twist of the foot that turned the leather loop, attached to the elongated circular frame woven across with sturdy willow withes, into a convenient snowshoe hitch. With a little practice, Ayla was soon striding across the top of the snow alongside Deegie.

Jondalar watched them leaving from the entrance to the annex. With a frown, he looked at the sky and considered following them, then changed his mind. He saw a few clouds, but nothing to portend danger. Why was he always so worried about Ayla whenever she left the earthlodge? It was ridiculous for him to follow her around. She wasn’t going out alone, Deegie was with her, and the two young women were perfectly able to take care of themselves … even if it did snow … or worse. They’d notice him following after a while, and then he’d just be in the way when they wanted to be off by themselves. He let the drape fall, and turned back inside, but he couldn’t shake his feeling that Ayla might be in danger.

“Oh, look, Ayla!” Deegie cried, on her knees examining the frozen solid white-furred carcass dangling from a noose pulled tight around its neck. “I set other traps. Let’s hurry and check them.”

Ayla wanted to stay and examine the snare, but she followed after Deegie. “What are you going to do with it?” she asked when she caught up.

“It depends on how many I get. I wanted to make a fringe on a fur parka for Branag, but I’m making him a tunic, too, a red one—not as bright as your red. It will have long sleeves and take two hides, and I’m trying to match the color of the second skin to the first. I think I’d like to decorate it with the fur and teeth of a winter fox. What do you think?”

“I think it will be beautiful.” They shussed through the snow for a while, then Ayla said, “What do you think would be best for a white tunic?”

“It depends. Do you want other colors or do you want to keep it all white?”

“I think I want it to be white, but I’m not sure.”

“White fox fur would be nice.”

“I thought about that, but … I don’t think it would be quite right,” Ayla said. It wasn’t so much the color that was bothering her. She remembered that she had selected white fox furs to give to Ranec at her adoption ceremony, and didn’t want any reminders about that time.

The second snare had been sprung, but it was empty. The sinew noose had been bitten through, and there were wolf tracks. The third had also caught a fox, and it had apparently frozen hard in the snare, but it had been gnawed at, most of it was eaten, in fact, and the fur was useless. Again Ayla pointed out wolf tracks.

“I seem to be trapping foxes for wolves,” Deegie said.

“It looks like only one, Deegie,” Ayla said.

Deegie was beginning to fear she would not get another good fur, even if one had been caught in her fourth snare. They hurried to the place where she had set it.

“It should be over there, near those bushes,” she said as they approached a small wooded copse, “but I don’t see …”

“There it is, Deegie!” Ayla shouted, hurrying ahead. “It look good, too. And look at that tail!”

“Perfect!” Deegie sighed with relief “I wanted at least two.” She untangled the frozen fox from the noose, tied it together with the first fox, and slung them over the branch of a tree. She was feeling more relaxed now that she had trapped her two foxes. “I’m hungry. Why don’t we stop and have something to eat here?”

“I do feel hungry, now that you say it.”

They were in a sp

arsely wooded glen, more brush than trees, formed by a creek that had cut through thick deposits of loess soil. A sense of bleak and weary exhaustion pervaded the small vale in the waning days of the long harsh winter. It was a drab place of blacks and whites and dreary grays. The snow cover, broken by the woody underbrush, was old and compacted, disturbed by many tracks, and seemed used and grimy. Broken branches exposing raw wood showed the ravages of wind, snow, and hungry animals. Willow and alder clung close to the earth, bent by the weight of climate and season to prostrate shrubs. A few scrawny birch trees stood tall and thin, scraping bare branches noisily together in the wind, as though clamoring for the fulfilling touch of green. Even the conifers had lost their color. The twisted pines, bark scabbed with patches of gray lichen, were faded, and the tall larches were dark and sagged heavily from their burden of snow.

Dominating one shallow slope was a mound of snow armed with long canes spiked with sharp thorns—the dry, woody stems of runners which had been sent out the previous summer to claim new territory. Ayla noted it in her mind, not as an impenetrable thicket of thorny briars, but as a place to look for berries and healing leaves in their proper season. She saw beyond the bleak, tired scene to the hope it held, and after the long confinement, even a winter-weary landscape looked promising, especially with the sun shining.

The two young women piled snow together to make seats on what would be the bank of a little stream if it were summer. Deegie opened her haversack and took out the food she had packed, and even more important, the water. She opened a birchbark packet and gave Ayla a compact cake of traveling food—the nutritious mixture of dried fruits and meat and energy-giving essential fat, shaped into a round patty.

“Mother made some of her steamed loaves with pine nuts last night and gave me one,” Deegie said, opening another packet and breaking off a piece for Ayla. They had become a favorite of hers.

“I will have to ask Tulie how to make these,” Ayla said, taking a bite before she unwrapped the slices of Nezzie’s roast, and put some down beside each of them. “I think we are having a feast out here. All we need are some fresh spring greens.”

“That would make it perfect. I can hardly wait for spring. Once we have the Back Breaking Celebration, it seems to get harder and harder to wait,” Deegie replied.

Ayla was enjoying the companionable outing with just herself and Deegie, and was even beginning to feel warm in the shallow depression, protected from winds. She untied the thong at her throat and pushed back her hood, then straightened her sling around her head. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the sun. She saw the circular afterimage of the dazzling orb against the red background of her lowered eyelids, and felt the welcoming warmth. After she opened her eyes again, she seemed to see with greater clarity.

“Do people always wrestle at Back Breaking Celebrations?” Ayla asked. “I have never seen anyone wrestle without moving his feet before.”