The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

“I get sick, I tell Wolf, ‘get Ayla.’ ” Rydag made the signal they had worked out before in practice and play. Wolf jumped up, put his paws on Ayla’s chest, and reached up to lick her jaw, eager to get her attention.

She smiled, ruffed up his neck, then signaled him down.

“I want stay here, Ayla. I like watching. River. Horses in meadow. People walk by.” Rydag grinned. “Not always see me, stare at tent, stare at horse place. Then see Wolf. Funny people.”

Mamut and Ayla both smiled at his simple delight in seeing the surprised reactions of people.

“Well, I suppose it will be all right. Nezzie wouldn’t have left him if she didn’t think he would be safe,” Ayla said, conceding her last internal argument against leaving. “I’m ready to go, Mamut.”

As they walked together toward the permanent lodges of Wolf Camp, Ayla noticed a denser concentration of tents and Camps, and many more people milling around between them. She was glad they were on the outside edge, where she could look out and see trees and grass, and the river and meadow. Several people nodded or spoke to them as they passed. Ayla watched Mamut, noting how he acknowledged their greetings, and responded the same way.

One lodge at the end of the somewhat uneven row of six seemed to be the focal point of activities. Ayla noticed a cleared area with no household Camps near the dwelling, and realized it must be the place where people gathered. The Camps that were immediately adjacent to the clearing did not have the look of usual household areas. One of them had a fence made of openly spaced mammoth bones, branches and dried brush marking the territorial boundaries. As they passed it, Ayla heard her name called. She stopped, surprised at who had called her from the other side of the fence.

“Latie!” she said, then recalled what Deegie had told her. As long as Latie was still at the lodge of the Lion Camp, the restriction on her association with males did not limit her movements or activities too much. However, once they reached the Meeting place, it was necessary that she be kept in seclusion. Several other young women were with her, all smiling and giggling. She was introduced to Latie’s age mates, who seemed to be somewhat in awe of her.

“Where are you going, Ayla?”

“To the Mammoth Hearth,” Mamut answered for her.

Latie nodded as though she should have known. Ayla noticed Tulie in the enclosed yard area around a tent which was decorated with painted designs in red ochre, talking to several other women. She waved and smiled.

“Latie, look! A red-foot!” one of her friends said, in hushed tones of excitement. Everyone stopped to stare, and the young women giggled. Ayla found herself looking with great interest at the woman who sauntered past, noticing as she walked that the bottoms of her bare feet were a rich bright red. She had been told about them, but this was the first one she had seen. She seemed to be a perfectly ordinary woman, Ayla thought. Yet, there was a quality to her that made one look twice.

The woman approached a knot of young men, whom Ayla hadn’t seen before, loitering near a stand of small trees across the clearing. Ayla thought her walk became more exaggerated as she neared them, her smile more languorous, and she suddenly noticed her red feet more. The woman stopped to talk to the young men, and her liquid laugh floated across the empty space. As she and the old man walked away, Ayla remembered the conversation the women, and Mamut, had had the evening before the Spring Festival.

All the young females who were in the transitional state of not-yet-women were under constant surveillance—but not only by the chaperons. Ayla noticed, now, several groups of young men standing around the fringes of the prohibited area where Latie and her age mates were staying, hoping to catch a glimpse of the forbidden, and therefore all the more desirable, young women. At no time in her life was a woman the object of greater interest by the male population. The young women enjoyed their unique status and the special attention it brought, and were just as interested in the other gender, though they disdained to show it openly. They spent most of their time peeking out of the tent or around the fence, speculating about the various males, who paraded and lounged around the periphery with exaggerated casualness.

Though the young men who watched, and were watched in return, might eventually form a hearth with those just now becoming women, they were not the ones likely to be chosen for the first, important initiation. The young women and the older female advisers who shared their tent discussed several possibilities from among the older and more experienced men. Those being considered were usually approached privately before the eventual selection was made.

The day before the ceremony, the young women who were staying together in one tent—occasionally there were too many for one tent and two Camps of young women would be established—would go out as a group. When they found a man with whom they wanted to spend the night, they would surround and “capture” him. The men thus captured were required to go along with the initiates—few men objected to the requirement. That night, after some preliminary rituals, they would all go together into the darkened tent, grope to find each other, and spend the night exploring the differences and learning the Pleasures of each other. Neither the young women nor the men were supposed to know with whom they eventually coupled, though in actual practice, they usually did. The watching older women made sure there was no undue roughness, and were available on the rare occasion that advice was necessary. If, for some reason, any of the young women were not opened, it could be accommodated in a quiet second night’s ritual without overtly placing blame on anyone in particular.

Neither Danug nor Druwez would be invited to Latie’s tent, primarily because they were too closely related, but also because they were too young. Other women who had celebrated their First Rites in previous years, particularly those who had no children yet, could choose to stand in for the Great Mother and teach Her way to young men. After a special ceremony, which honored them and set them apart for the season, the soles of the feet of these women would be stained with a deep red dye that would not wash off, though eventually it would wear off, to signify that they were available to help young men gain experience. Many also wore red leather bands tied around their upper arms, ankles, or waists.

Though some teasing was inevitable, the women appreciated the underlying seriousness of their task. Understanding his natural shyness, and the driving urge behind his eagerness, they treated each young man with consideration, teaching him to know a woman tenderly, so that someday he might be chosen to make a woman, so that someday she might make a child. And to show them how pleased She was with this offering of themselves, Mut blessed many of these women. Even those who had been joined for some time, and had never borne life in their wombs, were often pregnant by the end of the season.

Next to the not-yet-women,

the red-footed women were the most sought after by all ages of men. For the rest of his years, nothing could so quickly stimulate a man of the Mamutoi as the flash of a red foot when a woman walked by, and knowing it, some women tinged their feet reddish to make themselves more attractive. Though a woman who had made such a dedication of herself was free to choose any man, her service was for the younger ones and any older man who managed to convince her to share his company felt himself favored.

Mamut directed Ayla toward a Camp that was not far from the Rites of Womanhood Camp. At first glance it seemed to be an ordinary tent within a household Camp. The difference, she noticed, was that everyone was tattooed. Some, like old Mamut, just had a simple dark blue chevron pattern high on the right cheekbone; three or four broken lines, like the lower parts of downward-pointing triangles, stacked up, one nestled within the other. They reminded her of the lower jawbones of mammoths that had been used to construct Vincavec’s lodge. The tattoos of others, particularly the men, Ayla noticed, were much more elaborate. The patterns incorporated not only chevrons but triangles, zigzags, rhomboids, and right-angled spirals, in both blue and red.

Ayla was glad they had stopped off at Mammoth Camp before coming to the Meeting. She knew she would have been startled by their decorated faces, if she had not already met Vincavec. As fascinating and complex as the tattoos on the faces of these people were, none was as intricate as his.

The next difference she noticed was that although there seemed to be a preponderance of women at this Camp, there were no children. They had obviously been left in someone’s care at the household Camps. Ayla quickly understood that this was not considered to be a place for children. This was a place for adults to gather, for serious meetings, discussions, and rituals—and gaming. Several people were playing games with marked bones, sticks, and pieces of ivory in the outdoor area of the Camp.

Mamut walked up to the entrance of the tent, which was open, and scratched on the leather. Ayla looked into the dim interior over his shoulder, trying not to appear conspicuous to those lounging around outside, but they, too, were trying, without seeming too eager, to get a closer look at her. They were curious about the young woman, whom old Mamut had not just accepted into training but adopted as a daughter. She was a stranger, it was said, not even Mamutoi. No one even knew where she came from.

Many of them had made a point of walking past Cattail Camp to see the horses and the wolf, and they were surprised and impressed to see the animals, though they did not want to show it. How could anyone control a stallion? Or make a mare stand quietly with so many people—and a wolf—around? Why was the wolf so docile with the people of Lion Camp? He behaved like a normal wolf around everyone else. No one else could get near him, or even within the boundaries of their Camp without an invitation and, it was said, he had attacked Chaleg.

The old man motioned Ayla inside, and they both sat down near a large fireplace, though only a small flame burned within it, off to one side, near the woman who sat across. She was a heavy woman. Ayla had never seen anyone quite so fat and wondered how she could have walked any distance to get there.

“I have brought my daughter to meet you, Lomie,” the old Mamut said.

“I wondered when you were coming,” she replied.

Then, before she said anything else, she moved a red-hot stone from the fire with sticks. She opened up a packet of leaves and dropped a few on the stone and leaned closer to breathe in the smoke that curled up. Ayla smelled sage, and less pronounced, mullein and lobelia. She watched the woman closely, noted a heaviness of breathing, which was soon relieved, and realized she suffered a chronic cough, probably asthma.

“Do you make a cough syrup from the root of mullein, too?” Ayla asked her. “It can help.” She had been reluctant to speak up at first, and wasn’t sure why she did without having been introduced, but she wanted to help, and somehow it felt like the right thing to do.