“Durc … my baby,” she sobbed, burrowing her face in her hands. Why did Broud take you away from me?
She cried for her son, and for the clan she had left behind; she cried for Iza, the only mother she could remember; and she cried for her loneliness and fear of the unknown world awaiting her. But not for Creb, who had loved her as his own, not yet. That sorrow was too fresh; she wasn’t ready to face it.
When the tears had run their course, Ayla found herself staring at the crashing surf far below. She watched the rolling breakers spout up in jets of foam, then swirl around the jagged rocks.
It would be so easy, she thought.
No! She shook her head and straightened up. I told him he could take my son away, he could make me leave, he could curse me with death, but he could not make me die!
She tasted salt, and a wry smile crossed her face. Her tears had always upset Iza and Creb. The eyes of people in the Clan did not water, unless they were sore, not even Durc’s. There was much of her in him, he could even make sounds the way she could, but Durc’s large brown eyes were Clan.
Ayla climbed down quickly. As she hoisted her carrying basket to her back, she wondered if her eyes were really weak, or if all the Others had watering eyes. Then another thought echoed in her mind: Find your own people, find your own mate.
The young woman traveled west along the coast, crossing many streams and creeks that found their way to the inland sea, until she reached a rather large river. Then she veered north, following the rushing waterway inland and looking for a place to cross. She passed through the coastal fringe of pine and larch, woods which boasted an occasional giant dominating dwarfed cousins. When she reached the continental steppes, brush of willows, birches, and aspens joined the cramped conifers that edged the river.
She followed every twist and turn of the meandering course, growing more anxious with each passing day. The river was taking her back east in a general northeasterly direction. She did not want to go east. Some clans hunted the eastern part of the mainland. She had planned to veer west on her northward trek. She did not want to chance meeting anyone who was Clan—not with a death curse on her! She had to find a way to cross the river.
When the river widened and broke into two channels around a small gravel-strewn island with brush clinging to rocky shores, she decided to risk a crossing. A few large boulders in the channel on the other side of the island made her think it might be shallow enough to wade. She was a good swimmer, but she didn’t want to get her clothes or basket wet. It would take too long for them to dry, and the nights were still cold.
She walked back and forth along the bank, watching the swift water. When she decided upon the shallowest way, she stripped, piled everything into her basket, and, holding it up, entered the water. The rocks were slippery underfoot, and the current threatened to unbalance her. Midway across the first channel, the water was waist high, but she gained the island without mishap. The second channel was wider. She wasn’t sure if it was fordable, but she was almost halfway and didn’t want to give up.
She was well past the midpoint when the river deepened until she was walking on tiptoe with the water up to her neck, holding the basket over her head. Suddenly the bottom dropped. Her head bobbed down and she took an involuntary swallow. The next moment she was treading water, her basket resting on top of her head. She steadied it with one hand, trying to make some progress toward the opposite shore with the other. The current picked her up and carried her, but only for a short distance. Her feet felt rocks, and, a few moments later, she walked up the far bank.
Leaving the river behind, Ayla traveled the steppes again. As days of sunshine outnumbered those of rain, the warming season finally caught up and outpaced her northward trek. The buds on trees and brush grew into leaves, and conifers extended soft, light green needles from the ends of branches and twigs. She picked them to chew along the way, enjoying the light tangy pine flavor.
She fell into a routine of traveling all day until, near dusk, she found a creek or stream, where she made camp. Water was still easy to find. Spring rains and winter melt from farther north were overflowing streams and filling draws and washes that would be dry gullies or, at best, sluggish muddy runnels later. Plentiful water was a passing phase. The moisture would be quickly absorbed, but not before it caused the steppes to blossom.
Almost overnight, herbaceous flowers of white, yellow, and purple—more rarely a vivid blue or bright red—filled the land, blending in the distance to the predominant young green of new grass. Ayla delighted in the beauty of the season; spring had always been her favorite time of year.
As the open plains burgeoned with life, she relied less on the meager supply of preserved food she carried with her and began to live off the land. It slowed her down hardly at all. Every woman of the Clan learned to pluck leaves, flowers, buds, and berries while traveling, almost without stopping. She trimmed leaves and twigs from a sturdy branch, sharpened one end with a flint knife, and used the digging stick to turn up roots and bulbs as quickly. Gathering was easy. She had only herself to feed.
But Ayla had an advantage women of the Clan normally did not. She could hunt. Only with a sling, to be sure, but even the men agreed—once they accepted the idea of her hunting at all—that she was the most skilled sling-hunter in the clan. She had taught herself, and she had paid dearly for the skill.
As the sprouting herbs and grasses tempted burrowing ground squirrels, giant hamsters, great jerboas, rabbits, and hares from winter nests, Ayla started wearing her sling again, tucked into the thong that held her fur wrap closed. She carried the digging stick slipped into the thong, too, but her medicine bag, as always, was worn on the waist thong of her inner wrap.
Food was plentiful; wood, and fire, were a little more difficult to obtain. She could make fire, and brush and small trees managed to survive along some of the seasonal streams, often accompanied by deadfall. Whenever she came across dry branches or dung, she collected that, too. But she didn’t make a fire every night. Sometimes the right materials were not available, or they were green, or wet, or she was tired and didn’t want to bother.
But she didn’t like sleeping out in the open without the security of a fire. The extensive grassland supported an abundance of large grazing animals, and their ranks were thinned by a variety of four-legged hunters. Fire usually held them off. It was common practice in the Clan for a high-ranking male to carry a coal when they traveled, to start the next fire, and it didn’t occur to Ayla to carry fire-making materials with her at first. Once it did, she wondered why she hadn’t done it sooner.
The fire drill stick and flat wood hearth-platform didn’t make it any easier to start a fire, though, if tinder or wood was too green or damp. When she found the skeleton of an aurochs, she thought her problems were solved.
The moon had gone through another cycle of its phases, and the wet spring was warming into early summer. She was still traveling on the broad coastal plain that sloped gently toward the inland sea. Silt carried down by the seasonal floods often formed long estuaries, partially closed by sandbars, or sealed off completely to form lagoons or pools.
Ayla had made a dry camp and stopped at a small pool at midmorning. The water looked stagnant and not potable, but her waterbag was low. She dipped in a hand to sample it, then spat out the brackish liquid and took a small sip from her waterbag to wash out her mouth.
I wonder if that aurochs drank this water, she thought, noticing the bleached bones and skull with long tapering horns. She turned away from the stagnant pool with its specter of death, but the bones would not leave her thoughts. She kept seeing the white skull and the long horns, the curved hollow horns.
She stopped at a stream near noon and decided to make a fire and roast a rabbit she had killed. Sitting in the warm sun, spinning the fire drill between her palms against the wood platform, she wished Grod would appear with the coal he carried in.…
She jumped up, piled the fire drill and hearth into her basket, put the rabbit on top, and hurried back the way she had come. When she reached the pool, she looked for the skull. Grod usually carried a live coal wrapped in dried moss or lichen in the long hollow horn of an aurochs. With one, she could carry fire.
But while she was tugging at the horn, she felt a twinge of conscience. Women of the Clan did not carry fire; it was not allowed. Who will carry it for me if I don’t? she thought, jerking hard and breaking the horn away. She left quickly, as though thinking of the prohibited act alone had conjured up watchful, disapproving eyes.
There had been a time when her survival depended on conforming to a way of life foreign to her nature. Now it depended on her ability to overcome her childhood conditioning and think for herself. The aurochs horn was a beginning, and it boded well for her chances.
There was more to the business of carrying fire than she realized, however. In the morning she looked for dry moss to wrap her coal in. But moss, so plentiful in the wooded region near the cave, was not to be had on the dry open plains. Finally she settled for grass. To her dismay, the ember was dead when she was ready to make camp again. Yet she knew it could be done, and she had often banked fires to last the night. She had the necessary knowledge. It took trial and error, and many dead coals, before she discovered a way to preserve a bit of the fire from one camp
to the next. She carried the aurochs horn tied to her waist thong, too.