The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

When he tried, he could make no indentation in it with his fingernail. It was not made of wood or bone or ivory or antler. It was as hard as stone, but smoothly formed, with no indication or marks of carving. It was not any stone he knew.

He looked up at S'Armuna with a puzzled expression. "I have never seen anything like this before," he said.

Jondalar gave the figure to Ayla, and a shiver went through her at the moment she touched it. I should have taken my fur parka when we went out, she said to herself, but she could not help feeling that it was more than the cold that had made her feel such a sharp chill.

"That munai began as the dust of the earth," the woman stated.

"Dust?" Ayla said. "But this is stone!"

"Yes, it is now. I turned it to stone."

"You turned it to stone? How can you turn dust to stone?" Jondalar said, full of disbelief.

The woman smiled. "If I tell you, would it make you believe my power?"

"If you can convince me," the man retorted.

"I will tell you, but I won't try to convince you. You will have to convince yourself. I started with hard, dry clay from the river's edge and pounded it to dusty earth. Then I mixed in water." S'Armuna paused for a moment, wondering if she should say anything more about the mixture. She decided against it for now. "When it was the right consistency, it was shaped. Fire and hot air turned it to stone," the shaman stated, watching to see how the two young strangers would react, whether they would show disdain or be impressed, whether they would doubt or believe her.

The man closed his eyes trying to recall something. "I remember hearing ... from a Losadunai man, I think ... something about Mother figures made of mud."

S'Armuna smiled. "Yes, you could say we make munai out of mud. Animals, too, when we have need to call upon their spirits, many kinds of animals, bears, lions, mammoths, rhinos, horses, whatever we want. But they are mud only while they are being shaped. A figure made of the dust of the earth mixed with water, even after it has hardened, will melt in water back to the mud from which it was formed, then turn to dust, but after it is brought to life by Her sacred flame, it is forever changed. Passing through the Mother's searing heat makes the figures as hard as stone. The living spirit of the fire makes them endure."

Ayla saw the fire of excitement in the woman's eyes, and it reminded her of Jondalar's excitement when he was first developing the spear-thrower. She realized that S'Armuna was reliving the thrill of discovery, and it convinced her.

"They are brittle, even more than flint," the woman continued. "The Mother Herself has shown how they can be broken, but water will not change them. A munai made of mud, once touched by Her living fire, can stay outside in the rain and snow, can even soak in water and will never melt."

"You do indeed command the power of the Mother," Ayla said.

The woman hesitated an instant, then asked, "Would you like to see?"

"Oh, yes, I would," Ayla said at the same time as Jondalar replied, "Yes, I'd be very interested."

"Then come, I will show you."

"Can I get my parka?" Ayla said.

"Of course," S'Armuna said. "We should all put warmer clothes on, although if we were having the Fire Ceremony, it would be so hot that if you were anywhere near it, you would not need furs, not even on a day like this. Everything is nearly ready. We would have made the fire and begun the ceremony tonight, but it takes time, and the proper concentration. We'll wait until tomorrow. Tonight we have an important feast to attend."

S'Armuna stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, as though listening, or considering a thought that had occurred to her. "Yes, a very important feast," she repeated, looking straight at Ayla. Does she know the danger that threatens her? the shaman wondered. If she is who I think, she must.

They ducked into the shaman's lodge and slipped on their outer garments. Ayla noticed the young woman had left. Then S'Armuna led them some distance beyond her dwelling to the farthest edge of the settlement, toward a group of women working around a rather innocuous construction that resembled a small earthlodge with a sloped roof. The women were bringing dried dung, wood, and bone into the small structure, materials for a fire, Ayla realized. She recognized the pregnant young woman among them and smiled at her. Cavoa smiled shyly back.

S'Armuna went into the low entrance of the small structure, ducking her head, then turned and beckoned to the visitors when they held back, not sure if they were supposed to follow. Inside, a fireplace with lambent flames licking at glowing coals kept the small, somewhat circular anteroom quite warm. Separate piles of bone, wood, and dung filled almost the entire left half of the space. Along the right curved wall were several rough shelves, flattish shoulder and pelvic bones of mammoths supported by stones, displaying many small objects.

They moved closer and were surprised to see that the objects were figurines that had been shaped and molded out of muddy clay and left to dry. Several of the figures were of women, Mother figures, but some of them were not complete, just the distinguishing parts of women, the lower half of the body, including the legs, for example, or the breasts. On other shelves were animals, again not always in their complete form, heads of lions, and of bears, and the distinctive shapes of mammoths with high domed heads, humped withers, and sloping backs.

The figurines seemed to have been made by different people; some were quite crude, showing little artistic skill, other objects were sophisticated in concept and well made. Though neither Ayla nor Jondalar understood why the molders of the pieces made the particular shapes they did, they felt that each was inspired by some individual reason or feeling.

Opposite the entrance was a smaller opening that led to an enclosed space within the structure, which had been scooped out of the loess soil of a hillside. Except that it opened into the side, it reminded Ayla of a large ground oven, the kind that was dug into the earth, heated with hot rocks, and used to cook food, but she felt that no food had ever been cooked in this oven. When she went to look inside, she saw a fireplace within the second room.

From the bits of charred material in the ash, she realized bone was burned as fuel, and, looking closer, she recognized that it was a firepit similar to the ones used by the Mamutoi, but even deeper. Ayla looked around, wondering where the indrawing air vent was. In order to burn bone, a very hot fire was needed, which required that air be forced in. The Mamutoi firepits were fed by the constantly blowing wind outside, brought in through trench-vents that were controlled by dampers. Jondalar examined the interior of the second room closely and drew similar conclusions; from the color and hardness of the walls, he was sure that very hot fires had been sustained within the space for long periods of time. He guessed that the small clay objects on the shelves were destined for the same treatment.

The man had been right when he said he had never before seen anything like the Mother figure S'Armuna showed him. The figure, made by the woman standing in front of him, had not been manufactured by modifying—carving or shaping or polishing—a material that occurred naturally. It was made of ceramic, fired clay, and it was the first material ever created by human hand and human intelligence. The heating chamber was not a cooking oven, it was a kiln.

And the first kiln ever devised was not invented for the purpose of making useful waterproof containers. Long before pottery, small ceramic sculptures were fired into impermeable hardness. The figures they had seen on the shelves resembled animals and humans, but the images of women—no men were made, only women—and other living creatures were not considered actual portrayals. They were symbols, metaphors, meant to represent more than they showed, to suggest an analogy, a

spiritual similarity. They were art; art came before utility.