Joharran dropped one of Ayla’s hands, but, holding up the other, faced out toward the assembled Caves. “Please welcome this woman who traveled so far with Jondalar, welcome her to this land of the Zelandonii, the Great Mother Earth’s Children. Show this woman the hospitality and respect with which the Zelandonii honor all their guests, especially one of the Blessed of Doni. Let her know we value our visitors.”
There were sidelong glances in the direction of Marona and her friends. The joke wasn’t at all funny anymore. It was their turn to feel embarrassed, and Portula, at least, turned crimson when she looked up at the foreign woman standing on the Speaking Stone wearing a Zelandonii boy’s underwear and puberty belt. She hadn’t known the clothing she was given was inappropriate. It didn’t matter. The way she wore it made it entirely proper.
Then Ayla, feeling a need to do something, took a small step forward. “In the name of Mut, Great Mother of All, whom you know as Doni, I greet you Zelandonii, Children of this beautiful land, Children of the Great Earth Mother, and thank you for welcoming me. I thank you, too, for accepting my animal friends into your midst; for allowing Wolf to stay with me inside a dwelling.” Wolf looked up at her at the sound of his name. “And for providing a place for the horses, Whinney and Racer.”
The immediate reaction of the crowd was startled surprise. Though her accent was quite noticeable, it wasn’t the way she spoke that astonished the people. In the spirit of the formality of the introductions, Ayla said the name of her mare the way she had originally given it to Whinney, and they were stunned by the sound that had come out of her mouth. Ayla had made such a perfect horse’s whinny that for a moment, they thought it was a horse. It was not the first time she had surprised people with her ability to imitate the sound of an animal—a horse was not the only animal she could mimic.
Ayla had no memory of the language she had known as a child; she could not remember anything about her life before the Clan, except a few vague dreams and a mortal fear of earthquakes. But Ayla’s kind had an inherent compulsion, a genetic drive nearly as strong as hunger, for verbal speech. When she was living alone in the valley after she left the Clan and before she had learned to speak again from Jondalar, she developed verbalizations for herself to which she attributed meaning, a language only she, and Whinney and Racer to some extent, could understand.
Ayla had a natural aptitude for reproducing sounds, but having no verbal language and living alone, hearing only
the sounds made by animals, she began to mimic them. The personal language she devised was a combination of the baby sounds her son had begun to make before she was forced to leave him, the few words spoken by the Clan, and onomatopoeic mimicking of the sounds made by animals, including bird whistles. Time and practice had made her so proficient at imitating their sounds, even the animals could not tell the difference.
Many people could imitate animals, it was a useful hunting strategy if the mimic was good enough, but she was so good, it was uncanny. That was what caused the moment of consternation, but the people, who were used to a certain element of banter from speakers when the occasion wasn’t entirely serious, became convinced she had made the sound as a gesture of humor. The initial shock gave way to smiles and chuckles as they relaxed.
Ayla, who had been a bit apprehensive at their first reaction, noticed the easing of tension and relaxed in turn. When they smiled at her, she could not help but smile back, one of her glorious, beautiful smiles that seemed to make her glow.
“Jondalar, with a filly like that, how are you going to keep the young stallions away?” a voice called out. It was the first open acknowledgment of her beauty and appeal.
The yellow-haired man smiled. “I’ll have to take her out riding often, keep her busy,” he said. “You know that I learned how to ride while I was gone, don’t you?”
“Jondalar, you knew how to ‘ride’ before you left!”
There was a burst of laughter; this time, Ayla realized, the laughter was meant in fun.
Joharran spoke up when it settled down. “I have only one more thing to say,” he said. “I want to invite all the Zelandonii who have come from neighboring Caves to join the Ninth Cave in the feast we have prepared to welcome Jondalar and Ayla home.”
7
Marvelous aromas had been emanating from community cooking areas at the unoccupied far southwestern end of the abri all day, stimulating everyone’s appetite, and a number of people had been busy with last minute preparations before Joharran began to speak. After the introductions, as the throng pressed toward the far end, Jondalar and Ayla were urged ahead, although the crowd was careful to allow space around the wolf, who followed a step behind the woman.
The food was attractively arranged on platters and in bowls of shaped bone, woven grass and fiber, and carved wood and displayed on long, low tables made of blocks and slabs of limestone. Bent wood tongs, carved horn spoons, and large flint knives were conveniently nearby, ready to be used as serving implements. Most people brought their own eating dishes, though there were extras for those who needed them.
Ayla stopped to admire the display for a moment. There were whole roasted haunches of young reindeer, plump grouse, platters of trout and pike, and, even more prized during the early summer season, servings of still scarce vegetables: young roots, fresh greens, new shoots, and tightly coiled young ferns. Edible sweet milkweed flowers added a pleasing decoration to many of the dishes. There were also nuts and dried fruits from the previous autumn’s harvest, and containers of rich broth with chunks of reconstituted dried aurochs meat, roots, and mushrooms.
The thought struck Ayla that if they still had such prized food left after living through the rigors of the long winter, it spoke well, indeed, for their ability to organize the collection, preservation, storage, and distribution of adequate provisions to maintain the several Caves of Zelandonii throughout the cold season. The two hundred or so people of the Ninth Cave alone would have been too large a community for a less productive region to sustain year-round, but the exceptionally rich environment, as well as the large number of unusually convenient and serviceable natural shelters, encouraged the growing population of several Caves.
The home of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii was a high limestone cliff whose face was carved by weather and wear into an enormous, overhanging shelf that went from slightly south of due east to almost southwest in a long, shallow, south-facing curve that followed The River. The jutting overhang sheltered an area six hundred fifty feet in length and almost one hundred fifty feet in depth, offering nearly one hundred thousand square feet of covered living space. The stone floor of the abri beneath, layered with centuries of packed dirt and stone nibble, extended as a terrace or front porch somewhat beyond the edge of the huge rock ledge.
With so much space available, the members of the Ninth Cave did not fill up the entire protected area with living structures. No one made a purposeful decision to do so, but perhaps intuitively to lay claim and declare boundaries distinct from the adjacent area where the craftspeople of the vicinity tended to congregate, the residential dwellings of the Ninth Cave were clustered at the eastern end of the abri. Since they had plenty of room to spread out, the site immediately to the west of the dwellings was used for the community workplaces. Southwest of that, and continuing toward the end, was a large unoccupied space for children to play and for people to gather outside of their dwellings yet still be protected from inclement weather.
Though none of the others approached the size of the Ninth Cave, there were many other Zelandonii Caves along The River and its tributaries, most of them living, at least in winter, in similar sheltered limestone abris with capacious front porches of the same material. Though the people didn’t know it, and their descendants wouldn’t even think in such terms for many millennia, the location of the land of the Zelandonii was halfway between the North Pole and the equator. They didn’t need to know it to understand the benefits of their middle-latitude position. They had lived there for many generations and had learned from experience, passed down through example and lore, that the territory had advantages in all seasons, if one knew how to utilize them.
In summer, people tended to travel around the larger region that they thought of as Zelandonii land, usually living in the open in tents or lodges constructed of natural materials, especially when gathering together into larger groups and often when visiting or hunting or harvesting quantities of vegetable produce. But when they could, they were always happy to find a south-facing stone shelter to use temporarily, or to share the shelters of friends and kin, because of their distinct advantages.
Even during the Ice Age, when the leading edge of the nearest mass of ice was only a few hundred miles to the north, clear days could get quite hot at middle latitudes in the warm season. As the sun passed overhead, seeming to circle the great mother planet, it rode high in the southwest sky. The great protective overhanging cliff of the Ninth Cave, and others that faced south or southwest, cast a shadow beneath it in the heat of midday, offering a respite of enticing cool shade.
And when the weather began to chill, heralding the severe season of intense cold in periglacial territories, they welcomed their more permanent and protected homes. During the glacial winters, though sharp winds and temperatures well below freezing prevailed, the bitter cold days were often dry and clear. The shining orb hung low in the sky then, and the long rays of the afternoon sun could penetrate deep into a south-facing shelter to lay a kiss of solar warmth on the receptive stone. The great limestone abri cherished its precious gift, holding it until evening, when the nip of frost bit deeper, then it gave back its warmth to the protected space.
Proper clothing and fire were essential to survival on the northern continents when glaciers covered nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface, but in the land of the Zelandonii passive solar heat made a significant contribution toward warming their living space. The huge cliffs with their protective shelters were a significant reason the region was among the most heavily populated in all that cold ancient world.
Ayla smiled at the woman responsible for organizing the feast. “It looks so beautiful, Proleva. If the wonderful smells hadn’t made me so hungry, I would just like to look at it.”
Proleva smiled back, pleased.
“That is her specialty,” Marthona said. Ayla turned, somewhat surprised to see Jondalar’s mother; she had looked for her before she stepped down from the Speaking Stone but couldn’t find her. “No one can put together a feast or a gathering like Proleva. She’s a good cook, too, but it’s her skill at organizing the contributions of food and help from other people that makes her such an asset to Joharran and the Ninth Cave.”
“I learned from you, Marthona,” Proleva said, obviously delighted at the high praise from the mother of her mate.