The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

Ayla noticed that he carried the bowl on his right side, supported against his body with his crippled arm, and she had an unexpected memory of Creb holding a bowl of red ochre paste against his body with the arm that had been amputated at the elbow, just before he named her son and accepted him into the clan. It brought a smile of joy and pain. Mardena was watching her and wondered. Denoda had noticed her expression, too, and wasn’t as shy about mentioning it.

“You looked at Lanidar with such a strange smile,” she said.

“He reminds me of someone I used to know,” Ayla said. “A man who was missing the lower part of his arm. He had been attacked by a cave bear when he was a child. His grand mother was a healer, and she had to cut it off because it was poisoning his body. He would have died if she hadn’t.”

“What a terrible thing!” Denoda said.

“Yes, it was. He was blinded in one eye, too, by that attack, and his leg was hurt. He had to walk with a stick from then on.”

“The poor boy. He had to be taken care of the rest of his life, I suppose,” Mardena said.

“No,” Ayla said. “He made a valuable contribution to his people.”

“How did he manage? What did he do?”

“He became a great man, a mog-ur—that’s like a Zelandoni—and he was recognized as the First. He and his sister were the ones who took care of me after my own family died. He was the man of my hearth, and I loved him very much,” Ayla said.

Mardena was looking at her with jaw agape and her eyes open wide. She could hardly believe the woman, but why would someone he about something like that?

As Ayla talked, Denoda became particularly conscious of her unusual accent, but the story made her understand why she seemed to have taken a liking to Lanidar. When she mates, she is going to be related to some very powerful people, and if she likes him, she could help him a lot. This woman might be the best thing that ever happened to the boy, she thought.

Lanidar had been listening, too. Maybe I could learn to hunt, he thought, even if I only have one good arm. Maybe I could learn to do something besides picking berries.

They were approaching a construction that was like a surround, except that it didn’t seem particularly sturdy. It was made of long, thin, straight alder and willow poles lashed together in horizontal Xs with other poles across the top, attached to shorter, somewhat sturdier poles sunk into the groun

d. Bushes and tree branches, already drying out, loosely filled in the spaces between. If a herd of bison, for example, or even a large male—six feet six inches at the top of the hump on his shoulders, with long black horns—tried to break out, the enclosure would not have held. Even the horses could likely break it down, if they were determined.

“Do you remember how to whistle to call Racer, Lanidar?” Ayla asked.

“Yes, I think so,” he said.

“Why don’t you call him and see if he’ll come?” she said.

The boy whistled the loud, piercing call. Very soon the two horses, the mare following the young stallion, appeared from behind some trees that lined the small waterway and came trotting toward them. They stopped at the enclosure fence and watched the humans approaching. Whinney snorted and Racer whickered at them. Ayla answered with the distinctive whinny that was the sound she had originally named her horse, and both horses neighed back.

“She does know how to make a sound like a horse,” Mardena said.

“I told you she could, mother,” Lanidar said.

Wolf raced ahead, easily slipping under the fence. He sat in front of the mare while she dropped her head in what appeared to be a gesture of greeting. Then Wolf approached the young stallion, dropped down on his chest and forepaws, with his hindquarters up in the air in a playful pose, and yipped at Racer. The stallion nickered back, then they touched noses. Ayla smiled at them as she ducked inside the fence. She hugged the mare around the neck, then turned and stroked the stallion, who was crowding in looking for attention, too.

“I hope you like this surround better than having to wear halters and ropes all the time. I wish I could let you run free, but I don’t think it’s safe when so many people are out hunting. I’ve brought some visitors today, and it’s important for you to be very cooperative and gentle. I want the boy who whistles to check on you for me, and his mother is protective of him and nervous about you,” Ayla said in the language she had invented when she lived alone in the valley.

It comprised certain sounds and gestures from the Clan, some of the nonsense sounds she and her son had made to each other when he was a baby and they were alone, and certain onomatopoeic sounds she had begun to make in imitation of the animals around her, including horse snorts and whickers. Only she knew what she meant, but she had always used her invented language when she talked to the horses. She doubted if they fully understood, though certain sounds and gestures had meaning for them, since she used them as signals and directions, but they knew it was her way of addressing them and they responded by paying attention.

“What’s she doing?” Mardena said to Folara.

“She’s talking to the horses,” Folara said. “She often talks to them like that.”

“What is she saying to them?” Mardena asked.

“You’ll have to ask her,” Folara said.

“Do they know what she’s saying? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Denoda said.

“I don’t know, but they seem to listen,” Folara said.

Lanidar had crowded up close to the fence and was watching her closely. She really did treat them like friends, more like family, actually, he thought, and they treated her the same way. But he wondered where the enclosure came from. It hadn’t been there the day before.