The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

“Ayla! Did you make that?” Levela said, surprised.

“A Mamutoi woman taught me how to make white leather,” Ayla said. People were turning around, facing the next Zelandoni.

“We better stop talking, they are getting started,” Levela said.

After they quieted so the ceremony for the next couple could begin, Ayla thought about why the mating ritual included tying the wrists of the couples together with a thong that would be difficult to untie. The tangle of arms when Levela, in her excitement, rushed to hug her made her understand that being tied together forced one to consider the other before rushing ahead without thinking. Not a bad first lesson to learn about being mated.

“I wish they’d hurry,” one of the other newly mated men said under his breath. “I’m starving. With all dus fasting today, I’m sure they could hear my stomach growling all the way in the back.”

Ayla was rather glad for the Zelandoni’s long recitation of the names and ties, it gave her time to think and be alone with her own thoughts. She was mated. Jondalar was her mate. Maybe now she could begin to feel that she really was Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, although she was glad that Ayla of the Mamutoi was a part of her names. Just because they were going to be living with the Ninth Cave didn’t mean she was a different person. She just had new names and ties to add to her list of connections and relations. She hadn’t lost her Clan totem, either.

Her mind wandered back to the time when she was a girl living with the Clan. When they mated, they had no such knot-tying customs, but they didn’t need them. From the time they were young, women of the Clan were taught always to be aware of the men of the Clan, particularly the one to whom they were mated. A good Clan woman was expected to anticipate the requirements and wishes of her mate, because a man of the Clan learned from an early age never to be aware of, or at least not to show that he was aware of, his own needs, discomfort, or pain. He could never ask for her help, she had to know when it was needed.

Broud didn’t need her help when he asked, but he made demands all the time. He invented things for her to do just because he could make her do them—bring him a drink of water, tie on his leg coverings. He could claim that she was just a girl and had to learn, but he didn’t care if she learned, and it didn’t make any difference when she tried to please him. He wanted to show his power over her because she had resisted him, and women of the Clan did not willfully disobey men. She had made him feel less than a man and he hated her for it, or perhaps at some instinctual level he knew that her kind were different. It had not been an easy lesson for her to learn, but she had learned, and it was Broud, with his constant demands, who taught her, but Jondalar was the recipient. She was always aware of him, and it occurred to her that was why she was always uncomfortable when she didn’t know where he was. She was that way about her animals, too.

Suddenly, as though thinking about him had made him appear, Wolf was there. It was her right hand and Jondalar’s left that were tied together, and she stooped down and hugged him with her left. She looked up at Jondalar.

“I’ve been worried about him, wondering where he was,” Ayla said, “but he seems rather pleased with himself.”

“Maybe he has reason,” Jondalar said with a grin.

“When Baby found a mate, he left. He came back to visit once in a while, but he lived with his own kind. If Wolf has a mate, do you think he’ll decide to leave and live with her?”

“I don’t know. You’ve said before that he thinks of people as his pack, but if he’s going to mate, it has to be with his own kind,” he said.

“I want him to be happy, but I would miss him so much if he never came back,” Ayla said, standing. Most of the people around her were watching her with the wolf, especially those who didn’t know her well. She signaled him to stay close to her.

“He’s a very big wolf, isn’t he,” one of the women said, edging back a little.

“Yes, he is,” Levela said, “but people who know him say he has never threatened people.”

At that moment a flea decided to annoy the wolf. He sat down, hunched himself around, and started scratching. The woman tittered nervously. “That certainly doesn’t look very threatening,” she said.

“Except to the bug that’s bothering him,” Levela said.

Suddenly he stopped, cocked his head as though he was hearing or smelling or perceiving something, then stood up and looked up at Ayla.

“Go ahead, Wolf,” Ayla said, signaling his release. “If you want to go, go ahead.”

He raced off, weaving his way around people, some of whom looked rather startled when they caught sight of him.

The next joining was not of a couple, but of a triple. One man was mating identical twin sisters. They did not want to separate, and it was not uncommon for twins, or just sisters who were close, to become co-mates, although it could be difficult for one young man to try to provide for two women and their children. In this case the man was a little older, well established, with a good reputation and high status. Even so, the chances were that they would bring in a second man someday, although one never knew.

By the time the final couple was reached, people were getting bored with the inevitable repetition, especially when the ceremony was for someone they didn’t know, but the last ones brought some interest again. When Joplaya and Echozar came forward, there was a collective gasp from the peo

ple watching and then a buzz of conversation. Though neither one of the two had the usual appearance of the Zelandonii, and the audience knew that they were in fact not Zelandonii but Lanzadonii, they were still a shocking sight for some of the people there.

They saw a tall, slender, exotically appealing woman with dark hair and an ethereal beauty that was hard to describe. The man beside her could not have looked more different. He was slightly shorter, with such strong and unusual features, most people saw them as ugly. His thick browridges, accented by heavy, unruly eyebrows, protruded like a shelf over his dark, deep-set eyes. His nose was prominent, partly because the front of his rather long and broad face jutted forward, and partly because his nose, sharply defined and shaped rather like the beak of an eagle, though not as narrow, was enormous, yet it was in proportion to the size of his face. Like many men, he usually let his beard grow in the winter, because it helped to keep his face warm, but he shaved it in summer. He had recently shaved and his heavy jaw was clearly defined, but like the people of the Clan, he lacked a chin—almost. He had the hint of one, but with his nose protruding out so far, he appeared to have a weak, receding chin.

Echozar’s face was the face of the Clan, except for his forehead. The definitive, pushed-back, and flattened look of the sloping foreheads of the Clan was missing; he was not a flathead. Above Echozar’s bony browridges, his forehead rose as high and round as any man’s there. And while the people of the Clan were rather short, he was as tall as many of the men there, but with a stocky, robust frame and a big, rounded chest typical of the Clan. Like theirs, his legs were short in proportion and slightly bowed, but as muscular as his arms. There was no question that he was a strong man.

And there was no doubt that he was a man of mixed spirits, to some an abomination, half man and half animal. There were those who believed that he should not be allowed to mate the woman who was standing beside him. No matter how foreign she looked, it was undeniable that she was human, one of them, not one of those flathead animals. The Zelandonii should be discouraging them, not recognizing them or aiding in such a joining.

Since the Lanzadonii had no donier of their own yet, the One Who Was First stepped forward again. She was not only First, but the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave, and Dalanar had once lived with the Ninth Cave. He still had closer ries with them than with any other Cave, and Joplaya was the daughter of his hearth.

As the First took her place, she thought, smiling to herself, that Echozar looked so strong, not many people would be willing to challenge him one on one in an individual competition. Since they were the last couple to be mated, the First was thinking ahead to the contests. And, she thought, after they are mated might be a good time to announce that the First Acolyte of the Second Cave of the Zelandonii had been called, and after examination has proved to be Zelandoni. She has decided to return with Dalanar and his Cave and become the First Lanzadoni to Serve The Great Earth Mother, a good fit, and a good place for her to start out.

The donier looked at the people gathering around. Dalanar, standing there full of pride. It was amazing how much Jondalar looked like him, but the First was aware of some minor differences, probably because she had once been so intimate with the younger one. Jondalar, still tied to Ayla, had moved out of the group of newly joined and into the family circle. Joplaya was his close cousin, after all. Beside Dalanar was Jerika, Joplaya’s mother, and standing behind her was Hochaman, the man of Jerika’s hearth. He was leaning heavily on a young man who was unfamiliar to the First. She guessed he was originally a Zelandonii either from a far Cave or from some more distant people, perhaps the Losadunai, but the designs on his clothing and jewelry declared him as Lanzadonii.