The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

e birds to cook.

She decided to stop off and see if she could do anything for Zelandoni. The donier said she was in need of some ground red ochre, and Ayla said she would be happy to get some for her She went back down to Wood River Valley, whistled for Wolf, whom she had left exploring interesting new mounds and holes, and walked toward The River. She dug up the red-colored iron ore and found a nice river-rounded stone that she could use as a pestle to grind the ochre with. Then she whistled for Wolf again as she headed up the slope, not really paying much attention to who else was on the path.

It came as a shock when she almost bumped into Brukeval. He had actively avoided her since the meeting in the zelandonia lodge about Echozar and the Clan, though he constantly watched her from a distance. He observed her advancing pregnancy with pleasure, knowing she would soon be a mother, and actively imagined that the child she carried was of his spirit. Any man could fancy that any pregnant woman was carrying the child of his spirit, and most of them occasionally wondered if a particular woman might be, but Brukeval’s dream was an obsession. He would sometimes lie awake at night envisioning an entire life with Ayla, most of it mimicking what he surreptitiously saw her doing with Jondalar, but when confronted by her on the path, he didn’t know what to say. There was no way to avoid her now.

“Brukeval,” she said, attempting to smile. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Well, here we are,” he said.

She hurried ahead. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t mean to insult you at that meeting. Jondalar told me that you were teased before about flatheads, until you made people stop. I admire the fact that you stood up for yourself and made people stop calling you that. You are not a flat-head … one of the Clan. No one should ever have called you that. You couldn’t begin to live with them. You are one of the Others just like all the Zelandonii. That’s how they would see you.”

His expression seemed to soften. “I’m glad you recognize that,” he said.

“But you must realize, to me, they are people,” she hurried on. “They couldn’t be animals. I have never thought of them any other way. They found me alone and injured, and they took me in and cared for me, raised me. I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for them. I find them to be admirable people. I didn’t realize you would consider it an insult to suggest that your grandmother may have lived with them when she was lost and gone for so long, that they might have taken care of her, too.”

“Well, I guess you couldn’t know,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back, feeling relieved, and tried to make her explanation more clear. “It’s just that you remind me of some people that I care about. That’s why I was drawn to you from the beginning. There was a little boy I knew, who I loved, and you remind me of him …”

“Wait! Are you still saying that you think they are a part of me? I thought you said that I was not a flathead,” Brukeval said.

“You aren’t. Not even Echozar is. Just because his mother was Clan doesn’t mean that he is. He wasn’t raised by them, and you weren’t, either…”

“But you still think my mother was an abomination. I told you, she was not! Neither my mother nor my grandmother had anything to do with them. None of those dirty animals had anything to do with me, do you hear me?” He was shouting and his face had turned an angry red. “I am not a flathead! Just because you were raised by those animals, don’t think you can drag me down.”

Wolf was growling at the excited man, ready to spring to Ayla’s defense. The man looked as if he might want to hurt her. “Wolf! No!” she commanded. She had done it again. Why couldn’t she have stopped when he was smiling? But he didn’t have to call her Clan “dirty animals,” because they weren’t.

“I suppose you think that wolf is human, too,” Brukeval sneered. “You don’t even know the difference between people and animals. It’s unnatural for a wolf to act the way he does around people.” He was unaware just how close he was to Wolf’s fangs with his shouting, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Brukeval was beside himself. “Let me tell you something, if it hadn’t been for those animals attacking my grandmother, she would not have been so frightened that she gave birth to a weak woman, and my mother would have lived to take care of me, love me. Those filthy flatheads killed my grandmother and my mother, too. As far as I’m concerned, they are no use to anyone. They should all be dead, like my mother. Don’t you dare tell me they have anything to do with me. If it were up to me, I’d kill them all myself.”

He was advancing on Ayla as he screamed, backing her down the path. She held Wolf by the fur on his neck to keep him from attacking the raging man. Finally he brushed past her, knocking her aside, and stormed down. He had never been so angry. Not only because she imputed flatheads to his lineage, but because in his rage, he had blurted out his innermost feelings. He had wanted more than anything else to have had a mother to run to when the others teased him. But the woman who inherited Brukeval along with his mother’s possessions had no love for the baby she reluctantly nursed. He was a burden on her, and she considered him repulsive. She had several children of her own, including Marona, making it even easier to ignore him. But she wasn’t much of a mother even to her own, and Marona had learned her callous, unfeeling ways from her mother.

Ayla was shaking. Now she had really done it. She tried to collect herself as she stumbled her way up the path and into Zelandoni’s dwelling. The woman looked up as Ayla came through the entrance and immediately recognized that something was gravely wrong.

“Ayla, what is it? You look as if you’ve just seen an evil spirit,” she said.

“Oh, Zelandoni, I think I have. I just saw Brukeval,” she cried. “I tried to tell him I didn’t mean to insult him at that meeting, but I always seem to say the wrong thing to him.”

“Sit down, tell me about it,” Zelandoni said.

She explained what had happened during her encounter on the path. Zelandoni was quiet after Ayla told her, then she fixed the young woman a cup of tea. Ayla settled down; talking about it had helped.

“I’ve watched Brukeval for a long time,” Zelandoni said after a while. “There’s a fury inside him. He wants to strike out at the world that has given him so much hurt. He has decided to lay the blame on the flatheads, the Clan. He sees them as the root of his pain. He hates everything about them, and anyone associated with them. The worst thing you could have done was to imply that he himself might be related in some way to them. It’s unfortunate, Ayla, but I fear you have made an enemy. It can’t be helped, now.”

“I know it. I could tell. Why do people hate them so much? What’s so terrible about them?” Ayla asked.

The woman looked at her, considering, then made up her mind. “When I said at that meeting that I had gone into deep meditation to recall all the Histories and Elder Legends, that was entirely true. I used every prompt and memory aid I know to bring out everything I ever memorized. It is probably something that should be done more often, it’s enlightening. I think the problem, Ayla, is that we moved into their lands. In the beginning, it wasn’t so bad. There was a lot of room, many empty shelters. It wasn’t hard to share the land with them. They tended to keep to themselves, and we avoided them. We didn’t call them animals then, just flatheads. The term was more descriptive than derogatory,” she said.

“But as time went on, and more children were born, we needed more space. Some people began taking their shelters, sometimes fighting with them, sometimes killing them, sometimes being lolled. By then, we had lived here for a long time, and this was our home, too. The flatheads may have been here first, but we needed places to live, so we took theirs.

“When people treat others badly, they have to rationalize it so they can go on living with themselves. We give ourselves excuses. The excuse we used was that the Great Mother gave us the earth for our home, the water, the land, and all Her creation.’ That means all Her plants and animals are ours to use. Then we convinced ourselves that flatheads were animals, an

d if they were animals, we could take their shelters for ourselves,” Zelandoni said.

“But they are not animals, they are people,” Ayla said.

“Yes. You are right, but we conveniently forgot that. She also said the Earth is our ‘home to use, but not to abuse.’ The flatheads are also Earth’s Children. That was the other thing I learned from my meditation. If She mixes their spirits with ours, they must be people, too. But I don’t think it would have made much difference if we thought they were people or not. I think we would have done it anyway. Doni has made it easier for other living creatures that kill, so they can live. I don’t think your wolf there worries about the rabbits he kills to survive, or the deer that a pack of them may hunt down. He was born to kill them. Without them he would not live, and Doni has given every living thing the desire to continue living,” the donier said.

“But humans have been given the ability to think. That is what makes us learn and grow. It is also what gives us the knowledge that cooperation and understanding are necessary for our own survival, and that has led to empathy and compassion, but there’s another side to those kind of feelings. The empathy and compassion we feel for our own kind is sometimes extended to the rest of the living things on the earth. If we allowed it to keep us from killing a deer, or other animals, we would not live long. The desire to live is the stronger feeling, so we learn to be compassionate selectively. We find ways to close our minds. We limit our sense of empathy.” Ayla was listening closely, fascinated.