The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children 6)

But she needed more than a stone. If she just hit the back of her new flint knife with a hammerstone, it would chip. She needed something to soften the blow. Then she remembered that a corner of the baby’s carrying blanket was getting tattered. She got up and walked back to where the baby was kicking her feet and trying to reach for Wolf. Ayla smiled at her then cut off a piece of soft leather from the ragged corner. When she got back to her chore, she placed the blade of her knife lengthwise along the sternum, put the folded-up soft leather over the back of the blade, then picked up the hammerstone and hit the blade. The knife made a cut, but did not split the bone. She hit it again, and then a third time before she felt the bone give way. Once the breastbone was split open, she continued to cut up to the throat to free the windpipe.

She stretched the rib cage apart, then with her knife she cut the diaphragm, which separated the chest from the stomach, free from the walls. She got a good hold on the slippery windpipe and began to pull out the viscera, using her knife to free them from the backbone. The whole connected package of internal organs fell out on the ground. She turned the wolverine over to let it drain. It was now field dressed.

The process was essentially the same for any animal, small or large. If it was an animal that was intended for food, the next step would be to cool it as quickly as possible, by skinning it, rinsing it with cool water, and if it had been winter, laying it on snow. Many of the internal organs of herbivorous animals like bison or aurochs or any of the various deer, or mammoth or rhinoceros, were edible and quite tasty—the liver, the heart, the kidneys—and some parts were usable. The brains were almost always used for tanning the hides. The intestines could be cleaned out and stuffed with rendered fat, or cut-up pieces of meat, sometimes mixed with blood. Well-washed stomachs and bladders made excellent waterbags, and were good containers for other liquids. They also made effective cooking utensils. Cooking could also be done in a fresh skin spread out and stuffed loosely into a hole dug in the ground, adding water, then boiling it with heated rocks. When used for cooking, stomachs, hides, and all organic materials shrank some because they also cooked, so it was never a good idea to fill them too full of liquid.

Though she knew some people did, she never ate the meat of carnivores. The clan who raised her didn’t like to eat animals that ate meat, and Ayla found it distasteful the few times she had tried it. She thought that if she was really hungry, she might be able to stomach it, but she was sure she’d have to be starving. These days, she didn’t even like horsemeat, though it was the favorite of many people. She knew it was because she felt so close to her horses.

It was time to gather up everything and head back to camp. She stashed the spear shafts in the special quiver, along with her spear-thrower, and put the points she had retrieved into the cavity of the wolverine. She put Jonayla on her back with the carrying blanket, then picked up her gathering basket, and tucked the bundled long stems of cattails under one arm. Then grabbing the avens stems still tied to the head of the wolverine, she started out dragging it behind her. She left its innards where they had fallen; one or more of the Mother’s creatures would come along and eat them.

When she walked into their camp, both Jondalar and Zelandoni gawked for a moment. “It’s looks like you’ve been busy,” Zelandoni said.

“I didn’t think you were going hunting,” Jondalar said, walking toward her to relieve her of some of her burdens, “especially for a wolverine.”

“I didn’t plan to,” Ayla said, then told him what had happened.

“I wondered why you were taking your weapons with you just to gather some growing things,” Zelandoni said. “Now I know.”

“Usually women go out in a group. They talk and laugh and sing, and make a lot of noise,” Ayla said. “It can be fun, but it also warns animals away.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Jondalar said, “but you’re right. Several women together probably would keep most animals away.”

“We always tell young women whenever they leave their homes, to visit, or to pick berries, or gather wood, or whatever, to go with someone,” Zelandoni said. “We wouldn’t have to tell them to talk and laugh, and make noise. That happens whenever they get together, and it is a measure of safety.”

“In the Clan, people don’t talk as much, and they don’t laugh, but they make rhythms as they walk by banging digging sticks or rocks together,” Ayla said, “and sometimes shouting and making other loud noises along with the rhythms. It’s not singing, but it feels something like music when you do it.”

Jondalar and Zelandoni looked at each other, at a loss for words. Every so often Ayla would make a comment that gave them an insight into her life when she was young and living with the Clan, and how dissimilar her childhood had been from theirs, or anyone they knew. It also gave them an insight into how much the people of the Clan were like themselves—and how much different.

“I want that wolverine fur, Jondalar. I could make a new linin

g around the face of a hood for you with it, and for me and Jonayla, too, but I need to skin it right away. Would you watch her?” Ayla asked.

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll help you with it, and we can both keep an eye on her,” Jondalar said.

“Why don’t you both work on that animal, and I’ll watch the baby,” Zelandoni said. “It’s not like I haven’t cared for babies before. And Wolf will help me,” she added, looking at the large, usually dangerous animal, “won’t you, Wolf?”

Ayla dragged the wolverine to a clearing some distance beyond the boundaries of their camp; she didn’t want to invite any passing scavengers into their living area. Then she took her salvaged flint points out of its belly cavity.

“Only one has to be reworked,” she said, giving them to Jondalar. “The first spear went into his hind quarters. He saw me make the throw and moved fast. Then Wolf chased him and cornered him in some bushes. I threw the second spear hard, harder than I needed to. That’s why the tip broke, but I knew he was going after Jonayla, and I was angry.”

“I’m sure you were. I would have been, too. I think my day was much less exciting than yours,” Jondalar said as they began skinning the wolverine. He made a cut through the pelt down the left hind leg to the belly cut Ayla had made earlier.

“Did you find flint in the cave today?” Ayla asked, making a similar cut down the left foreleg.

“There’s a lot there. It’s not the finest quality, but it’s serviceable, especially for practice,” Jondalar said. “Do you remember Matagan? The boy who was gored in the leg by the rhino last year? The one whose leg you fixed?”

“Yes. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, but I saw him. He walks with a limp, but he seems to get around fine,” she said, making a cut in the right front leg, while Jondalar worked on the right hind leg.

“I talked to him and to his mother and her mate, and some others from their cave. If it’s agreeable to Joharran and the Cave—and I can’t imagine why anyone would object—he’s going to come and live at the Ninth Cave at the end of summer. I’m going to show him how to knap flint, and see if he has any talent or inclination for it,” Jondalar said. Then, looking up, “Do you want to save the feet?”

“Those are sharp claws, but I don’t know what I’d use them for,” Ayla said.

“You can always trade them. I’m sure they’d make good decorations, for a necklace, or sewn on a tunic. The teeth, too, for that matter. And what do you want to do with this gorgeous tail?” Jondalar said.

“I think I’ll keep the tail along with the pelt,” Ayla said, “but I may trade the claws and the teeth … or maybe I could use a claw as a hole-maker.”

They cut off the feet, breaking through the joints and cutting the tendons, then pulled the furry skin off the right side to the backbone, using their hands to tear it off more than their knives. They balled up fists to break through the membrane between the body and the hide as they got to the meatier part of the legs. Then they turned it over and started on the left side.

Talking as they worked, they continued separating the hide from the carcass by pulling and tearing, wanting to make as few cuts in the skin as possible. “Where will Matagan stay? Does he have any family at the Ninth Cave?” Ayla asked.