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

“No, he doesn’t. We haven’t decided yet where he should stay.”

“He’ll miss his home, especially at first. We have a lot of room, Jondalar; he could stay with us,” Ayla said.

“I was thinking of that, and was going to ask if you’d mind. We’d have to rearrange some things, give him his own sleeping space, but that might be the best place for him. I could work with him, watch what he does, see how much interest he shows. No point in making him work at it if he doesn’t like it, but I wouldn’t mind having an apprentice,” Jondalar said. “And with his bad leg, it would be a good skill for him to learn.”

They had to use their knives more to release the skin from the backbone and around the shoulders, where it was tight and the membrane between the meat and the skin was not as defined. Then they had to remove the head. With Jondalar holding the animal taut, Ayla found where the head met the neck and swiveled easily, then cut through the meat to the bone. With a twist, a quick break, and a cut through membranes and tendons, the head was off, and the pelt was free.

Jondalar held up the luxuriant hide, and they admired the thick, beautiful fur. With his help, skinning the wolverine had been short work. Ayla recalled the first time that he had helped her cut up a kill, when they were living in the valley where she found her horse, and he was still recovering from being mauled by the lion. It had come as a surprise to her not only that he was willing, but that he was able. Men of the Clan didn’t do that kind of work, they didn’t have the memories for it, and Ayla still forgot sometimes that Jondalar could help her with tasks that in the Clan had been women’s work. She was accustomed to doing it herself and seldom asked for assistance, but she was as grateful now as she had been then for his help.

“I’ll give this meat to Wolf,” Ayla said, looking down at what was left of the wolverine.

“I was wondering what you were going to do with it,” Jondalar said.

“I’ll wrap the hide up now, with the head inside, and make us an evening meal. Maybe tonight I can start scraping the skin,” Ayla said.

“Do you have to start on it tonight?” Jondalar said.

“I’ll need the brains for softening it, and they’ll go bad fast if I don’t start using them soon. This is such beautiful fur, I don’t want to spoil it, especially if it is going to be as cold next winter as Marthona thinks it will.”

They started to leave, but Ayla spied a patch of plants with coarsely toothed heart-shaped leaves growing about three feet tall in the rich, moist soil along the stream they were using for water. “Before we go back to camp, I want to collect some of those stinging nettles,” Ayla said. “They’ll be good to eat tonight.”

“They sting,” Jondalar said.

“Once they are cooked, they don’t sting, and they taste good,” Ayla said.

“I know, but I wonder how people first thought of cooking nettles for food. Why would they even think of eating them?” Jondalar said.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out, but I have to find something to pick them with. Some big leaves to cover the hands so the nettles won’t sting me.” She looked around, then noticed a tall, stiff plant with showy thistle-like purple flower heads, and big heart-shaped soft, downy leaves growing from the ground around the stems. “There’s some burdock. Those leaves feel like fine buckskin, they’ll work.”

“These strawberries are delicious,” Zelandoni said. “A perfect ending to a wonderful meal. Thank you, Ayla.”

“I didn’t do much. The roast came from the hind quarters of a red deer that Solaban and Rushemar gave me before we left. I just made a stone oven and roasted it, and cooked up some cattails and greens.”

Zelandoni had watched Ayla dig a hole in the ground with a small shoulder bone that had been shaped and sharpened at one end and used like a trowel. To remove the loose dirt, she transferred it by small shovelfuls onto an old hide; then gathering the ends together, she hauled the hide away. She lined the hole with stones, leaving a space not much bigger than the meat, then built a fire in it until the rocks were hot. From her medicine bag, she took out a pouch and sprinkled some of the contents on the meat; some plants could be both medicinal and flavorful herbs. Then she added some of the tiny rootlets growing out of the wood avens rhizome, which tasted like cloves, along with hyssop and woodruff.

She wrapped the red deer roast in the burdock leaves. Then she covered the hot coals in the bottom of the hole with a layer of dirt so they wouldn’t burn the meat, and dropped the leaf-wrapped roast in the little oven. She piled wet grasses on top and more leaves, and covered it all with more dirt to make it airtight. She topped it with a large, flat stone that she had also heated over a fire, and let the roast cook slowly in the residual heat and its own steam.

“It wasn’t just cooked meat,” Zelandoni insisted. “It was very tender and had a flavor that I wasn’t familiar with, but it tasted very good. Where did you learn to cook like that?”

“From Iza. She was the medicine woman of Brun’s clan, but she knew more than the healing uses of plants; she knew how they tasted,” Ayla said.

“That’s exactly how I felt when I first tasted Ayla’s cooking,” Jondalar said. “The flavors were unfamiliar, but the food was delicious. I’ve gotten accustomed to it now.”

“It was also a smart idea to make those little cooking bags out of the cattail leaves, then putting the nettle greens and the green cattail tops and shoots in them before putting them in the boiling water. It was so easy to pull them out. You didn’t have to fish around in the bottom of the pot,” the First said. “I’m going to use that idea for making decoctions and tisanes.” She saw a frown of puzzlement on Jondalar’s face and added a clarification. “Cooking medicines and steeping teas.”

“I learned that at the Summer Meeting of the Mamutoi. A woman there was cooking that way, and many of the other women started doing it too,” Ayla said.

“I also liked the way you put a little fat on top of the hot flat stone and cooked those cattail flour cakes on it. You put something in them as well, I noticed. What is in that pouch that you use?” the Woman Who Was First asked.

“The ashes of coltsfoot leaves.” Ayla said. “They have a salty flavor, especially if you dry them first and then burn them. I like to use sea salt, when I can get it. The Mamutoi traded for it. The Losadunai live near a mountain made of salt, and they mine it. They gave me some before we left, and I still had some when we arrived here, but it’s gone now, so I use the ashes of coltsfoot leaves made the way Nezzie did. I used coltsfoot before, but not the ashes.”

“You

have learned a lot from all your travels, and you have many talents, Ayla. I didn’t realize cooking was one of them, but you are very good at it.” Ayla didn’t quite know what to say. She didn’t consider cooking a talent. It was just something you did. She still didn’t feel comfortable with direct praise and didn’t know if she would ever be, so she didn’t respond to it. “Big, flat rocks like that are hard to find. I think I’ll keep that one. Since Racer is pulling a pole-drag, I can pack it and won’t have to carry it,” Ayla said. “Would anyone like some tea?”

“What kind are you making?” Jondalar said.

“I thought I’d start with the cooking water that was used for the nettles and cattails, and add some hyssop,” Ayla said, “and maybe woodruff.”