Ayla fought back tears. “I don’t know how much the Mother values the Gifts She gives Her children, but I know of nothing I value more than my children. I don’t know why She wanted my child, but the Great Mother filled my head with the words of Her Gift after my baby was gone.” Tears glistened in Ayla’s eyes as much as she tried to control them. She bowed her head and said quietly, “I wish I could return Her Gift and have my baby back.”
There was a gasp from several who were gathered. One did not take the Mother’s Gifts lightly, nor did one openly wish to give them back. She might be greatly offended, and who could know what She might do then.
“Are you sure you were pregnant?” the Eleventh asked.
“I missed three moontimes, and I had all the other signs. Yes, I’m sure,” Ayla explained.
“And I’m sure,” the First said. “I knew she was carrying a child before I left for the Summer Meeting.”
“Then she must have miscarried. That would account for the childbirth pain I thought I sensed in her telling,” said the visiting Zelandoni.
“I think it’s obvious that she miscarried. I believe the miscarriage brought her dangerously close to death while she was in the cave,” the First said. “That must have been why the Mother wanted her baby. The sacrifice was necessary. It brought her close enough to the next world for the Mother to speak to her, to give her the verse for the Gift of Knowledge.”
“I am sorry,” said the Zelandoni of the Second Cave. “Losing a child can be a terrible burden to bear.” He said it with such genuine feeling, it made Ayla wonder.
“If there are no objections, I think it is time for the ceremony,” the One Who Was First said. There were nods of agreement. “Are you ready, Ayla?”
The young woman frowned with consternation as she looked around. Ready for what? It all seemed so sudden. The Donier could see her distress.
“You said you wanted to have the full formal testing. The understanding is that if you satisfied the zelandonia, you would progress to the next level. You would no longer be an acolyte. You would leave here zelandoni,” the First explained.
“You mean, right now?” Ayla asked.
“The first mark of acceptance, yes,” the First said, as she picked up a sharp flint knife.
34
“There will be a more public ceremony when you are presented to the people as a Zelandoni, but the marks are made with acceptance, in private with only the zelandonia. As you increase in rank, and marks are added, they are made in the presence of zelandonia and acolytes, but never in public,” the Zelandoni Who Was First said. The large woman, who carried herself with the dignity and power her position conferred, asked, “Are you ready?”
Ayla swallowed, and frowned. “Yes,” she said, and hoped she was.
The First looked around the gathering, making sure she had everyone’s attention. Then she began. “This woman is fully trained to fulfill all the duties of the zelandonia, and it is the First Among Those Who Serve The Mother who attests to her knowledge.”
There were nods and sounds of acknowledgment.
“She has been called and tested. Are there any among us who question her call?” Zelandoni asked.
There were no dissenters. There was never any doubt.
“Do all here agree to accept this woman as a Zelandoni into the ranks of the zelandonia?”
“We agree!” came the unanimous response.
Ayla watched as the man who was Zelandoni of the Second Cave came forward and held out a bowl of something dark. She knew what it was; a part of her mind was observing, not just participating. The bark of mountain ash, called a rowan tree, had been burned in a ceremonial fire and then sifted in the wind to a fine gray powder. The ashes of rowan bark were astringent, antiseptic. Then the woman who was the Zelandoni from a distant Cave, the one unknown to her, brought forth a steaming reddish liquid: last autumn’s dried rowanberries, boiled down to a concentrated liquid and strained. Ayla knew the juice from the rowanberries was acidic and healing.
Zelandoni Who Was First picked up a bowl of soft, white, partially congealed pure tallow that had been rendered with boiling water from aurochs fat, and added a little to the powdered ashes, then some of the steaming red rowanberry juice. She mixed it with a small carved wooden spatula, adding more fat and liquid until it satisfied her. Then she faced the young woman and picked up the sharp flint knife.
“The mark you will receive can never be removed. It will declare to all that you acknowledge and accept the role of Zelandoni. Are you ready to accept that responsibility?”
Ayla took a deep breath and watched the woman with the knife approach, knowing what was coming. She felt a twinge of fear, swallowed hard, and closed her eyes. She knew it would hurt, but that wasn’t what she was dreading. Once this was done, there was no going back. This was her last chance to change her mind.
Suddenly she recalled hiding in a shallow cave, trying to squeeze herself into the stone wall at her back. She saw the sharp, curved claws on the huge paw of a cave lion reaching in, and screamed with pain as four parallel gashes were raked across her left thigh. Squirming away, she found a small space to the side and pulled her legs in closer, away from the claws.
Her memory of being chosen and marked by her Cave Lion Totem had never been so clear and intense before. Reflexively, she reached for her left thigh to feel the different texture of the skin of the four parallel scars. They were recognized as Clan totem marks when she was accepted into Brun’s clan, though traditionally a Cave Lion Totem chose male, not female.
How many marks had been carved into her body in her life? Besides the four marks of her protective totem spirit, Mog-ur had nicked the base of her throat to draw blood when she became the Woman Who Hunts. She was given her Clan hunting talisman, the red-stained oval of mammoth ivory, to show that in spite of the fact that she was a woman, she was accepted as a hunter of the Clan, though only allowed to use a sling.
She no longer carried the talisman with her, or her amulet with the rest of her signs either, though at that moment, she wished she had them. They were hidden behind the carved, woman-shaped donii figure in the niche that had been dug out of the limestone wall of her dwelling at the Ninth Cave. But she did have the scar.