“Exactly. You have cared for them, you love them, they are the children of your hearth. That means they are your children, Willadan.”
“Yes, they are the children of my hearth, but you said if I am not the one who started them. Do you think they could have been started by my essence?” Willadan asked, a bit wistfully.
“It may well be that the honor your mate paid to the Mother was accepted as sufficient offering, and that she allowed your essence to start all of them. We don’t know, but if you could not love them more, Willadan, does it make any difference?”
“No, I guess not.”
“They may have been started by your essense, or they may not have,” Zelandoni said, “but they will always be more than the children of your hearth. They are your children.”
“Will we ever know for sure?”
“I don’t know if we will ever know. With a woman, it is obvious. She is either pregnant or not. With a man, his children are always the children of his mate. That’s the way it has always been. Nothing has changed. No man can be certain who started the children of his hearth.”
“Jondalar can,” came a voice from the audience. Everyone stopped and stared at the one who had spoken. It was Jalodan, a young man from the Third Cave. He was sitting with Folara’s friend, Galeya, whom he had mated two years before. He suddenly flushed from all the penetrating attention, including the hard look from Zelandoni. “Well, he can,” he said defensively. “Everyone knows Ayla never chose anyone but him—until last night. If children are started from the essence of a man’s organ, and Ayla never shared Pleasures with anyone but Jondalar, then the child of his hearth has to be his, had to come from his essence. That’s what he was fighting about last night, wasn’t he? He kept screaming, ‘He’s making my baby!’ every time he hit Laramar.”
Now all the attention was focused on Jondalar, and he squirmed under the intense scrutiny. Some people glanced at Ayla, but she was sitting rigidly still, looking down.
Suddenly Joharran stood up. “Jondalar was not in control of himself. He let himself drink too much, and it drowned his brains,” he said with exasperated sarcasm.
There were smiles and snickers. “I’ll wager his head was full of the ‘morning-after’ when the sun came up,” another young man called out. There was a touch of admiration in his tone, as though he found Jondalar’s violent behavior somehow laudable.
“Since both Jondalar and Laramar are from the Ninth Cave, this is an issue that will be settled by the Ninth Cave. This is not the place to discuss Jondalar’s actions,” Joharran said, trying to end the issue. He had heard the appreciation in the voices of some of the young men, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to be emulating that kind of behavior.
“Except to say, Jemoral,” Zelandoni added, “that Jondalar will be suffering from more than a morning-after headache, I’m afraid. There will be serious consequences to pay, you can be sure.” It was difficult to know all the people at the meeting, though she tried. Their clothing was always a clue, as well as the beads and belts and other accoutrements they wore. This was a young man from the Fifth Cave, related to their Zelandoni. They all tended to be a little showier than most, and wore more beads, since they were known for making and trading them. And he was sitting closer to the front, which allowed her to see him clearly enough to recognize him.
“But I think I understand how he felt,” Jemoral persisted. “What if I want the child of my mate to come from me?”
“Yes,” another man spoke out, “what then?”
Another voice added, “What if I want the children of my hearth to be mine?”
Zelandoni waited until the commotion settled down, surveying the audience to see that most of the comments were coming from the Fifth Cave. Then she fixed the entire group with a stern look.
“You want the children of your hearth to be yours, Jemoral,” she said, looking directly at the young man who had asked the question. “Do you mean like your clothes, or your tools, or your beads? You want to own them?”
“No-ah-no. I-ah-didn’t mean that,” the young man stuttered.
“I’m glad to hear that, because children cannot be owned. They can’t be yours, or your mate’s. No one can own them. Children are ours to love and care for, to provide for, to teach, as the Mother does for us, and you can do that whether they come from your essence, or from someone else’s. We are all children of the Great Earth Mother. We learn from Her. Remember in the Mother’s Song:
To Woman and Man the Mother gave birth,
And then for their home, She gave them the Earth,
The water, the land, and all Her creation.
To use them with care was their obligation.
It was their home to use, But not to abuse.
Several zelandonia joined in the response, then they continued.
For the Children of Earth the Mother provided,
The Gifts to survive, and then She decided,
To give them the Gift of Pleasure and caring,
That honors the Mother with the joy of their pairing.