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

His mind became a confusion of pain, guilt, and desperation. He could think of nothing he might do to make his life right again, and every time he saw anyone, he was sure they were looking at him with the same disgust and loathing that he felt about himself. Part of his self-recrimination stemmed from the fact that as dispicably as he’d behaved, and as ashamed as he was, every time he closed his eyes to try to sleep at night, he would see Laramar on top of Ayla, and feel the same rage and frustration he’d felt then. He knew in his heart that under the same circumstances, he would do it again.

Jondalar’s mind dwelled on his problems constantly. He could hardly think of anything else. It was an incessant itch, like continually picking on the scab of a minor cut, never giving it a chance to heal, making it worse and worse until it became a running infection. He tried to get away from people as often as he could, and began taking long walks, usually beside the bank of The River, most often upstream. Each time he went he’d walk a little farther, stay a little longer, but he always reached a point where he could not go on and would have to turn around and walk back. Occasionally, he would get Racer and instead of walking along the river would ride out across the open grassland. He resisted taking his horse too often because it was then that he was most tempted to keep on going, but this day he wanted to ride out and put some distance between himself and the Camp.

As soon as she was fully awake, Ayla got up and went to The River. She hadn’t slept well; at first she was too edgy and restless to fall asleep, and then she was awakened by dreams that she couldn’t quite remember, but that left her uneasy. She thought about what she needed to do to make the Clan ceremony as close to correct as possible. While she looked for soaproot to purify herself, she also kept an eye out for a nodule of flint or even a leftover piece of reasonable size. She wanted to make a cutting tool in the Clan way that she could use to cut off a piece of leather to make a Clan amulet.

When she came to the mouth of the small stream as it emptied into The River, she turned to follow it instead. She had to walk upstream some distance before she found a few soaproot plants, in the woods behind the camp of the Ninth Cave. It was late in the season and most had been picked, and then the variety she found wasn’t the same plant that the Clan used, and she had wanted the ritual to be right. Although, since she was a woman, it would never be a Clan ceremony anyway. Only men of the Clan consumed the roots. The woman’s job was only to prepare them. As she stooped to pull the soaproots out, she thought she caught a glimpse of Jondalar in the woods, walking alongside the small stream, but when she stood up, she didn’t see him and wondered if it was her imagination.

The stallion was glad to see Jondalar. The other horses were, too, but he didn’t want to take them. He was in the mood for a long run alone. When they reached the open plains, Jondalar urged the horse into a thundering gallop across the land. Racer seemed just as eager to live up to his name. Jondalar wasn’t paying much attention to where they were going, or where they were. Suddenly, he was literally jerked out of his moody meditation when he heard a loud belligerent neigh, the sound of hoofs, and felt his mount begin to rear. They were in the middle of a herd of horses. It was only his years of riding and quick reflexes that enabled him to keep his seat. He lunged forward and grabbed a handful of the stand-up mane of the steppe horse and held on, struggling to calm the stallion and get him back under control. Racer was a healthy stallion in his prime. Though he’d never had the experience of living in the auxiliary male herd that stayed near the fringes of a primary herd of females and young, keeping the herd stallion constantly on guard and ready to defend his own, or of the play-fighting with other young males as he was growing up, yet he was instinctively ready to challenge the herd male.

Jondalar’s first thought was to get his horse as far away from the herd as possible, as fast as he could, but it was all he could do to turn the stallion around and head back toward the Campsite. When Racer settled down and they were finally heading steadily back, Jondalar began to wonder if it was fair to keep the virile stallion away from other horses, and for the first time, he seriously contemplated the idea of letting him go. He wasn’t ready to give him up yet, but he began to rethink taking long rides alone on the brown stallion.

On the way back, he found himself moodily introspective again. He remembered the day of the big meeting, and watching Ayla sitting stiffly while Brukeval reviled her. He had ached to comfort her, to force Brukeval to stop, to tell him he was wrong. He had completely understood everything Zelandoni said; he’d heard most of it over the years from Ayla and he was more ready than most to accept it. The thing that was new to him was the name given to the relationship—“far mother,” shortened to “fa’ther”—and he thought about Zelandoni’s final words, that the men would name the boys; fathers would name their sons. He said the word over to himself. Father. He was a father. He was Jonayla’s father.

He wasn’t fit to be Jonayla’s father! It would shame her to name him her father. He had nearly killed a man, with his fists. If it hadn’t been for Danug, he would have. Ayla had lost a baby when she was alone, in the deep passages of Fountain Rocks Cave, and he wasn’t there to help her. What if the child she had lost was a boy? If she hadn’t lost it and it was a boy, would he have been the one to name him? What would it be like to decide on a name for a child?

What did it matter? He would never be able to name a child. He would never have any more children. He had lost his mate; he would have to leave his hearth. After Zelandoni had closed the meeting, he had avoided the conversations that everyone was having and had hurried back to the fa’lodge so he wouldn’t have to see Ayla, or Jonayla.

He was still feeling the same when the rest of the fa’lodge started walking toward the Lanzadonii camp for the big feast the next day, but after everyone had been gone for some time, Jondalar couldn’t seem to stop himself from dwelling on all his wrongs. Finally, he couldn’t stand it inside the lodge, with his mind going over and over the same things, blaming himself, berating himself, scourging himself. He went out and headed for The River to take another long walk. Since his near encounter with the stallion when they ran into a herd of mares, Racer seemed more excitable and Jondalar decided not to ride him. As he started walking upstream, he was surprised to see that Wolf had caught up with him. Jondalar was glad to see the carnivore and stopped to greet him, catching the great head by his ruff, which was growing thicker now and more luxurious.

“Wolf! What brings you here? Are you tired of all the noise and commotion, too? Well, you’re welcome to join me,” he said with enthusiasm. The animal responded with a low growl of pleasure.

Wolf had been so involved with Jonayla, after being away from her for so long, and with Ayla, who had been his primary focus since the day she pulled the frightened four-week pup from his cold and lonely den, that he hadn’t spent much time with the third human he considered to be an essential member of his pack. On the way back to the camp of the Ninth Cave after the meal he’d been given, he saw Jondalar heading toward The River and ran after the man, ahead of Jonayla. He turned back to look at her, and whined.

“Go ahead, Wolf,” the child said, signaling him on. “Go with Jondalar.”

She had seen the man’s great unhappiness, and she was more than aware that her mother was just as sad, for all that she tried not to show it. She didn’t know exactly what, but the child knew something was terribly wrong and it gave her a fearful knot in the pit of her stomach. More than anything she wanted her family back together, and that included her ’Thona and W

eemar, and Wolf and the horses, too. Maybe Jondy needs to see you, Wolf, and be with you, like I did, Jonayla thought.

Ayla had been thinking about Jondalar, or more precisely, about using the pool in the small river for her ceremonial bath, and that made her think of Jondalar. She wanted the quiet and privacy of the secluded place for the purification cleansing, but she hadn’t been able to go back since she found Jondalar there with Marona. She knew there was flint in that area; Jondalar had found some, but she didn’t see any, and didn’t think she would have time to look farther afield. She knew Jondalar always had a few good hunks of flint around, but she didn’t even consider asking him. He wasn’t talking to her these days. She would just have to make do with a Zelandonii knife and awl to cut the hide and to pierce holes around the edge for the drawstring, even if it was another deviation from Clan custom.

She found a flattish rock, carried it closer to the pool in the small river and then with another rounder stone, she pounded the foamy saponifying ingredients from the soaproots on it, mixed with a little water. Then she stepped into the quiet backwater inside a curve at the edge of the pool and began to smooth the slippery foam on her body. The bottom dropped off quickly as she moved out from the bank to rinse. She ducked her head under, swam a few strokes, then returned to wash her hair. As Ayla bathed in the pool, she thought about the Clan.

She remembered her childhood with Brun’s clan as peaceful and safe, with Iza and Creb there to love her and take care of her. Everyone knew from the time they were born what was expected of them, and there was no allowance for deviation. Roles were clearly defined. Everyone knew where they fit, knew their rank, knew their jobs, knew their place. Life was stable and secure. They didn’t have to worry about new ideas changing things.

Why was she the one who had to bring changes that affected everyone? That some would hate her for? Looking back, her life with the Clan seemed so reassuring, she wondered why she had struggled so hard against the restrictions. The ordered life of the Clan appealed to her now. There was a comforting security to a strictly regulated life.

Yet, she was glad she had taught herself to hunt, though it was against Clan traditions. She was a woman and women of the Clan did not hunt, but if she hadn’t known how, she wouldn’t be alive now, even if she almost died for it after they found out. The first time she was cursed, when Brun expelled her from the clan, he limited the time to only one moon. It was the beginning of winter and they all expected her to die, but the hunting she was cursed for had saved her life from the curse. Maybe I should have died then, she thought.

She had defied the way of the Clan again when she ran away with Durc, but she couldn’t let them expose her newborn son to the mercy of the elements and carnivores just because they thought he was deformed. Brun had spared them, though Broud objected. He had never made her life easy. When he became leader and cursed her, it was forever and for no good reason, and that time she was finally forced to leave the clan. Hunting saved her then, too. She would never have survived in the valley, if she wasn’t a hunter, and if she hadn’t known that she could live alone if she had to.

Ayla was still thinking about the Clan, and how to handle the rituals associated with the roots properly when she returned to the camp. She saw Jonayla sitting with Proleva and Marthona. They waved and beckoned to her.

“Come, have something to eat,” Proleva said. Wolf had grown tired of walking with the melancholy man, who did nothing but shuffle along, and had come back to find Jonayla. He was on the other side of the fire gnawing a bone, and looked up. Ayla walked in their direction. She gave her daughter a hug, then held her off and looked at her with a strange sadness and hugged her again, almost too hard.

“Your hair is wet, mother,” Jonayla said, squirming out of the way.

“I just washed it,” Ayla said, petting the large wolf, who had come to greet her. She took the handsome head between her hands, looked deeply into his eyes, then hugged him with fervor. When she stood up, the wolf looked up at her with anticipation. She patted the front of her shoulders. He jumped up, steadied himself with his paws on her shoulders, licked her neck and face, then took her jaw gently in his teeth and held it. When he let go, she returned the wolf signal of pack membership, taking his muzzle in her teeth for a moment. She hadn’t done that for a while and Ayla thought he seemed pleased.

Proleva let out the breath she’d been holding when Wolf dropped down. That particular bit of wolfish behavior from Ayla was disturbing no matter how many times she saw it. Watching the woman exposing her neck to the teeth of the huge wolf always unnerved her, and made her realize that the friendly, well-behaved animal was a powerful wolf who could easily kill any one of the humans he mingled with so freely.

After she caught her breath and settled her apprehensions, Proleva commented, “Help yourself, Ayla. There’s plenty. This morning’s meal was easy to make. There was a lot left over from yesterday’s feast. I’m glad we decided to make a meal together with the Lanzadonii. I liked working with Jerika and Joplaya, and several of the other women. I feel as though I know them better now.”

Ayla felt a pang of regret. She wished she hadn’t been so busy with the zelandonia; she would have liked to help with the feast. Working together was a good way to get to know people better. Being wrapped up in her own problems didn’t help either; she could have gotten there earlier, she thought, as she picked up one of the extra cups that were set out for those who forgot their own, and dipped a cup of chamomile tea from the large, kerfed wooden cooking box. Tea was always the first thing made in the morning.

“The aurochs is particularly good and juicy, Ayla. They’ve started to put on their winter fat, and Proleva just reheated it. You should try some,” Marthona urged, noticing that she wasn’t taking any food. “Food holders are over there.” She indicated a stack of odd-sized but generally flat pieces of wood, bone, and ivory that were used as plates.

Trees that had been felled and broken for firewood often produced large splinters that could be quickly trimmed and smoothed into plates and dishes; shoulder and pelvic bones from various deer, bison, and aurochs were roughly shaped to a reasonable size for the same purpose. The tusks of mammoths could be chipped off, much like flint, but making much larger flakes that were used for plates as well.