The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children 3)

and planned how to do it. I waited until the next festival to Honor the Mother. She must have guessed. She tried to avoid me, but then changed her mind. Some people were scandalized the next day, even though it was entirely proper to share Pleasures with her at a festival.” He snorted with derision. “They needn’t have bothered. She said she still cared about me, wanted the best for me, but it wasn’t the same. She really didn’t want me any more.

“The truth of it is,” he said, with bitter irony, “I think she does care about me. We’re good friends now, but Zolena knew what she wanted … and she got it. She is not Zolena now. Before I started my Journey, she became Zelandoni, First among Those Who Serve the Mother. I left with Thonolan soon afterward. I think that’s why I went.”

He walked to the entrance again, and stood there looking out over the top of the repaired windbreak. Ayla got up and joined him. She closed her eyes, feeling the wind on her face, and listened to Whinney’s even breathing, and Racers more nervous huffing. Jondalar took a deep breath, then went back and sat down on a mat by the fire, but he made no move to go to sleep. Ayla followed him, took down the large waterbag and poured some water into a cooking basket, then put stones in the fire to heat. He didn’t seem ready for bed yet. He wasn’t through.

“The best part of going back home was Thonolan,” he said, picking up the thread again. “He’d grown up while I was gone, and after I got back, we became good friends and started doing all kinds of things together.…”

Jondalar stopped, and his face filled with grief. Ayla remembered how hard his brother’s death had been on him. He slumped down beside her, his shoulders sagging, drained and exhausted, and she realized what an ordeal it had been for him to talk about his past. She wasn’t sure what had brought it on, but she knew something had been building up in him.

“Ayla, on our way back, do you think we can find … the place where Thonolan was … killed?” he said, turning to her, his eyes brimming, and his voice breaking.

“I’m not sure, but we can try.” She added more stones to the water and picked out soothing herbs.

Suddenly she remembered, with all the worry and fear she’d felt then, his first night in her cave, when she wasn’t sure he would live. He’d called for his brother then, and though she hadn’t understood his words, she understood he was asking for the man who was dead. When she finally made him understand, he spent his great racking grief in her arms.

“That first night, do you know how long it had been since I cried?” he asked, startling her, almost as though he knew what she had been thinking, but then he’d been talking about Thonolan. “Not since then, not since my mother told me I would have to leave. Ayla, why did he have to die?” he said, with a pleading, strained voice. “Thonolan was younger than I was! He shouldn’t have died so young. I couldn’t bear knowing he was gone. Once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there, Ayla. I never told you that before. I think I was ashamed because … because I lost control again.”

“There is no shame in grieving, Jondalar … or in loving.

He looked away from her. “You think not?” His voice held an edge of self-contempt. “Even when you use it for yourself, and hurt someone else?”

Ayla frowned in puzzlement.

He turned and faced the fire again. “The summer after I was back, I was selected at the Summer Meeting for First Rites. I was worried; most men are. You worry about hurting a woman, and I’m not a small man. There are always witnesses, to verify that a girl has been opened, but also to make sure that she’s not really hurt. You worry that maybe you won’t be able to prove your manhood and they’ll have to get another man at the last moment, and you’ll be shamed. Many things can happen. I have to thank Zelandoni.” His laugh was caustic. “She did exactly what a donii-woman is supposed to. She counseled me … and it helped.

“But, I thought of Zolena that night, not the aspiring Zelandoni. Then I saw this scared girl and I realized she was a lot more worried than I was. She really got frightened when she saw me full; many women do, the first time. But I remembered what Zolena had taught me, how to make her ready, how to limit and control myself, how to please her. It turned out to be wonderful, to see her go from a nervous, scared girl to an open, willing woman. She was so grateful, and so loving … I felt that I loved her, that night.”

He closed his eyes in that frown of pain Ayla had seen so much recently. Then he jumped up again and paced. “I never learn! I knew the next day I didn’t really love her, but she loved me! She was not supposed to fall in love with me any more than I was supposed to fall in love with my donii-woman. I was supposed to make her a woman, teach her about Pleasures, not make her love me. I tried not to hurt her feelings, but I could see her disappointment when I finally made her understand.”

He was striding back from the cave opening, and stopped in front of her and almost shouted at her. “Ayla, it is a sacred act, to make a girl a woman, a duty, a responsibility, and I had profaned it again!” He started walking. “That wasn’t the last time. I told myself I would never do that again, but it happened the same way the next time. I told myself I would not accept the role again, I didn’t deserve it. But the next time they selected me, I couldn’t say no. I wanted it. They chose me often, and I began to look forward to it, to the feelings of love and warmth on that night, even though I hated myself the next day for using those young women and the Mother’s sacred rite for myself.”

He stopped, and clung to one of the posts of her herb drying rack, and looked down at her. “But after a couple of years, I realized something was wrong, and I knew the Mother was punishing me. The men my age were finding women, settling down, showing off the children of their hearths. But I couldn’t find a woman to love that way. I knew many women, I enjoyed them for their company and their Pleasures, but I only felt love when I wasn’t supposed to, at First Rites … and only on that night.” He hung his head.

He looked up, startled, when he heard a gentle laugh. “Oh, Jondalar. But you fell in love. You love me, don’t you? Don’t you understand? You weren’t being punished. You were waiting for me. I told you my totem led you to me, maybe the Mother did, too, but you had to come a long way. You had to wait. If you had fallen in love before, you would never have come. You would never have found me.”

Could that be true? he wondered. He wanted to believe it. For the first time in years he felt the load that had weighed down his spirit lighten, and a look of hope crossed his face. “What about Zolena, my donii-woman?”

“I don’t think it was wrong to love her, but even if it went against your customs, you were punished, Jondalar. You were sent away. That’s over now. You don’t have to keep reminding yourself, punishing yourself.”

“But the young women, at First Rites, who …”

Ayla’s expression turned hard. “Jondalar, do you know how terrible it is to be forced the first time? Do you know what it is to hate and have to endure what is not a Pleasure, but painful and ugly? Maybe you weren’t supposed to fall in love with those women, but it must have been a wonderful feeling for them to be treated gently, to feel the Pleasures that you know so well how to give, and to feel loved that first time. If you gave them even a little of what you give me, then you gave them a beautiful memory to carry with them all their lives. Oh, Jondalar, you didn’t hurt them. You did exactly the right thing. Why do you think you were chosen so often?”

The burden of shame and self-contempt he had carried, buried deep inside for so long, began to slip. He began to think that maybe there was a reason for his life, that the painful experiences of his childhood had some purpose. In the catharsis of confession, he saw that perhaps his actions had not been as contemptible as he thought, that perhaps he was worthwhile—and he wanted to feel worthwhile.

But the emotional baggage he had dragged around with him for so long was hard to unload. Yes, he’d finally found a woman to love, and it was true that she was everything he’d ever wanted, but what

if he brought her home and she told someone that she was raised by flatheads? Or worse, that she had a mixed son? An abomination? Would he be reviled, again, along with her, for bringing such a woman? He flushed at the thought.

Was it fair to her? What if they turned her away, heaped insults on her? And what if he didn’t stand by her? What if he let them do it? He shuddered. No, he thought. He wouldn’t let them do such a thing to her. He loved her. But what if he did?

Why was Ayla the one he had found to love? Her explanation seemed too simple. His belief that the Great Mother was punishing him for his sacrilege could not be laid to rest so easily. Perhaps Ayla was right, maybe Doni had led him to her, but wasn’t it a punishment that this beautiful woman he loved would be no more acceptable to his people than the first woman he had loved? Wasn’t it ironic that this woman he had finally found was a pariah who had given birth to an abomination?

But the Mamutoi held similar beliefs and they weren’t turning her away. The Lion Camp was adopting her, even knowing she had been raised by flatheads. They had even welcomed a mixed child. Maybe he shouldn’t try to take her home with him. She might be happier staying. Maybe he should stay, too, let Tulie adopt him and become Mamutoi. His forehead furrowed. But he wasn’t Mamutoi. He was Zelandonii. The Mamutoi were good people, and their ways were similar, but they weren’t his people. What could he offer Ayla here? He had no affiliations, no family, no kin among these people. But what could he offer her if he took her home?

He was torn in so many directions, he suddenly felt exhausted. Ayla saw his face go slack, his shoulders slump.

“It’s late, Jondalar. Drink a little of this, and let’s go to bed,” she said, handing him a cup.