ped him enter, and waited for the first satisfying push. He pulled back and pushed in again, and filled her again. He felt her warm folds embrace him as he plunged in deeply, completely. They fit together so well. This was the woman he wanted. She could hold all of him, he didn’t have to worry about his size. He pulled out almost all the way, then plunged in again, and then again, and each time she felt him, the sensation grew stronger, her breath expelled with a rising tone to match the feeling growing inside.
And then the pulsing grew until it flooded over him. He released as she reached her peak. He pulled out and pushed in again a few times, and then let himself go and relaxed on top of her. She didn’t want him to move. She loved the feeling of him on top of her like that. She wanted to savor the Pleasures and relax, too.
They went swimming again, but this time when they got out, Ayla took their soft drying skins out of her pack. They whistled for the horses and rode back to their campsite. Wolf was there, pacing around their tent, growling at something, and the horses seemed nervous.
“There’s something out there,” Ayla said. “Wolf doesn’t like it, and it’s making the horses nervous. Those wolves we heard last night, do you think it could be them?”
“I don’t know, but after we eat, why don’t we pack up the tent and go for a long ride,” Jondalar said. “Maybe spend tonight some other place.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ayla said. “We can stop by the lodge and leave our mating outfits, get the rest of our traveling things, and explore the area around here. When we come back, we can set up our tent near the pool. Hardly anyone goes there. And let’s take Wolf with us. Some pack might think he’s in their territory, and wolves will fight to defend their territory against other wolves.”
33
When they rode to the camp of the Ninth Cave and dismounted near their lodge, the people ignored them as though they weren’t there, walking past and averting their eyes or looking beyond them. Ayla felt a chill of uneasy recognition; it felt like the death curse of the Clan. She knew what it meant when people she loved shunned her, refused to see her though she stood in front of them waving her arms and shouting.
Then she saw Folara glancing at them and trying to hide a smile, and Ayla relaxed. There was no ill will. It was their trial period and they weren’t supposed to talk to anyone but each other, but she noticed several others glancing in their direction and trying not to smile at them. It was obvious that everybody was very much aware of their presence. They went into the lodge just as Marthona was coming out. They sidestepped each other as they passed by without saying a word, but the older woman looked directly at them and smiled. She didn’t think it was necessary to go through all the elaborate avoidance schemes, neither speaking to them nor encouraging them to talk was enough.
They put their mating outfits on the grass-stuffed underpads of their bare sleeping place and packed some additional traveling gear, then they walked to Marthona and Willamar’s place. She had placed the rawhide packet with Ayla’s amulet in it on her bed, and put some food she had packed up for them beside it. Ayla almost thanked her out loud, but caught herself, then with a quick smile she made the Clan hand signs for “I am grateful for your kindness, mother of my mate.”
Marthona didn’t understand the signs, but she guessed it was a gesture of appreciation of some kind and smiled at the young woman who was now the mate of her son. It might be valuable to learn some of those signs, she thought. It could be interesting to communicate without speaking, and without anyone else knowing what you were saying. When they left, Marthona walked over to their place and looked at the clothing they had worn the previous night.
Jondalar’s white tunic had made him stand out, but then he usually did, and while it was stunning and displayed an advanced technique for working with leather, it was still Ayla’s entire outfit that had made the real impression, just as Marthona hoped it would. It had already caused some people to reconsider the status they were willing to grant her. Marthona had invited some people over for a taste of some bilberry wine, which she had recently started serving—it had been stored for two years in a dark, dry corner of her dwelling in the well-washed and securely stoppered stomach of an elk. She decided she would place a few lamps around the inside of the lodge so they could see better in the dim interior space. She bent over and straightened the tunic and leggings, rearranging them slightly to show off a particular area of intricate beadwork that had been covered by a fold.
Ayla and Jondalar loved their days of nominal separation from the Zelandonii. It was like a return to their Journey, but without the pressure of having to keep traveling. They spent the long summer days hunting, fishing, and gathering just for their own needs, swimming and taking long rides on the horses, but with Wolf only a sometime companion, and Ayla missed him when he was gone. It was as though he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to stay with the humans he adored or return to whatever it was he found so fascinating in the wild. He always found them, no matter where they camped, and every time he made an appearance at the tent, Ayla was delighted. She paid attention to the animal, stroked and petted riim, talked to him, hunted with him. Her attention usually encouraged him to stay with them for a while, but eventually he would go again and often stay away through the night or several.
They explored the hills and valleys of the surrounding area. As well as Jondalar thought he knew the countryside of his birth, because they were riding on horses and able to cover so much more territory, he was able to see it on a broader scale and from a different perspective. He gained an insight he hadn’t had before, and it gave them an appreciation for the richness of the region. Sometimes in herds, and sometimes in fleeting glimpses, they saw a tremendous number and remarkable variety of animals that inhabited the land of the Zelandonii.
Most grazing and browsing creatures placidly shared the same fields, meadows, and open woodlands, and the two horses were usually ignored along with the humans who were riding them. As a result, they were able to get quite close. Ayla liked to sit quietly on Whinney’s back while the mare grazed and study the other animals, and Jondalar often joined her, though he also spent time doing other things. He was working on spears and a spear-thrower for Lanidar more appropriate to his size, and with an adaptation he hoped would make it easier for him to use with one arm. Jondalar was with her when they came upon a herd of bison one afternoon.
Although many bison and aurochs had been hunted, it was hardly noticed; their numbers were insignificant in comparison with the vast numbers of animals that roamed the open landscape. But the two distinct bovines were never seen together. They avoided each other. Though Ayla and Jondalar had killed and helped to butcher their share of bison recently, observing them as they moved through their environment was enlightening. The grazers had lost their thick, dark, woolly fur during the spring molt and were wearing their lighter-colored summer coats. Ayla especially enjoyed watching the lively, playful calves, still quite young—the cows calved in late spring and early summer. The young developed rather slowly and required close, attentive care, but still fell prey to bears, wolves, lynxes, hyenas, leopards, the occasional cave lion—and humans.
Deer of various species were abundant and came in all sizes, from huge giant deer to tiny roe deer. Jondalar and Ayla saw a small bachelor herd of megaceros with their delicate sharp noses, and marveled at their fantastic antlers. They were shaped like a hand with outstretched fingers, and though they could span twelve feet and weigh one hundred sixty pounds or more, these were younger animals, slimmer, with smaller appendages. They had not yet developed the huge muscular necks of the mature deer, though they all sported humps on their withers, where the tendons to support their future massive antlers were attached.
Even young megaceros avoided woods where their antlers could get caught in tree branches. The spotted fallow deer was the woodland variety. In a marshy area, they saw a single deer of another kind, tall and gangly, with smaller, though still quite substantial, palmate antlers, standing in the mi
ddle of the water, dipping his head under and pulling out a mouth full of dripping, green water plants, but this deer had a huge overhanging nose. It was called moose in some countries, but the name given to it in Jondalar’s region was elk.
Far more prevalent were the variety of elk known in this land as red deer. They also grew large anders, but of the branching variety. Red deer were primarily grazers and could live in a broad range of open country, from mountains to steppes. Nimble and fearless, steep hills and rough country didn’t deter them, nor did narrow ledges above the treeline if there was grass to tempt them. Forests with enough spaces between trees to allow an undergrowth of grasses and ferns or interspersed with sunny glens were acceptable habitats, as were heather-covered hills and open steppes.
Red deer didn’t like to run, but their long-legged walk or lively trot covered ground with celerity, and if chased, they could run for miles, leap a forty-foot distance, and jump to a height of eight feet. They were also excellent swimmers. Though they preferred to eat grass, they could feed on leaves, buds, berries, mushrooms, herbs, heathers, bark, acorns, nuts, and beechnut mast. Red deer congregated in small herds at this time of year, and in a meadow beside a stream, Ayla and Jondalar saw several of the deer and stopped to observe them. The grass was just turning from green to gold, and a few fully leafed-out, luxuriant beech trees lined the bank, but on the other side was a substantial gallery forest.
It was a male herd of various ages, and their anders were in full velvet. Antlers began when the males were about a year old with single spikes. They were cast off in early spring, but they started to grow new ones almost immediately. Each year a new tine was added, and by early summer even the biggest were fully grown, encased in velvet, a soft skin full of blood vessels, which carried the nutrients that allowed their anders to grow so quickly. By mid- to late summer, the velvet dried and became very itchy, causing the deer to scratch against trees and rocks to rub it off, but the bloody skin often hung in tatters until it was gone.
They counted twelve points on the biggest, which weighed around eight hundred pounds. Though they were called red deer, the color of the coat of the twelve-point buck was a black gray brown; others in the herd were a light brownish-red color, some shading toward taupe, and one was blond. A young one with just the hint of spikes still showed faintly the white spots of a fawn. Although Jondalar was tempted, he decided not to go after the one with the huge rack, though he was sure he could bring it down with his spear-thrower.
“That big one is in his prime,” he said. “I’d like to come back and watch him later, they often come back to the same places. In his season of Pleasures, he’ll fight for as many females as he can, though many times just displaying that rack is enough to discourage competitors. But they fight hard and will go at it all day. It makes so much noise when they run into each other with those anders, you can hear them from very far away, and they will even get up on their hind legs and fight with their front legs. As big as he is, he must be a very good, aggressive fighter.”
“I’ve heard them fight, but I’ve never seen them,” Ayla said.
Once, when I was living with Dalanar, we saw a couple of them locked together with their antlers intertwined. They couldn’t get apart no matter how they tried. We had to cut the antlers to separate them so we could use them. They were an easy kill, but Dalanar said we were doing them a favor, they would have died anyway of hunger and thirst.”
“I think that big stag has had a brush with people before,” Ayla said, signaling Whinney to move back. “The wind just shifted and must have given him our scent, he’s getting edgy. You can see he’s starting to walk away. They will all go if he goes.”
“He does look nervous,” Jondalar said, backing off, too.
Suddenly, a lynx that had been lying in wait, unseen, in one of the beech trees, dropped down onto the back of the youngest when he walked underneath. The faintly spotted deer leaped forward, trying to dislodge the wildcat, but the short-tailed feline with the tufted ears held on to the deer’s shoulders and bit down, opening his veins. The other deer raced away, but the young cervid with the cat on his back ran in a large arc and circled around. As they watched the panicky animal heading back, both Ayla and Jondalar readied their spear-throwers for protection, just in case, but the lynx had been drinking his blood and the deer was showing signs of exhaustion. He stumbled, the lynx took a new grip, and more blood spurted. The deer took a few more steps, stumbled again, then dropped to the ground. The lynx bit open the head of the young animal and started feeding on the brains.
It was over quickly, but the horses were nervous and the humans were both ready to leave. “That’s why he looked nervous,” Ayla said. “It wasn’t our scent at all.”