The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

“Thonolan was born to Willamar’s hearth,” Marthona said, “born of his spirit, too, I’m certain. He always wanted to keep moving, even when he was a baby. Is he still traveling?”

Ayla noticed again an indirectness to the questions Marthona asked, or sometimes didn’t ask but made clear nonetheless. Then she recalled that Jondalar had always been a little disconcerted by the directness and frank curiosity of the Mamutoi, and she had a sudden insight. The people who called themselves the Mammoth Hunters, the people who had adopted her and whose ways she had struggled so hard to learn, were not the same as Jondalar’s people. Although the Clan referred to all the people who looked like her as the Others, the Zelandonii were not the Mamutoi and it was not only the language that was different. She would have to pay attention to differences in the way the Zelandonii did things, if she wanted to fit in here.

Jondalar took a. deep breath, realizing this was the time to tell his mother about his brother. He reached over and took both of his mother’s hands in his. “I’m sorry, mother. Thonolan travels in the next world now.”

Marthona’s clear, direct eyes, showed the depth of her sudden grief and sadness over the loss of her youngest son; her shoulders seemed to collapse from the heavy burden. She had suffered the loss of loved ones before, but she had never lost a child. It seemed harder to lose one that she had raised to adulthood, who still should have had the fullness of life before him. She closed her eyes, trying to master her emotions, then straightened her shoulders and looked at the son who had returned to her.

“Were you with him, Jondalar?”

“Yes,” he said, reliving the time, and feeling his grief afresh. “It was a cave lion … Thonolan followed it into a canyon.… I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Jondalar was fighting for control, and Ayla remembered that night in her valley when his grief overwhelmed him while she held him and rocked him like a child. She didn’t even know his language then, but no language is needed to understand grief. She reached over and touched his arm, to let him know she was there for him without interfering in the moment between mother and son. It was not lost on Marthona that Ayla’s touch seemed to help. He took a breath.

“I have something for you, mother,” he said, getting up and going to his traveling pack. He took out a wrapped packet, then, thinking about it, took out another.

“Thonolan found a woman and fell in love. Her people called themselves Sharamudoi. They lived near the end of the Great Mother River, where the river was so big, you understand why she was named for the Great Mother. The Sharamudoi were really two people. The Shamudoi half lived on the land and hunted chamois in the mountains, and the Ramudoi lived on the water and hunted giant sturgeon in the river. In the winter, the Ramudoi moved in with the Shamudoi, each family of one group had a family of the other they were tied to, mated in a way. They seemed to be two different people, but there were a lot of close connections between them that made them each a half of one people.” Jondalar found it difficult to explain the unique and complex culture.

“Thonolan was so much in love, he was willing to become one of them. He became part of the Shamudoi half, when he mated with Jetamio.”

“What a beautiful name,” Marthona said.

“She was beautiful. You would have loved her.”

“Was?”

“She died trying to give birth to a baby who would have been the son of his hearth. Thonolan couldn’t stand losing her. I think he wanted to follow her to the next world.”

“He was always so happy, so carefree….”

“I know, but when Jetamio died, he changed. He wasn’t happy and carefree anymore, just reckless. He couldn’t stay with the Sharamudoi anymore. I tried to persuade him to go home with me, but he insisted on going east. I couldn’t let him go alone. The Ramudoi gave us one of their boats—they make exceptional boats—and we went downstream, but we lost everything in the great delta at the end of the Great Mother River, where it empties into Beran Sea. I got hurt, and Thonolan almost got sucked into quicksand, but a Camp of Mamutoi rescued us.”

“Is that where you met Ayla?”

Jondalar looked at Ayla, then back at his mother. “No,” he said, pausing for a moment, “after we left Willow Camp, Thonolan decided he wanted to go north and hunt mammoth with them during their Summer Meeting, but I don’t think he really cared. He just wanted to keep going.” Jondalar closed his eyes and breathed deep again.

“We were hunting a deer,” he picked up the story again, “but we didn’t know the same deer was being stalked by a lioness. She pounced about the same time that we threw spears. The spears landed first, but the lioness took the kill. Thonolan decided to go after it; he said it was his, not hers. I told him not to argue with a lioness, let her have it, but he insisted on following her back to her den. We waited a while, and when the lioness left, Thonolan decided to go into the canyon and take a piece of the meat. The lioness had a mate, and he wasn’t going to let go of that kill. The lion killed him, and mauled me pretty bad, too.”

Marthona frowned in concern. “You were mauled by a lion?”

“If it hadn’t been for Ayla, I’d be dead,” Jondalar said. “She saved my life. She got me away from that lion, and treated my wounds, too. She’s a healer.”

Marthona looked at Ayla, then back at Jondalar with surprise. “She got you away from a lion?”

“Whinney helped me, and I couldn’t have done it if it was just any lion,” Ayla tried to explain.

Jondalar understood his mother’s confusion. And he knew the explanation wasn’t going to make it any easier to believe. “You’ve seen how Wolf and the horses mind her.…”

“You’re not telling me …”

“You tell her, Ayla,” Jondalar said.

“The lion was one I found when he was a cub,” Ayla began. “He’d been trampled by deer and his mother had left him for dead. He almost was. I was the one who had chased those deer, trying to get one to fall into my pit-trap. I did get one, and on the way back to the valley, I found the cub and took him back, too. Whinney wasn’t too happy about it, the lion scent scared her, but I got both the deer and the lion cub back to my cave.

I treated him, and he recovered, but he couldn’t take care of himself alone, so I had to be his mother. Whinney learned to take care of him, too.” Ayla smiled, remembering. “It was so funny to watch them together when he was little.”

Marthona looked at the young woman and gained a new understanding. “Is that how you do it?” she said. “The wolf. And the horses, too?”

Now it was Ayla’s turn to stare in surprise. No one had ever made the connection so quickly before. She was so pleased that Marthona was able to understand, she beamed. “Yes! Of course! That’s what I’ve tried to tell everyone! If you find an animal very young, and feed him and raise him as though he were your own child, he becomes attached to you, and you to him. The lion that killed Thonolan, and mauled Jondalar, was the lion I raised. He was like a son to me.”