Mammoth Hunters (30 page)

“I not remember … but have dream.”

Mamut was interested. “A dream?” he encouraged.

“Comes back, sometime. I am in dark place, small place. Light comes in small opening. Then”—she closed her eyes and swallowed—“something block light. I am frightened. Then big lion claw come in, sharp nails. I scream, wake up.”

“I have had a dream about cave lions recently,” Mamut said. “That’s why I was so interested in your dream. I dreamed of a pride of cave lions, sunning themselves out on the steppes on a hot summer day. There are two cubs. One of them, a she-cub, tries to play with the male, a big one with a reddish mane. She reaches up with a paw, and bats his face, gently, more like she just wants to touch him. The big male shoves her aside, and then holds her down with a huge forearm, and washes her with his long raspy tongue.”

Both Ayla and Jondalar listened, entranced.

“Then, suddenly,” Mamut continued, “there is a disturbance. A herd of reindeer is running straight at them. At first I thought they were attacking—dreams often have deeper meaning than they seem—but these deer are in a panic, and when they see the lions, they scatter. In the process, the she-cub’s brother gets trampled. When it’s over, the lioness tries to get the little male to get up, but she can’t revive him, so finally she leaves with just the little she-cub and the rest of the pride.”

Ayla was sitting in a state of shock.

“What’s wrong, Ayla?” Mamut asked.

“Baby! Baby was brother. I chase reindeer, hunting. Later, I find little cub, hurt. Bring to cave. Heal him. Raise him like baby.”

“The cave lion you raised had been trampled by reindeer?” It was Mamuts turn to feel shock. This could not be merely coincidence or similarity of environment. This had powerful significance. He had felt the cave lion dream should be interpreted for its symbolic values, but there was more meaning here than he had realized. This went beyond Searching,
beyond his previous experience. He would have to think deeply about it, and he felt he needed to know more. “Ayla, if you wouldn’t mind answering …”

They were interrupted by loud arguing.

“You don’t care about Fralie! You didn’t even pay a decent Bride Price!” Crozie screeched.

“And you don’t care about anything but your status! I’m tired of hearing about her low Bride Price. I paid what you asked when no one else would.”

“What do you mean, no one else would? You begged me for her. You said you’d take care of her and her children. You said you’d welcome me to your hearth.…”

“Haven’t I? Haven’t I done that?” Frebec shouted.

“You call this making me welcome? When have you shown your respect? When have you honored me as a mother?”

“When have you shown me respect? Whatever I say, you argue about.”

“If you ever said something intelligent, no one would need to argue. Fralie deserves more. Look at her, full of the Mother’s blessing …”

“Mother, Frebec, please, stop fighting,” Fralie interjected. “I just want to rest.…”

She looked drawn and pale, and she worried Ayla. As the argument raged, the medicine woman in her could see how it distressed the pregnant woman. She got up and was drawn to the Hearth of the Crane.

“Can’t you see Fralie upset?” Ayla said when both the old woman and the man stopped just long enough for her to speak. “She need help. You not help. You make sick. Not good, this fighting, for pregnant woman. Make lose baby.”

Both Crozie and Frebec looked at her with surprise, but Crozie was quicker to recover.

“See, didn’t I tell you? You don’t care about Fralie. You don’t even want her to talk to this woman who knows something about it. If she loses the baby, it will be your fault!”

“What does she know about it!” Frebec sneered. “Raised by a bunch of dirty animals, what can she know about medicine? Then she brings animals here. She’s nothing but an animal herself. You’re right, I’m not going to let Fralie near this abomination. Who knows what evil spirits she has brought into this lodge? If Fralie loses the baby it will be her fault! Her and her Mother-damned flatheads!”

Ayla staggered back as though she had been dealt a physical
blow. The force of the vituperative attack took her breath away and rendered the rest of the Camp speechless. In the stunned silence, she gasped a strangled, sobbing cry, turned and ran out through the lodge. Jondalar grabbed her parka, and his, and ran after her.

Ayla pushed through the heavy drape of the outer archway into the teeth of screaming wind. The ominous storm that had been threatening all day brought no rain or snow, but howled with fierce intensity beyond the thick walls of the earthlodge. With no barrier to check their savage blast, the difference in atmospheric pressures caused by the great walls of glacial ice to the north created winds of hurricane force across the vast open steppes.

She whistled for Whinney, and heard an answering neigh close by. Coming out of the dark on the lee side of the longhouse, the mare and her colt appeared.

“Ayla! You weren’t thinking of going for a ride in this windstorm, I hope,” Jondalar said, coming out of the lodge. “Here, I brought your parka. It’s cold out here. You must be freezing already.”

“Oh, Jondalar. I can’t stay here,” she cried.

“Put your parka on, Ayla,” he insisted, helping to pull it over her head. Then he took her in his arms. He had expected a scene such as the one Frebec had just made, much earlier. He knew it was bound to happen when she talked so openly about her background. “You can’t leave now. Not in
this.
Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” she sobbed. “Away from here.”

“What about Whinney? And Racer? This is no weather for them to be out in.”

Ayla clung to Jondalar without answering, but on another level of consciousness, she had noticed that the horses had sought shelter close to the earthlodge. It bothered her that she had no cave to offer them for protection from bad weather, as they were used to. And Jondalar was right. She couldn’t possibly leave on a night like this.

“I don’t want to stay here, Jondalar. As soon as it clears up, I want to go back to the valley.”

“If you want, Ayla. We’ll go back. After it clears. But now, let’s go back inside.”

“Look how much ice is clinging to their coats,” Ayla said, trying to brush away with her hand the icicles hanging in matted clumps to Whinney’s long shaggy hair. The mare snorted, raising a steaming cloud of warm vapor in the cold morning air, which was quickly dissipated by the sharp wind. The storm had let up, but the clouds overhead still looked ominous.

“But horses are always outside in winter. They don’t usually live in caves, Ayla,” Jondalar said, trying to sound reasonable.

“And many horses die in winter, even though they stay in sheltered places when the weather is bad. Whinney and Racer have always had a warm and dry place when they wanted one. They don’t live with a herd, they aren’t used to being out all the time. This is not a good place for them … and it’s not a good place for me. You said we could leave any time. I want to go back to the valley.”

“Ayla, haven’t we been made welcome here? Haven’t most people been kind and generous?”

“Yes, we were welcomed. The Mamutoi try to be generous to their guests, but we are only visitors here, and it’s time to leave.”

Jondalar’s forehead wrinkled with concern as he looked down and scuffed his foot. He wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know how. “Ayla … ah … I told you something like this might happen if you … if you talked about the … ah … people you lived with. Most people don’t think about … them the way you do.” He looked up. “If you just hadn’t said anything …”

“I would have died if it hadn’t been for the Clan, Jondalar! Are you saying I should be ashamed of the people who took
care of me? Do you think Iza was less human than Nezzie?” Ayla stormed.

“No, no, I didn’t mean that, Ayla. I’m not saying you should be ashamed, I’m just saying … I mean … you don’t have to talk about them to people who don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure you understand. Who do you think I should talk about when people ask who I am? Who my people are? Where I come from? I am not Clan any more—Broud cursed me, to them I am dead—but I wish I could be! At least they finally accepted me as a medicine woman. They wouldn’t keep me from helping a woman who needs help. Do you know how terrible it is to see her suffer and not be allowed to help? I am a medicine woman, Jondalar!” she said with a cry of frustrated helplessness, and angrily turned back to the horse.

Latie stepped out of the entrance to the earthlodge, and seeing Ayla with the horses, approached eagerly. “What can I do to help?” she asked, smiling broadly.

Ayla recalled her request for help the evening before, and tried to compose herself. “Not think I need help now. Not stay, go back to valley soon,” she said, speaking in the girl’s language.

Latie was crushed. “Oh … well … I guess I’d be in the way, then,” she said, starting back to the archway.

Ayla saw her disappointment. “But horses need coat brushed. Full of ice. Maybe could help today?”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said, smiling again. “What can I do?”

“See, there, on ground near lodge, dry stalks?”

“You mean this teasel?” Latie asked, picking up a stiff stem with a rounded spiny dried top.

“Yes, I get from riverbank. Top make good brush. Break off, like this. Wrap hand with small piece leather. Make easier to hold,” Ayla explained. Then she led her to Racer and showed the girl how to hold the teasel to curry the shaggy winter coat of the young horse. Jondalar stayed nearby to keep him calm until he became accustomed to the unfamiliar girl when Ayla went back to breaking up and brushing away the ice clinging to Whinney.

Latie’s presence temporarily ended their talk about leaving, and Jondalar was grateful for it. He felt he had said more than he should have, and said it badly, and now was at a loss for words. He didn’t want Ayla to go under these circumstances. She might never want to leave the valley again if she
went back now. As much as he loved her, he didn’t know if he could stand to spend the rest of his life with no other people. He didn’t think she should, either. She has been getting along so well, he thought. She wouldn’t have any trouble fitting in anywhere, even with the Zelandonii. If only she wouldn’t talk about … but she’s right. What is she supposed to say when someone asks who her people are? He knew that if he took her home with him, everyone would ask.

“Do you always brush the ice out of their coats, Ayla?” Latie asked.

“No, not always. At valley, horses come in cave when bad weather. Here, no place for horses,” Ayla said. “I leave soon. Go back to valley, when weather clear.”

Inside the lodge, Nezzie had walked through the cooking hearth and the entrance foyer on her way out, but as she approached the outer archway, she heard them talking outside, and stopped to listen. She had been afraid Ayla might want to leave after the trouble the night before, and that would mean no more sign language lessons for Rydag and the Camp. The woman had already noticed the difference in the way people treated him, now that they could talk to him. Except Frebec, of course. I’m sorry I asked Talut to invite them to join us … except where would Fralie be now if I hadn’t? She’s not well; this pregnancy is hard on her.

“Why do you have to leave, Ayla?” Latie asked. “We could make a shelter for them here.”

“She’s right. It wouldn’t be hard to set up a tent, or lean-to, or something near the entrance to protect them from the worst winds and snows,” Jondalar added.

“I think Frebec not like to have
animal
so close,” Ayla said.

“Frebec is only one person, Ayla,” Jondalar said.

“But Frebec is Mamutoi. I am not.”

No one refuted her statement, but Latie blushed with shame for her Camp.

Inside, Nezzie hurried back to the Lion Hearth. Talut, just waking up, flung back the furs, swung his huge legs over the edge of the bed platform and sat up. He scratched his beard, stretched his arms in a wide reach and opened his mouth in a terrific yawn, and then made a grimace of pain and held his head in his hands for a moment. He looked up and saw Nezzie, and smiled sheepishly.

“I drank too much bouza last night,” he announced. Getting up, he reached for his tunic and pulled it on.

“Talut, Ayla is planning to leave as soon as the weather clears,” Nezzie said.

The big man scowled. “I was afraid she might. It’s too bad. I was hoping they would winter with us.”

“Can’t we do anything? Why should Frebec’s bad temper drive them away when everyone else wants them to stay?”

“I don’t know what we can do. Have you talked to her, Nezzie?”

“No. I heard her talking outside. She told Latie there was no place here to shelter the horses, they were used to coming in her cave when the weather was bad. Latie said we could make a shelter, and Jondalar suggested a tent or something near the entrance. Then Ayla said she didn’t think Frebec would like to have an animal so close, and I know she didn’t mean the horses.”

Talut headed for the entrance and Nezzie walked along. “We probably could make something for the horses,” he said, “but if she wants to go, we can’t force her to stay. She’s not even Mamutoi, and Jondalar is Zel … Zella … whatever it is.”

Nezzie stopped him. “Couldn’t we make her a Mamutoi? She says she has no people. We could adopt her, then you and Tulie could make the ceremony to bring her into the Lion Camp.”

Talut paused, considering. “I’m not sure, Nezzie. You don’t make just anyone Mamutoi. Everyone would have to agree, and we’d need some good reasons to explain it to the Council at the Summer Meeting. Besides, you said she’s leaving,” Talut said, then pushed the drape aside and hurried to the gully.

Nezzie stood just outside the archway watching Talut’s back, then shifted her gaze to the tall blond woman who was combing the thick coat of the hay-colored horse. Pausing to study her carefully, Nezzie wondered who she really was. If Ayla had lost her family on the peninsula to the south, they could have been Mamutoi. Several Camps summered near Beran Sea, and the peninsula wasn’t much farther, but somehow the older woman doubted it. Mamutoi knew that was flathead territory and stayed away as a rule, and there was something about her that didn’t quite look Mamutoi. Perhaps her family had been Sharamudoi, those river people to the west that Jondalar stayed with, or maybe Sungaea, the people who lived northeast, but she didn’t know if they traveled as
far south as the sea. Maybe her people had been strangers traveling from some other place. It was hard to say, but one thing was certain. Ayla was not a flathead … and yet they took her in.