The Shelters of Stone (91 page)

T
he First gave the young woman a sharp look. Perhaps she should have spoken with Ayla earlier, in more depth. Was it possible she knew of a way to thwart the will of Doni? This was the wrong way to bring it up, but it was too late now. The zelandonia who were standing nearby were talking loudly and gesticulating among themselves, some were just as agitated as the Fourteenth. A few were saying it was wrong. The rest were coming back to the central area to find out what was going on. Ayla didn’t know her statement would cause such a stir.

The three women with her were standing back and watching. Marthona looked on with sardonic amusement, though her expression remained neutral. Joplaya was astounded that the esteemed zelandonia could quarrel so ardently, but was just as shocked as they were. Jerika listened with great interest, but she had already decided to speak with Ayla in private. Her announcement to the zelandonia could be the solution to a serious problem that had been worrying the woman for some time.

When she first met him, Jerika had fallen completely and irrevocably in love with the handsome giant of a man who was so charmed by the exquisitely dainty yet fiercely independent young woman. He was a gentle man and consummate lover in spite of his size, and she reveled in their
Pleasures. When he asked her to be his mate, she accepted without hesitation, and when she discovered that she was pregnant, she was delighted. But the baby she carried was too big for her tiny frame, and the delivery nearly killed her and her daughter. It damaged her internally, and she never became pregnant again, much to her regret, and relief.

Now her daughter had chosen a man who was, though not as tall, if anything more robust, with powerful muscles and huge bones. Though Joplaya was tall, she was thin and rather delicate with, Jerika had carefully noticed, narrow hips. From the time she realized who her daughter would probably end up choosing, and therefore be the one whose spirit would most likely be chosen by the Mother to start any children she might have, she worried that Joplaya would suffer her fate, or worse. She suspected that Joplaya was already pregnant, since she had started having violent bouts of morning sickness on the trip, but she refused her mother’s suggestion to end the pregnancy.

Jerika knew there was nothing she could do about it. It was the Great Mother’s decision. Joplaya would be Blessed or not, when She wished, and live or the at Her discretion, but Jerika suspected that with the man Joplaya had chosen, the chances were that her daughter would the young and painfully in childbirth, if not with the first, then later, with another one. Her only hope was that her daughter would live through this first one and, like herself, as painful as it was, be damaged so badly that she would never be able to get pregnant again … until she heard Ayla say that she knew how to prevent life from starting. She immediately decided that if her daughter had as much trouble as she did and managed to live through the birth of her first, to save her life, she would make sure Joplaya would not get pregnant again.

“Quiet, please,” the One Who Was First said. The noise finally settled down. “Ayla, I want to make sure I understand you. Are you saying you know how to stop a pregnancy before it starts? That you know how to prevent life from beginning?” she asked.

“Yes. I thought you would know, too. I was using certain
plants on my Journey from the east with Jondalar. Ï did not want to have a baby while we were traveling, I had no one to help me,” she said.

“You told me that you were already Blessed by Doni. You said it has been three moons since your last bleeding. You were still traveling then,” the donier said.

“I’m almost certain this baby was started after we crossed the glacier,” Ayla said. “We brought only enough of the Losadunai burning stones to melt ice for water to drink for the horses and Wolf and the two of us. I did not even try to boil water for tea and did not prepare my usual morning drink. It was a very difficult crossing, and we almost didn’t make it. When we reached this side and got down off the ice, we stayed and rested for a while, and I didn’t bother to make the preparation. By that time, it didn’t matter if life started. We were almost here. I was happy when I realized I was pregnant.”

“Where did you learn about this medicine?” Zelandoni asked.

“From Iza, the medicine woman who raised me.”

“How did she say it worked?” Zelandoni of the Fourteenth asked.

The First looked at her, trying to contain her annoyance. She was asking questions in a logical sequence. She didn’t need help or interference, but Ayla answered anyway.

“The Clan believes that the spirit of a man’s totem fights the spirit of a woman’s totem, and that is why she bleeds. When the man’s totem is stronger than a woman’s, it defeats hers and begins the new life. Iza told me that certain plants could make a woman’s totem strong and help her totem spirit fight off the man’s,” she explained.

“Primitive, but I’m surprised they have ideas about it at all,” the Fourteenth said, and got a hard stare from the First.

Ayla heard the disdain in her tone and was glad now that she hadn’t said anything earlier about a man starting a baby inside a woman. She didn’t think it was a blending of spirits by Doni any more than it was a defeated totem, but she thought the Fourteenth or someone else would probably find her thoughts more worthy of criticism than consideration.

“You said you used the plants on your Journey. What made you think the medicine would work?” the First asked, taking control of the questions again.

“Men of the Clan put great value on the children of their mates, particularly if they are boys. When their mate has a child, it adds to their prestige. They believe it shows the vigor of their totem, which is in a sense their inner strength. Iza told me she used the plants herself for many years to keep from getting pregnant because she wanted to bring disgrace upon her mate. He was a cruel man who beat her to show his authority over a medicine woman of her rank, so she decided to show that his totem spirit wasn’t strong enough to defeat hers,” Ayla said’

“Why would she put up with such behavior?” the Fourteenth interjected again. “Why didn’t she just sever the knot and find another mate?”

“Women of the Clan have no choice in whom they mate. It is decided by the leader and the other men,” Ayla explained.

“No choice!” the Fourteenth sputtered.

“Under the circumstances, I’d say it showed a great deal of subtle intelligence on the part of the woman, what was her name, Iza?” the First said quickly, before the Fourteenth could butt in and ask another question. “Do all the women of the Clan know about these plants?”

“No, only medicine women, and I think this preparation was known only to women of Iza’s line, but she gave the preparation to some of the other women if she thought they needed it. I don’t know if she told them what it was, though. If any of the men had found out, they would have been very angry, but no one would ask Iza. A medicine woman’s knowledge is not for men to know. It is passed down to her daughters, who would become medicine women themselves, if they showed the inclination. Iza thought of me as her daughter,” Ayla said.

“I am very surprised at the sophistication of their medicine,” Zelandoni said, knowing she was speaking for many of the others.

“Mamut of the Lion Camp understood how effective their medicine was. He went on a Journey when he was young, and broke his arm, quite badly. He stumbled into the cave of a clan, and the medicine woman there set his arm and nursed him back to health. We both believed it was the same clan as the one I lived with. The woman who healed him was Iza’s grandmother.”

There was total silence in the tent when Ayla finished. What she said was very difficult to believe. The zelandonia of the nearby Caves had heard Joharran and Jondalar talk to people about the flatheads, whom Ayla said called themselves the Clan, and were people, not animals. There had been much discussion about it the next few days, but most dismissed the idea. Flatheads might be a little more clever than most people thought, perhaps, but hardly human. Now this woman was saying that they had healed a man of the Mamutoi and had thought about how life began. She even implied that their medicinal practices might be more advanced than those of the Zelandonii.

The zelandonia started discussing these issues again, and the commotion inside the tent could be heard outside. The male zelandonia who had been guarding the women’s meeting were dying of curiosity to find out what was causing the uproar, but were waiting to be invited back in. They knew there were still a few women inside, but it was most unusual for a women’s meeting to become so heated.

The First had heard Ayla speak in depth of the Clan before and was quicker to grasp the implications and to extend them. She was now persuaded that they were people, and believed it was important for the Zelandonii to understand the possible consequences, but even she had not realized how advanced they were. Zelandoni had presumed a simpler, more primitive way of life and believed that their medicine was at a similar level. She felt that Ayla had gained some good basic instruction that she could develop. This called for a réévaluation.

Their own Histories harked back to a time when the Zelandonii lived a simpler life, but their comprehension of
vegetable foods and medicines had been more advanced than other kinds of knowledge. She suspected that awareness of plants was older, went back further. If the Clan was as ancient as Ayla seemed to think, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that their knowledge could be quite developed. Especially if it was true, as Ayla had indicated, that they had some kind of special memory they could draw on. Zelandoni wished that she had spoken with Ayla before it was brought up to the zelandonia, but perhaps it was best this way. It might take just such a shock to make the zelandonia realize the full impact that the people Ayla knew as the Clan could have on them.

“Let’s be quiet, please,” Zelandoni said, trying to settle them down again. When order was finally restored, she made an announcement. “It appears that Ayla has brought us some information that may be very useful. The Mamutoi were very perceptive when they adopted her to the hearth of the Mammoth, which was, in effect, the same as being adopted by the zelandonia. We will speak with her in some depth later and explore the extent of her knowledge. If she does in truth know of ways to prevent the start of life, this could be a great benefit, and we should be grateful to have it.”

“I should tell you that it doesn’t always work,” Ayla interjected. “Iza’s mate died when an earthquake collapsed their cave, but she was pregnant when she found me. Her daughter, Uba, was born not long after. But Iza could count twenty years by then, very old for a woman of the Clan to have a first child. Their girls become women at eight or nine years. But the medicine worked for her for many years, and it worked for me for most of my Journey.”

“Very little of the knowledge of medicine or healing is absolutely certain,” Zelandoni said. “In the end, it is still the Great Mother who decides.”

Jondalar was glad to see the women returning. He had been waiting for Ayla. He had stayed at their camp with Wolf when Dalanar went to the main camp with Joharran and had promised that he would meet them as soon as Ayla returned.
Marthona had told Folara to have some hot tea and a little food ready for them, and invited Jerika and Joplaya to their lodge. Marthona and Jerika talked about mutual friends and relations, and Folara started telling Joplaya about some activities the younger people were planning.

Ayla joined them for a while, but after the rather contentious ending to the meeting in the zelandonia lodge, she felt a need to go off by herself. Saying that she wanted to check on the horses, she picked up her haversack and left with Wolf. She walked upstream along the creek, visited with the horses for a while, then continued on until she came to the pool. She was tempted to go for a swim, but decided to keep on walking instead. She proceeded along a newly developing path, and when she found herself near the new cave, she realized that she had gone the way that Jondalar and the others had come before.

As she approached the small hill that held the cave, she could see the mouth clearly and noticed that the obstructing brush had been cleared away. Dirt and stones around the opening had also been removed, which enlarged the entrance. It was likely that nearly every one of the people at the Summer Meeting of Zelandonii had been inside the new cave at least once by now, but there was little evidence to show for the visits. Because it was so beautiful, and so unusual with its nearly white stone walls, it was considered a very sacred place and rather inviolable. The zelandonia and Cave leaders were still getting accustomed to it, working out the appropriate times and ways to use it. Traditions hadn’t been developed yet, it was too new.

The spot where she had made a small fire to light torches and left charcoal remains had become a fireplace with stones encircling it and a few partially burned torches nearby. She removed her fire-making kit from her pack, quickly kindled a fire and lit one of the torches, then walked to the entrance of the cave.

Holding the torch high, she stepped inside the dark space. The sunlight coming in through the entrance lit the soft dirt floor of the sloping entry corridor, which had
acquired an accumulation of footprints of all sizes, both bare and in footwear. She saw an imprint of a long, narrow bare foot, probably of a tall man, another of average size and slightly wider, the foot of either a grown woman or a growing boy. There was the sole of a sandal woven of grass or reeds, near it the blurred outline of a leather moccasin, then a line of the widely spaced, rather unsteady, tiny footprints of a toddler just learning to walk. On top of them was the pawprint of a wolf. Ayla wondered what a tracker, unaware of the animal that walked ahead of her into the cave, would make of that.

She felt the air become cool and damp and the space darken as she proceeded underground. The cave did not require feats of agility to get into, at least to the large main room. This was a cave that whole families would use, but not as a living space. Underground caves were too dark and damp to live in, especially when the region was full of shelters open to daylight with level floors and overhanging stone ledges above to protect them from rain and snow. And this cave was so beautiful, it felt like a special sanctuary, an extraordinary entrance to the womb of the Mother.