The Mammoth Hunters

  “The woman was so weak I thought it might give her reason to live if I showed her that her son was alive, and she seemed eager to see him. But I guess she was too far gone, must have lost too much blood. It was as though she just gave up. She died before the sun came up.

  “Everybody told me to leave him to die with his mother, but I was nursing Rugie anyway, and had a lot of milk. It wasn’t that much trouble to put him to my breast, too.” She hugged him protectively. “I know he’s weak. Maybe I should have left him, but I couldn’t love Rydag any more if he were my own. And I’m not sorry I kept him.”

  Rydag looked up at Nezzie with his big, glowing brown eyes, then put thin arms around her neck and laid his head on her breast. Nezzie rocked him as she held him.

  “Some people say he’s an animal because he can’t talk, but I know he understands. And he’s not an abomination’ either,” she added, with an angry look at Frebec. “Only the Mother knows why the spirits that made him were mixed.”

  Ayla was fighting to hold back tears. She didn’t know how these people would react to tears; her watering eyes had always bothered people of the Clan. Watching the woman and the child, she was overwhelmed with memories. She ached to hold her son, and grieved anew for Iza, who had taken her in and mothered her, though she had been as different to the Clan as Rydag was to the Lion Camp. But more than anything, she wished there was some way she could explain to Nezzie how moved she was, how grateful she was for Rydag’s sake … and her own. Inexplicably, Ayla felt it would somehow help repay Iza if she could find a way to do something for Nezzie.

  “Nezzie, he knows,” Ayla said softly. “He is not animal, not flathead. He is child of Clan, and child of Others.”

  “I know he is not an animal, Ayla,” Nezzie said, “but what is Clan?”

  “People, like mother of Rydag. You say flathead, they say Clan,” Ayla explained.

  “What do you mean, ‘they say Clan’? They can’t talk,” Tulie interjected.

  “Not say many words. But they talk. They talk with hands.”

  “How do you know?” Frebec asked. “What makes you so smart?”

  Jondalar took a deep breath and held it, waiting for her answer.

  “I lived with Clan before. I talked like Clan. Not with words, until Jondalar came,” Ayla said. “The Clan were my people.”

  There was a stunned silence as the meaning of her words became clear.

  “You mean you lived with flatheads! You lived with those dirty animals!” Frebec exclaimed with disgust, jumping up and backing away. “No wonder she can’t talk right. If she lived with them she’s as bad as they are. Nothing but animals, all of them, including that mixed-up perversion of yours, Nezzie.”

  The Camp was in an uproar. Even if some might have agreed with him, Frebec had gone too far. He had overstepped the bounds of courtesy to visitors, and had even insulted the headman’s mate. But it had long been an embarrassment to him that he belonged to the Camp that had taken in the “abomination of mixed spirits,” and he was still chafing under the barbs of Fralie’s mother in the most recent round of their long-standing battle. He wanted to take out his irritation on someone.

  Talut roared to the defense of Nezzie, and Ayla. Tulie was quick to defend the honor of the Camp. Crozie, smiling maliciously, was alternately haranguing Frebec and browbeating Fralie, and the others were voicing their opinions loudly. Ayla looked from one to another, wanting to put her hands over her ears to shut out the noise.

  Suddenly Talut boomed a shout for silence. It was loud enough to startle everyone into quiet. Then Mamut’s drum was heard. It had a settling, quieting effect.

  “I think before anyone else says anything, we ought to hear what Ayla has to say,” Talut said, as the drum stilled.

  People leaned forward attentively, more than willing to listen to find out about the mysterious woman. Ayla wasn’t sure she wanted to say any more to these noisy, rude people, but she felt she had no choice. Then, lifting her chin a bit, she thought, if they wanted to hear it, she’d tell them, but she was leaving in the morning.

  “I no … I do not remember young life,” Ayla began, “only earthquake, and cave lion who make scars on my leg. Iza tell me she find me by river … what is word, Mamut? Not awake?”

  “Unconscious.”

  “Iza find me by river, unconscious. I am close to age of Rydag, younger. Maybe five years. I am hurt on leg from cave lion claw. Iza is … medicine woman. She heal my leg. Creb … Creb is Mog-ur … like Mamut … holy man … knows spirit world. Creb teach me to speak Clan way. Iza and Creb … all Clan … they take care of me. I am not Clan, but they take care of me.”

  Ayla was straining to recall everything Jondalar had told her about their language. She hadn’t liked Frebec’s comment that she couldn’t talk right, any more than the rest of what he said. She glanced at Jondalar. His forehead was furrowed. He wanted her to be careful of something. She wasn’t entirely sure of the reason for his concern, but perhaps it was not necessary to mention everything.

  “I grow up with Clan, but leave … to find Others, like me. I am …” She stopped to think of the right counting word. “Fourteen years then. Iza tell me Others live north. I look long time, not find anyone. Then I find valley and stay, to make ready for winter. Kill horse for meat, then see small horse, her baby. I have no people. Young horse is like baby, I take care of young horse. Later, find young lion, hurt. Take lion, too, but he grow up, leave, find mate. I live in valley three years, alone. Then Jondalar come.”

  Ayla stopped then. No one spoke. Her explanation, so simply told, with no embellishments, could only be true, yet it was difficult to believe. It posed more questions than it answered. Could she really have been taken in and raised by flatheads? Could they really talk, or at least communicate? Could they really be so humane, so human? And what about her? If she was raised by them, was she human?

  In the silence that followed, Ayla watched Nezzie and the boy, and then remembered an incident early in her life with the Clan. Creb had been teaching her to communicate with hand signs, but there was one gesture she had learned herself. It was a signal shown often to babies, and always used by children to the women who took care of them, and she recalled how Iza had felt when she first made the signal to her.

  Ayla leaned forward and said to Rydag, “I want show you word. Word you say with hands.”

  He sat up, his eyes showing his interest, and excitement. He had understood, as he always did, every word that was said, and the talk about hand signs had caused vague stirrings within him. With everyone watching, she made a gesture, a purposeful movement with her hands. He made an attempt to copy her, frowned with puzzlement. Then, suddenly comprehension came to him from some deeply buried place, and it showed on his face. He corrected himself as Ayla smiled and nodded her head. Then he turned to Nezzie and made the gesture again. She looked at Ayla.

  “He say to you, ‘mother,’ ” Ayla explained.

  “Mother?” Nezzie said, then closed her eyes, blinking back tears, as she held close the child she had cared for since his birth. “Talut! Did you see that? Rydag just called me ‘mother.’ I never thought I’d ever see the day Rydag would call me ‘mother.’ ”

  4

  The mood of the Camp was subdued. No one knew what to say or what to think. Who were these strangers that had suddenly appeared in their midst? The man who claimed to come from someplace far to the west was easier to believe than the woman who said she had lived for three years in a valley nearby, and even more amazing, with a pack of flatheads before that. The woman’s story threatened a whole structure of comfortable beliefs, yet it was difficult to doubt her.

  Nezzie had carried Rydag to his bed, with tears in her eyes, after he had signed his first silent word. Everyone else took it as a signal that the storytellings were over and moved to their own hearths. Ayla used the opportunity to slip away. Pulling her parka, a hooded outer fur tunic, over her head, she went outside.

  Whinney recognized her and ni
ckered softly. Feeling her way in the dark, guided by the mare’s snorting and blowing, Ayla found the horse.

  “Is everything all right, Whinney? Are you comfortable? And Racer? Probably no more than I am,” Ayla said, with thoughts as much as with the private language she used when she was with the horses. Whinney tossed her head, prancing delicately, then rested her head across the woman’s shoulder as Ayla wrapped her arms around the shaggy neck and laid her forehead against the horse who had been her only companion for so long. Racer crowded in close and all three clung together for a moment of respite from all the unfamiliar experiences of the day.

  After Ayla assured herself that the horses were fine, she walked down to the edge of the river. It felt good to be out of the lodge, away from people. She took a deep breath. The night air was cold and dry. Sparks of static crackled through her hair as she pushed back her fur-lined hood, stretched her neck and looked up.

  The new moon, avoiding the great companion that held it tethered, had turned its shining eye out upon the distant depths whose whirling lights tantalized with promises of boundless freedom, but offered only cosmic emptiness. High thin clouds cloaked the fainter stars, but only veiled the more determined with shimmering halos, and made the sooty black sky feel close and soft.

  Ayla was in a turmoil, conflicting emotions pulling at her. These were the Others she had looked for. The kind she had been born to. She would have grown up with people like them, comfortable, at home, if it hadn’t been for the earthquake. Instead she had been raised by the Clan. She knew Clan customs, but the ways of her own people were strange. Yet if it hadn’t been for the Clan, she wouldn’t have grown up at all. She couldn’t go back to them, but she didn’t feel that she belonged here, either.

  These people were so noisy, and disorderly. Iza would have said they had no manners. Like that Frebec man, speaking out of turn, without asking permission, and then everyone yelling and talking at once. She thought Talut was a leader, but even he had to shout to make himself heard. Brun would never have had to shout. The only time she ever heard him shout was to warn someone of impending danger. Everyone in the clan kept the leader at a certain level of awareness; Brun had only to signal, and within heartbeats, he would have had everyone’s attention.

  She didn’t like the way these people talked about the Clan, either, calling them flatheads and animals. Couldn’t anyone see they were people, too? A little different, maybe, but people just the same. Nezzie knew it. In spite of what the rest said, she knew Rydag’s mother was a woman, and the child to whom she gave birth only a baby. He’s mixed, though, like my son, Ayla thought, and like Oda’s little girl at the Clan Gathering. How could Rydag’s mother have had a child of mixed spirits like that?

  Spirits! Is it really spirits that makes babies? Does a man’s totem spirit overcome a woman’s and make a baby grow inside her, the way the Clan thinks? Does the Great Mother choose and combine the spirits of a man and a woman and then put them inside a woman, the way Jondalar and these people believe?

  Why am I the only one who thinks it’s a man, not a spirit, that starts a baby growing inside a woman? A man, who does it with his organ … his manhood, Jondalar calls it. Why else would men and women come together like they do?

  When Iza told me about the medicine, she said that it strengthened her totem and that’s what kept her from having a baby for so many years. Maybe it did, but I didn’t take it when I was living alone and no babies got started by themselves. It was only after Jondalar came that I even thought about looking for that golden thread plant and the antelope sage root again.…

  After Jondalar showed me it didn’t have to hurt … after he showed me how wonderful it could be for a man and woman together …

  I wonder what would happen if I stopped taking Iza’s secret medicine? Would I have a baby? Would I have Jondalar’s baby? If he put his manhood there, where babies come from?

  The thought brought a flush of warmth to her face, and a tingling to her nipples. It’s too late today, she thought, I already took the medicine this morning, but what if I just made an ordinary tea tomorrow? Could I start Jondalar’s baby growing? We wouldn’t have to wait, though. We could try tonight.…

  She smiled to herself. You just want him to touch you, and put his mouth on your mouth, and on … She shivered with anticipation, closing her eyes to let her body remember how he could make it feel.

  “Ayla?” a voice barked.

  She jumped at the sound. She hadn’t heard Jondalar coming, and the tone he used wasn’t in keeping with the way she was feeling. It dispelled the warmth. Something was bothering him. Something had been bothering him since they arrived; she wished she could discover what it was.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing out here?” he snapped.

  What had she been doing? “I am feeling the night, and breathing, and thinking about you,” she answered, explaining as fully as she could.

  It wasn’t the answer Jondalar expected, though he wasn’t sure what answer he did expect. He had been fighting down a hard knot of anger and anxiety that had made his stomach churn ever since the dark-skinned man appeared. Ayla seemed to find him so interesting, and Ranec was always looking at her. Jondalar had tried to swallow his anger and convince himself it was silly to think there was anything more to it. She needed other friends. Just because he was the first didn’t mean he was the only man she would ever want to know.

  Yet when Ayla asked Ranec about his background, Jondalar felt himself flush with hot rage and shudder with cold terror at the same time. Why did she want to know more about this fascinating stranger if she wasn’t interested? The tall man resisted an urge to snatch her away, and was bothered because he had such a feeling. She had the right to choose her friends, and they were only friends. They had only talked and looked at each other.

  When she went outside alone, Jondalar, seeing Ranec’s dark eyes follow her, quickly put on his parka and went out after her. He saw her standing by the river, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, felt sure she was thinking about Ranec. Her answer first caught him by surprise, then he relaxed, and smiled.

  “I should have known, if I asked, I’d get a complete and honest answer. Breathing, and feeling the night—you’re wonderful, Ayla.”

  She smiled back. She wasn’t sure what she had done, but something had made him smile and put the happiness back in his voice. The warmth she had been feeling returned, and she moved toward him. Even in the dark of night, with barely enough starlight to show a face, Jondalar sensed her mood from the way she moved, and responded in kind. The next moment she was in his arms, with his mouth on hers, and all her doubts and worries fled from her mind. She would go anywhere, live with any people, learn any strange customs, so long as she had Jondalar.

  After a moment she looked up at him. “Do you remember when I asked you what your signal was? How I should tell you when I wanted you to touch me, and wanted your manhood in me?”

  “Yes, I remember,” he said, smiling wryly.

  “You said to kiss, or just ask. I am asking. Can you make your manhood ready?”

  She was so serious, and so ingenuous, and so appealing. He bent his head to kiss her again, and held her so close she could almost see the blue of his eyes, and the love in them. “Ayla, my funny, beautiful woman,” he said. “Do you know how much I love you?”

  But as he held her, he felt a flush of guilt. If he loved her so much, why did he feel so embarrassed about the things she did? When that Frebec man backed away from her in disgust, he’d wanted to die of shame that he had brought her, that he could be associated with her. A moment later, he’d hated himself for it. He loved her. How could he be ashamed of the woman he loved?

  That dark man, Ranec, wasn’t ashamed. The way he looked at her, with his white gleaming teeth and his dark flashing eyes, laughing, coaxing, teasing; when Jondalar thought of it, he had to fight an impulse to strike out at him. Every time he thought of it, he had to fight the urge again. He loved her so m
uch he couldn’t bear the thought that she might want someone else, maybe someone who wasn’t embarrassed by her. He loved her more than he ever thought it was possible to love anyone. But how could he be ashamed of the woman he loved?

  Jondalar kissed her again, harder, holding her so tight it hurt, then with an almost frenzied ardor, he kissed her throat and neck. “Do you know what it feels like to know, finally, that you can fall in love? Ayla, can’t you feel how much I love you?”

  He was so earnest, so fervent, she felt a pang of fear, not for herself, but for him. She loved him, more than she could ever find words for, but this love he felt for her was not quite the same. It wasn’t so much stronger, as more demanding, more insistent. As though he feared he would lose that which he had finally won. Totems, especially strong totems, had a way of knowing, and testing, just such fears. She wanted to find a way to deflect his outpouring of powerful emotion.

  “I can feel how ready you are,” she said, with a little grin.

  But he didn’t respond with a lighter mood, as she had hoped. Instead he kissed her fiercely, crushing her until she thought her ribs would crack. Then he was fumbling inside her parka, under her tunic, reaching for her breasts, trying to untie the drawstring of her trousers.

  She had never known him like this, needing, craving, imploring in his urgency. His way was usually more tender, more considerate of her needs. He knew her body better than she did, and he enjoyed his knowledge and skill. But this time his needs were stronger. Knowing the moment for what it was, she gave herself up to him, and lost herself in the powerful expression of his love. She was as ready for him as he was for her. She undid the drawstring and let her legged garment drop, then helped him with his.

  Before she knew it, she was on the hard ground near the bank of the river. She caught a glimpse of faintly hazy stars before closing her eyes. He was on her, his mouth hard on hers, his tongue prodding, searching, as though he could find with it what he sought so eagerly with his warm and rigid member. She opened to him, her mouth and her thighs, then reached for him and guided him into her moist, inviting depths. She gasped as he entered, and heard an almost strangled moan, then felt his shaft sink in to fill her, as she strained to him.